Posts by MarkJ

61) Message boards : Questions and problems : It appears that CPU tasks take way too long to crunch when GPU is active (Message 91938)
Posted 26 Jun 2019 by MarkJ
Post:
Are you using the iGPU (the Intel graphics)? That will slow down the cpu tasks.

The second thing to look at would be cooling, with the cpu and the GPUs going a laptop will be struggling with the heat and likely throttle to protect itself. Laptop cooling systems tend to get clogged with fluff easily so may need cleaning.
62) Message boards : BOINC Manager : Finish all jobs and close (Message 91685)
Posted 2 Jun 2019 by MarkJ
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The client has an exit_when_done config option you can put into cc_config. See BOINC Client configuration

I haven’t tried it, but would assume you set no new tasks and add this into cc_config and re-read config files. Once it’s completed all work it should exit.

Normally I set no new tasks and once it’s done the machine just goes idle, no need to power it off and on all the time. I have a number of machines that process work overnight (due to it being cooler) this way.
63) Message boards : GPUs : Is there a way in Linux Mint 19.1 to delay boinc start at boot? (Message 91565)
Posted 20 May 2019 by MarkJ
Post:
There is a similar query about delaying service startup on StackOverflow. See https://stackoverflow.com/questions/43001223/how-to-ensure-that-there-is-a-delay-before-a-service-is-started-in-systemd

There are a few suggestions in there but I think using a timer and disabling the service is probably the easier one for you.

It would be better if BOINC could do it as a config option as not all of us will want a delay and then there are the many different ways of doing it (just look at the message thread I linked to) and the different systemd/initd used by different flavours of Linux.

BOINC already has a start_delay config option, however thats after its got going and before running tasks. Can we move that delay so that it occurs before the GPU detection? That way we don’t need another config option.
64) Message boards : Questions and problems : Problems with remote client control (Message 89857)
Posted 30 Jan 2019 by MarkJ
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Have you got an IP address or host name in remote_hosts.cfg that allows the host you are connecting from?

Have you entered the password that is in gui_rpc_auth.cfg (on the host you are connecting to) into the BOINC manager that is trying to connect?

You need both of these as well as the port being open. If you update these files you need to restart the core client to pickup the changes.
65) Message boards : Projects : PreK-12 BOINC Machine Question (Message 89855)
Posted 30 Jan 2019 by MarkJ
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Basically BOINC runs on each machine. Those machines do not need screens or keyboards - commonly called headless. You can run Windows or Linux on these compute nodes. Linux is free. Each machine works independently of the others. This is called a CoW (Cluster of Workstations) arrangement. These machines would be connected to your internal network. They will need internet access to download work units (what you called packets) and so on. You can use a proxy server if you have one.

You would use one machine to monitor and manage the others. It doesn’t have to run BOINC, but will need a screen and keyboard. As mentioned before BOINCtasks is a good program to run for monitoring the others. You can see all the tasks that are running on all the machines at once. You can use this same machine to login to your compute nodes and apply operating system updates, etc as needed.

BOINCtasks is a Windows program but will also run under Linux using wine. My BOINCtasks machine is an old laptop running Win7 and my compute nodes are running Linux. I have Intel machines, AMD machines and a bunch of Raspberry Pi’s as compute nodes. The BOINCtasks website is here which has some screen shots so you can see what it looks like, the program of course and instructions on how to use it.
66) Message boards : Questions and problems : CluBORun (Message 89489)
Posted 6 Jan 2019 by MarkJ
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Sorry can’t help answer the question, but I looked it up on github as I haven’t heard of it before. The about file says the following:

CluBORun: tool for utilizing idle resources of computing clusters in volunteer computing

There are some reasons why resources of computing clusters can be useful in volunteer computing. Firstly, a computing cluster is quite reliable device, so results obtained on it can be taken as a reference when checking the results. Secondly, computing cluster can significantly help to increase performance of a new volunteer project with low amount of participants.

We have implemented a CluBORun tool (Cluster for BOINC Run) aimed at utilizing idle resources of computing clusters in volunteer computing projects based on BOINC. The key feature of CluBORun is that it utilizes only idle resources of computing clusters (just as BOINC-manager does it for computers) and uses only ordinary cluster’s user rights. When tasks from another user appear in a cluster queue, CluBORun stops BOINC tasks in queue if new tasks can be launched on freed resources.

The CluBORun tool was launched on the computing cluster MVS-100k (Joint supercomputer center of RAS) on December 2013 to include the resources of this cluster in volunteer computing project SAT@home. As a result the performance of the project increased by 40 % in some periods of time. At the moment CluBORun can work with the SLURM, Cleo and the SUPPZ job scheduler systems. We plan to make a version for the PBS TORQUE system in the nearest future.
67) Message boards : BOINC client : RPI and working location. (Message 89483)
Posted 5 Jan 2019 by MarkJ
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Raspbian are still on 7.6 until Debian release Buster (expected in Q1 2019). At the moment Buster has 7.10. I am hoping Gianfranco can get 7.14.2 in before their change freeze.

Correction: They have 7.12 in Buster
68) Message boards : BOINC client : RPI and working location. (Message 89482)
Posted 5 Jan 2019 by MarkJ
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The default working location for most distro installs was changed from /var/lib/boinc-client to /var/lib/boinc w.e.f. version 7.10

Perhaps somebody could add a comment. #2945

Gianfranco set up a symlink so /var/lib/boinc is the same as /var/lib/boinc-client under Debian. I expect it will be the same across the derivatives like Ubuntu.

Raspbian are still on 7.6 until Debian release Buster (expected in Q1 2019). At the moment Buster has 7.10. I am hoping Gianfranco can get 7.14.2 in before their change freeze.
69) Message boards : Questions and problems : want to write software for boinc (Message 89333)
Posted 26 Dec 2018 by MarkJ
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the idea is about a solar flare calculator to predict solar flares.

Wouldn’t NASA or one of the other space agencies have routines for calculating this? It sounds like you would need to team up with some astrophysics specialists, typically that would be done via a university.

After you’ve got some software you would need to look at hosting a project so you get into hardware and infrastructure for it to run the BOINC server software. Depending on how many users/work units you get up to, it could be multiple servers or as simple as a VM running on a beefier home computer. If you are collaborating with a university they might be able to help with computer science students to set it up/run it and/or help with the hardware.
70) Message boards : Projects : GPUGrid (Message 89252)
Posted 17 Dec 2018 by MarkJ
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I have seen situations where the project comms will time out after 5 minutes which is the default setting unless changed via cc_config. Its possible that it would try 1st attempt and then timeout after 5 mins followed by another go before going into project backoff. That would mean at least 10 minutes plus the default backoff interval before it goes into project backoff.
71) Message boards : Questions and problems : stdoutdae.txt file not found (Message 89250)
Posted 17 Dec 2018 by MarkJ
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7.6 onwards log to the syslog. You can still view the log via BOINC Managers Event Log (or BOINC Tasks Messages) for the most recent start of the BOINC client.
72) Message boards : Questions and problems : Einstein@home: Download problems caused by chscksum error in JPLEPH.405 (Message 88272)
Posted 30 Sep 2018 by MarkJ
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You’ll have to take it up over on Einstein. If I recall correctly the last time it happened they had to fix the file on their download server.

Update: There are already 2 threads going in their Problems and Bug reports message boards. One of them contains a work-around.
73) Message boards : Questions and problems : Problem install BOINC on Linux-Ubuntu 18.04 (Message 87241)
Posted 24 Jul 2018 by MarkJ
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BOINC 7.9.3 is in the Ubuntu 18.04 (Bionic) repo, so why would you install a much older version?

You can use loctusofborg’s ppa to get a more up to date version than that even. See locutusofborg for details.
74) Message boards : Questions and problems : BOINC manager closes on selecting 'Notices' tab (Message 87204)
Posted 21 Jul 2018 by MarkJ
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I noticed in the dump a mention of Avast. Have you tried disabling it when you do the install? Overzealous virus scanners are known for causing all sorts of problems like this. Did it quarantine the installer, or maybe it just blocks it when you run the installer.
75) Message boards : Questions and problems : Wanted: add headless options for boinc-client (Message 87176)
Posted 19 Jul 2018 by MarkJ
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I believe it has already been addressed by the Linux package. You'll have to get the version from Debian's stretch-backports if you want a newer version.

Read the last couple of messages in this thread
76) Message boards : Questions and problems : Compiling for headless use? (Message 86977)
Posted 10 Jul 2018 by MarkJ
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Raspbian Stretch Lite, seems to be stuck on 7.6.33

You can use the standard Debian repo assuming its a Pi2 or Pi3. The minimum Debian support is an ARMv7 processor which is why you need a Pi2 or better.

See here for how to do it. You can then use the boinc-client from stretch-backports, which as I type this is 7.10.2. The 7.12 will probably hit stretch-backports in a week or two.
77) Message boards : Questions and problems : Compiling for headless use? (Message 86944)
Posted 9 Jul 2018 by MarkJ
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What distro are you running? Don't they have boinc-client in their repo or did you want to compile your own?
78) Message boards : Questions and problems : What's wrong with the way deadlines work using BOINC? (Message 86922)
Posted 7 Jul 2018 by MarkJ
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The “store at least” in current clients is the cache low-water mark. The “store up to” becomes the high-water mark. So in your example you have 0.5 low-water and 0.76 as high-water days of work the client tries to keep cached.

Current server code stores estimates by app version after a machine has done at least 11 task for each app version. The older method was to store a single DCF (duration correction factor) value on the client but it gets confused with different app versions so estimates vary wildly. Which is used depends on the server software and a lot of projects are still running older versions.

I run multiple projects, but only one active at a time. I have a small cache setting and I toggle which one by setting no new tasks on the project tab in the manager. Some projects play nice together and others not. The ones that play nice usually have similar run times.
79) Message boards : Projects : Largest backlog? (Message 86914)
Posted 7 Jul 2018 by MarkJ
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As as user you could use the server status page of each project.

Some of the projects show estimated work, and current compute capacity on their server status page, eg Einstein shows current capacity plus estimates in days for their gravity wave work. Asteroids shows just current capacity but no estimates on work. They almost all show number of work units available.

In a lot of cases it might be the project hasn’t got any idea how much data they have to process because it’s has a feed of data, so while they have it they’ll always have work (bar project issues). They wouldn’t be able to estimate how much compute capacity they need.
80) Message boards : GPUs : Using Nvidia Tesla Dual GPU card (Message 86592)
Posted 17 Jun 2018 by MarkJ
Post:
Did you install the Tesla Driver for Windows?

According to the log it can only see the Quadro and isn't aware of the Tesla. If it found it you'd have 3 lines (one for each device) and then you can tell it which one to ignore.


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