LHC@home: Theory Application

Docker Failing Tasks, with pattern Theory_nnnn-nnnnnnn-nnnn_nnnnnnnnnn

Sat, 06 Jun 2026 14:42:05 GMT

No.
Even the artifact from last night didn't work for me.
Will test over the weekend why.

79 TB disk reads

Thu, 04 Jun 2026 19:39:55 GMT

In reply to Toby Broom's message of 4 Jun 2026:

I have an overide in appconfig for the VM that it has 1.5 GB to aviod this, I think its just a bad WU?

OK. That might be the case.

Theory in containers

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 19:57:01 GMT

I'm sure that most people have seen this message:

level=warning msg="The cgroupv2 manager is set to systemd but there is no systemd user session available"
level=warning msg="For using systemd, you may need to log in using a user session"
level=warning msg="Alternatively, you can enable lingering with: `loginctl enable-linger nnn` (possibly as root)"
level=warning msg="Falling back to --cgroup-manager=cgroupfs"

For me enabling linger never worked on my computers so I set in /etc/containers/containers.conf

[engine]
cgroup_manager = "cgroupfs"

All was well and I had no issues to run tasks.

However, I had another issue and asked the BOINC team for help, they said my podman has issues, so it seems that its not recomeneded to use cgroupfs.

After many hours of trying settings I was able to get systemd to work.

I installed BOINC directly from BOINC as per instructions here https://boinc.berkeley.edu/linux_install.php via apt as I have a Debian based Linux.

However, as it common for LHC@Home the default settings are not compatiable, so you need to overide the defualts.

to get the nnn value you can run

 id -u boinc,

my numbers, were different on each computer, some were 120, others 125 and other 997.

systemctl edit boinc-client

to edit the overide of the default BOINC setting:

[Unit]
Requires=user@nnn.service #Wait for the users instance of systemd to start since BOINC is set to auto start at boot.
After=user@nnn.service #Wait for the users instance of systemd to start since BOINC is set to auto start at boot.

[Service]
ProtectHome=false #Since podman need to read and write to /run/user/ folder this needs to be off so it can communicate with podman
Delegate=cpu io memory pids #I needed this to ensure that the statistics about the containers are populated correctly
MemoryAccounting=yes  #I needed this to ensure that the statistics about the containers are populated correctly
ProtectSystem=full  #needed for VirtualBox to run correctly
Environment="XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=/run/user/nnn" #I'm not sure if this is needed but seemed to help BOINC find podman
Environment="DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS=unix:path=/run/user/nnn/bus" #I'm not sure if this is needed but seemed to help BOINC find podman

For me the boinc user that was created automatically had many services that were not needed (e.g. audio, firmware updater) so I could disable these, its more a cosmetic thing.

systemctl --user -M boinc@ mask \
  pipewire.service \
  pipewire-pulse.service \
  pipewire-pulse.socket \
  filter-chain.service \
  wireplumber.service \
  xdg-document-portal.service \
  xdg-permission-store.service \
  snap.firmware-updater.firmware-notifier.service \
  snap.firmware-updater.firmware-notifier.timer \
  snap.prompting-client.daemon.service \
  snap.snapd-desktop-integration.snapd-desktop-integration.service

Hopefully this is useful to get your podman/BOINC running too.

theory 302.1

Fri, 29 May 2026 13:55:12 GMT

In reply to Pascal's message of 29 May 2026:

... could you give me a step-by-step description. ...

My previous post describes the steps you need to do.

For example #3:
Use an editor you are familiar with and modify /etc/cvmfs/default.local as follows:
- add 'alice.cern.ch' to the repository list
- remove 'geant4.cern.ch'

For example #4:
Use an editor you are familiar with and modify /etc/cvmfs/default.local as follows:
Add 'CVMFS_USE_CDN=yes'

Similar with the other numbers.
I will not explain how to create a file, open a file in an arbitrary text editor, enter a line, modify some text, remove another line, save the file ...

... if I understood correctly, you have to install cvmfs + podman and that’s it.
Is the installation of CVMFS for podman identical to the one used to do the theory native tasks?

The docker/podman app replaced the older Theory native app.
Podman (or docker) is a MUST HAVE to run this app.

A local CVMFS is recommended as it avoids a lot of network traffic but it is independent from Podman.
If you don't install it, a CVMFS inside the container will be used.
If you decide to use CVMFS on the host it MUST be correctly configured!
As for CVMFS you got the links with step by step instructions and comments in your task logs.

Working set size/Virtual memory size of Docker app incorrect

Wed, 27 May 2026 16:04:56 GMT

Done its https://github.com/BOINC/boinc/issues/7100

No Tasks

Mon, 25 May 2026 23:18:16 GMT

Finally got the server to take back my finished Dockers and give me some new ones ....nothing at -dev yet

Task at 100% and still running

Sun, 24 May 2026 04:31:35 GMT

I used to get very long Theory work units, such as some more than 12 hours (on a 2 year old CPU) such as sent dates April 5, 13, 30 and May 1 and 8 (such as https://lhcathome.cern.ch/lhcathome/result.php?resultid=435330784). Some long tasks included those with Input file metadata indicating pythia8, sherpa, herwig, powheg-box, and likely other subtypes.

Since May 8, all work units complete in usually under an hour and a few within about 3-4 hours on that same PC system,

Has the generation of the long work units changed or is it just random over time?

Just wondering whether we still need to request a red message in the Event Log to warn users when a specific task may take a very long time to run.

Stuck in waiting for validation with not beeing send out again

Fri, 15 May 2026 09:38:24 GMT

Sadly, that's not the same problem. It completed on my end successfully and the task has online the status 'Completed, waiting for validation' but it has been waiting for 10 days.
Some tasks had similar results, but they got sent out again to another user, and when that was done, it finished up.
But here it seems that the sending-out part was not generated successfully.

How do I tell if a podman theory task in windows is stuck or still running?

Tue, 12 May 2026 15:48:36 GMT

I don't have htop inside the container so I just used top e.g.

podman exec -it ed746bb7ffd4 top -n1

 
Tasks:  17 total,   2 running,  15 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie
%Cpu(s):  0.4 us, 24.3 sy, 72.5 ni,  2.9 id,  0.0 wa,  0.0 hi,  0.0 si,  0.0 st
MiB Mem : 511227.9 total, 447688.1 free,  53287.8 used,  17278.2 buff/cache
MiB Swap:   8192.0 total,   8192.0 free,      0.0 used. 457940.1 avail Mem

    PID USER      PR  NI    VIRT    RES    SHR S  %CPU  %MEM     TIME+ COMMAND
    965 boinc     30  10  635044 269404  14120 R 100.0   0.1   3196:45 Herwig

Since I have more than 1 container I used podman ps to get the ID (ed746bb7ffd4 ) that I was intrested in.