LHC@home

It could be great to be able to contribute to LHC@home. By example, users could port LHC@home to many OS and platforms.
CERN has just launched the open hardware repository. Opening the LHC@home sources would follow the CERN policy.

To the moderators of LHC@home:

The last post to this thread was on 2011 July 22. Shouldn't there have been an answer of some kind?

I tried running LHC@home on 4 boxes: solaris, MacOSX, Ubuntu, a virtual debian distro. The BOINC managers worked just fine on every project I attached to (I tried 6) except for LHC@home.

Is Cern really stuck on using Windows? Why the reluctance to offer the sources so plugins can be developed for multiple platforms? Heck folks WikiLeaks probably has your sources already, ask them to publish for you. (sorry about the sarcasm it was intended to be humorous).

Could someone please let us know why we cannot join in the search for Peter Higgs' elusive bouncing boysson just because we prefer non-MS platforms?

If it is just time: I volunteer mine to convert the code. I'm certain there will be others.

Sincerely,
Clark Williams

This project runs fine on my 2 Kubuntu boxes.

This project verifies results by comparing 2 results from the same WU to see if they match. They require an extremely high precision in the results and they have had great difficulty getting results from different platforms to match and verify. After about 5 years of work on the problem they now have results from Linux and Windows matching well and they hope to be able to port the code to OS X in the not too distant future. There is no anticipated delivery date for an OS X app, there isn't even an anticipated date by which they can begin to anticipate a date for delivery.

Be aware that the project's sole developer is retired. He doesn't earn a dime from his work at this project and his primary goal at this time is to document and publish how he is able to get results from Linux and Windows to agree with the degree of precision he has achieved. It is a remarkable achievement and it deserves to be documented and published. After that job is finished he hopes to begin porting to OS X. I think I've summarized his concerns and intentions fairly accurately but if you want to check it out for yourself then find Eric Macintosh's posts and read them.

I don't recall any official word regarding the source being made available but IMHO they probably won't release it because they want strict control over the task results to ensure they match.

Thank you!

I was really just looking for a reply to the original post that explained why we didn't see more platforms. Mac OSX is okay but other distros on Linux, Solaris, OS 9, and others was just as important.

I'm very curious now about the accuracy problems. Especially considering the accuracy problems with the gravity wave experiments. VERY interesting. I'll find the papers and read them.

It will be interesting to see what the problems are and how they have been overcome.

Again, thank you for the explanation.
That is what I was looking for.
Clark Williams

I know this is an ancient post, however, the sources can be found here: https://github.com/SixTrack/SixTrack

Awesome! I much prefer to contribute to such projects that let anyone, even outside the classic university community, see the source. Since your post I've been contributing my modest resources to LHC@home/Sixtrack.

I absolutely agree! Also, having the source open makes things easier for us too. We even had a bugfix from one of the volunteers :)

If you're interested in getting more involved, there will be a Google Summer Of Code project:
https://ep-dep-sft.web.cern.ch/article/221195
(scroll down for SixTrack)