LHC@home

after about 10 1/2 hours, a Theory task failed with the exit status shown in the subject line.

The Hypervisor System log in the stderr shows quite a number of lines with the following text:

ERROR [COM]: aRC=E_ACCESSDENIED (0x80070005) aIID={b2547866-a0a1-4391-8b86-6952d82efaa0} aComponent={MachineWrap} aText={The object functionality is limited}, preserve=false aResultDetail=0

the link for this task is: https://lhcathome.cern.ch/lhcathome/result.php?resultid=198771190

Can anyone tell me what exactly the problem is?
I hate to have my PC crunch for 10 1/2 hours for nothing :-(

Your CPU throttle is set to only 80%.
This may result in a timeout and a heartbeat error:

2018-06-17 15:31:09 (9284): VM Heartbeat file specified, but missing heartbeat.

Your CPU throttle is set to only 80%.
This may result in a timeout and a heartbeat error

I now set the CPU time to 95%, and the error happened again:

https://lhcathome.cern.ch/lhcathome/result.php?resultid=198836624

So I am trying it with 100% now, although I am not sure whether this is good for the netbook on the long run - CPU temperature now is up to ~79°C

Can anyone tell me what exactly the problem is?
I hate to have my PC crunch for 10 1/2 hours for nothing :-(

Exactly will be hard, but I suppose the system is too busy,

- probably you are also running SixTrack at the same time
- the vboxwrapper has a too low priority (lowest) and is not able to handle the heartbeat message on time.
- Vboxheadless.exe has a too high priority (normal). Ideal is wrapper and vboxheadless has the same priority (below normal).

Crystal Pellet, thanks for your comments.

No, nothing else is running. The Netbook is dedicated only to run ONE task out of the LHC projects (if Sixtrack tasks are available, I run Sixtrack, and this kind of failure never happens, of course).

The priority settings seem interesting - please let me know where I can look them up and, if necessary, change these settings as suggested by you.

The priority settings seem interesting - please let me know where I can look them up and, if necessary, change these settings as suggested by you.

You can look the priorities of those processes up with "Task Manager" (rightclick taskbar).
Maybe you have to add the base priority column.
The wrapper priority can be increased there, but is only for that running process.

The priority change of VBoxHeadless.exe is more complex, because the VM's are sandboxed.
If you want to decrease that priority to "below normal", ask.

The wrapper priority can be increased there, but is only for that running process

it's easy to perform, but - as you say - the setback is that this is only for a given running process. Once a new task gets started, the priority needs to be manually changed again. Which, at the bottom line, is somewhat cumbersome, though.

The priority change of VBoxHeadless.exe is more complex, because the VM's are sandboxed.
If you want to decrease that priority to "below normal", ask.

I guess also here, the change of the priority would be only for the running process, right?

Once a new task gets started, the priority needs to be manually changed again. Which, at the bottom line, is somewhat cumbersome, though.
...
I guess also here, the change of the priority would be only for the running process, right?

For setting the priority automatically you could use http://efmer.eu/download/boinc/priority/Priority_1_2.zip Some info here
That's a (rather old) tool from Fred Melgert (the creator of BoincTasks).
Processes added in that tool can only have the same priority, but that's OK cause wrapper and VBox would run 'below normal' priority.
You could put the Priority.exe in the startup when booting.
You can not change VBoxHeadless.exe itself. You have to change the priotity of VBoxSVC.exe to 'below normal'.
The child processes of VBox will also get that priority. When VBoxSVC.exe is not running, you have to force that to run by starting
Oracle VM VirtualBox Manager, before starting a LHC VM-task.

A couple of tools to modify the process priority on a windows host are mentioned here:
https://superuser.com/questions/620724/changing-windows-process-priority-via-command-line


On a linux host "renice" would do it, in connection with a simple process filter called by cron.

A couple of tools to modify the process priority on a windows host are mentioned here:
https://superuser.com/questions/620724/changing-windows-process-priority-via-command-line

Good stuff there.

On a linux host "renice" would do it, in connection with a simple process filter called by cron.

On my Ubuntu machine VBoxHeadless runs at nice 19. VBoxSVC also runs at nice 19 which means VBoxWrapper also runs at nice 19. I guess that is why I have never had the heartbeat problem.

I notice you run several openSUSE machines. Do VBoxHeadless and VBoxSVC not both run at nice 19 on openSUSE?