LHC@home

Dear volunteers,

we are pleased to announce the release to production (SixTrack app) of new exes for the current pro version (v5.02.05). We have new exes for FreeBSD (avx/sse2), an exe for XP hosts (32bits), an aarch64 executable for Linux, and one for Android. Many thanks to James, Kyrre and Veronica for finding the time to produce them.

Distributing an exe compatible with XP hosts is not a way to encourage people to stay with unsupported OSs, but rather a trial to have a smooth transition to more recent OSs. In this way, people with XP hosts do not miss the possibility to contribute to the present wave of SixTrack tasks (expected to be quite long) while considering options for upgrading their hosts. At the same time, we are looking into preparing 32bits Linux exes. It should be noted that all Win exes are distributed without targeting specific kernel versions - hence, XP hosts may receive tasks with regular Windows exes immediately failing, but the BOINC server should quickly learn that the XP-compatible exe is the appropriate one.

We are also very happy to start involving freeBSD and Android users in our production chain. For the latter platform, the present exe won't run on Android versions >=8 - James is still looking into this. Since the android version filtering needs a fix on the scheduler side:
https://github.com/BOINC/boinc/issues/3172
we labelled the Android exe as beta. Hence, Sixtrack beta users with Android 8 and later should not request tasks for that host or untick the test applications flag in their LHC@home project preferences.

We are pursuing also the generation of MacOS exes, and we should test them soon on sixtracktest.

Thanks for your continuous support and help,
Alessio, for the SixTrack team

It should be noted that all Win exes are distributed without targeting specific kernel versions - hence, XP hosts may receive tasks with regular Windows exes immediately failing, but the BOINC server should quickly learn that the XP-compatible exe is the appropriate one.

It doesn't seem to be learning very quickly. At the time of writing one host has received 17 "regular" tasks, which failed and 7 "XP" ones which are OK. The details are here
If it doesn't improve I'll try an app_info file to make sure it uses the correct exe.

Excellent news, tasks seem to be running well on my group of 64bit Pi3B's.

RAM usage is around 50MB which is good for letting it run in the background whilst the Pi's are doing their Primary Roles.

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We are pursuing also the generation of MacOS exes, and we should test them soon on sixtracktest.

Yes ! Youpi !

Thanks for all !! :)

Mac OS exes plugged in production.
Many thanks, James, for all the head-scratching and making the Mac OS a reality!

Seems to be working smoothly, Mac Mini 2019 is crunching at full speed.