LHC@home

Hello, I have a strange virtualization issue running lhc@home (also affects other projects like cosmology@home). I've tried looking through other forum posts and troubleshooting on my own, but I just can't figure this out. BOINC seems to read virtualization as the inverse of it's actual setting. When I enable virtualization in BIOS (tested to work with virtualbox VMs, leomoon cpu-v, task manager, and android VMs) my machine has "Virtualbox (6.1.12) installed, CPU does not have hardware virtualization support" listed under vitrualization in computer information in my profile. When I turn off virtualization (all tests mentioned before confirm virtualization is disabled) the same line in my profile is listed as "CPU supports virtualization and it is enabled". Only when virtualization is off am I sent virtual machine tasks, all of which fail because virtualization is off. I have gone through Yeti's checklist multiple times, disabled hyper-v, checked client_state.xml for "<p_vm_extensions_disabled>" (which stays at 0 even when virtualization is turned off in BIOS), and reinstalling virtualbox and BOINC. If I've missed anything please let me know, thanks.

This is strange.
You have a Ryzen, so the BIOS Parameter is SVM. It must be enabled.
After a reboot Hardware Virtualisation must be shown as on in the Computerlist.
When you have this done and get always a error, have no more idea.

Yes. I should clarify that when I said I turned on or off "virtualization", SVM was the BIOS option I changed. There is nothing further in the BIOS that I could find relating to virtualization.

Have the Motherboard something wrong?
Do you have made a BIOS upgrade, or is a upgrade possible?
The OS is not able to change the SVM Parameter, I think.

The motherboard works fine. As I said virtualization is working in other applications. I am on the most recent revision BIOS.

Your same Computer say in Cosmology, no Virtualisation is avalaible.
Therefore you have no work with Boinc to Docker for this project.
Do you have a other Project with Virtualisation on?

Virtualization Virtualbox (6.1.12) installed, CPU does not have hardware virtualization support

This for both LHC and Cosmology. Looking on latest task at LHC:

VBoxManage.exe: error: Not in a hypervisor partition (HVP=0) (VERR_NEM_NOT_AVAILABLE).
VBoxManage.exe: error: AMD-V is disabled in the BIOS (or by the host OS) (VERR_SVM_DISABLED)
VBoxManage.exe: error: Details: code E_FAIL (0x80004005), component ConsoleWrap, interface IConsole

I looks to be enable in bios but system block it and Virtualbox try hyper v which should be off so it did not pass it.
You have an Enterprise x64 Edition licence and i would think it would be locked for user. If this is a computer to company i would avoid using virtualbox or any virtual session on it.

You cold task manager and go cpu it should say that virtualization is enable or not.
You try start vm session in virtualbox try if fail or not.

The license is from a previous employer, but the machine is my personal machine. Thank you for reminding me to change that, but it did not seem to affect anything. Task manager says virtualization is enabled, and I am able to create virtual machines myself as I was able to before. I have not tried any other projects, but when I noticed this issue I tried cosmology to check if it occurred there too. I will look for a third vm based project to check.

According to the computer details page the record has been created at 7 Oct 2018, 5:33:41 UTC:
https://lhcathome.cern.ch/lhcathome/show_host_detail.php?hostid=10566169
AMD introduced the Ryzen 7 3700X in July 2019.
https://www.amd.com/en/products/cpu/amd-ryzen-7-3700x

It looks like something got messed and it might be useful to finish/report all downloaded tasks and reattach the computer to the project under a fresh ID.

That is a good point. I was running an Intel CPU and motherboard before, but I must not have properly reattached the machine under a different id. I cannot seem to attach with a different id, and I can't delete the existing id. Is there something I'm missing?

I was running an Intel CPU and motherboard before ...

Did you reinstall the BOINC client when you changed the CPU/MB?
I guess not.
I guess you used the previous installation or a restored backup.
If so, the client contacted the project server using the old host ID.

It looks like this computer is attached to a couple of projects.
I checked some of them and all computer details pages look weird:
Tasks: >0
Number of times client has contacted server: 0 (Zero!)

How can it be that a computer gets a task (or more!) without having a single contact to the server?


To solve this issue you may consider to start from the scratch:
1. Set all projects to "no new tasks"
2. Finish all tasks your client has already downloaded and report them
3. Shut down your client
4. Backup your global_prefs_override.xml and cc_config.xml
5. If you use any, backup your app_config.xml and app_info.xml files
6. Remove the complete BOINC installation
7. Do a fresh BOINC installation (not a restore!)
8. Restore your previous cc_config.xml
9. Insert <ncpus>1</ncpus> into the <options> section of your cc_config.xml
10. Start your BOINC client and attach it to the first project
11. Immediately after you attached it to the project set this project to "no new tasks".
12. Check your client messages and the project website: Did your computer get a fresh ID?
Some project servers need a couple of attempts to give your computer a fresh ID.
In this case change the <ncpus> value for each attempt and temporarily the computer's name
13. If your computer has a fresh ID, suspend this project and continue with the next project
14. Once your computer has been attached to all projects shut down the client
15. Restore your computer's name and the files from (4.), (5.)
16. Check if <ncpus> has been removed from cc_config.xml or is set to your default/preferred value
17. Reboot
18. Restart your BOINC client
19. Resume the projects and allow new tasks

... enabling that option in BIOS could solve your issue.

The computer records for this host are obviously messed at various BOINC projects, even at those that don't run VM apps (like Rosetta, Asteroids).
Changing an arbitrary BIOS setting will not heal the records.

Thank you for the insight. I will follow those steps.

Unfortunately the new entry seems to have the same issue after following the steps outlined and even after enabling IOMMU.

Have found this:
Device Guard or Credential Guard or a Group policy in a domain for Windows Enterprise can make problems to enable/disable Hardware Acceleration, also driver from the Graphic card.
It seem Hardware Acceleration is more integrated in the Windows Enterprise OS than in Windows 10 pro.

After changing to a Windows 10 pro installation the issue persists. Looks like the issue is unrelated to the license.

Just wanted to update this because the issue has been resolved. I don't know what exactly fixed it, but after some unrelated fiddling with a lot of settings to get a FreeBSD VM working on Virtualbox, BOINC started working again. I believe it may have had something to do with enabling and disabling WSL and Hyper-V through the command line (not just the windows features menu as I tried before). For anyone who has a similar issue and finds this, I have WSL and Hyper-V disabled, and Virtual Machine Platform and Windows Hypervisor Platform enabled in Windows Features. I unregistered all WSL distributions from the command prompt, and disabled Hyper-V through the command prompt with "bcdedit /set hypervisorlaunchtype off". Hopefully this can help someone else.

Personnaly I had actived Windows Sandbox and it was the issue. If you did, unactivate it.

I've got an HP Envy Desktop with a 13th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-13400 [Family 6 Model 191 Stepping 2], running Windows 11 Home. The BIOS virtualization options are on. I've tried with the Windows Features "Virtual Machine Platform" and "Windows Hypervisor Platform" both on and off. In all cases, LHC still says "Virtualbox (7.0.14) installed, CPU does not have hardware virtualization support".
Any suggestions? I usually run Linux, but both this system to be able to run both Windows-specific projects and VirtualBox-specific projects (like LHC).

Windows 11 Home or Intel i5 does not support Hardware Acceleration.