LHC@home

I'm neither admin nor do I force you to do so.
It's just the case that this forum is not made to handle things like code management.
Github is made exactly for this.

Volunteer moderator, I listen to those moderating the forum. It is as it should be.

I found my old github account, added the theory.sh + a README file:

https://github.com/seanr22a/LHC-Theory/blob/main/theory.sh
https://github.com/seanr22a/LHC-Theory/blob/main/README.md

There is an updated theory.sh there now with the latest updates. I don't think it ends there because I have no idea how many kinds of theory jobs there is so it will probably be many more updates.

If someone find anything wrong in the script, please PM me. Shell scripting is not my expertise so take it for what it is. I would prefer write it in C which is my home turf :)

For those interested, check github for updates regulary. I will not post any more about updates here. Latest update was today 2025-03-20 14:01 Asia/Bangkok.

https://github.com/seanr22a/LHC-Theory/blob/main/theory.sh
https://github.com/seanr22a/LHC-Theory/blob/main/README.md

This is how it looks now with some small adjustments to get the terminal window width smaller:

When you are running Theory work units under VirtualBox, is there any easy way to check the actual progress?
Is there a file you can check to see the progress?

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When you are running Theory work units under VirtualBox, is there any easy way to check the actual progress?
Is there a file you can check to see the progress?

Since you are using Linux: watch -n 1 tail -n 10 boincdatapath/slots/slotnumber/shared/runRivet.log

The script I made for the native version of Theory doesn't work with the vbox version. There are similarities but after looking at one runRivet.log file I found no info about total events for the job so it's not possible to know how much is left. There is an event counter but nothing telling how far it will go.

I will look at more log files and see if there is any way to find how many events the job has. If I can find total events when it's easy to update the script.

Unlike older Theory vbox versions the one currently in use tails it's runRivet.log to '...\slots\x\shared\'.
The #events can be found around line 32 like:

nevts=100000

or in line 1 as the 2nd last parameter like:

===> [runRivet] Mon Jun  2 01:27:13 PM UTC 2025 [boinc pp w1j 7000 100 - pythia8 8.313 default 100000 1173]

Use either.

the #events can be found around line 32

Thanks for the info! It confirms what I just found tracing one logfile from beginning to end.

I will do a vbox version of the script but it will take a while as I have to receive all the different kinds of jobs as before. I assume it will be the same as with native with many kinds of jobs the script must handle.

I'm late to the party I have not been running Boinc for a couple of months and found out today that Theory moved to vbox in April. I also found that I had to uncheck the box "Run native if available" in the settings to receive any Theory jobs :)

First version is now available for theory - vbox: https://github.com/seanr22a/LHC-Theory/blob/main/theory-vbox.sh

Please PM me if you find any issues.

It was less work to make it running for vbox than I thought. I will load one of my servers with as many theory jobs as possible and let it run to catch any issues.
The jobs available now seems to be only Pythia whatever that is - my degree is not in physic :-) Looking at the old native version there was several different types of jobs so I assume it will be the same in the vbox version so I will have to wait and see what happens when other type of jobs get available.

The vbox version is working fine. I received a lot of different jobs including those with a long Preparation time and everything is working. Download the theory-vbox.sh script from https://github.com/seanr22a/LHC-Theory/

Do not use the old theory.sh script as it works only with native jobs. It's not likely the native jobs comes back as everything is moving to use vbox so everything runs in a controlled environment.

Works on my box.
Very handy!

--- LHC Theory - localhost.localdomain ---- 2025-06-08 11:42:29 ------------------------------------------------------
 
                                     |          Events          |
  Slot                     Job id    Total  Processed   Remaining     Elapsed time  Completed %   Err 
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
     2   Theory_2914-4642936-34_0   100000      91600        8400   0 day(s) 09:29         91.6       

--- Number of Theory jobs for host localhost.localdomain: 1 ----------------------------------------------------------

The 'Completed %' looks right.
But this job has been running (with a pause of computation of ~5 hours) for 1 day 12 hours according to BOINC Manager.

The last line in runRivet.log shows:

  Event 91600 ( 1h 7m 57s elapsed / 6m 13s left ) -> ETA: Fri Jun 06 18:44  
91600 events processed

Hmmm.

Well, looking at the figures, 132,860 s (elapsed time) as a percentage of 864,000 s (job duration) is 15.37%.

This might be helpful -
/var/lib/boinc/slots/2/stderr.txt

### trailing progress lines of the first run - ###
2025-06-07 19:02:25 (39258): Status Report: Job Duration: '864000.000000'
2025-06-07 19:02:25 (39258): Status Report: Elapsed Time: '90000.000000'
2025-06-07 19:02:25 (39258): Status Report: CPU Time: '88924.030000'
2025-06-07 20:41:27 (39258): Status Report: Job Duration: '864000.000000'
2025-06-07 20:41:27 (39258): Status Report: Elapsed Time: '96000.000000'
2025-06-07 20:41:27 (39258): Status Report: CPU Time: '94870.180000'
2025-06-07 20:55:39 (39258): Stopping VM.
2025-06-07 20:55:46 (39258): Successfully stopped VM.
    ### 5 hour pause ###
    ### second run start - ###
2025-06-08 02:12:31 (2771): vboxwrapper version 26210
2025-06-08 02:12:31 (2771): BOINC client version: 8.0.4
2025-06-08 02:12:34 (2771): Detected: VirtualBox VboxManage Interface (Version: 7.1.8)
    ### vbox/start-up posts omitted ###
    ### first 6 progress line of second run - ###
2025-06-08 02:12:46 (2771): Status Report: Job Duration: '864000.000000'
2025-06-08 02:12:46 (2771): Status Report: Elapsed Time: '96860.000000'
2025-06-08 02:12:46 (2771): Status Report: CPU Time: '95722.470000'
2025-06-08 03:51:48 (2771): Status Report: Job Duration: '864000.000000'
2025-06-08 03:51:48 (2771): Status Report: Elapsed Time: '102860.000000'
2025-06-08 03:51:48 (2771): Status Report: CPU Time: '101672.980000'
    ### last 3 progress lines - ###
2025-06-08 12:07:02 (2771): Status Report: Job Duration: '864000.000000'
2025-06-08 12:07:02 (2771): Status Report: Elapsed Time: '132860.000000'
2025-06-08 12:07:02 (2771): Status Report: CPU Time: '131240.800000'

Please read the readme file at github. It explains that the time shown in the script is absolute time from when the job was created in Boinc. If you would pause the job for 2 days it would show those days too. I leave all the CPU time calculations to Boinc.

You can also use: boinccmd --get_task_summary pwscerd

I have an old script which does a similar thing, but is not restricted to LHC@Home project

Download link + pics: https://sourceforge.net/projects/boincctrl/

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@seanr22a Thank you again for this vbox script.