LHC@home

I'm using Ubuntu 25.04 set up with Virtualbox to run the Theory application. I'm getting a strange error in the log file output that I've never seen before. The relevant workunit is:

https://lhcathome.cern.ch/lhcathome/workunit.php?wuid=231769216

The workunit validated as complete. But it didn't do run any simulations and ran for a few minutes only.

Here's the log truncated:

PYTHIA8=/cvmfs/sft.cern.ch/lcg/releases/LCG_107/MCGenerators/pythia8/313/x86_64-el9-gcc11-opt
make: Entering directory '/scratch/pythia8'
g++ pythia8.cc -o pythia8.exe -Wfatal-errors -I/cvmfs/sft.cern.ch/lcg/releases/LCG_107/MCGenerators/pythia8/313/x86_64-el9-gcc11-opt/include -I/cvmfs/sft.cern.ch/lcg/releases/LCG_107/HepMC/2.06.11/x86_64-el9-gcc11-opt/include -L/cvmfs/sft.cern.ch/lcg/releases/LCG_107/MCGenerators/pythia8/313/x86_64-el9-gcc11-opt/lib -lpythia8  -L/cvmfs/sft.cern.ch/lcg/releases/LCG_107/MCGenerators/lhapdf/6.5.5/x86_64-el9-gcc11-opt/lib -lLHAPDF -L/cvmfs/sft.cern.ch/lcg/releases/LCG_107/HepMC/2.06.11/x86_64-el9-gcc11-opt/lib -lHepMC -pthread -Wl,-rpath /cvmfs/sft.cern.ch/lcg/releases/LCG_107/MCGenerators/pythia8/313/x86_64-el9-gcc11-opt/lib -Wl,-rpath /cvmfs/sft.cern.ch/lcg/releases/LCG_107/MCGenerators/lhapdf/6.5.5/x86_64-el9-gcc11-opt/lib -Wl,-rpath /cvmfs/sft.cern.ch/lcg/releases/LCG_107/HepMC/2.06.11/x86_64-el9-gcc11-opt/lib -DVERSION=313
make: Leaving directory '/scratch/pythia8'
Run pythia8 8.313 ...
generatorExecString = /scratch/pythia8/pythia8.exe /scratch/tmp/tmp.CvqzzdP7z0/generator.params /scratch/tmp/tmp.CvqzzdP7z0/generator.hepmc
Input steering file = /scratch/tmp/tmp.CvqzzdP7z0/generator.params
Output HepMC file = /scratch/tmp/tmp.CvqzzdP7z0/generator.hepmc

 *------------------------------------------------------------------------------------*
 |                                                                                    |
 |  *------------------------------------------------------------------------------*  |
 |  |                                                                              |  |
 |  |                                                                              |  |
 |  |   PPP   Y   Y  TTTTT  H   H  III    A      Welcome to the Lund Monte Carlo!  |  |
 |  |   P  P   Y Y     T    H   H   I    A A     This is PYTHIA version 8.313      |  |
 |  |   PPP     Y      T    HHHHH   I   AAAAA    Last date of change: 10 Jan 2025  |  |
 |  |   P       Y      T    H   H   I   A   A                                      |  |
 |  |   P       Y      T    H   H  III  A   A    Now is 21 Apr 2025 at 19:07:40    |  |
 |  |                                                                              |  |
 |  |   Program documentation and an archive of historic versions is found on:     |  |
 |  |                                                                              |  |
 |  |                               https://pythia.org/                            |  |
 |  |                                                                              |  |
 |  |   PYTHIA is authored by a collaboration consisting of:                       |  |
 |  |                                                                              |  |
 |  |   Javira Altmann, Christian Bierlich, Naomi Cooke, Nishita Desai,            |  |
 |  |   Ilkka Helenius, Philip Ilten, Leif Lonnblad, Stephen Mrenna,               |  |
 |  |   Christian Preuss, Torbjorn Sjostrand, and Peter Skands.                    |  |
 |  |                                                                              |  |
 |  |   The complete list of authors, including contact information and            |  |
 |  |   affiliations, can be found on https://pythia.org/.                         |  |
 |  |   Problems or bugs should be reported on email at authors@pythia.org.        |  |
 |  |                                                                              |  |
 |  |   The main program reference is C. Bierlich et al,                           |  |
 |  |   'A comprehensive guide to the physics and usage of Pythia 8.3',            |  |
 |  |   SciPost Phys. Codebases 8-r8.3 (2022) [arXiv:2203.11601 [hep-ph]]          |  |
 |  |                                                                              |  |
 |  |   PYTHIA is released under the GNU General Public Licence version 2          |  |
 |  |   or later. Please respect the MCnet Guidelines for Generator Authors        |  |
 |  |   and Users.                                                                 |  |
 |  |                                                                              |  |
 |  |   Disclaimer: this program comes without any guarantees.                     |  |
 |  |   Beware of errors and use common sense when interpreting results.           |  |
 |  |                                                                              |  |
 |  |   Copyright (C) 2025 Torbjorn Sjostrand                                      |  |
 |  |                                                                              |  |
 |  |                                                                              |  |
 |  *------------------------------------------------------------------------------*  |
 |                                                                                    |
 *------------------------------------------------------------------------------------*

 PYTHIA Error in LHAPDF6::init: unknown PDF
 PYTHIA Error in BeamSetup::initPDFs: could not set up PDF for beam A
 PYTHIA Abort from BeamSetup::initBeams: PDF initialization failed
streaming input: end of stream found setting badbit.
ERROR: failed to read events from input file
ERROR: failed to run pythia8 8.313

The MCnet usage guidelines apply to Rivet: see http://www.montecarlonet.org/GUIDELINES
Please acknowledge Rivet in results made using it, and cite https://arxiv.org/abs/1912.05451
[1]-  3832 Exit 1                  ( env $origEnv $generatorExecString; exit $? )
[2]+  3833 Exit 1                  ( $rivetExecString; exit $? )  (wd: /scratch/tmp/tmp.CvqzzdP7z0)
ERROR: fail to run pythia8 8.313 or Rivet (error exit code)
=> ldd version
ldd (GNU libc) 2.34
Copyright (C) 2021 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This is free software; see the source for copying conditions.  There is NO
warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
Written by Roland McGrath and Ulrich Drepper.
=> /lib64/libc.so.6
-rwxr-xr-x. 1 root root 2543976 Nov 12 12:34 /lib64/libc.so.6
GNU C Library (GNU libc) stable release version 2.34.
Copyright (C) 2021 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This is free software; see the source for copying conditions.
There is NO warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A
PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
Compiled by GNU CC version 11.5.0 20240719 (Red Hat 11.5.0-2).
libc ABIs: UNIQUE IFUNC ABSOLUTE
For bug reporting instructions, please see:
<https://www.gnu.org/software/libc/bugs.html>.
=> os-release
NAME="AlmaLinux"
VERSION="9.5 (Teal Serval)"
ID="almalinux"
ID_LIKE="rhel centos fedora"
VERSION_ID="9.5"
PLATFORM_ID="platform:el9"
PRETTY_NAME="AlmaLinux 9.5 (Teal Serval)"
ANSI_COLOR="0;34"
LOGO="fedora-logo-icon"
CPE_NAME="cpe:/o:almalinux:almalinux:9::baseos"
HOME_URL="https://almalinux.org/"
DOCUMENTATION_URL="https://wiki.almalinux.org/"
BUG_REPORT_URL="https://bugs.almalinux.org/"

ALMALINUX_MANTISBT_PROJECT="AlmaLinux-9"
ALMALINUX_MANTISBT_PROJECT_VERSION="9.5"
REDHAT_SUPPORT_PRODUCT="AlmaLinux"
REDHAT_SUPPORT_PRODUCT_VERSION="9.5"
SUPPORT_END=2032-06-01

PYTHIA Error in LHAPDF6::init: unknown PDF
PYTHIA Error in BeamSetup::initPDFs: could not set up PDF for beam A
PYTHIA Abort from BeamSetup::initBeams: PDF initialization failed
streaming input: end of stream found setting badbit.
ERROR: failed to read events from input file
ERROR: failed to run pythia8 8.313

The MCnet usage guidelines apply to Rivet: see http://www.montecarlonet.org/GUIDELINES
Please acknowledge Rivet in results made using it, and cite https://arxiv.org/abs/1912.05451
[1]- 3832 Exit 1 ( env $origEnv $generatorExecString; exit $? )
[2]+ 3833 Exit 1 ( $rivetExecString; exit $? ) (wd: /scratch/tmp/tmp.CvqzzdP7z0)
ERROR: fail to run pythia8 8.313 or Rivet (error exit code)


Is this a problem at my end or is there a problem with the image from CERN Virtualbox is using? Has anyone else encountered this?

This kind of errors come from the scientific app.
There's a rather high error rate for quite a while.

The BOINC part is running fine, hence you should either
- let the tasks run as usual
- set Theory to NNT until the scientific app is fixed (often without a comment)

You should NOT abort those tasks to avoid unwanted side effects on the BOINC side.

I will note that not all pythia8 tasks are failing. Very rarely do I get to sit down and look at what the VM is actually doing. But I've found some tasks give that error and some that don't.

CP5-CR2 is generating events
default-CD is generating events
default-noRap is generating events

qcdcr0 failed (by failed I mean they didn't generate any events)
tune-A2 failed I got 2 of them that failed.
tune-AU2 failed
tune-AU2lox failed
vincia-default failed (X2)
ropes failed

I haven't gotten any pythia6, sherpa or herwig tasks so I don't know about those.