LHC@home

I have a couple of these also.

Going on the 5th day and always approaching 100% but never reaching it.

314464634	162960124	22 Apr 2021, 11:19:02 UTC	28 Apr 2021, 19:06:30 UTC	Completed and validated	497,012.25	553,831.60	265.24	ATLAS Simulation v2.00 (vbox64_mt_mcore_atlas)
windows_x86_64

313918637	162691404	21 Apr 2021, 9:24:05 UTC	29 Apr 2021, 2:26:32 UTC	Completed and validated	536,236.41	500,751.30	408.92	ATLAS Simulation v2.00 (vbox64_mt_mcore_atlas)
windows_x86_64

I have more than enough memory and 16 cores.
I have found that if BOINC runs more than one instance of ATLAS the task will stall at around 90% and drag on forever. It will only increase in finishing by .001% every few seconds.
You need to limit the number of simultaneous tasks by LHC. I even tried running Theory and ATLAS together and ATLAS stalled out all the time.

Now if you run ATLAS alone and set your cpu number to 4 in the preferences, then it will make ATLAS run only one task at a time. It should take under 8 hours to complete a task.
If you run any other LHC projects, then you will have to write a special script to force BOINC to run only 1 task from LHC at a time.

it strange, yes, looking it say it successfully ran the WU but then couldn't successfully power off the VM, so you successfully did work for CMS, just the project didn't think so.

Sometimes I get junk VM's left over that can cause problems, so I clear them out. How is your storage, could be it too slow clean up after the WU is done and then it time out boinc detecting. Last one I see is that if I run 1 WU/core then it can really slow my computer so I do use at most 80%, it still loads my CPU to 100% normally but it not red lined.

Morning,

This is exactly what I meant, I didn't want to tlak about what my host is running or not running :)

I understood there is no "official" image built with such conf...maybe is time to spend some effort in such image by the community?

I am running QuChemPedIA@home tasks on a Windows 10 PC using VirtualBox. QuChem is a Linux project and 94% of its users run a native Linux client, most on Debian. Strangely enough, when my PC completes a task, 90% of the times it was faster than its Linux wingman, even if the Linux host has a much more powerful CPU, mostly AMD Ryzen Threadripper.My CPU is an Intel i5 9400F, with 6 processors, that is 3 cores. Some of my Linux wingmen reach 128 processors. I am an old UNIX and Linux user, but at least in this case Windows is faster.
Tullio

How did you build your Linux VM?
Did you use the Cern product?

No, i am using the wrapper QuChem provided me. They complain that they don't have a developer and I don't know where they got it. I am 50 in their ranking list of RAC.
Tullio
In stderr.txt the vboxwrapper is indicated as 7.9.26200
I've completed a number of BOINC@TACC tasks on the same Windows 10 PC. They seem to use a docker 4.1.19-boot2 docker. Frankly, I don't know what it is.

Success?
No, since the task did not create a HITS file.

[2021-01-21 10:38:47] No HITS result produced

In addition the CVMFS client is installed but not configured to use openhtc.io.
This disrespects the project's requirements not to swamp the CVMFS stratum-one-servers.

[2021-01-21 09:33:23] 2.6.0.0 14739 0 66852 77616 3 1 74634 4096001 0 65024 0 0 n/a 525 196 http://cvmfs-s1fnal.opensciencegrid.org/cvmfs/atlas.cern.ch DIRECT 1
[2021-01-21 09:33:23] CVMFS is ok
[2021-01-21 09:33:23] Efficiency of ATLAS tasks can be improved by the following measure(s):
[2021-01-21 09:33:23] The CVMFS client on this computer should be configured to use Cloudflare's openhtc.io.
[2021-01-21 09:33:23] Small home clusters do not require a local http proxy but it is suggested if
[2021-01-21 09:33:23] more than 10 cores throughout the same LAN segment are regularly running ATLAS like tasks.
[2021-01-21 09:33:23] Further information can be found at the LHC@home message board.

I am running QuChemPedIA@home tasks on a Windows 10 PC using VirtualBox. QuChem is a Linux project and 94% of its users run a native Linux client, most on Debian. Strangely enough, when my PC completes a task, 90% of the times it was faster than its Linux wingman, even if the Linux host has a much more powerful CPU, mostly AMD Ryzen Threadripper.My CPU is an Intel i5 9400F, with 6 processors, that is 3 cores. Some of my Linux wingmen reach 128 processors. I am an old UNIX and Linux user, but at least in this case Windows is faster.
Tullio

Hi team,

I was just wondering: Isn't there an image with all stuff done ready to crunch? I mean, I download it, use Virtualbox and run it, having insise the native apps.

In the end of the day, we are running VM anyway, seems to be "easier", isn't it? At least we would not be loading and unloading 1 image per task

On the other hand, is a million times easier for a non extra experienced user, to just download and load a linux VM and crunch than following the instructions (is quite long...)

Thx¡
Javi

Hence, it is not a nice behaviour to launch a new project now that forces already outdated software components.

I do have "Run native if available" checked.

Sure.
Disable it.
And please, don't ask: "Why?"

I suggest to contact the admins of the "new" project and ask them to update their project.
Older versions may run with LHC but there is no guarantee that they are supported after OS/BOINC updates.

Cosmology@Home is running with Virtualbox 5.2.44 only.
For me LHC@Home in Windows run also with 5.2.44, but also with 6.1.12 from Boinc-Mainpage. (Boinc 7.16.11).

Can you tell me what version of VB is required for LHC?

I returned work two days ago on VBox 5.2.42 (Ubuntu 18.04.5).
https://lhcathome.cern.ch/lhcathome/show_host_detail.php?hostid=10671473

Can you tell me what version of VB is required for LHC? Because I've just joined another project that doesn't like later versions. Will it break LHC if I downgrade?

According to the VirtualBox download page all versions prior to 6.1 are out of support since July 2020:
https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads

I suggest to contact the admins of the "new" project and ask them to update their project.
Older versions may run with LHC but there is no guarantee that they are supported after OS/BOINC updates.

Hi. I have an ASUS ZenFone Zoom smartphone (Intel Z3580 CPU quad-core 2.3GHz) but at the moment I can only help SETI research. Can you tell me when you will add an app for x86 Android devices?

We can run on android devices, see sixtracktest here: https://lhcathome.cern.ch/lhcathome/apps.php

Currently there are two issues:

1: The ram usage of sixtrack is relatively high - almost all internal arrays are allocated with a fixed size at compile time, and set to a "worst case" capacity. A lot of android devices just do not have sufficient spare ram. Work is in progress to re-structure the internals to reduce the memory usage and only allocate what is needed.

2: The security model in the current android release has restricted the usage of some syscalls, and we seem to use some of the restricted ones. This needs to be changed.

Once both of these issues have been resolved, we can push the android version out to production.

Hi,

SixTrack is not a multi threaded application, and due to the nature of the simulations we run on SixTrack, there is no real need for parallelising it.

Hello,
Why not to use LHC@HOME preferences ?
You can select amount of CPU !
If you want to run 4CPU on one host and 8CPU on a other host,
add a separate computer location with preferences you want (CPU/GPU/application/ressources).