1) Message boards : Cafe LHC : Children’s Respite Home closed by Network Rail’s Heartless Action (Message 48908)
Posted 9 Nov 2023 by Mr P Hucker
Post:
Sorry for the off topic post, but I stayed at this campsite/B&B/kid's charity and would hate to see it closed down. Network Rail never paid them the £250K damage they caused by making a flood by blocking a stream. Now they're doing this. It seems Network Rail operate above the law.

https://chng.it/HFyDCQzLvm

Please sign and share.
2) Message boards : Cafe LHC : Eviction of Russian scientists (Message 48898)
Posted 4 Nov 2023 by Mr P Hucker
Post:
(Who's "we"?)
The British government, and all the patients they treat.

That's odd considering we welcome doctors from India/Pakistan.
Only because they accept NHS pay rates...
They must pay them a lot considering how much it costs to perform an operation. 12 grand to replace my hip. 16 grand to put a valve in my father's heart.

So scientists aren't considered important?
No - (foreign) scientists are just as much seen as cheap exploitable disposable labour. That's why the UK Government's R&D people and culture strategy avoids any commitment to retaining experienced staff or supporting returns after a career break, but when it comes to getting in naive junior staff there's bullet points a-plenty!
Probably true. But the trouble with using junior staff is the lack of experience.
3) Message boards : Cafe LHC : Eviction of Russian scientists (Message 48895)
Posted 4 Nov 2023 by Mr P Hucker
Post:
OK, thanks for that. I guess that's partly the reason there was so much debate over how scientists from the countries involved should be acknowledged in future publications. I would make two quibbles: a) it was CERN's decision to take those actions, not the LHC's; and b) the decision affects the nations involved, not individual scientists per se, although there may be inevitable trickle-down effects to individuals, according to policy. I'd also note that whilst 8% of the workforce (however that's defined) are of Russian nationality a good proportion are employed by organisations outside Russia itself (other universities, and even directly by CERN). If CERN were to sever its co-operation agreement with Australia, I would expect my participation not to be affected since I work for a UK institution!
So it's just how the references in papers are written? If the work is still done, the scientists are still paid, and their names are put in the relevant places in papers, it shouldn't be a problem. They're just allergic to the word Russia.

Yes, that was when I had my fall. I'm being excluded because of the amount of time I have had on sick-leave, and my fitness to return to work has to be officially evaluated. From an email I had on Friday it looks like this evaluation is being outsourced to a contracting company, so I've no idea how long it will take nor how competent it will be.
Sounds like the exact opposite of me trying to skive off er.... get sick leave for an illness. They tried to show I was capable, they're trying to show you're incapable. I take it you work in some dangerous areas and they want to make sure you don't cause some horrid accident through you not thinking clearly? Hopefully it's ATOS, they just say everyone's capable (because the government bribes them to, even if they're wheelchair bound and commit suicide because of it).

So evaluations aside, how are you feeling, have you fully recovered? This conversation remains confidential and I won't forward it to the contractor :-)
4) Message boards : Cafe LHC : Eviction of Russian scientists (Message 48891)
Posted 4 Nov 2023 by Mr P Hucker
Post:
I see from Wikipedia, LHC excluded Russian scientists. Why? Why take away experts in physics because of politics? The war has nothing to do with their contribution to LHC.
Please quote your source. I'm not currently aware of any decision by LHC or CERN or any of the experiments to "exclude" Russian scientists. I do know that there was an intense debate after Russia's invasion of Ukraine over how the experiments should treat scientists from Russia, Ukraine and perhaps Belarus insofar as crediting inputs to research. This was primarily to do with inclusion of attributions in author lists of publications, and also acknowledgements of national support in appendices. The consultation took well over a year before a consensus was reached and it's only in the last few months that we have been submitting articles to scholarly journals again, and having them accepted for publication[1].
"With the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, the participation of Russians with CERN was called into question. About 8% of the workforce are of Russian nationality. In June 2022, CERN said the governing council "intends to terminate" CERN's cooperation agreements with Belarus and Russia when they expire, respectively in June and December 2024. CERN said it would monitor developments in Ukraine and remains prepared to take additional steps as warranted.[80][81] CERN further said that it would reduce the Ukrainian contribution to CERN for 2022 to the amount already remitted to the Organization, thereby waiving the second installment of the contribution."
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_Hadron_Collider#Exclusion_of_Russia

[1] I know this because I register CMS publications with the University's research archives, and since sometime last year the list of accepted publications dwindled to a mere trickle. Once the new protocol was accepted, more and more papers are coming in for registration, but unfortunately after my accident I've not had access to my computers to update the data. Currently, beyond that fateful 1st August I have 47 new papers to process once I'm allowed back on campus.
I take it 1st August was your accident in the kitchen? Why are they not allowing you back in?
5) Message boards : Cafe LHC : Eviction of Russian scientists (Message 48874)
Posted 1 Nov 2023 by Mr P Hucker
Post:
UK scientists get also problems after UK leaving EU.
That's odd considering we welcome doctors from India/Pakistan. So scientists aren't considered important?
6) Message boards : Cafe LHC : Eviction of Russian scientists (Message 48868)
Posted 31 Oct 2023 by Mr P Hucker
Post:
I thought countries tended to be happy with intelligent folk coming in, for example the UK welcomes foreign doctors.

Presumably the Russian scientists were providing input to the LHC, and the more input, the more it achieves.
7) Message boards : Cafe LHC : Eviction of Russian scientists (Message 48856)
Posted 30 Oct 2023 by Mr P Hucker
Post:
A council, I won't hold my breath, I emailed them anyway.
8) Message boards : Cafe LHC : Eviction of Russian scientists (Message 48851)
Posted 29 Oct 2023 by Mr P Hucker
Post:
I see from Wikipedia, LHC excluded Russian scientists. Why? Why take away experts in physics because of politics? The war has nothing to do with their contribution to LHC.
9) Message boards : ATLAS application : queue is empty (Message 48670)
Posted 27 Sep 2023 by Mr P Hucker
Post:
The problem with Cosmology tasks is so rare it's not worth my effort to change VB versions
Odd, with me and others complaining in the forum, they break very often. Every single day I had to clear out jammed ones. Problem went away when I went to v5. Maybe only the Windows VB has this problem?

ver 7 is what comes with the distro, so I use it. The biggest problem is that one-day delay in restarting the postponed tasks.
Yes, that was my problem. Once there are loads of them, the queue runs out and I have to nudge them. So if a computer is unattended too long, no Cosmology gets done. V5 just works. Oracle broke it after that. When creating a new version of something, always make it compatible with older things.

I haven't found a way to change that. I could probably ask in the forums on the Cosmology or Boinc websites, but it's just as easy to abort the problem task and let things carry on.
Restarting Boinc resets the 1 day timer. There must be a way to make it shorter, but I think I asked and it's hard coded.

There is no boinctasks anywhere in the packages available from my distro, nor any package by that name. Besides, if it is a command-line util, I prefer to use a gui when one is available.
Google is your friend.
https://efmer.com/boinctasks/boinctasks-flavours/ - it's a GUI. Don't expect everything to be in the holy repository.

AFAIK, for quite some time now, each CPU core has its own math unit, which is shared between the threads the core includes. I guess I'm using the most restrictive possible definition of "core" -- if it includes a math unit, it is worthy of being called a CPU :D
If you call a core a CPU, what do you call the whole CPU?

You can often use all the threads, since the maths unit isn't used 100% of the time, there are memory accesses etc going on aswell, so I treat each thread as a core, so does Boinc.

Recently, I've seen the odd report of upcoming processors that may feature one math unit per thread. If that comes about, then your definition of a CPU and mine will coincide :D
If they have a mathSSS unit per thread, what will they continue to share?
10) Message boards : ATLAS application : queue is empty (Message 48667)
Posted 27 Sep 2023 by Mr P Hucker
Post:
For example, Cosmology tasks sometimes become "stuck"; the VM becomes unmanageable, so boinc postpones further calculations for a full day, 86400 seconds.
You're using VB 7. Cosmology hates anything newer than 5. LHC works fine on 5. Only Uspex requires 6 or later. Or you can use the legacy Cosmology tasks, but they're not very fast.

During that time, boinc will run any Cosmology tasks that are in queue, but will not request any new ones. In my experience, it also appears that it does not report completed tasks. Given the short run times of these tasks, the queue is quickly emptied of Cosmology tasks. When this happens, the Cosmology RAC will quickly decline by a significant amount. Of course, this issue is also immediately apparent if I just look at the tasks list, but this is not the only problem I've encountered.
If you use Boinctasks, there's a % CPU usage column. I can see immediately something isn't processing.

The only 24-core Ryzen CPUs I am aware of are a couple of ThreadRippers. I'm happy for you that you can afford not just one, but two, CPUs that combined must have set you back nearly US$3500 :D
I have Ryzen 9 3900X and Ryzen 9 3900XT. When I say core I mean thread. Yes I know technically they're not cores, but they behave as such. Hell Boinc calls them CPUs!
11) Message boards : ATLAS application : queue is empty (Message 48656)
Posted 24 Sep 2023 by Mr P Hucker
Post:
OK, so you do a detailed check first thing every morning. I check the statistics graphs.
That doesn't show things up accurately. You're just looking at how well you've done over the last month.

And it can't work with Rosetta, as their work is on and off. So your RAC there will jump about randomly, and it will affect your RAC here when your computers go and do some Rosetta instead of LHC.

I don't know what you're using where those yellow flags happen -- VirtualBox perhaps? That is my last line of "defence" if I find a problematic task in the boinc manager.
Yellow is the colour I chose to show tasks saying "computation error". Lots of projects do that, usually the projects fault, but can be a dodgy or overheating CPU/GPU.

I don't go to that depth unless I see something that suggests a problem somewhere. That, as I said, often begins with a glance at the statistics graphs. Then, I check the tasks for any project where the RAC has been dropping.
I do not switch projects. I run those which are doing things of interest to me -- LHC, Einstein, Cosmology and Rosetta.
I get bored on one, or miss doing another. I want 100 machines. Too much to get done!

Cosmology is causing me a problem. They only work with VB 5. Uspex needs VB 6 or later. LHC will run on anything.

I have settled on those, and they are not likely to change, at least not in the near future.
Oh, if I had one of those 64-core Threadrippers I mentioned earlier (yeah, I wish!!) then I would also add in a project dealing with climate change. But that isn't going to be happening any time soon -- the CPU alone costs around $10K here in Canada.
I've got two 24 core Ryzens, that will do for now. Money is saving up for a new house.

The only Climate change I know of is CPDN. Their tasks are so rare you might aswell join it and get them when they are available. You're best joining with windows and linux as one subproject is on each (I've got Boinc running on linux in a VB inside Windows on the two fastest machines, so I can get tasks from either of their subprojects).
12) Message boards : ATLAS application : queue is empty (Message 48636)
Posted 23 Sep 2023 by Mr P Hucker
Post:
Well, since it's difficult to transfer cash in a TCP packet....
Gridcoin is a nice idea, if it paid anything like the electric cost.

And it would be easy enough to allow anyone over a certain RAC to apply for an account, give paypal address, and get regular payments. But apparently a huge place like CERN can't afford it.

probably still wouldn't have even half of what some of those RAC wh*res have in their computing arsenal.
ROFL! And you can write hoars, that's lots of frost :-)

As for looking for errors, usually a computation error pops up in yellow on my list. Or I see the CPU% bar drop down and turn white. Or something runs a longer time than expected. I also look at the MSI afterburner graph on every machine each morning, using remote desktop, to make sure nothing is overheating, the CPU isn't throttling the GPU, and all the chips are running flat out.

RAC wouldn't work for me, I keep switching projects, and run projects with a non-constant supply of work.

I do hate acronyms: "1907: Given royal approval by Edward VII becoming the Royal Automobile Club", no wonder they're so expensive, probably still paying tax to the king.
13) Message boards : Number crunching : Setting up a local Squid to work with LHC@home - Comments and Questions (Message 48635)
Posted 23 Sep 2023 by Mr P Hucker
Post:
Someone needs to create a step by step guide for installing and configuring cvmfs, boinc and apptainer, without building from source.
I keep saying this, but they don't like it. Apparently it's already simple?
14) Message boards : ATLAS application : Uploading stuck (Message 48634)
Posted 23 Sep 2023 by Mr P Hucker
Post:
If it's still relevant....
15) Message boards : Number crunching : Setting up a local Squid to work with LHC@home - Comments and Questions (Message 48630)
Posted 23 Sep 2023 by Mr P Hucker
Post:
ATLAS seem to have stopped uplaoding, is there something that I can check in the config files?
I uploaded one 10 minutes after your post.
16) Message boards : ATLAS application : queue is empty (Message 48626)
Posted 22 Sep 2023 by Mr P Hucker
Post:
Furthermore, it helps if one's contribution to the effort is appreciated by the people who run the projects. The only way I can see for such appreciation to be seen on an ongoing basis is through the credit system.
Cash would be a show of appreciation. Then again there are those who ran Collatz for credit and didn't believe there was a point to the maths. "It takes all sorts to make a world" as my gran used to say.
17) Message boards : ATLAS application : queue is empty (Message 48624)
Posted 22 Sep 2023 by Mr P Hucker
Post:
The credit system that it AFAIK uses is a bit weird. https://boinc.berkeley.edu/trac/wiki/CreditNew
If i remember right did the credit per Workunit move around quite a bit when a new version was released. Guess right now with more users that come back cause of new ATLAS work and the different long tasks(2000events and it sounds like the new are shorter) is the change bigger. But AFIAK did it smooth out after a few days of Atlas running with constant flow of work.
You'd think they'd just give you 1 credit per 1000 calculations or something. It's not particle physics.
18) Message boards : ATLAS application : queue is empty (Message 48623)
Posted 22 Sep 2023 by Mr P Hucker
Post:
thanks for the information. Please tell me where I can find these files
The Windows equivalent is presumably C:\ProgramData\BOINC\slots\2\boinc_133f818bb0d17e70\Logs but I've no idea how you find the correct slot out of hundreds to look in.
19) Message boards : ATLAS application : queue is empty (Message 48622)
Posted 22 Sep 2023 by Mr P Hucker
Post:
What gives? For one Atlas task, running on 4 threads, I get a credit of nearly 13,000. For another task, running on 8 threads, I get credit of only 3200. Both tasks required nearly the same amount of CPU time, over 530,000 secs.
Credit is never accurate. LHC is in fact banned from Gridcoin because you can cheat the credit here very easily.

On Asteroids at the moment, due to a GPU version which is slower than the CPU version, if my GPU task is compared to a CPU wingman, I get normal credit. But if my wingman is also on GPU, the credit is calculated as time multiplied by GPU speed, and I get 100 times more.

Who cares anyway, credit is just a toy, as long as you get the science done.
20) Message boards : ATLAS application : queue is empty (Message 48617)
Posted 22 Sep 2023 by Mr P Hucker
Post:
Is it my imagination or has the memory requirement dropped? All running Atlases are showing 4.4-4.8GB in Boinc. And one of them is a 4 core computer, the others are 8 cores per task of the computer's 24 cores. I thought Atlas used to be 2GB + 1GB per core, making 10GB for 8 cores and 6GB for 4 cores?


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