1) Message boards : Number crunching : Where is LHC Alpha? I want to try BUDA on it. (Message 51933)
Posted 19 days ago by Mr P Hucker
Post:
I have messaged Ivan, is he still around?
2) Message boards : Number crunching : Where is LHC Alpha? I want to try BUDA on it. (Message 51931)
Posted 20 days ago by Mr P Hucker
Post:
I wouldn't have thought Vitalii Koshura was incorrect. He said there are BUDA tasks in LHC alpha.
3) Message boards : Number crunching : Where is LHC Alpha? I want to try BUDA on it. (Message 51929)
Posted 20 days ago by Mr P Hucker
Post:
The Boinc developers have told me you have BUDA tasks on LHC Alpha. How can I access this?
4) Message boards : Number crunching : Boinc and Docker (Message 51928)
Posted 20 days ago by Mr P Hucker
Post:
for anyone getting the same, I accidentally installed Ubuntu, Boinc wants boinc-buda-runner to be the default.

Type this into powershell/windows terminal:

wsl --list

Using the name of the one you don't want (in my case Ubuntu) in place of <distroname>, type:

wsl --unregister <DistroName>

Restart Boinc.

(P.S. this was solved using AI - GPT in Duckduckgo, it can do anything!)
5) Message boards : Number crunching : Boinc and Docker (Message 51927)
Posted 20 days ago by Mr P Hucker
Post:
Doesn't seem to work anyway, I followed the instructions at https://github.com/BOINC/boinc-buda-runner-wsl?tab=readme-ov-file

And I get this in Boinc:

04/06/2025 16:34:53 | | Docker detection in Ubuntu:
04/06/2025 16:34:53 | | - cmd: podman --version
04/06/2025 16:34:53 | | - output: /bin/bash: line 1: podman: command not found
04/06/2025 16:34:53 | | Docker detection in Ubuntu:
04/06/2025 16:34:53 | | - cmd: docker --version
04/06/2025 16:34:53 | | - output: /bin/bash: line 1: docker: command not found

Yet in windows terminal:

wsl.exe -d boinc-buda-runner
Ryzen:/mnt/c/Users/peter$ podman --version
podman version 5.3.2

So eventually all this will be inside the Boinc installer and just work?
6) Message boards : Number crunching : Boinc and Docker (Message 51926)
Posted 20 days ago by Mr P Hucker
Post:
Wow, first time I've blocked anyone here, two whingers saying Linux is the best, have been removed. I came here to read about docker, not how everyone should go back to typing commands in text mode.

So! Does docker work with LHC? Does it work with other projects which use virtualbox? Do I remove virtualbox? A distinct lack of information....
(As you may have guessed I use Windows).
7) Message boards : Cafe LHC : Eviction of Russian scientists (Message 51882)
Posted 11 May 2025 by Mr P Hucker
Post:
Have we let the Russian scientists back in yet? Science is not equal to politics. Who cares what the military is doing, we're supposed to be discovering things.

https://www.science.org/content/article/banished-world-s-biggest-physics-lab-russian-scientists-look-inward-and-china
8) Message boards : News : Downtime 1 October (Message 51876)
Posted 8 May 2025 by Mr P Hucker
Post:
LHC@home BOINC servers will be down for a while later today due to a database intervention.
Divine intervention?
9) Message boards : CMS Application : no new WUs available (Message 51791)
Posted 31 Mar 2025 by Mr P Hucker
Post:
Looks like we have ATLAS and CMS back up and running. No Theory though, which means two of my 10 machines can't run. Not enough RAM for the other subprojects.
10) Message boards : CMS Application : no new WUs available (Message 51783)
Posted 31 Mar 2025 by Mr P Hucker
Post:
the VM will keep crunching them until minimum 12 hours has passed
Explains why my recent ones have finished very early. Sporadic job availability?
11) Message boards : CMS Application : no new WUs available (Message 51780)
Posted 31 Mar 2025 by Mr P Hucker
Post:
The CMS jobs and Boinc tasks are two different things. Boinc handles the download of tasks which launch the VM machines. The VM machines then contact Cern and download the jobs that are then crunched. One Boinc task will handle several sets of jobs (depending on the speed of host). If there are jobs available when VM requests them, the VM will keep crunching them until minimum 12 hours has passed. If 12 hours has passed and the current set of jobs is finished, the task ends normally. The crunching has a maximum time limit of 18 hours when Boinc task is finished anyway.
[edit] If there aren't any jobs available when the VM requests them, the task ends there. This could happen right at the start of the VM and the task would end in about 20 minutes. Boinc server should notice this and stop generating new tasks.
Is it not possible to avoid this? Not sure if it's CMS, probably more Theory. The VM machines for Theory download common files every time. So someone running many theory tasks is hammering your servers for the same file over and over (and also overloading the user's internet connection which causes impatient VMs to not bother continuing, sitting with no CPU usage for 10 days). If this file was stored using Boinc, each machine would only request the big common file once.

Yes I know users can run squid, but:
a) Most people don't know how or can't be bothered or have never heard of it.
b) People such as myself tried it for 2 months until it broke and now I can't get it to run again even with a fresh install on another computer - it's so unintuitive and needs a GUI.
c) Why should we have to?
12) Message boards : CMS Application : no new WUs available (Message 51778)
Posted 30 Mar 2025 by Mr P Hucker
Post:
after CMS ran out of jobs, the automatic stop of tasks download took place.
I don't follow. There's no tasks so it automatically stops you downloading the tasks which aren't there?
13) Message boards : CMS Application : no new WUs available (Message 51777)
Posted 30 Mar 2025 by Mr P Hucker
Post:
Apologies for the short blackout, I've been having the most terrible weekend. It started with a full glass of wine spilling right into my keyboard, and hasn't got better since... (more details suppressed to save those of a sensitive disposition!)
I'm also hampered by my cellphone supplier switching off 3G connectivity, so I can only connect to 4G at just one bar on the power meter, barely managing 2-300 Kbps data rate.
Finally managed to log in to CERN, after trying all afternoon/night, to see that jobs are flowing. I'll try to submit a new batch of jobs in the next few hours.
Sorry for the late post, but if you're still having trouble, you can buy phone signal boosters - make your own little cell! I'm planning on trying one for the north pennines hills in england where I've bought land to caravan holiday on. Big aerial (well a foot or two) up a tree, transmitter either a little one in the caravan or you can make a bigger cell to cover a large area with a bigger one.
14) Questions and Answers : Wish list : Major Topic "Xtrack Application" (Message 51575)
Posted 19 Feb 2025 by Mr P Hucker
Post:
@Laurence, @Frederik

Wouldn't it be a good idea to set up a new major topic "Xtrack Application" here:
https://lhcathome.cern.ch/lhcathome/forum_index.php
Somebody a year ago told me Xtrack was coming. Is it still coming? I've not been around for a year. Although half of my computers remained crunching on their own for all that time!
15) Message boards : ATLAS application : Download failures (Message 50346)
Posted 5 Jun 2024 by Mr P Hucker
Post:
Something well up with it if it can have a deadline or be reported before it was created. Unless my computer's clock was wrong at the time? Would the server take my time or theirs?

I detached and reattached, but I've been given the exact same task, which still says download error, and the status on the server hasn't changed. I think someone's going to have to manually delete it from the server.
16) Message boards : ATLAS application : Download failures (Message 50344)
Posted 5 Jun 2024 by Mr P Hucker
Post:
You are still suffering from the old problem many had with ATLAS a week ago. The only recipe is to remove LHC@home project (not just reset) and attach again that specific host to LHC@home again.
In my opinion it is/was a database problem, caused by switching some parts to a different server.
I have already done this, admittedly before the Boinc upgrade, does that matter?

Anyway, there's a problem somewhere in Boinc never giving up on downloading the same file over and over again. Where is the timeout on lost tasks?
17) Message boards : ATLAS application : Download failures (Message 50341)
Posted 5 Jun 2024 by Mr P Hucker
Post:
The updated Boinc version did not stop the problem.

Perhaps someone with tech knowledge could look at debug messages and find a more descriptive error so we know if the file is actually missing or it's a communication problem.



Ah, I'm on 7.24.1. Nobody told me there was a version 8 out. You'd think they could put an auto update in there or at least a notification!

I'm running that version, and am not having any problems with file downloads.
So are all my other hosts with no problems, it's a rare problem and seems to stick to particular hosts.
18) Message boards : ATLAS application : Download failures (Message 50339)
Posted 5 Jun 2024 by Mr P Hucker
Post:
This problem seems to be with older BOINC clients that include old ssl certificate bundles. If removing and re-attaching to the project does not help, please consider upgrading to a more recent BOINC client version.

Maybe... A quick check on a host here which doesn't (yet) see the problem shows the certificate bundle is from 2022. However, a more recent version is here dated March 2024.
I have several hosts and only one showed the problem, yet they're all out of date. Seems a small chance you see the problem. Weird the problem happens a lot on one host and never on the others though.
19) Message boards : ATLAS application : Download failures (Message 50337)
Posted 5 Jun 2024 by Mr P Hucker
Post:
Ah, I'm on 7.24.1. Nobody told me there was a version 8 out. You'd think they could put an auto update in there or at least a notification!
20) Message boards : ATLAS application : Download failures (Message 50331)
Posted 3 Jun 2024 by Mr P Hucker
Post:
Detaching and reattaching just gives me different files to download repeatedly. Something is up - my host is not telling the server it cannot download (bug in Boinc?). The server wonders why I've lost the task and sends it over and over again (should be a max number of times set somewhere).


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