Info 12th BOINC Pentathlon 2021

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Icecold

Golden Member
Nov 15, 2004
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So when do I start bunkering ??? And the project is sidock ?
The marathon project does seem to be confirmed as SiDock. it currently has 3 day task deadlines, so there's not much benefit to bunkering anything before May 2nd at 00:00 UTC otherwise the tasks will hit their deadline before it starts. There was some talk of changing the task deadlines, but I'm not sure if it would be increased(probably unlikely) or decreased(seems more likely).
 

Icecold

Golden Member
Nov 15, 2004
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@scole I'm fairly surprised Seti USA wanted to crunch under TSBT given all the "controversies" you guys have been embroiled in lately. Is XS going to crunch under TSBT too right after trying to distance themselves from you guys, or are they doing their own thing this year?
 

scole

Junior Member
Apr 17, 2016
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@scole I'm fairly surprised Seti USA wanted to crunch under TSBT given all the "controversies" you guys have been embroiled in lately. Is XS going to crunch under TSBT too right after trying to distance themselves from you guys, or are they doing their own thing this year?
There were no controversies, just your belly aching.
 

StefanR5R

Elite Member
Dec 10, 2016
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Cat's out of the bag.
I'll wait with an update of post #1 until there is SG's canonical announcement.


I'm fairly surprised
I am not. They have been functioning this way for apparently much longer than I for one am involved with Distributed Computing. I am not a moderator, but the thread opener, and as such I mention that I am entirely disinterested in dealing with them, even in talking about them.
 
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Ken g6

Programming Moderator, Elite Member
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Oh, great, SiDock is the one who doesn't know how to support old Linux versions by compiling in a VM. I tried to tell them, but apparently they never listened. :(
 

StefanR5R

Elite Member
Dec 10, 2016
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One workaround is to provide a newer libm-2.xx.so. Having it in the global LD_LIBRARY_PATH works, but less invasive methods may be possible. Another workaround might be to compile CMDock oneself. The SiDock@home forum (currently down) has got a link to the source code.
 
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StefanR5R

Elite Member
Dec 10, 2016
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I'll wait with an update of post #1 until there is SG's canonical announcement.
While there is no official announcement yet, pschoefer (organizer) made comments in the SiDock message board, the Pentathlon shoutbox, and the SG forum on the fact that the slip of tongue at least won't cause massive pre-bunkering due to SiDock's 3-day reporting deadline.

Further, the project server is online after (AFAICT) an outage, and backend server names in server_status.php have changed, hinting that SiDock's new server is now in operation.

That is, so far everything looks like the cat is staying out of its bag.
 

Endgame124

Senior member
Feb 11, 2008
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I've downloaded exactly 1 sidock WU, processed it, and it won't upload (even tried manual retry). not looking great so far.
 

StefanR5R

Elite Member
Dec 10, 2016
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The work you got was probably a resend; server_status indicates that they are not generating work yet. There is a user report about persistent failure to upload in SiDock's message board.

Edit,
some new workunits are out now, but the server upgrade is not yet finished.
 
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Icecold

Golden Member
Nov 15, 2004
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I'm pretty sure they do have a backup project just in case. I don't remember where I had read it, but it sounds like they're incredibly thorough/methodical in how they pick projects for the Pentathlon.
 

StefanR5R

Elite Member
Dec 10, 2016
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Upload to SiDock@home works again. Everything else (validations for example) appears to work too. The application is still the same, i.e. not yet updated for checkpointing.
 

Icecold

Golden Member
Nov 15, 2004
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As expected, SiDock was announced officially as the marathon project.
 

StefanR5R

Elite Member
Dec 10, 2016
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I'll update post #1.

SiDock@home technical info:
  • (edit) To create a new account, use the invitation code Crunch_4Science
    Join TeAmAnandTech on our team page.
  • CPU only, for Windows x86-64, Linux x86-64, Mac x86-64
    The Linux application requires glibc 2.27 or later (at least the libm portion of it).
  • minimum quorum: 2, CreditNew
  • current average run time: 8+ hours
  • no checkpoints (therefore, don't suspend a task to disk, leave it in RAM)
  • reporting deadline: 3 days 2 days
    (edit) Hence, work at this contest can begin after Sunday May 2 Monday May 3, 00:00 UTC (after Saturday May 1 Sunday May 2, 20:00 EDT / 17:00 PDT) – i.e. download tasks, start computation but suspend network transfers.
  • After the stats table at the contest site was initialized, which should be shortly after May 5, 00:00 UTC, enable networking again to let the boinc client upload and report the results, as well as fetch more work.
  • upload server: www.sidock.si, scheduler server: www.sidock.si

A new Linux application version is listed at apps.php but it has got a lower version number than the current one and does not seem to be in active use. It may have its own task queue, according to the looks of server_status.php. Perhaps they added checkpointing in this version.

Corrections/ additions/ updates welcome.


_______________________
another edit: spelling correction
yet another edit: new shorter deadline at SiDock@home
 
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voodoo5_6k

Senior member
Jan 14, 2021
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Thanks for all the information, @StefanR5R :) Time to start clearing the work queues and get ready for the switch to SiDock on Sunday...
 

StefanR5R

Elite Member
Dec 10, 2016
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PS,
SiDock's limit on tasks in progress: 2 per active logical CPU, but no more than 128 per host

PPS,
the next one of the 5 contests — starting time and project — may be announced any time now too. The organizers will post announcements at the contest blog (trilingual) and in their forum (in German) at these times of day: 00:00, 06:00, 12:00, 18:00 UTC.
 
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