Quick!!! Join LHC 2.0 Beta!

[Philippart]

We are very happy to announce our advance from Alpha-test level to Beta.

This means no more need for an invitation code to join the project, so please tell your friends that we are now open to everyone. We aim to accept about 1000 active Beta testers, with about 2000 PC's running.

During the Beta period we will be introducing a graphic display to show volunteers what is happening with the CERN jobs that their Virtual Machine is running.

We are also working on a longer-term enhancement to allow volunteers to get more directly engaged with the science - stay tuned!

Congratulations and thanks to all our Alpha testers for your patience and help, and welcome to Beta...

The LHC@home 2.0 team

http://cern.ch/LHCathome/Physics/

 

[Sunny129]

count me in! i love the concept of LHC@Home, but hate the fact that there is hardly ever work available...and when it is, your chances of getting any is a crap shoot. hopefully LHC@Home 2.0 will be different...

 

[Philippart]

they are looking forward to put a lot of experiments on the grid, only downside is the virtualmachine the apps run in

 

[Sunny129]

they are looking forward to put a lot of experiments on the grid, only downside is the virtualmachine the apps run in

yeah, i was reading about that at the LHC@Home 2.0 website, but i'm not exactly clear on how much of a downside it is. i've already installed VirtualBox for Windows x86 on my WinXP Pro machine at work. aside from not being able to run the new project directly through WinXP, what are the downsides? from what i understand, we can use BOINC as installed on the main OS, and don't necessarily have to install BOINC on the "virtual OS"...then again, maybe i'm not understanding the whole concept of VirtualBox or virtual machines in general...

 

[waffleironhead]

downloading Vbox right now. I'm wondering how it will sit next to vmware.

 

[Sunny129]

ok, VirtualBox is running, and BOINC has downloaded and started its first Test4Theory 6.02 task on my host at work. the only downside i'm seeing so far is my antiquated hardware - the task has been running for 15 min. now and has only reached 1% completion...that's right, i'm crunching on a single core AMD Athlon XP 2800+ LOL. according to the count down, i have ~135 hours until completion hahaha.


*EDIT* - ok, its taking my Athlon XP 2800+ approx. 15 min per % of completion. so it'll take approx. 1500 minutes, or ~25 hours, to complete a single task on this host. that being said, its a whole lot better than the initial BOINC estimate of ~135 hours to complete. but the BOINC estimated time to completion has already started correcting itself, and is slowly but surely converging on some number (probably in the ~25-hour range). at this rate, it should take me approx. 2 days to complete a single task b/c my work host is only on for 12-13 hours a day.

 

[Philippart]

i suggest doing an exception this night: keep the computer on

I tried suspending and restarting the task, but virtualbox didn't open again...

I posted this issue in the forums, I hope I will get an answer soon, I'll let you know!

 

[Sunny129]

i suggest doing an exception this night: keep the computer on

I tried suspending and restarting the task, but virtualbox didn't open again...

I posted this issue in the forums, I hope I will get an answer soon, I'll let you know!

yeah, i noticed the thread on the LHC@H 2.0 Beta message boards and subscribed to it .

a question for you though - after you noticed that resuming the task in BOINC doesn't necessarily restart VirtualBox, did you re-suspend the task in BOINC, restart VirtualBox manually, and then resume the task in BOINC to see what happens?...when i first connected to the project, BOINC DLed my first task and it just started running it on its own, so i'm thinking that perhaps BOINC issued some sort of command that runs the VirtualBox executable, though i'm not entirely sure...

in the mean time, i'll do as you suggest and let my work host run overnight.

 

[Philippart]

some experiments:

* all WUs will error immediately if you installed Boinc in protected mode
* to see the simulation progress press crtl-alt-F2 in the VM window, to get out again (back to your host OS): press right crtl
* I recommend to select in every window that pops up that it shouldn't be shown in the future
* I recommend running it only on multicore cpus, I tested it on a winxp singlecore setup and it brought the whole pc badly to its knees as the priority of the VM (and thus science app) is 'normal' by default, setting it to a lower priority using the taskmanager helps a lot on a singlecore!

 

[Sunny129]

* to see the simulation progress press crtl-alt-F2 in the VM window, to get out again (back to your host OS): press right crtl

can i run VirtualBox as a service so that it minimizes to the system tray, or at least doesn't terminate when i close the GUI? i know its rather trivial, but it annoys me that when i minimize it, its still there on the windows task bar.

* I recommend running it only on multicore cpus, I tested it on a winxp singlecore setup and it brought the whole pc badly to its knees as the priority of the VM (and thus science app) is 'normal' by default, setting it to a lower priority using the taskmanager helps a lot on a singlecore!

i must be lucky b/c i was able to work in autoCAD, surf the web, and monitor one of my BOINC hosts at home via Logmein.com (which consumes quite a bit of CPU power) on my single core CPU work host, all without a significant slowdown while VB ran in the background. but it did bring specific tasks to their knees, for instance printing - it would take 20-30 seconds for a print command issued from my work host to reach the printer on our office network. not a big deal though - i can afford to wait that long for something to print. besides, i'm gonna be designing using some new 3-D software soon, which will require a computer upgrade ...so she shouldn't be single core too much longer...


on that note, my work host is crunching away on its first task still...its about 9.5 hours in and 39% complete. one thing i noticed though is that my CPU temps are a bit higher than usual - but that makes sense as we bump the A/C up over the weekend, so the ambient temp in the building is higher. during the day when the A/C is on, i see 42-43°C...right now i see 47-48°C. i'll have to keep an eye on it tomorrow during the day b/c the building will warm up quite a bit...but i think i should be ok given that the max temp for this CPU is around 85°C.

 

[Philippart]

Every Wu lasts 24h no matter what cpu you use, it submits all the work done in that time period in the VM, be it 1 run or a very big amount.

I use Trayeverything http://www.softpedia.com/progDownload/TrayEverything-Download-83675.html to put the VM in the system tray, I like that little free software a lot, I've used it with cmd windows in F@H before.


Edit: Sunny: don't forget to join TeAm AnandTech!

 

[Sunny129]

yeah, i added one of my hosts at home to the project last night, and i noticed that despite that it utilizes an AMD Phenom II X4 965BE CPU, LHC@H 2.0 Beta only allows 1 task to be downloaded and crunched at a time...which means it'll only utilize 1 of my 4 CPU cores...and yes, i also noticed that it would take approx. 24 hours to complete, despite this CPU being far more powerful than the antiquated Athlon XP 2800+ i have in my work host....that seems a bit strange to me, but i guess it is what it is.

thanks for the link to TrayEverything...i'll give it a shot too.

...and thanks for reminding me to join TA - i skipped that part of the project attachment process b/c it was confusing me, but it should be a simple change in preferences now that my account is set up. i'm already a devout member of TA for E@H, MW@H, and S@H, and hopefully Muon1 DPAD too just as soon as i can gather a bit more computing power.

 

[Philippart]

despite this CPU being far more powerful than the antiquated Athlon XP 2800+ i have in my work host....that seems a bit strange to me, but i guess it is what it is.

not strange at all actually, it works like rosetta@home: a fixed runtime and your cpu does as much as it can in that period. That's the idea, credit is a different story on rosetta it is work based and here (as far as I know, I'm not certain yet) it's the same credit for every 24h per performance class of computers as Boinc itself can't "see" how much work has been achieved in 24h (for an explanation see below)

here's how LHC 2.0 works:
The reason for the VM is that they @Cern run all their apps on their custom linux distribution with their libraries, ... it's a modified version of scientific linux.
That way they don't have to port and debug the app and libraries for every platform: everybody runs CERN's OS to avoid problems.

The boinc app is a basic app, which does only this: start the os and end it after 24h

The OS has in it's "autostart" the real science app which downloads WUs and uploads results during that 24h period.

In one sentence: your boinc WU is like a package for a "boinc-like" software in the VM


I submitted my first WU and got my first credits I will now est the suspend again! (I didn't want to do any experiments with the one that was already running for some time)

PS: welcome to the TeAm

PS2: this VM idea is new for boinc (LHC2.0 are the first to use it) and I think this might be a way to finally port folding@home easily to boinc

 

[waffleironhead]

Everything is running fine so far except a few things.

1) the vm doesnt always shutdown when I close boinc. Sometimes it just sits there working away. Stalls my shutdown of win7 as its waiting for the VM to close before shutting down.

2) I was unable to get a work unit inside the vm for over an hour. It just kept say connecting to cern> for a job. It repeated this for an hour. I forced a reset of the vm and it grabbed a job right away.

 

[Philippart]

Everything is running fine so far except a few things.

1) the vm doesnt always shutdown when I close boinc. Sometimes it just sits there working away. Stalls my shutdown of win7 as its waiting for the VM to close before shutting down.

2) I was unable to get a work unit inside the vm for over an hour. It just kept say connecting to cern> for a job. It repeated this for an hour. I forced a reset of the vm and it grabbed a job right away.

post this on the official forums to let them know about it

 

[Fardringle]

Do we actually need to create a virtual machine inside of VirtualBox for the CERN client to use? I'm pretty sure I followed all of the instructions - and it didn't say to create a VM that I saw - but the CERN client isn't running even though BOINC downloaded a task from the project server. It tried to start the job but immediately failed with a "Computation error". The only message in the BOINC Event Log is that computation was finished on the work unit after 0 seconds.

 

[Sunny129]

I submitted my first WU and got my first credits I will now est the suspend again! (I didn't want to do any experiments with the one that was already running for some time)

yup, i got my first credits too! i would have more by now, but i ended up changing some computing and project-specific resource sharing settings for both T4T@H and E@H. as a consequence, the T4T@H task that was in progress went into "waiting to run" mode to allow some E@H tasks to run in "high priority" mode for the time being. on that note, i wanted to make mention of the fact that when a T4T@H task goes into "waiting to run" mode, BOINC does not terminate VirtualBox, unlike what we're seeing when one manually suspends a T4T@H task. instead, VirtualBox reads "BOINC_VM [paused]" on the task bar when the T4T@H task is "waiting to run" (as opposed to "BOINC_VM [running]" when the task is "running").

Do we actually need to create a virtual machine inside of VirtualBox for the CERN client to use? I'm pretty sure I followed all of the instructions - and it didn't say to create a VM that I saw - but the CERN client isn't running even though BOINC downloaded a task from the project server. It tried to start the job but immediately failed with a "Computation error". The only message in the BOINC Event Log is that computation was finished on the work unit after 0 seconds.

you don't need to do anything with VirtualBox after you install it, let alone try to create a VM inside VirtualBox (i have no idea how one would do that anyways). VirtualBox IS the VM, and its already setup with CERN's custom Linux distribution as an OS (as Philippart stated earlier). once you've connected to the project via the BOINC manager, BOINC itself will initialize VirtualBox. a program that exists on VirtualBox's Linux OS then downloads all the necessary files and uses the host's CPU to process the data. so like Philippart said, the only thing BOINC really does is initialize VirtualBox, report VirtualBox's progress during the crunching process (which can also be viewed from within the VirtualBox window, and not just through the BOINC manager), and then terminate VirtualBox at the end of the designated 24-hour period.

it sounds to me like you set everything up as necessary, and perhaps you've just got BOINC installed in protected mode?

 

[Fardringle]

VirtualBox itself is not an OS or virtual machine. It's merely an interface that allows virtual machines (other operating systems) to be installed and run inside of the host OS. The VirtualBox download I got from the LHC 2.0 link did not create a Linux VM so that might be why LHC isn't running properly for me. I'll reinstall it and see what happens.

 

[Sunny129]

VirtualBox itself is not an OS or virtual machine. It's merely an interface that allows virtual machines (other operating systems) to be installed and run inside of the host OS. The VirtualBox download I got from the LHC 2.0 link did not create a Linux VM so that might be why LHC isn't running properly for me. I'll reinstall it and see what happens.

sorry if i jumbled the terminology. i guess i meant to say one thing and accidentally said something else...either way, you said it alot better than i did. at any rate, if VirtualBox ran, but didn't create a Linux VM to run CERN's T4T@H DC software on, then perhaps the install file you downloaded was corrupt in such a way that the install was ableto run, but in an incomplete manner. there are SHA256 and MD5 checksums available on the VirtualBox download page to verify the integrity of your download...i don't know if you checked the file after downloading it or not. there's also a VirtualBox user's manual that might help you troubleshoot the issue.

 

[Philippart]

Do we actually need to create a virtual machine inside of VirtualBox for the CERN client to use? I'm pretty sure I followed all of the instructions - and it didn't say to create a VM that I saw - but the CERN client isn't running even though BOINC downloaded a task from the project server. It tried to start the job but immediately failed with a "Computation error". The only message in the BOINC Event Log is that computation was finished on the work unit after 0 seconds.

To me it is clear that you installed boinc in protected mode (a setting one could easily skip during installation), I suggest downloading the most recent boinc version and unticking "protected mode" or just reinstall your version and untick it.

In virtualbox you don't need to do anything: the software only needs to be installed. The boinc app will do all the rest!

I hope this helps

 

[Sunny129]

I submitted my first WU and got my first credits I will now est the suspend again! (I didn't want to do any experiments with the one that was already running for some time)

Tom, could you elaborate on this? clearly that first task was able to finish b/c you didn't cause it to error by hitting "suspend" or literally closing and restarting BOINC...but what about the next task? did you have any problems suspending that one?

the reason i ask is b/c my home host threw 4 errors today. the first occurred due to a system freeze. after rebooting and getting back to Windows, the "low connectivity" icon appeared in the system tray - it was the virtual host-only network connection that had little or no connectivity...that seemed like a weird issue to be having all of the sudden. i also was unable to get VirtualBox running again, which became obvious just as soon as BOINC appeared to report the errored task, grab another task and begin crunching it, b/c that next task failed after ~20 seconds. during that ~20 seconds i noticed that VirtualBox had not opened. after manually trying to run the VirtualBox executable, i got an error (which i forgot to write down like an idiot) that more or less told me that VirtualBox couldn't run. i then came to find that there was neither a VirtualBox uninstaller in the program's root directory nor an uninstaller in the Windows add/remove programs list. after confirming that there should in fact be an uninstaller in the Windows add/remove programs list (but not necessarily one in the VB root directory), it was pretty obvious to me that something had simply gone wrong during the install of VirtualBox. fortunately i was able to find on the internet a utility that uninstalls VirtualBox so that a fresh install can be performed. so i did that, re-downloaded the VirtualBox install file, and reinstalled it. this seems to have done the trick, as there is no longer a "virtual host-only network connection" with low/no connectivity (in fact its on longer even listed in the network connections), and there is now an "Oracle VM VirtualBox 4.1.0" entry in the Windows add/remove programs list.

i'm not sure that the nature of your problem is the same or even similar to the problem i was having, but i thought i would post about it just in case the might find any of the information useful...

 

[Fardringle]

To me it is clear that you installed boinc in protected mode (a setting one could easily skip during installation), I suggest downloading the most recent boinc version and unticking "protected mode" or just reinstall your version and untick it.

In virtualbox you don't need to do anything: the software only needs to be installed. The boinc app will do all the rest!

I hope this helps

I re-downloaded and reinstalled VirtualBox with no change. I'm almost certain BOINC is not running in protected mode but I'll reinstall the newest version again so I can be 100% certain..


edit: I guess it was in protected mode. I uninstalled and reinstalled BOINC (making sure protected mode was off) and LHC seems to be running OK now.

I did notice something that might be considered a bug, though. I have my BOINC preferences on this machine set to only run if CPU usage is below a certain threshold so that it doesn't interfere with other stuff that I do on the computer. BOINC projects are supposed to run at low priority, but many of them (particularly GPU projects) still have an effect on regular computer operations so I used this option to keep BOINC from making the system unusable for me since it's my primary home machine. However, since VirtualBox is not actually part of the BOINC system, any time it uses any CPU cycles, BOINC thinks the system is busy with something else and repeatedly suspends all activity as soon as it sees that VirtualBox is running. Setting the CPU usage threshold to 0 (no limit) prevents this from happening, but will cause issues with my regular usage of the machine. I'll let it run through the 24 hours for the current LHC work unit but might have to suspend the project if it turns out to be a problem.

 

[Philippart]

I see your problem, especially as Virtualbox runs by default on "normal" priority insead of "low"

I noticed that my singlecore was unusable when running LHC2.0 and even my quadcore experienced a lag when watching high quality movies. Setting the process priority to a lower level helped a lot.

There is some free software on the internet which can be used to set a process automatically to a certain priority once it appears.

The 25% is no good solution as far as I understand your problem, as the actual LHC app is not the wrapper app. That way Boinc can't know that virtualbox is in a sense one of its applications... Please report this on the forums as this bug is rather interesting!

 

[petrusbroder]

Crunching the first WU.
Let us see how that works ...

 

[Philippart]

welcome to the TeAm Peter and Ingleside!

Our position so far: #44