I can't install Virtualbox - it states it's not compatible with my iMac, do I need to have it installed in order to run Rosetta@home? I haven't gotten any work for my computer to do.

1. Sometimes tasks don't start. They sit there at 0% and with no time used, but say "Running" in BOINC Manager. This tends to happen in batches for me and happens on multiple machines. I don't think there is a thread discussing this. Restarting BOINC Manager fixes this.

2. Some tasks never end. The % keeps climbing but they have to be aborted. My record that I've noticed is 4-days of CPU time. The error on the Vbox screen is always the same, but might be misleading (Spectre error). Thread here:
https://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/forum_thread.php?id=14897

Couldn't copy file: fwrite() failed

Have I missed any major issues?

1. Sometimes tasks don't start. They sit there at 0% and with no time used, but say "Running" in BOINC Manager. This tends to happen in batches for me and happens on multiple machines. I don't think there is a thread discussing this. Restarting BOINC Manager fixes this.

2. Some tasks never end. The % keeps climbing but they have to be aborted. My record that I've noticed is 4-days of CPU time. The error on the Vbox screen is always the same, but might be misleading (Spectre error). Thread here:
https://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/forum_thread.php?id=14897

I observed sort of a combination of both problems, but maybe it is something different altogether. In my case, VirtualBox-tasks seem to start in the BOINC Manager (Status: "Running"), when actually the VM that belongs to that task hangs while booting. The progress indicated in the BOINC manager asymptotically approaches 100%, but never reaches it. These tasks run until they are manually aborted. They don't consume much CPU time. I observed the problem using Linux and using Windows. When using Windows, I checked the VBox screen: in one case it was completely empty, in the other case it showed the error message

Couldn't copy file: fwrite() failed

I have not seen the Spectre error yet. In Linux I haven't yet figured out how to check the VBox-screen.
@Jim1348 described such tasks in the forum as "0 CPU-tasks".
I have written a watchdog-script to abort such tasks as soon as possible. This is a good workaround for me, of course it would be better if this problem would be fixed.

Have I missed any major issues?

4. Some tasks get the status "Postponed: VM job unmanagable, restarting later." and block a slot where another work unit could be processed. This was discussed here and here. In my experience, after restarting the BOINC client, the results of such tasks are reported and new work units are downloaded and processed.

#!/bin/bash

# Edit this:
#    a list of hosts, each optionally with GUI port number appended
#    (may be just a single host, or dozens of hosts)
hosts=(
	"localhost"
	"computer_a"
	"computer_b:31420"
)

# Edit this:
#    the password from gui_rpc_auth.cfg
#    This script expects the same password on all hosts.
#    Can be set to "" if you have empty gui_rpc_auth.cfg's.
password="$(cat /var/lib/boinc/gui_rpc_auth.cfg)"

# Edit this if you want to apply this to a different project.
project_url="https://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/"

# Change this from "abort" to "suspend" if you prefer.
task_op="abort"

# Before a task hasn't been executing for some time, other task stats
# may still be imprecise.  The script therefore does not touch any
# tasks which haven't been executing for at least this many seconds.
# You can use integer numbers here, but not floating point numbers.
# E.g.: 5 * 60 for 5 minutes.
min_elapsed_time=$((5 * 60))

# After tasks were aborted, boinc-client may cease to request
# new work due to "Communication deferred". To avoid this, should a
# project update be forced after one or more tasks were aborted?
# Set to 1 for yes, 0 for no.
force_project_update=1

# Loop intervals.
# You probably don't need to edit these.
check_every_n_minutes=10
timestamp_every_n_minutes=120

# That's it; there is probably no need to edit anything from here on.
delay=$((${check_every_n_minutes}*60/${#hosts[*]}+1))
ts=${timestamp_every_n_minutes}

echo "Monitoring ${hosts[*]}."
for ((;;))
do
	(( (ts += check_every_n_minutes) >= timestamp_every_n_minutes )) && { date; ts=0; }

	for host in ${hosts[*]}
	do
		# Edit this if you run on Cygwin:
		#    boinccmd="/cygdrive/c/Program*Files/BOINC/boinccmd --host ${host} --passwd ${password}"
		if [ -n "${password}" ]
		then
			boinccmd="boinccmd --host ${host} --passwd ${password}"
		else
			boinccmd="boinccmd --host ${host}"
		fi

		tasks=$(${boinccmd} --get_tasks) || { sleep ${delay}; continue; }

		unset name url state ett cct
		while read line
		do
			case ${line} in
		             		[1-9]* )	 i=${line%)*};;
		        	     "name: "* )  name[$i]=${line#*"name: "};;
			      "project URL: "* )   url[$i]=${line#*"project URL: "};;
			"active_task_state: "* ) state[$i]=${line#*"active_task_state: "};;
			"elapsed task time: "* )       tmp=${line#*"elapsed task time: "}; ett[$i]=${tmp%.*};;
			 "current CPU time: "* )       tmp=${line#*"current CPU time: "};  cct[$i]=${tmp%.*};;
			esac
		done <<< "${tasks}"

		n=0
		for j in ${!name[*]}
		do
			# Skip tasks
			#   - which do not belong to this project,
			#   - which are not currently running,
			#   - which have been running for less than $min_elapsed_time seconds,
			#   - which have a CPU time of more than 50% of elapsed time.
			[ "${url[$j]}"   != "${project_url}" ] && continue
			[ "${state[$j]}" != "EXECUTING"      ] && continue
			e=${ett[$j]}; ((e < min_elapsed_time)) && continue
			c=${cct[$j]}; ((e < 2*c)) && continue

			printf "${host}: ${task_op} ${name[$j]}t"
			printf "(elapsed: %02d:%02d:%02d," $((e/3600)) $((e%3600/60)) $((e%60))
			printf " CPU: %02d:%02d:%02d)n"   $((c/3600)) $((c%3600/60)) $((c%60))
			${boinccmd} --task "${project_url}" "${name[$j]}" "${task_op}"
			((n++))
		done

		((force_project_update && n)) && { sleep 1; ${boinccmd} --project "${project_url}" update; }

		sleep ${delay}
	done
done

'neverending; little CPU time'

the script requires a fairly recent version of 'boinccmd'. I don't know precisely how recent, but 7.16.17 works, 7.16.6 does not work. (The version of the boinc clients which are controlled by the script does not matter.)

xii5ku wrote:

the script requires a fairly recent version of 'boinccmd'. I don't know precisely how recent, but 7.16.17 works, 7.16.6 does not work. (The version of the boinc clients which are controlled by the script does not matter.)

PS, you can tell whether your boinccmd is recent enough for the script by looking at the output of the --get_tasks call (towards any client which has one ore more task in progress). If there is a line with "elapsed task time:" for each task, it will work.

I thought it would be a good idea to create a post listing the issues with the VirtualBox tasks, which can then be updated as/if they get fixed. This isn't a thread to list the details of the issues - just to link to the wider discussions elsewhere:

Tasks sometimes get stuck occupying a CPU slot indefinitely, until the deadline.
Tasks occupy much more RAM, on a Ryzen 5900x 64GB of ram is not enough to utilize the entire host.
KVM might not be available on Linux due to it being utilized by another hypervisor, this will make the tasks extremely slow (about 20 / 50 times slower).
The heavy I/O operations that start with the sudden downloads / start of the VMs cause Linux systems with NVMe SSDs to become unresponsive for half a minute at a time (this is due to polling vs interrupt based I/O).

I think it is absolutely undoubtedly necessary we get an option to disable vbox tasks in the computing preferences menu and will abort all vbox tasks until then (sorry).

I'm contemplating writing a script that will only ask for new tasks once the scheduler shows regular tasks are available as well.

I think it is absolutely undoubtedly necessary we get an option to disable vbox tasks in the computing preferences menu and will abort all vbox tasks until then (sorry).

Got to your account page, Computing and Credit, Computers on this account, click on View, click on Details for the computer you are after, down the bottom somewhere (i think think it is) should be a Skip button.
No more Python work.

Solution for postponed vbox tasks: install vbox 5.2.44