Posts by Ray Murray

1) Message boards : Number crunching : Problems and Technical Issues with Rosetta@home (Message 98468) Posted 10 Aug 2020 by Ray Murray Post: Hi Corgi, Running Boinc and Folding together can cause resource conflicts. Boinc can't see that Folding is using 1 (light), 3 (medium) or all 4 (full) cores so Boinc will, itself, try to use those cores as well causing Folding, Boinc and anything else you're trying to do, to slow down. You could set Folding to light, to use only 1 core and Boinc to use 3 of 4, 75%, or medium, 3 core and limit Boinc to 1 of 4, 25%. Or maybe set Folding to light, Boinc to 50% or 25%, leaving 1, or 2 cores free. I've noticed with Folding, if set to medium, 3 cores, before a task starts, you can turn it down to light, 1 core, and back up to medium later, but if a tasks starts in light, 1 core, turning it up to medium has no effect and it will run as 1 core to the end of that task. Hope that helps.
2) Message boards : Number crunching : Invalid pointer issue (Message 98462) Posted 10 Aug 2020 by Ray Murray Post: My understanding was that the Target Runtime would be set when the task was allocated but I am happy to be proved wrong in that assumption. If the results are returned as Valid then it could just be that that particular part of the Task didn't return what was being looked for but otherwise the Task returned good work.
3) Message boards : Number crunching : Running multiple covid projects on multiple machines, how do you personally go about it? (Message 98459) Posted 10 Aug 2020 by Ray Murray Post: Folding is currently using <100MB, on 3 CPU threads, and I think Ibercivis uses something similar but I can't confirm that just now as they currently don't have work available. There was steady work for a while but recently it has has come more intermittently, perhaps as they finish one study then move to the next. Project to Cruncher communication is as bad as it is here. Rosetta is definitely the most RAM-hungry, using anything from 400MB to >2GB.
4) Message boards : Number crunching : Invalid pointer issue (Message 98450) Posted 9 Aug 2020 by Ray Murray Post: Hi Manalog, I'm Windows only, so not much help for your Linux except for your question of changing the runtime. This change would only affect future tasks. It will have no influence on any tasks already in progress or waiting to run. That's my only input, sorry, but it rules out one cause.
5) Message boards : Number crunching : Running multiple covid projects on multiple machines, how do you personally go about it? (Message 98448) Posted 9 Aug 2020 by Ray Murray Post: Hi Wolfman, As different Projects are approaching the problem from different directions, to develop new drugs or test the effectiveness of existing ones, I think it's good to back all the dogs in the fight. Because of those different strategies, I don't think it's possible to determine which hardware is "better" at which Project, other than Boinc credits awarded per day or per hour, but the virus doesn't care about credits! Even with encouraging trials ongoing, I think there's still a long way to go and hopefully something even better than those candidates waiting to be discovered. With lots of hosts, the simplest way might be to have each host doing different Projects rather than setting resource shares in Boinc and letting it switch between. I have only 2 hosts active just now, both having been switched from LHC to doing purely Covid work (for an old uncle that I lost to it). This one, running 3of4 threads, is doing Rosetta, WCG and Ibercivis (which is out of work again) but rather than letting Boinc switch mid-task, I have "Switch between ...." set to 1500 mins so that any individual task will run to completion. The other one is running exclusively Folding@Home on 3of4 threads. That is not Boinc so Boinc doesn't see the threads as being used so tries to use them itself (unless restricted). I don't have anything with a useable Graphics card so haven't tried TNG so others would have to input on balancing resources re.CPU/GPU. Stay safe
6) Message boards : Number crunching : Problems and Technical Issues with Rosetta@home (Message 98080) Posted 14 Jul 2020 by Ray Murray Post: This one was just a smidgeon over 23hrs. Not a problem for me as my hosts run 24/7 and I have "Switch between" set beyond 2 days (to allow an occasional long LHC virtual task to run to completion without interruption) but I don't know how it would have fared on a machine that only runs 8hrs a day or if it was switched out too many times.
7) Message boards : Rosetta@home Science : What are the Rosetta work units having my system do? (Message 97883) Posted 2 Jul 2020 by Ray Murray Post: Hi Digi-U, Your Folding wu, at Medium setting will probably be trying to use 6 of your 8 logical cores. Boinc can't see that so IT will also be trying to use as many cores as you allow it which will be slowing down work across ALL projects. You could try either limiting Folding to the Light setting to reduce its core use or limit Boinc to fewer cores, OR BOTH so that your cores are better allocated without so much competition for resources. Setting Folding to Light will slow down the current task but the timeout for subsequent tasks will be adjusted accordingly.
8) Message boards : Number crunching : other covid 19 project (Message 97523) Posted 23 Jun 2020 by Ray Murray Post: Ibercivis are hoping upgrades to the cooling system in their data centre will be completed today, although being Spain, that might mean mañana ;¬) https://boinc.ibercivis.es/ which then links to a more detailed explanation all in Spanish https://ibercivis.es/paron-boinc-covid-phym/ which can be readily translated by Google or other translator of your choice.
9) Message boards : News : Outage notice (Message 97383) Posted 14 Jun 2020 by Ray Murray Post: Look at Sid Celery's post just a few posts ago.
10) Message boards : Number crunching : Large numbers of tasks aborted by project killing CPU performance (Message 96657) Posted 20 May 2020 by Ray Murray Post: Another reason for the Project Aborting tasks is that they may have found a flaw in a batch of tasks from which returned results would be useless so rather than wasting your time and theirs, they Abort the whole batch. My buffer is set to 0.1 and 0.1 so I only ever have 1 active task per core and perhaps 1, at most 2 spare. Often it is 1 out, 1 in. Also just now, time is of the essence so they want the work returned as soon as possible so the result can be analysed as to whether it can be discarded or is worthy of further investigation.
11) Message boards : Number crunching : Added WCG to the mix; no longer receiving R@H tasks (Message 96653) Posted 20 May 2020 by Ray Murray Post: If you haven't run WCG for a while, Boinc will see a "Deficit" there and will try to do proportionately more work for it to bring it up to parity with your other Project(s) eventually matching your resource share. I'm sure there's a manual edit of a Boinc file to bypass the delay while Boinc sorts itself out but I can't remember which, or what value to set. Cross-posted with Grant but I concur.
12) Message boards : Number crunching : Rosetta running on ARM platforms (Message 96634) Posted 19 May 2020 by Ray Murray Post: Thanks, Grant, It didn't seem too happy running 2 cores using 250-400MB each so I've put it back to 1 but upped the time to 6 hours. If it goes well overnight, I'll deselect time limit and just let it run whatever it gets. The scheduler appears to know that it doesn't have much memory and has only sent WUs it is capable of running . The laptop got a task that needed 1.3GB yesterday but it has the capacity, and spare, to handle that. I'm letting it run WCG and Ibercivis as well and the other one is doing Folding, just to cover all bases. I've even got the phone doing Dreamlab.
13) Message boards : Number crunching : Rosetta running on ARM platforms (Message 96611) Posted 18 May 2020 by Ray Murray Post: I've got a Win10 laptop, switched from LHC for now, running 8hr tasks but just for curiosity I've sparked up an old Tesco Hudl that was lying in a drawer. (It's not clever enough to run WCG tasks) It's only got 1Gb of RAM so sometimes refuses to get work with the "...needs 1716.61MB but only 716.81MB available..." message but all the tasks it has returned so far have been valid. I'm letting it use all of 1 core and as much of the available ram as it needs on 2hr tasks. I think letting it use more cores would be pushing it and longer tasks might need more memory, although I might experiment on both counts. "Every little helps". It might just be one of these short tasks that finds the key. Who knows. Stay safe. Stay well.
14) Message boards : Number crunching : Remove? Rosetta lost its mind (Message 96479) Posted 14 May 2020 by Ray Murray Post: Hi Johannes, When you reattach, choose "Existing user" and use the same e-mail and password that you did originally. Your credits and work history will then still be associated with your account. Set No New Tasks, first and let your host run dry as you will lose the work in progress.
15) Message boards : Cafe Rosetta : so sorry (Message 96332) Posted 10 May 2020 by Ray Murray Post: On the website, on your Account page, in Preferences for this project, you can also set different preferences for different Locations then change your computers' Locations appropriately. The physical Location doesn't matter; they could be sitting side by side, as mine are. You could set a faster machine to run 8hr tasks as Primary (Default) and a lesser machine to run 2hr tasks as Home and perhaps another with different preferences again as School. And in Boinc Options/Computing Preferences you can also set the % of the CPUs to use eg. 75% for 3 0f 4 cores, 50% for 2 of 4, or 66.67% for 16 of 24, if you're lucky enough to have that capacity, so that Boinc uses some cores and some are always available for exclusive use of the OS and your other uses.
16) Message boards : Number crunching : How secure is my machine when running R@h? (Message 96277) Posted 8 May 2020 by Ray Murray Post: Guilherme, Is this what you're looking for? https://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/cpu_list.php from the dropdowns at the top of the page Computing/Statistics/CPU models. On security; Boinc, or any other Boinc user, doesn't have access to anything on your computer. Even the information about it is limited to OS, CPU type, amount of memory, and how many and which tasks it has running or run. You can see more info on your hosts than others can see. Compare what you can see of your own with what you can see about mine. If you are worried that it will overtax your machine, you can limit the number of core assigned to Boinc. I always like to leave 1 core free, particularly when I am new to a project, so I can gauge the impact on the system without the danger of it falling over. Hope that's helpful.
17) Message boards : Cafe Rosetta : so sorry (Message 95668) Posted 1 May 2020 by Ray Murray Post: I'm new here, too, Wim but I have always had my cache set to 0.3 days and 0.3 additional so that whichever project I have contributed to (currently only here and Folding), I only get 1 task per allowed core plus maybe a couple spare so I never have more work than I can do by deadline. And there's also the option in Preferences to set shorter WUs down as low as 2hrs. Hope that'll change your mind on quitting.