They are engaged in cancer research. As for the right kind, few if any of the IT people know all of the 2000 or so computer languages.

Research by IT guys? So Krembil bought something they don't have the manpower to make work. FFS.

Why would they need to know a computer language? They're just copying from one server to another!

I don't expect WCG to come up alive very soon. I believe that the Krembil Research Insttitute has bitten more than it can chew,

It's a multi billion dollar organisation, how can they not afford some IT guys?

Chances are that they have some. Just not enough of the right kind, or too much else for them to do.

The whole system is offline, what else are they doing, making coffee? Anyway, they have the money to hire some short term. As for right kind, WTF?

I don't expect WCG to come up alive very soon. I believe that the Krembil Research Insttitute has bitten more than it can chew,

It's a multi billion dollar organisation, how can they not afford some IT guys?

Hardly, avx came out at the start of 2011 - very new in terms of computers would be at least the start of 2021.

Snob! I have 7 PCs and only 2 have AVX. Most of my equipment is 2nd hand and an average of 10 years old. I fail to see the point in spending thousands on stuff that goes a few times faster than stuff that's 50 quid.

So how come Folding at Home makes code that runs on everything?

Do you know if GPUGrid will ever support AMD cards? I doubt I'll ever buy one of those overpriced slow Nvidias. I found people mentioning they were trialling it in 2011 and 2015....

Anyway looks like GPUGrid ran out of work. I've shoved all my PCs on it to see if I ever get anything, seems they have a CPU and an ATI tickbox, not sure if those ever actually produce anything though.

I prefer both to the situation at Predictor@Home. They lost the two members of their project team who knew how the create useful new workunits (probably because they graduated). For several months, they kept the project running by repeatedly raising the number of times a workunit could fail before no more tasks would be sent out for it. Some of the remaining workunits failed over 30 times before the professor in charge decided it was not worthwhile to let the project continue, and it shut down.

ROFL, Wikipedia says "Though it was quite successful, a "disagreement" between the project administration and the user base caused a mass exodus of participating users"

Is it time to panic ?
There are less than a million tasks left on the front page . . .
Does this mean we may run out of pythons sometime this year :-)

Given that the most In progress for them was a bit over 21,000, they tend to average around 15,000 or less, and that there are presently only 10,500 In progress, i think it will be a long, long, long time before they get cleared due to the very minuscule number of systems that are actually processing them.

I make that four months. Depends how soon you want to panic.

And then we get to have fun with the buggy stuff.

Can you unupdate to 5.2.44?

I'll give that a try if there are continued problems. I just went back and looked, the existing tasks are still postponed (1 day hasn't elapsed yet, and there isn't an obvious way to manually resume them), but one of the other python tasks seems to be running ok so maybe it was just a transient issue.

And it's weird you have so many .tmp files. I thought BOINC deleted all files once the data was uploaded and reported?

It is odd - I have no explanation or any idea what circumstances created it.
I only have this observation, for whatever value anyone else can find in it.
People might want to examine their own ProgramData folder and pre-empt the events that affected me if they see the same thing.
We're all in self-help mode

Thank you. I have changed the settings. I am not sure what you mean by "They're not too bad if you have AVX."

My computer has both the 64-bit and the 32-bit versions of VirtualBox installed. It runs 64-bit vbox apps.

This is news to me, I just have 64 bit installed, I think, no idea how to find out. Does that mean I can't run the 32 bit ones? I would have thought the 64 would include the 32?

My 32-bit version may be left over from the earlier BOINC work that used it, such as RNA World. It's a separate program.

If you can reach the command line while no Virtualbox task is running, Try entering vbox to test if the 32-bit version can be found. If the program starts, try entering exit to see if this will shut it down. For a similar test for the 64-bit version, enter vbox64 instead.

Not sure what you mean. Where do I enter this? I'm running Windows 11.

When i run vbox i get "vbox" is not recognized as an internal or external command operable program or batch file
The same happens to "vbox64"

My computer has both the 64-bit and the 32-bit versions of VirtualBox installed. It runs 64-bit vbox apps.

This is news to me, I just have 64 bit installed, I think, no idea how to find out. Does that mean I can't run the 32 bit ones? I would have thought the 64 would include the 32?

robertmiles wrote:

Virtualbox has the old vbox, which handles 32-bit programs
.
.
.
Where's any evidence that the multicore Cosmology tasks use Virtualbox?

It's mentioned at the apps overview page of any project:
https://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/apps.php
https://www.cosmologyathome.org/apps.php


no "()" in the "Version" col indicates a native/legacy app without special requirements like SSE, AVX ...
(vbox64) in the "Version" col indicates an app that requires VirtualBox 64-bit.
(vbox64_mt) in the "Version" col indicates an app that requires VirtualBox 64-bit and is able to run multicore VMs.
64-bit vbox apps don't run on a computer that has 32-bit vbox installed.

I've looked for memory boards compatible with my computer but with more memory each and didn't find any. Crucial gives me a page not found error when I try there.

If you want say a single stick of 32GB DDR4 3200, type this into Ebay:
1x32GB DDR4 3200

Or if you want two 16GB sticks of 2600:
2x16GB DDR4 2600

Look what motherboard and CPU you have and decide what the max size and speed sticks they will take are. Let me know the CPU and MB models if you want me to find out.

Where's any evidence that the multicore Cosmology tasks use Virtualbox?

This is the only types I've ever received:

Cosmology@Home	camb_boinc2docker	camb_boinc2docker_2281906_1648978147.594575_0	00:11:31 (00:55:39)	04-04-2022 12:25 AM	04-04-2022 12:25 AM	6C	80.54	Reported: OK +	Xeon 1			
Cosmology@Home	camb_boinc2docker	camb_boinc2docker_2282323_1648978163.467520_0	00:09:20 (00:47:28)	04-04-2022 03:40 AM	04-04-2022 03:40 AM	6C	84.76	Reported: OK +	Xeon 1			

6 cores (or whatever you choose) for Vbox and 1 core for legacy.

Q9450 Doesn't support AVX. Virtualbox jobs get stuck if avx is missing.

Not on cosmology or LHC, that's only a Rosetta requirement. I have 5 computers with no AVX and they all run Cosmology and LHC VB tasks fine.

Which Virtualbox program does this?

I'm using version 5.2.44, from here: https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Download_Old_Builds_5_2 It's 64 bit.

Also, the Cosmology tasks on my computer do not appear to use any Virtualbox program at all. Most of them use the multithreaded feature, which divides the work among 4 virtual CPU cores, without using a Virtualbox program.

That can't be be right. If the tasks are called "Cosmology Legacy", they're not Vbox and use 1 core. The Vbox ones are the only multicore ones. Linux might be different if you use that (but it appears you're on Windows only).

BOINC is giving me error messages about being unable to run Python tasks because the need very large amounts of free memory to even start, such as about 19 GB. Is this a real requirement for them, or just bad calculations?

Sometimes they ask for more than they will actually need, but they do use a lot. For example I have a 6 core i5 with 16GB of RAM. It can get 5 Pythons running, then the memory is 80-90% full and doesn't load the 6th.

19GB sounds unusual, since that would stop any from running on my above machine at all, and I've never seen that.