BOINC Pentathlon 2019

[Windows7ge]

So so far I have the following operating systems running on PROXMOX:

Ubuntu 19.04 Desktop
Ubuntu 18.04 Desktop
Ubuntu 16.04 Desktop
Mint MATE (kernel 4.20.12)
Mint 19 cinnamon
Lubuntu 18.10
SparkyLinux 4.10
CentOS 7 - Could not get BOINC to work
Ubuntu Server 19.04

Even though all of these are running in VM's and their are noticeable differences in WU completion time between them even the slowest Linux version on this list is still faster than Windows 10 running BOINC natively.

 

W10 sucks for BOINC. Go Linux.

 

I'm going to get the same list running on Windows Server Hyper-V and I'll report back with a full list of performance metrics.

[GOTSpectrum]

@leadeater I'm getting really pissed off with having no BOINC team leader and Whiskers not making much of a move on badges, who would I talk to about these concerns? 

 

I'm wanting to organise more DC events on the forum but without the mod/s playing ball I just am so disheartened. 

[Windows7ge]

@Ben Quigley Yeah as you can see I'm still waiting for Whiskers to tell me if I'm even eligible. He hasn't even looked at the message he was sent yet (3 days ago).

It's fine. I've been here for >3 years without any badges I can go longer.

[GOTSpectrum]

2 minutes ago, Windows7ge said:

@Ben Quigley Yeah as you can see I'm still waiting for Whiskers to tell me if I'm even eligible. He hasn't even looked at the message he was sent yet (3 days ago).

It's fine. I've been here for >3 years without any badges I can go longer.

My issue is We have been a large sub-community here for some time, they(LTT) used to make vids about folding and BOINC and now it seems like an afterthought, @Slick used to be massively into it and now it feels like he just doesn't care anymore(Him and most of LMG), and if so, thats fine, but tell us so we can find somewhere where we are supported and cared about. 

[leadeater]

1 hour ago, Ben Quigley said:

@leadeater I'm getting really pissed off with having no BOINC team leader and Whiskers not making much of a move on badges, who would I talk to about these concerns? 

 

I'm wanting to organise more DC events on the forum but without the mod/s playing ball I just am so disheartened. 

You'll have to talk to @colonel_mortis about it.

[GOTSpectrum]

1 hour ago, leadeater said:

You'll have to talk to @colonel_mortis about it.

I'm presuming he gets many pings, if he doesn't reply before tomorrow I'll drop him a DM and see what he says.

[Windows7ge]

I might as well ask now. Currently I'm testing with OpenZIKA. Do any of you want me to perform tests for yoyo & NFS? It's entirely possible being a different workload for a different OS to perform better. Don't know if any of you want those statistics.

 

I might attempt testing LHC but as leadeater found out it probably won't work for VM tasks.

[leadeater]

3 hours ago, Windows7ge said:

I might attempt testing LHC but as leadeater found out it probably won't work for VM tasks.

LHC sixtrack doesn't require vbox, if you want to test that.

[Windows7ge]

7 minutes ago, leadeater said:

LHC sixtrack doesn't require vbox, if you want to test that.

I remember but if LHC gets picked again in future BOINC events were not going to waste time on sixtrack.

 

Worst case scenario partition a HDD/SSD with like 8 Linux volumes and hop between them as bunkered jobs run out.

 

If I have any better luck with VB on Linux in a VM I'll let you know.

[Ithanul]

I will probably get around and do some testing with my two Threadrippers.

 

Though, going to rework my 2nd rig as it is over due for some cleaning and be moved into the other side of the TX10.

[Windows7ge]

10 hours ago, Ithanul said:

I will probably get around and do some testing with my two Threadrippers.

 

Though, going to rework my 2nd rig as it is over due for some cleaning and be moved into the other side of the TX10.

Welp, I had just typed out an entire list of suggestions, and potentially helpful information for your VM testing. I wanted to use code tags for some bits but I'm on mobile ATM and the option isn't there. I thought "Oh, I know I'll request the desktop site (totally cheat)." well not only did it not work but the freaking site DIDN'T SAVE THE 30+ LINES OF TEXT I WROTE OUT WHEN IT RELOADED!!! *flips multiple tables*. I'm not retyping all of that on a phone at 12:15AM. I'll redo it tomorrow on a desktop.

 

Why aren't we allowed code tags on mobile!?! While I'm at it why aren't we allowed to change font styles on mobile!?! Also the text auto-saving feature needs tweaking. It's seriously inconsistent. *Resists urge to flip one more table*

[RollinLower]

On 5/23/2019 at 2:46 AM, Ben Quigley said:

I'm presuming he gets many pings, if he doesn't reply before tomorrow I'll drop him a DM and see what he says.

any updates on this?

[GOTSpectrum]

1 hour ago, RollinLower said:

any updates on this?

Not as of yet, I'll be messaging him today, my partner ended up at the local medical center so haven't had the time.

[GOTSpectrum]

6 hours ago, RollinLower said:

any updates on this?

As an update, I've just messaged Mortis and will keep your all updated on what is said.

 

Happy computing!

[Windows7ge]

22 hours ago, Ithanul said:

I will probably get around and do some testing with my two Threadrippers.

Alright lets try this again.

 

Firstly if you could, try different versions/distros than what I'm testing. If you can't then at least try different kernels. One that I'd like to test which I haven't is Linux Mint with kernel v5.1.4. Maybe you could consider testing that for me.

 

Information & recommendations to maybe save you some time:

 

For your testing I would seriously advise against using VB. The software isn't a good performer and results could even become skewed if the system decides to do something in the background. Consider using (in no particular order) PROXMOX, ESXi, or Hyper-V. Note: If you use Hyper-V and choose to use a Gen 2 VM (UEFI support) save yourself the trouble and disable Secure Boot:

Quote

Hyper-V Manager > Virtual Machines > [VM name] *Right Click* > Settings... > Security > Un-tick "Enable Secure Boot"

For the life of me I could not find a .ISO file that wanted to play friendly with Gen 2 VMs unless I disabled Secure Boot. Maybe leadeater could shed some light on why that might be.

 

For your Debian based distros all the Terminal commands I needed to get the VM's up & running quick included:

apt-get update && apt-get upgrade // Requires that you are root. Sudo will not work.
sudo -i // Just how I got to become root but "su -" may also work (both may or may not ask for password).
apt-get install boinc-client boinc-manager // Just a fast and easy way of installing BOINC (requires root).
boincmgr // If you want to launch BOINC from CLI.
apt-get install --no-install-recommends [ubuntu-desktop | kubuntu-desktop | lubuntu-desktop | mate-desktop | ubuntu-gnome-desktop | xubuntu-desktop]
// ^ Is for your server distros if you want a basic desktop without the extra desktop applications. A barebones GUI. NOTE: kubuntu-desktop may require the adding of a repository "add-apt-repository ppa:kubuntu-ppa/backports".

If you already know all of those then maybe someone else will find them helpful.

[Ithanul]

1 hour ago, Windows7ge said:

Alright lets try this again.

 

Firstly if you could, try different versions/distros than what I'm testing. If you can't then at least try different kernels. One that I'd like to test which I haven't is Linux Mint with kernel v5.1.4. Maybe you could consider testing that for me.

 

Information & recommendations to maybe save you some time:

 

For your testing I would seriously advise against using VB. The software isn't a good performer and results could even become skewed if the system decides to do something in the background. Consider using (in no particular order) PROXMOX, ESXi, or Hyper-V. Note: If you use Hyper-V and choose to use a Gen 2 VM (UEFI support) save yourself the trouble and disable Secure Boot:

For the life of me I could not find a .ISO file that wanted to play friendly with Gen 2 VMs unless I disabled Secure Boot. Maybe leadeater could shed some light on why that might be.

I can look into testing that kernel on Mint with my 2nd rig, since I am planning to clean it and move into the other case along with redoing the OS (plan though is to setup it with Debian server or Ubuntu server in the end).  I will run the Mint natively first.

 

I always have secure boot disabled.  That crap tends to be more headache than it is worth. 

[Windows7ge]

3 minutes ago, Ithanul said:

I can look into testing that kernel on Mint with my 2nd rig, since I am planning to clean it and move into the other case along with redoing the OS (plan though is to setup it with Debian server or Ubuntu server in the end).  I will run the Mint natively first.

For Linux Mint MATE 18.3 kernel 4.20.12 the WU average completion time to beat is 01:39:30. Of course running it natively on a completely different platform will give you results noticeably different from mine.

 

6 minutes ago, Ithanul said:

I always have secure boot disabled.  That crap tends to be more headache than it is worth. 

I don't even understand why it's a feature. AFAIK it just exists to keep people from walking up-to a computer and running a modded OS. Or something to that extent.

[Ithanul]

11 minutes ago, Windows7ge said:

I don't even understand why it's a feature. AFAIK it just exists to keep people from walking up-to a computer and running a modded OS. Or something to that extent.

And at that point, physical security has failed big time.

 

Then again, we had some bright idea individual smack an USB stick right into a server node. (where I work USB sticks are a huge, very huge no, no)

[Windows7ge]

9 minutes ago, Ithanul said:

And at that point, physical security has failed big time.

 

Then again, we had some bright idea individual smack an USB stick right into a server node. (where I work USB sticks are a huge, very huge no, no)

They hit Accept without reading the terms & conditions.

 

Oh, also if you do decide to test with VM's you really don't need much Storage/RAM per VM. I'd say 4GB RAM & 8GB or 16GB of disk storage.

[Ithanul]

1 minute ago, Windows7ge said:

They hit Accept without reading the terms & conditions.

 

Oh, also if you do decide to test with VM's you really don't need much Storage/RAM per VM. I'd say 4GB RAM & 8GB or 16GB of disk storage.

I'm good on RAM and Storage.  Each of my rigs have 32GB of RAM.  I will probably mess a bit around with some VMs since I am interested in trying PROXMOX out.

[Windows7ge]

I've finished the testing for OpenZIKA. Take this with a grain of salt as you won't have the same hardware/software setup as me.

 

I knew it'd be a possibility that a different OS would preform better based on the host/hypervisor.

 

After 3 full days they accumulated more than 1,661 WU's. That'd be a pretty good bunker drop. After setting up the best performers that number should be a bit higher. I'm going to work on setting up a series of VMs using the best performers and see how things work out when there's 8 or 16 instances running side by side.

[Windows7ge]

So a downside to the VM's similar to what leadeater experienced with native servers there does seem to be an issue with adding a large number of machines to a single account most of them aren't getting any work at all. It seems as if WCG doesn't like it. I'm thinking of trying adding other Projects under the My Projects page on WCG and seeing if it's just OpenZIKA or the account overall.

[GOTSpectrum]

1 hour ago, Windows7ge said:

So a downside to the VM's similar to what leadeater experienced with native servers there does seem to be an issue with adding a large number of machines to a single account most of them aren't getting any work at all. It seems as if WCG doesn't like it. I'm thinking of trying adding other Projects under the My Projects page on WCG and seeing if it's just OpenZIKA or the account overall.

Try decreasing the cache size so each machine is only getting .5 days of work as done projects limit the number of WUs that will be served to an account.

[leadeater]

6 minutes ago, Ben Quigley said:

Try decreasing the cache size so each machine is only getting .5 days of work as done projects limit the number of WUs that will be served to an account.

Once you start submitting completed work the WU limit increases as well, I didn't have any problems storing more than a days worth of ZIKA on ~15 servers so long as tasks were completing and submitting. It just took a while to spool them all up and get them all working.

[Windows7ge]

1 minute ago, leadeater said:

Once you start submitting completed work the WU limit increases as well, I didn't have any problems storing more than a days worth of ZIKA on ~15 servers so long as tasks were completing and submitting. It just took a while to spool them all up and get them all working.

Only problem for me being each server did just a couple jobs as you described but then just stopped receiving work.

Things worked during different OS testing but now only 2/16 VMs have jobs. The rest, sitting idle.