BOINC 6.2.18 Available

A

aldamon

Supreme [H]ardness
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http://boinc.berkeley.edu/download.php

Came out at the end of July and I missed it.

Release notes for version 6.2
[edit] New features
[edit] Improved Windows security

BOINC now offers Protected application execution: in this mode, applications are run under an unprivileged account, so that they cannot access your files.

NOTE: Choosing this option will require a reboot after setup has completed the installation. Setup creates several users and groups on the system and you will not be able to properly manage BOINC until after the system has been rebooted.
[edit] Windows Vista compatibility

BOINC Manager now starts up without any security warnings when you log in. Application graphics now work in all cases.
[edit] Support for multiple selection in GUI

You can now select multiple items (projects, tasks, etc.) and operate on them as a group.
 
Is this the WCG project? or ?

I had signed up for it a while back but have not tried it yet. I might take one of my Quads and dedicate it soon to this and see how it works out for a while and how it plays with the GPU F@H client.



 
Sunin said:
Is this the WCG project?
Click to expand...

Yeah, the standard BOINC client is better than the "WCG" branded BOINC client. Same thing but with more functionality like quad core support, which is kind of important. :p
 
Sorry to dredge up an old thread but wanted to know if any kind of guide or instructions are necessary to get this fired up.

I joined the team a while back and got so busy I never got a chance to get this set up and running (not to mention I wasn't sure which client to install WCG or BOINC). I've got an Athlon XP 2600 that I hope will run this and get put to some use. Hopefully my signup/login info for WCG is still good..

Where do you get/keep up with stats and stuff? Oh yeah... and badges.. we gots to have us some cool badges... :)

*edit: Anyone know if this works headless and w/o a kbd? I don't have a KVM switch so I'd need to be able to run this headless after setup.

 
(not to mention I wasn't sure which client to install WCG or BOINC)
Click to expand...

The standard BOINC client can open multiple units for muli-core CPUS. There is really no reason to run the WCG-branded client. You can attach to WCG projects with BOINC during the initial setup. Make sure you've picked HardOCP as your team in your account.

I've got an Athlon XP 2600 that I hope will run this and get put to some use.
Click to expand...

It will be fine.

Where do you get/keep up with stats and stuff? Oh yeah... and badges.. we gots to have us some cool badges... :)
Click to expand...

You can get your own stats with the BOINC client. In BOINC Manager, click the Tasks tab and click one of your projects. Then click My Grid and log in.

If you just want a link, here is our team results sorted by points:

http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/team/viewTeamMemberDetail.do?sort=points&teamId=BP5XNJBR9N1

No badges right now.

*edit: Anyone know if this works headless and w/o a kbd? I don't have a KVM switch so I'd need to be able to run this headless after setup.
Click to expand...

BOINC runs automatically after boot-up, so it should run fine headless after you set it up.
 
aldamon said:
Yeah, the standard BOINC client is better than the "WCG" branded BOINC client. Same thing but with more functionality like quad core support, which is kind of important. :p
Click to expand...

After reading your post I just checked to see which client I was running, and it is the WCG branded BOINC v5.10.45. Are you saying that the WCG client doesn't support quads? I have my [email protected] using it 24/7 and it runs 4 threads in device manager. Is there any reason, ie performance increase, I should switch clients?

 
Sweet.. thanks for the info aldamon! Hopefully I can get this setup this weekend and give it a go. Finally something for the poor little Athlon to do. ;)


 
ccityinstaller said:
After reading your post I just checked to see which client I was running, and it is the WCG branded BOINC v5.10.45. Are you saying that the WCG client doesn't support quads?
Click to expand...

Cool. It didn't open multiple threads when I tried it a while ago. Regardless, the standard BOINC client is still newer. It probably wouldn't hurt to switch for the bug fixes.
 
Got it up and running on one machine.

Now all I gotta do is figure out how to select/define which research projects I want to work on. It grabbed several on init without me getting a chance to specify what I wanted to work on. Is that normal?

I tried to get there from the Boinc Manager but seems the site was busy with a stats update (which has been going on for an ungodly long time it seems) so I'll have to figure it out later. Meanwhile it's crunching so it's all good.

Refreshingly easy to setup and get started.


 
You could have picked the WCG project during installation. To attach to WCG now:

1. Click Tools > Attach to Project > Next.
2. Select World Community Grid > Next.
3. Under the Projects tab, select the project BOINC gave you by default and click Detach so you're only running WCG units.

nomad8u said:
Refreshingly easy to setup and get started.
Click to expand...

Yeah, what's really cool is the control you have over your machines. You can set up custom profiles for each machine and control them all individually or as a group from the Web site. You can also retrieve stats/points from each machine separately, which I think is really cool.
 
aldamon said:
You could have picked the WCG project during installation. To attach to WCG now:
Click to expand...

No, I got that figured out during the install. I meant picking which research (ie; cancer, dengue etc.) you wanted to run. There's no way I can find to config that in the Boinc client and you can't set it up online unless you already have the client installed. So it D/L's a bunch of work right at install time with no means to limit what you might want to work on. I also haven't found a way (yet) to set this up on a per machine basis.

Yeah, what's really cool is the control you have over your machines. You can set up custom profiles for each machine and control them all individually or as a group from the Web site. You can also retrieve stats/points from each machine separately, which I think is really cool.
Click to expand...

Yeah, the one item I don't see available is limiting what core of a processor you can run on (since I'm also running F@H on a couple quads I'd like to dedicate a core to WCG on each. You can tell it the # of procs but not which ones as far as I can tell. I'm still messing with the custom profiles online but didn't see a way to either name one to use for a specific machine.

I've still got a little learning curve to get through on this yet. But overall not too bad. Getting ready to set up another machine in a few minutes.


 
nomad8u said:
I meant picking which research (ie; cancer, dengue etc.) you wanted to run. There's no way I can find to config that in the Boinc client and you can't set it up online unless you already have the client installed.
Click to expand...

1. Click My Grid > My Projects.
2. Uncheck the WCG projects you don't want to crunch.

Yeah, the one item I don't see available is limiting what core of a processor you can run on (since I'm also running F@H on a couple quads I'd like to dedicate a core to WCG on each. You can tell it the # of procs but not which ones as far as I can tell.
Click to expand...

Pretty sure you're stuck doing this with affinity. WCG and FAH don't really get along well unless

1. you can somehow get WCG off of Core 0 with affinity.
2. run WCG on Cores 0-2 with the BOINC Manager and isolate FAH on Core 3 with affinity.

I'm still messing with the custom profiles online but didn't see a way to either name one to use for a specific machine.
Click to expand...

1. Click My Grid > Device Manager.
2. Under Selected Profile, click Default. Now you can pick a number of suggested profiles or create a new custom profile.
 
While I think the bionic program is great there seems to be an issue with two teams. It’s a shame we can’t get all involved with one team.

As it stands the two teams only share part of the available work and only a few things cross over but the stats are recorded in two places.

I believe King either has badges or is working on badges.;)


 
BillR said:
While I think the bionic program is great there seems to be an issue with two teams. It’s a shame we can’t get all involved with one team.

As it stands the two teams only share part of the available work and only a few things cross over but the stats are recorded in two places.

I believe King either has badges or is working on badges.;)


Click to expand...

When you say "two teams", are you referring that there are different teams if you use the Standard WCG client vs the BOINC? I'd like to know before I switch over and try the BOINC client out. I am ranked #11 on the above linked stats page, and don't wanna lose my place :)

 
I joined the "most active" of the two teams and as it turns out don't see all their members on the stats page. I agree it would be nice to be able to consolidate teams. It would make King's life easier too I guess. No matter, I can keep up with stats elsewhere.

Yeah... I'm a stats pig I'll admit it. :D When I'm coughing up just north of a C note for power each month, it's nice to be able to "see" something as a result.

I'm liking the idea of not having all my eggs in one crunching basket. This way when F@H puts out troublesome clients, I've got work to fall back on and do. Now to see if I can get a GPU client and a VM SMP client and WCG to play footsies together smoothly.


 
ccityinstaller said:
When you say "two teams", are you referring that there are different teams if you use the Standard WCG client vs the BOINC? I'd like to know before I switch over and try the BOINC client out. I am ranked #11 on the above linked stats page, and don't wanna lose my place :)

Click to expand...

The "top" two teams (both in point and in the order their listed) from this post are what Bill's referring to I think. When I search for all 3 of the teams names at WCG I can only find the top 2 from that list.

I saw your name on our stats page but not Aldamons but I'm not sure if the actual stats are right or not. That might be part of what King is working on IDK.


 
nomad8u said:
I joined the "most active" of the two teams and as it turns out don't see all their members on the stats page. I agree it would be nice to be able to consolidate teams. It would make King's life easier too I guess. No matter, I can keep up with stats elsewhere.

Yeah... I'm a stats pig I'll admit it. :D When I'm coughing up just north of a C note for power each month, it's nice to be able to "see" something as a result.

I'm liking the idea of not having all my eggs in one crunching basket. This way when F@H puts out troublesome clients, I've got work to fall back on and do. Now to see if I can get a GPU client and a VM SMP client and WCG to play footsies together smoothly.


Click to expand...

The really sad part of all this is it is my belief (as per IBM who runs the one project) that Stanford has the ability to use the Bionic client for regular folding.

Frankly I have yet to see any version of the Bionic client fail.

Oh well, some still want to reinvent the wheel;)




 
BillR said:
The really sad part of all this is it is my belief (as per IBM who runs the one project) that Stanford has the ability to use the Bionic client for regular folding.

Frankly I have yet to see any version of the Bionic client fail.

Oh well, some still want to reinvent the wheel;)




Click to expand...

IIRC, they did have a folding client running under the BOINC client at one point not too long ago, but choose to stick with their own client for whatever reason.

BOINC is open-source and can be used by anyone under the terms of the GPL. There's dozens of projects that use BOINC, not just WCG. It was actually written by UCB for SETI, not by IBM.
 
Sunin said:
I had signed up for it a while back but have not tried it yet. I might take one of my Quads and dedicate it soon to this and see how it works out for a while and how it plays with the GPU F@H client.



Click to expand...

Since I just set two Quads up with this yesterday, I can save you a bit of time and some research on a "smooth" setup. I'm running the 6.2.18 Boinc client and it plays just fine with the GPU client. Matter of fact it's playing just fine with a combo GPU/VM SMP client (I had problems with a second VM/SMP client on both Quads so I decided to drop to one VM/SMP with GPU combined on both and try them with the Boinc Client)

So I have a "hands-off" startup that runs well and seems to play well together. Both Quads are setup pretty much identically, just different H/W (GPU/Mobo) but both are running XP32. I have the GPU clients set to run from the "startup folder" and the Notfreds VM/SMP clients running under VMware Server are set to start automajically at system startup. This was tested via a couple reboots to ensure it worked and to see how long to add a delay in BOINC before it starts up. I'm using Bill's 2 Process Manager to control affinities for the VM/SMP client (core 2-3) and for the BOINC executable which I found handles all the running projects (core 1). The GPU is set for its' default core 4.

Before installing the BOINC client, I created a file to control startup delay of the client. It's a straight text file called "cc_config.xml" and has a 300 second startup delay like this:
Code: 
<cc_config>
<options>
	<start_delay>300</start_delay>
</options>
</cc_config>
I had this file ready to go ahead of time (the installer needs a reboot following install of the BOINC client on this and probably future versions) so I could drop it in the BOINC Data directory before allowing the reboot and first startup of the client.

I also created another file to handle "remote" config/monitoring of all clients from one PC. The BOINC Manager has the ability to alter the configuration of remote clients but has a crappy monitoring capability IMO. A 3rd party app Boinc View works great for monitoring remote clients ala FAH Spy. Both monitoring and control are password protected on each client via a file in the Boinc Data directory called "gui_rpc_auth.cfg". In order to gain remote access to each client, I created another text file called "remote_hosts.cfg" and dropped it in the Data directory before the reboot as well. Contents are either the IP address or computer name like this:
Code: 
BOXEN1
DS3L
#BASEMENT#
The # is used to comment out a line so I have the same file to use on each install and just comment out the machine I'm monitoring/controlling from.

Anyhew I dropped both these files into the respective Data directories (default depends on how you install it. I set it up for all users). In my case it is "C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\BOINC". Doing this after the install but prior to reboot saves you from having to stop/restart the clients to enable remote access by reading the config file. It also gives a 300 second delay (plenty on my machine) for the GPU/VM SMP clients to get up and running and for Bill's 2 to get affinities for SMP set prior to starting up Boinc.

When the Boinc client starts for the first time it goes straight to "configuration". Before I hit the first "button/setting" when the window popped up, I brought up Bill's 2 and located Boinc.exe in the process list and created a rule for it to run on core 1 only. Then I proceeded into setup, and the only "non-standard" thing I did was to set it to use 25% of available processors.

Walla... a hands off setup that has 2 Quads pushing 14k ppd for F@H and I have no clue yet how much for WCG as I'm too new at that end of it yet. But the point is I have a modest Folding garden that should always have work to do. The odds of 3 seperate clients on one machine hanging and wasting power are slimmer now than what they were AND for times when we have Team Competitions going on (like the CC) it's easy enough to bring the additional core from each Quad back online for F@H. Plus I get to contribute to some different varieties of research as a bonus. All in all a win-win in my book.

If you decide to give it a go and run into any snags getting it setup (you probably won't it's THAT smooth) I can lend a hand if necessary.

Luck!


 
aldamon said:
Nice work nomad8u. That sounds optimal.
Click to expand...

Thanks! It's a work in progress as I learn the WCG/Boinc setup and functionality. But honestly I just like the ease of getting it set up and running with little fuss and so far no babysitting. I really like the flexibility of being able to run multiple projects to contribute to as well. That's my main goal, to contribute to the research without waisting time massaging clients...
As long as I can still run it without too many problems, I'll still be a F@H contributor though. I really like being able to use my GPU's for science!

Of course I just started running it 2 days ago so I'll see how stable it is over time. But nothing I've seen or read so far (yeah I've been researching it so as to look for issues that might arise) leads me to believe it'll be less stable than F@H.


 
does boinc survive being ghosted? like does it have some sort of unique machine id like FAH does?
 
FLECOM said:
does boinc survive being ghosted? like does it have some sort of unique machine id like FAH does?
Click to expand...

I'm certainly no expert on WCG/Boinc (yet :D) as I just fired up my first clients a couple days ago. But it does look to be doable (mass/network deployment) but I have no idea how involved it is.There's 2 available Boinc clients. The WCG branded client and the "standard" Boinc client which works just fine with WCG and is the one I used (thread title version) and according to a post here by aldamon is a more "feature rich" version. IDK but I took his suggestion and have no issues with it on a couple boxen FWIW.

Here is a link to a couple of PDF's on the WCG site titled Is there an easy way to install the grid agent to multiple devices or across a network? and here is a link to the FAQ for Bulk Windows Deployment of BOINC.

IDK how helpful this is but hopefully that's enuff to get you going if you're interested.


 
nomad8u said:
Here is a link to a couple of PDF's on the WCG site titled Is there an easy way to install the grid agent to multiple devices or across a network? and here is a link to the FAQ for Bulk Windows Deployment of BOINC.
Click to expand...

Yeah, there are massive BOINC farms out there. However they're done, mass installations must be relatively painless.

nomad8u said:
Of course I just started running it 2 days ago so I'll see how stable it is over time. But nothing I've seen or read so far (yeah I've been researching it so as to look for issues that might arise) leads me to believe it'll be less stable than F@H.
Click to expand...

In three months, I haven't had a single problem with the software. There was a small issue with FightAIDS@Home work units a few weeks ago but they fixed it.
 
I don't know if there's any way to make mass rollouts painless but I'm sure it's doable. I also have no illusions that the project will be trouble free. I saw the issues with the WUs which seemed to be resolved pretty quickly. I also saw they had a pretty sizable server outage due to a snowstorm or some such.

Point is the client is flexible enough it allows you to configure a work buffer to compensate for such issues. You can have 2-3 days worth of work queued up to crunch while they get their hardware issues sorted out. Now THAT'S practical and to me is indicative of a somewhat professional environment and a well thought out process. Hell, the client even appears to be self tuning in that it is adapting to the speed my processors are crunching and is fetching more work/uploading results at strategic intervals to keep my queue filled properly. :)


 
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