Cosmology@home

Gilthanis

Gilthanis

[H]ard|DCer of the Year - 2014
Joined
Jan 29, 2006
Messages
8,735
I hit 800k today. :)


Edit: I created an account called HardOCPtest so that anyone whom wanted to test or contribute anonymously could do so.

to attach a computer to your account without using the BOINC Manager.
To do so, install BOINC, create a file named account_www.cosmologyathome.org.xml in the BOINC data directory, and set its contents to:
<account>
<master_url>http://www.cosmologyathome.org/</master_url>
<authenticator>296783_55796b5290264650abe9ce5289ccdbe9</authenticator>
</account>

teamdaily.php
 
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I don't know how serious to take Ben but he did finally make a response in the forums. Only took 2 years...

Hi -
Thank you for your message.

I agree that we have been lacking in our communication activities.

The good news is that we are taking active steps to improve the project at the moment. We have been using the small amount of funding we have on keeping C@H up. We had some downtime yesterday due to a hardware failure. This has now been resolved.

We are now working on a major upgrade of C@H this summer. This will involve
- migration of c@h to a new, more stable, and more robust server,
- upgrade to the latest BOINC version,
- some infrastructure changes that will allow us to push new code versions much more efficiently.

These changes will set us up for launching new cosmology applications (beyond the current CAMB).

More updates to follow.

Let me thank you for your patience and for your continued involvement in C@H.

Best regards,
Ben
____________
Creator of Cosmology@Home
Professor of Physics and Astronomy
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
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http://www.cosmologyathome.org/forum_thread.php?id=7221#20248

Hi everyone,

My name is Marius. Although I've been totally silent on these boards until now, I've been involved in some way or another with C@H for about three years. At first it was just developing PICO (the code which uses the results you guys calculate), more recently full blown C@H development.

I'm here to give you some updates and answer questions. We definitely hear your complaints and admit this project hasn't been maintained well in the past few years. For this we are sorry, and its clear we need to improve to keep you as volunteers. As we see it, the main requests have been,

* Quicker response on these boards
* A clearer explanation of what exactly you guys are calculating and what we do with it
* Proof of the impact of these results (i.e. in papers, etc...)
* Software updates to the C@H apps and server
* No more empty promises

Please tell us if we missed something important. We're going to try and address all of these.

Now for updates. A large part of what I've been doing recently centers around developing boinc2docker, a new app framework which is going to make it infitiely easier for us to deploy future apps, and hence to do more and new science. I will make a detailed post about this in the near future. If you're curious for now you can stalk my github and interactions with the BOINC devs on the boinc_dev and boinc_projects mailing lists (in fact anyone is more than welcome to contribute, we're keeping this all open source).

For now that's it, just wanted to let you know we're actively working on things as we speak, and more will follow. Feel free to leave questions or comments. Thanks!

Marius
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http://www.cosmologyathome.org/forum_thread.php?id=7222#20254
 
Last modified: 24 Aug 2015 22:20:05 UTC

Hi all,

Today is an exciting day as its a big step in the process of completely revamping the C@H server. After a lot of work the last couple of months, we're ready to open up the new server to public beta testing. It is currently up and running at beta.cosmologyathome.org. If you would like help, please point your clients to this server, run a few jobs then report back in this thread about your experience.

On Aug 17 we dumped the user database into this server, so if you registered before that, your regular C@H login will work on there. Otherwise you will need to create a new account. Once beta testing is done we will attempt to transfer over any credits you earned on the beta server, however please note this will be on a best-effort basis with no guarantee. All other aspects of the beta server, including message boards, etc... will be deleted. The new server is beta software, and may crash, be reset without notice, etc..., however if you are excited or curious about trying out new software, we could use your help ironing out all the bugs!

So what's new?


A new app, "camb_boinc2docker". This updates us the very latest version of CAMB. More importantly perhaps, it runs in an entirely new way, using software I developed for BOINC called "boinc2docker". To run these jobs, you will need a 64-bit OS and Virtualbox installed (for the last year or so, Virtualbox has been an optional part of the install for the BOINC client itself, if you did not install it then you should download version 4.x.x here). The advantage of boinc2docker is that it makes it drop-dead easy for us as developers to upgrade and deploy new apps, so that its not 5 years in between updating app versions :) It also adds the following:
Mac OS support
Multi-threaded support
Full pause/resume/checkpoint support
An actual progress bar
The new default "third" BOINC credit system
A very recent version of the BOINC server software, which adds some slightly nicer forum functions and a new forum based news format.
For 32-bit users or users who don't have Virtualbox installed, the existing camb app, now called "camb_legacy", is still supported.
The server code is (almost) entirely public on github.



Many thanks to the BOINC developers for their help with along the way, especially Rom Walton for his help with vboxwrapper, on which boinc2docker is heavily based.

So give it a spin don't hesitate to post here, I'll be keeping a close eye on this thread!
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http://www.cosmologyathome.org/forum_thread.php?id=7227#20282
 
As a summary from their thread, they intend to have both virtualbox work units and nonvirtualbox for now. Also, the virtualbox app is multi-threaded which is currently problematic in many cases due to the settings it uses. However, being beta it is a work in progress and they are tweaking it.
 
When asked about potentially adding badges to the project

Hi Coleslaw, we think this is a great idea. In fact we have a C@H'er named Mark who has volunteered to work on exactly this and work is already in progress. I don't know enough to say when things might be ready, I can say with some certainty that it won't be until the server upgrade. Maybe Mark will chime in with more.
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Gilthanis said:
As a summary from their thread, they intend to have both virtualbox work units and nonvirtualbox for now. Also, the virtualbox app is multi-threaded which is currently problematic in many cases due to the settings it uses. However, being beta it is a work in progress and they are tweaking it.
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Yeah, I've been running the beta apps and none of them complete the run. Still lots of bugs to be worked out.
 
I'm getting this error after 10 minutes:

Postponed: VM Hypervisor failed to enter an online state in a timely fashion. (12 CPUs)
 
Hmm, seems to be a known issue with Win 10 and Virtual Box apps.
 
Try the latest version of Virtualbox. I believe the latest v5.whatever version fixed some win10 issues (5.2 or 5.3 is what the guys at vLHC have been saying seems to work...)
 
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Yeah, I downloaded V5 after I posted about the Win 10 issue and that seems to have fixed it.
 
Marius
Thanks everyone, please keep comments coming!

I will be out of touch until about Sept 9th, as I'm moving overseas.

I'll make sure to catch up on messages left here when I'm back. A number of things are fixed, but not live yet, including suspend/resume improvements, file deletion issues, app preferences... These will go live once I get back to work around the 9th, I'd rather do that then do it now and have there be issues that I can't deal with. Talk to you all later and thanks for the help!
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Marius posted this

Thanks for the update M0CZY, and everyone still testing. In fact, if you're reading this and could do so, it'd be helpful if you could hop back on to the beta server and run a few jobs to help verify all these updates are OK. If you want you can keep your clients on the beta server, only about a week left of beta testing, and your credits will transfer when we go live.

A few of the updates which I have pushed recently:


I did away with check-pointing entirely for now. I would like to have it, but for now seemed more trouble that its worth. This should solve many memory / disk space / stuck job problems some were seeing.
I shortened the jobs (~20min on my laptop) so they're shorter and there's less need for check-pointing anyway.
The server status page has a link to the exact version of the code which the server is currently running, for those curious.
No more camb_legacy jobs should be sneaking in if your host can run camb_boinc2docker.
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Hi all,

First, thanks to all the beta testers who have helped iron out bugs over the last month. The beta test has been hugely helpful and the new setup is now ready.

On Wed Oct 21 at 12pm UTC we will take the server down and upgrade it. If all goes according to plan this process should take a couple of hours.

During this time your clients will be unable to report on completed jobs or download new ones. Once the new server is up your jobs should report and new ones will begin coming in with no need for any action on your part.

One of the main improvements added by this upgrade is a new app, "camb_boinc2docker". This app runs on 64-bit Windows, Mac, or Linux machines and uses Virtualbox. If you would like to ensure ahead of time that your computers can run this app, I invite you to download Virtualbox if you do not already have it, and check that your processor's virtualization setting is enabled. (Note the current app will still be available under the name "camb_legacy", but we really encourage you to run the new one if you can)

Looking forward to lots of new and improved crunching!

Marius & the C@H team
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http://www.cosmologyathome.org/forum_thread.php?id=7234#20364
 
Cosmology got their server software updated.

Message 20464 - Posted: 21 Oct 2015, 15:14:06 UTC
Last modified: 21 Oct 2015, 21:26:07 UTC

Today with Kevin's help we completed the upgrade of the C@H server.

Everything appears to have gone well, we don't anticipate this should disrupt the jobs you were running. However please comment with any issues you might find related to the upgrade here, we'll use this thread as tech support. Please also make sure you read the new requirements and FAQ.

This upgrade is a big milestone for us. Its the first time in several years the server or the application has been upgraded. It sets us up to deploy and update future applications very easily compared to the work that was required before, and I'm really excited about what we can and will do at C@H in the future!

So what exactly is new?


A new app, "camb_boinc2docker", based on the very latest version of CAMB. It runs in an entirely new way, using software I developed for BOINC based on Virtualbox and Docker, and is what will make future development much more efficient.
Mac OSX support
Multi-threaded support
An accurate progress bar
The new default "third" BOINC credit system
A very recent version of the BOINC server software which includes a number of changes e.g. to the forum functionality, etc...
A visual redesign of the site.
For 32-bit users or users who don't have Virtualbox installed, the existing camb app, now called "camb_legacy", is still supported.
The server code is (almost) entirely public on github.



For now I have marked the new app, camb_boinc2docker, as "beta" which means if you would like to run it, you need to check "Run test applications" under your Cosmology@Home preferences in your account. We'll get rid of the beta tag shortly after we are sure everything checks out.

Thank you also to those that ran the beta server over the last month, it is now shutdown permanently and I'll be transferring over the credits you earned in the next few days.

Thanks everyone and feel free to leave comments / questions below,

Marius & C@H team
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Just some numbers for those that beta tested
+------------------------+-----------------------+ | name | sum(r.granted_credit) | +------------------------+-----------------------+ | SETI.USA | 1376403.6574270157 | | [H]ard|OCP | 163058.3852804363 | | Crunching@EVGA | 148842.4715186074 | | Russia Team | 102421.55081945132 | | L'Alliance Francophone | 49746.34027442818 | | Team 2ch | 30453.94871506022 | | BlackOps | 28585.888540659926 | | Rechenkraft.net | 18923.603190393675 | | Free-DC | 15961.464953903744 | | Webberites | 15335.961032793999 | | BOINCstats | 15118.052748232518 | | BOINC Confederation | 14901.540964566957 | | SETIKAH@KOREA | 11901.765743570217 | | Overclock.net | 11083.40494981562 | | BOINC.Italy | 9402.697180314288 | | SETI.Germany | 7846.810959656556 | | The Final Front Ear | 5732.983394023572 | | Czech National Team | 3421.617170127079 | | Nordlichter | 2738.3229767108646 | | Sleeping Dogs | 752.426345730569 | | USA | 533.1851906170231 | | BOINC@AUSTRALIA | 49.14897260535999 | +------------------------+-----------------------+
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I found this kinda cool..

We will be using these results directly in a forthcoming paper from the Planck collaboration. To give you extra incentive to run these jobs we'll give thanks in the acknowledgments of the paper to the top 3 users and the top team according to credits gained on this app (we'll give a two week warning before picking the winners). Credits gained during the beta will count, so go ahead and get started now!
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http://www.cosmologyathome.org/forum_thread.php?id=7360#20758
 
I'm on board. Initially there were bad wu that never completed crunching, but supposedly that has been fixed.
 
You can partially navigate their pages using the IP address: 194.57.221.140
 
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