open Beta Test for new cmsearch VM application

[robertmiles]

There are approximately 120 more XXL long-runner available for conversion and Michael is going to upload some fresh tasks that we are distributing soon. The requirements for 4GB RAM and 64bit CPU/OS are still standing. I don't have the time right now to create and test a 32bit VM.

I want to thank all participants of this test and hope that you will help other users with your knowledge.

Does the requirement for 4 GB RAM exclude computers with 8 GB installed but BOINC only allowed to use 40% of it?

Does the VM run in 64-bit mode, even if a 32-bit workunit is running under it?

[ChristianB]

Does the requirement for 4 GB RAM exclude computers with 8 GB installed but BOINC only allowed to use 40% of it?

Yes, BOINC won't download/start a VM if not enough memory is available. On the other hand, if you allow 40% while active and 60% while not in use you will get some work but it's started only when you're not at the computer.

Does the VM run in 64-bit mode, even if a 32-bit workunit is running under it?

We only run 64-bit applications inside the 64-bit VM and there is no 64 or 32-bit mode in VirtualBox you either install a 64-bit or a 32-bit Operating System. I used a 64-bit System because we need a lot of RAM which is limited on 32-bit Windows to 3 GB of which we can only use 1 GB for the VM to not interfere with normal operations.

[jrp2706]

Hello

I have been away for a few days and returned to catch up on the progress of the testing and discovered that I appear to have one of the Work Units ChristianB mentioned a few posts ago, namely 6330530.

I have been having a look at it and it appears to be in some sort of loop, the stderr.txt file is currently 77Mb and seems to be full of various dumps and diagnostics!

Do you want me to abandon it and/or submit these diagnostics to you or leave it running?

BOINC says it is at 98.675% with over 74 hours left but this has not changed in the last 24 hours.

I look forward to your advice, and in the meantime I have suspend the task in BOINC.

[JeromeC]

I got what I think are my first WUs for Mac with the new VM, so far so good (24 and 13 hours running time). Checkpoint visible from the manager.

Let's keep fingers crossed

[JeromeC]

So far "not so good" : it's been twice that I come home and boinc is "frozen", all the tasks are in memory using 0% CPU, boinc manager is not reacting anymore. I have to stop everything and restart. The second time it was very strange, I had the VB tasks running but not the other regular boinc WUs, only the 2 RNA + 1 T4T working (CPU used), but not the rest, I had to stop / restart.

I don't know for sure if it is "because of RNA" or what may be happening, I tried to look at the console but didn't find anything meaningfull for me.

My boinc is running as a service, ie to stop / restart I have to stop + unload the service and reload it again and restart.

I'm running latest Mac OS X version + 7.0.65.

[ChristianB]

@JeromeC: you're right there was only one other Mac that errored out the tasks. You could try to limit the number of concurrent VM's on your system. This seems to help on other systems that get unresponsive. Create an app_config.xml in your Client directory with the content:

Code: Alles auswählen

<app_config>
   <app>
      <name>cmsearch3</name>
      <max_concurrent>1</max_concurrent>
   </app>
</app_config>

This will limit the RNA World VM to one running instance.

[Michael H.W. Weber]

You also may want to test it with "core number minus one", to have higher efficiency. Some AMD systems appear to have a similar problem. What type of CPU is mounted?

Michael.

[JeromeC]

Well this is very strange because it's been working quite fine actually, boinc did not behave the same anymore so far, even with other T4T VM/VB WU at the same time... My 2 RNA WUs are still running (73 and 63 hours of calculation so far).

But now I discovered another WORSE issue : I'm using a Windows 7 virtual machine via Parallel Desktop (Mac OS virtualization application) from time to time, I think I ran it yesterday for the first time since I started to crunch those RNA VB WUs. And then KABOOM, Kernel Panic, reboot. This is very rare on my Mac (maybe the first in a year or two, I can't even remember). So I tried to launch my win VM again, KABOOM. So I googled, looked at the (extensive) Parallel Desktop support KB, tried some check / repair process on my VM file. KABOOM. Tried to run another VM I have on PD. KABOOM.

So I opened a ticket with PD support and they headed me here. It says VirtualBox + Parallel Desktop running at the same time can lead to a Kernel Panic, and "there is no solution". Now the strange thing is that I have been using both PD and VB for a long time, running different VMs at the same time. Also I've been using T4T VB/VM for a long time (since T4T beta stage with the VM), and had no issue running VM under PD at the same time.

But I also remember you said on this forum that your new VM/VB WUs are different from the T4T one and are not using the VB/VM the same way (I can't remember the exact difference you mentioned). So now I wonder if there is "something different" that makes me fall in this "known issue" with PD+VB=KABOOM...

For the moment I've done one thing : install a Win7 VM under VirtualBox to avoid this issue : it is running fine so far, I have my VM running and the 2 RNA WUs running too, nice. But I don't like it much (see below).

What I could do also is try to stop the RNA WUs and see if I can run my PD VM again (because I like much more the integration of Win inside Mac OS through PD compared to VB, the user experience is way better. If this works, it'll mean there is definitively an issue with T4T VB/VM and PD... which would be sad... I'll try this test later.

[robertmiles]

Does the requirement for 4 GB RAM exclude computers with 8 GB installed but BOINC only allowed to use 40% of it?

Yes, BOINC won't download/start a VM if not enough memory is available. On the other hand, if you allow 40% while active and 60% while not in use you will get some work but it's started only when you're not at the computer.

Does the VM run in 64-bit mode, even if a 32-bit workunit is running under it?

We only run 64-bit applications inside the 64-bit VM and there is no 64 or 32-bit mode in VirtualBox you either install a 64-bit or a 32-bit Operating System. I used a 64-bit System because we need a lot of RAM which is limited on 32-bit Windows to 3 GB of which we can only use 1 GB for the VM to not interfere with normal operations.

60% while not in use would be practical only if I found a way to tell it to run only 64-bit applications from any of the several BOINC projects I subscribe to. 64-bit Windows Vista, but not the other 64-bit Windows versions, if it is running mainly 32-bit applications, requires about half of the memory to hold the SYSWOW64 modules required to run 32-bit applications. Therefore, if BOINC is allowed to use 60% of the memory for 32-bit applications, Windows Vista will not find enough memory to do that. Also, my keyboard and mouse input goes through a 32-bit application, which would be almost stopped by the low free memory, and therefore quite slow in telling BOINC when the computer is in use again.

[JeromeC]

I can confirm you that the Kernel panic only occurs if the RNA WUs are crunching when I launch the Parallel Desktop Windows, not if they are suspended and I have the T4T WU running.

Which proves RNA and T4T is not using the VM the same way, cool, and uncool though.

And those 2 WUs have been running for > 150 h and are blocked at 98,77% with a fixed remaining time > 80 h, and it has been like that for days, is this normal ? How long I am supposed to expect they should run ??

[ChristianB]

Maybe it has something to do with Hardware acceleration. We use SSE3 if available and T4T may not use it. You can see the estimated time to completion on our reference system here: 6330676 and 6330666

[JeromeC]

24 weeks ??? is this some kind of joke ???

Not even the long running XXL WUs of RNA ever took that long !!! How many millions of credits would you grant me for this !?