Sztaki Desktop Grid, Last big battle

motqalden

[H]ard|DCOTM x5
Joined
Jun 22, 2009
Messages
3,166
Hi Guys,

Sztaki Desktop Grid project which is one of the Marathon events for this years Formula Boinc is officially closing on May 31. These means we only have a few more days to secure our spot / points for the year on the project. the same Xtra Sneaky team is pushing the team behind and ahead of us to try to block / steal points from us and we need as many people working on this in the last few days to stick it too them and win a few extra points for the year.

This project is tricky to get work for and you likely will only be running on or 2 threads max at a time per machine you put it on with lots of periods of no work, so you can easily run this without affecting your other projects and you also won't get too hot as its only a few threads.

Step 1 is to download the Boinc Manager if you haven't done so already: https://boinc.berkeley.edu/

Step 2 : from tools menu in boinc, choose add project and select "Sztaki Desktop Grid"

Capture1.PNG

>>>When prompted to create and account and then join team [H]ard|OCP

Step 3 >>> This is the most important Step!!
most of the time when your boinc checks the project there will be no work. To help this you can make a batch file that forces boinc to check for Sztaki work more often.

Simply open a text file and paste this in:

for /l %%x in (1, 1, 10000) do (echo %%x
"c:\Program Files\Boinc\boinccmd.exe" --project http://szdg.lpds.sztaki.hu/szdg/ update
ping 127.0.0.1 -n 140 > nul)


>> Then save the file as Sztaki.bat (Make sure to select all file types instead of .txt so it saves as batch file)
once saved simply click the file and it should start running. Leave it running and you will get way more work , but you will still only get a couple of work units every so often.
Lack of work is why we need to push hard on this one.

This project doesn't care how big or how fast your computer is! the most important thing is that you have it running on as many computers as you can even if they are 10+ years old. This only runs on CPU and only a few work units are downloaded at a time at most so even if you have paused for the summer you can easily run this without breaking a sweat.

For the adventurous you can install Virtual Machines, or Virtual box copies of an OS and run multiple boinc clients on one rig to maximize efforts. I currently have 15 instances of boinc over 4 computers and it makes a big difference but do whatever works for you.

Message me if you have any questions about this or the virtual box setup. there are also scripts you can run to ping the project if you prefer to run in linux so let me know if you need that.

We only have 2 or 3 days to beat those eXtra Sneaky bastards! so time is of the essence.
 
without a batch file or script you will get almost no work so this part is essential. Points are super low, approx 2 per task so don't expect huge rewards but i managed 2700 points yesterday
 
Added it to an old Netbook and my second crunching computer. Running the update script on both.
 
LOL pulled a task right after setting up one of the VMs. :D :D

Edit: 10 up on the workstation. Need to scrounge up that ram for the 2P.

Edit2: First time i've ever maxxed out the ram on this thing on non-caching type stuff.

Welp - TIME FOR 64GB! :p

Edit3: More like... my 2P has a 120GB SSD. Oh well. Good thing i got a couple Samsung 850 Evo's lying around. Bad thing is i gots to go to work. Later this afternoon i'll slot em in.

Edit4: Spinning up those Win10 VMs was very easy. Cloned when ready - did 10 in roughly 20 minutes.
 
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LOL pulled a task right after setting up one of the VMs. :D :D

Edit: 10 up on the workstation. Need to scrounge up that ram for the 2P.

Edit2: First time i've ever maxxed out the ram on this thing on non-caching type stuff.

Welp - TIME FOR 64GB! :p

Edit3: More like... my 2P has a 120GB SSD. Oh well. Good thing i got a couple Samsung 850 Evo's lying around. Bad thing is i gots to go to work. Later this afternoon i'll slot em in.

Edit4: Spinning up those Win10 VMs was very easy. Cloned when ready - did 10 in roughly 20 minutes.



Really glad you are onboard with this! This is what things looked like when i went to bed:



Capture3.PNG



And this was this morning when i checked this morning

Capture4.PNG



As you can see they gained 2k on us overnight roughly. They also seem to be upping their pace big time. If we don't match it they will overtake us. They upside is we are only 10 from overtaking ARS now which is some pretty good progress! I still think we can block them from behind and overtake and this will be 3 points gained instead of 3 points lost! let's do this [H]!!


See i told you windows 10 VB was easy to do! I was in the same boat with 120GB ssd so i pulled a 250GB spinner i had out of a really old machine :D thing is slow AF

MN Scout. Time per task won't' matter much because its very unlikely to fall behind on whatever it manages to download task wise.
 
Damn - machines rebooted and I totally forgot to restart the batch file! Up and running again - now just gotta wait forever for it to get some work again.
 
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... a bat script.

Linux users probably want something like this.

#!/bin/bash
while true; do
boinccmd --project http://szdg.lpds.sztaki.hu/szdg/ update
sleep 140
done

Any errors and incorrect translations are on the house.

(Looks like my version ends up getting work requests through about every minute, I do not know if the work servers allow this.)
 
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... a bat script.

Linux users probably want something like this.

#!/bin/bash
while true; do
boinccmd --project http://szdg.lpds.sztaki.hu/szdg/ update
sleep 140
done

Any errors and incorrect translations are on the house.

(Looks like my version ends up getting work requests through about every minute, I do not know if the work servers allow this.)



Someone posted that this was what you would use on Linux . I am not a big Linux user so don't quote me on this:

watch -n 140 boinccmd --project http://szdg.lpds.sztaki.hu/szdg/ update
 
I jusr realized that every single work unit I've run on this has given me zero points. Every single one shows "Error while computing". :(
 
I jusr realized that every single work unit I've run on this has given me zero points. Every single one shows "Error while computing". :(


Are you running primegrid at the same time?


EDIT: I have a friend running it for a week now and he has had the same problem....
 
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Nope.... but there are a lot of work related programs running like FlexiSign, Illustrator, Photoshop, administrative stuff, etc....
 
Well.... 0 points... Wish I had more time to test last night, but I found out about it @ 12:15ish...
Had to be up at 5am.
Will troubleshoot when I get home @ 3:15 pm CST
 
Nope.... but there are a lot of work related programs running like FlexiSign, Illustrator, Photoshop, administrative stuff, etc....


Are you running Norton av? I am cross referencing with my friend to see what if anything you guys have in common.
 
No Norton here.... I had been running an older WCG 32 bit version of the client. I just upgraded the client to the newest official x64 Boinc version. It moved everything over just fine. A dozen work units start running. Starts moving pretty quick at about 1% progress a minute. Then between 5% and 6% all 12 works units reset back to 0% completed ???? They run for a full minute showing 0% then right at one minute they jump to 2% and move pretty quick until about 5.4% then start back over again. I just aborted those 12 tasks.
 
No Norton here.... I had been running an older WCG 32 bit version of the client. I just upgraded the client to the newest official x64 Boinc version. It moved everything over just fine. A dozen work units start running. Starts moving pretty quick at about 1% progress a minute. Then between 5% and 6% all 12 works units reset back to 0% completed ???? They run for a full minute showing 0% then right at one minute they jump to 2% and move pretty quick until about 5.4% then start back over again. I just aborted those 12 tasks.

yeah this this exactly what is happening to Darkeagle.... I have been trying to figure it out for a few days and i am not having any luck. We did complete wipe of his boinc and re-install and that didnt' help.
 
Bizarre..... I have no idea. I'll see once it grabs a new task if that does the same thing now that I'm on the newest x64 client.
 
I just double checked and the server was doing the same thing... That one is Windows Server 2016 Datacenter. This one is Windows 10 Enterprise LTSB.
 
Well according to the Inclusive list the project doesn't require anything special.

https://hardforum.com/threads/all-inclusive-dc-project-list.1801908/

SZTAKI Desktop Grid - SzDG is an online architecture, run by the Laboratory of Parallel and Distributed Systems. The staff of the laboratory maintains the system, which is open for any scientific research seeking immense computing power. SzDG currently hosts one mathematical project.
http://szdg.lpds.sztaki.hu/szdg/
http://szdg.lpds.sztaki.hu/szdg/forum_forum.php?id=23
W, L, M, 1

I really don't know what the issue could be to have that many WU's constantly fail. Something is missing for sure.
 
I give up. Upgraded both clients to the newer x64 Boinc client instead of the old 32 bit WCG client, aborted all tasks, reset everything and both system got a couple of work units and started doing the same damn thing. :bored:

I dont have time to troubleshoot it today and the project ends tomorrow. What should I run instead?
 
Yafu is currently invite only. I'd need an invitation code to join that.
 
And is on their home page.





MixManSC, have you ran any other BOINC work on these machines? Were any of them Virtualbox projects? If so, make sure the slot directories do not have any residual files in them. If you are attached to any other projects, detach completely from them and manually delete any residual files you find. I'm guessing something didn't clean up after itself and is corrupting things. If now, exclude your BOINC data directory from any/all malware protection software. AV, ad-ware, spyware, etc.... This error comes up a lot when there is a delay between the file being finished writing and the app closing.
In looking through the client code it looks like this condition occurs when the client finds that the boinc finish file has been written to disk but the science application process is still running.

<core_client_version>7.10.2</core_client_version>
<![CDATA[
<message>
finish file present too long</message>
<stderr_txt>
00:33:04 (2708): called boinc_finish

</stderr_txt>
]]>

So, I would see if the system is being overtaxed. Even if it is something as simply too many IO's on the HDD.
 
I cant run virtualbox. I have (and use a good bit) Hyper-V. It seems that different hypervisors do not play well together. I have not tested it but the this machine has dual Samsung Pro NVME SSD's. The server doing the same crap runs on a mirrored set of Intel enterprise SAS SSD's and is not in production yet so its only workload has been Boinc and has no sort of AV installed (it still just bare metal Server 2016). Both have run a bunch of other projects without issue, have gobs of RAM, processor resources, etc. I'll check for any residual stuff though. One thing I did notice, when a task would end, if I messed with the client it would wait a while. In task manager, even after a task ended or was aborted it was still in task manager for quite a while.
 
Something is causing them to hang. I would uninstall BOINC completely..delete the data folder..then reinstall fresh that way. See what it does.
 
And over

About SZTAKI Desktop Grid
SZTAKI Desktop Grid closed on June 21st, 2018.

SZTAKI Desktop Grid was operated by the Laboratory of Parallel and Distributed Systems at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest, Hungary.

The SZTAKI Desktop Grid and its applications were partly supported by the IDGF-SP project. The work leading to these results has received funding from the European Union Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under grant agreement n° RI-312297. The experts of the International Desktop Grid Federation provided further support for the SZTAKI Desktop Grid infrastructure, its applications, and its integration into the European Grid Infrastructure (EGI).
 
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