Farm status
Intel-GPU machines
One or two running overnight doing Seti work (depends on how hot it gets)
Nvidia GPU machines
Off
Parallella's
Running Einstein BRP4 work
Raspberry Pi's
Running Einstein BRP4 work
Parallella and Pi updates
LocutusOfBorg has updated his ppa with BOINC 7.6.12. I have updated both of the Parallella's with it. It has a fix to report the ARM CPU features properly. It also has a fix for reusing slot directories that only effects Linux and OSX clients.
The Raspberry Pi foundation seem to have created their Debian Stretch repositories. Well partially, archive.raspbian.org doesn't seem to have them yet. I have updated the Pi2's (the B+ is upgrading now). Stretch is the testing version of Debian so expect many changes before its release. It does however provide BOINC 7.6.12.
Windows updates
Microsoft have been pushing Windows 10 out to Win7 and Win8 machines even if they didn't select the update. Supposedly this was an error. It seems they are getting quite aggressive with getting people onto Win 10. In the mean time I will look at getting the Intel GPU machines onto Linux as a longer-term goal.
18 October 2015
04 October 2015
4th of October
After being relatively cool for the last couple of months the hot weather has arrived. Today its 32 degrees. Most of the farm is off.
Farm status
Intel GPU machines
Two running overnight to clear Climate Prediction models
Nvidia GPU machines
Off
Parallella's
Running Einstein BRP4 work units
Raspberry Pi's
Running Einstein BRP4 work units
Raspbian updated
The Raspberry Pi Foundation finally got to releasing Debian Jessie. Raspbian is the customised version of Debian that is officially supported on the Pi. You can also run other operating systems such as RISC OS and Ubuntu although they don't have official support.
They have yet to set up repositories for Debian Stretch (testing) so I still can't get an up to date BOINC client short of compiling my own. One of the bugs with the 7.4.23 version in Debian Jessie seems to be the size of the log files grow unbounded. Despite setting a 2Mb file size limit I regularly get log files in the order of 38-53Mb and have to manually clean them up.
Climate models
A batch of 12,000 Pacific North West (PNW) regional models were released by the project, so I have been crunching these for the last couple of weeks. Plenty of supply. One of the upload servers was off for a few days and so I had hundreds of zip files stuck trying to upload. The zip files are mostly 8Mb and the final (13th file) is 15Mb for each work unit. They fixed the server a few days ago but its took me two days to clear the backlog. When 6 machines all try and upload at the same time my 1Mbit upload speed just can't cope and nothing much gets through. I had to clear one machine at a time until they we're all done.
Now that uploads are sorted I am running off the remaining work units which takes around 32-36 hours. I've been running the machines overnight when its cooler so they get some processing time. The climate models don't like being stopped and quite often crash if you shut down the BOINC.
OpenVMS
A year or so ago I got myself a second-hand Alpha Server DS15. Unfortunately I had a few issues with it wanting a terminal plugged in instead of using the system console. Anyway I'd like to get OpenVMS installed again and running. I've got discs and a hobbyist license so if there are any OpenVMS gurus out there who live in Sydney I'd love to hear from you.
Farm status
Intel GPU machines
Two running overnight to clear Climate Prediction models
Nvidia GPU machines
Off
Parallella's
Running Einstein BRP4 work units
Raspberry Pi's
Running Einstein BRP4 work units
Raspbian updated
The Raspberry Pi Foundation finally got to releasing Debian Jessie. Raspbian is the customised version of Debian that is officially supported on the Pi. You can also run other operating systems such as RISC OS and Ubuntu although they don't have official support.
They have yet to set up repositories for Debian Stretch (testing) so I still can't get an up to date BOINC client short of compiling my own. One of the bugs with the 7.4.23 version in Debian Jessie seems to be the size of the log files grow unbounded. Despite setting a 2Mb file size limit I regularly get log files in the order of 38-53Mb and have to manually clean them up.
Climate models
A batch of 12,000 Pacific North West (PNW) regional models were released by the project, so I have been crunching these for the last couple of weeks. Plenty of supply. One of the upload servers was off for a few days and so I had hundreds of zip files stuck trying to upload. The zip files are mostly 8Mb and the final (13th file) is 15Mb for each work unit. They fixed the server a few days ago but its took me two days to clear the backlog. When 6 machines all try and upload at the same time my 1Mbit upload speed just can't cope and nothing much gets through. I had to clear one machine at a time until they we're all done.
Now that uploads are sorted I am running off the remaining work units which takes around 32-36 hours. I've been running the machines overnight when its cooler so they get some processing time. The climate models don't like being stopped and quite often crash if you shut down the BOINC.
OpenVMS
A year or so ago I got myself a second-hand Alpha Server DS15. Unfortunately I had a few issues with it wanting a terminal plugged in instead of using the system console. Anyway I'd like to get OpenVMS installed again and running. I've got discs and a hobbyist license so if there are any OpenVMS gurus out there who live in Sydney I'd love to hear from you.
27 September 2015
27th of September
Farm status
Intel GPU's are running a mix of Climate Prediction regional work units (CPU) and Einstein on their GPU's.
The Nvidia GPU's are also running some Climate Prediction regional work (CPU) and nothing on their GPU's. There are no "short" GPUgrid work units available for the GPUgrid crunchers.
The Pi's and Parallella's are running Einstein BRP work
Win10 upgrades
I spent a bit of time running around to each machine upgrading them to Windows 10. I had one of the Intel GPU machines fail complaining about being unable to boot, but a subsequent attempt worked fine.
I have also updated the GPUgrid machines however they don't have any short work units available so haven't been able to check them. They had an old version of EVGA Precision (2.03) installed on these machines and it didn't work so I need to get a more up to date version. I usually use Precision to control the fan speeds as the cards are already factory overclocked.
I still have the 6 core/12 thread machines to do but wanted to see how the Nvidia drivers work (or don't) under Win10 before doing them.
So far I haven't had many issues, just finding out where things are in Win10 has been the biggest problem. I use the OO-Shut Up program to set a lot of the privacy setting and then work my way through the settings panel for the others. I remove some of the junk they give you like the Xbox app which a dedicated number cruncher really needs. To do that you use powershell commands. I turn off a few services and fiddle with the time synchronisation. I put the old task manager on them and finally let Ccleaner loose to clean things up.
Intel GPU's are running a mix of Climate Prediction regional work units (CPU) and Einstein on their GPU's.
The Nvidia GPU's are also running some Climate Prediction regional work (CPU) and nothing on their GPU's. There are no "short" GPUgrid work units available for the GPUgrid crunchers.
The Pi's and Parallella's are running Einstein BRP work
Win10 upgrades
I spent a bit of time running around to each machine upgrading them to Windows 10. I had one of the Intel GPU machines fail complaining about being unable to boot, but a subsequent attempt worked fine.
I have also updated the GPUgrid machines however they don't have any short work units available so haven't been able to check them. They had an old version of EVGA Precision (2.03) installed on these machines and it didn't work so I need to get a more up to date version. I usually use Precision to control the fan speeds as the cards are already factory overclocked.
I still have the 6 core/12 thread machines to do but wanted to see how the Nvidia drivers work (or don't) under Win10 before doing them.
So far I haven't had many issues, just finding out where things are in Win10 has been the biggest problem. I use the OO-Shut Up program to set a lot of the privacy setting and then work my way through the settings panel for the others. I remove some of the junk they give you like the Xbox app which a dedicated number cruncher really needs. To do that you use powershell commands. I turn off a few services and fiddle with the time synchronisation. I put the old task manager on them and finally let Ccleaner loose to clean things up.
19 September 2015
19th of September
Farm news
Raspberry Pi's and Parallella's are running Einstein BRP4 work.
The Intel GPU machines were up until a few hours ago running Seti work, however there is no network connection to Seti or BOINC at the moment. I have switched them over to Asteroids for the time being.
The Nvidia GPU machines have been resting.
Windows 10
I have updated a couple of the Intel GPU machines from Windows 7 to Windows 10. Apart from having to set all the privacy settings and set things up again they seem to be working fine. If there are no problems for a week or so I will update the rest of the Intel GPU machines.
The only reason why I didn't switch to Linux is because setting up a GPU to work with Linux is such a pain and usually doesn't work. If the Linux distro people could get them to work out of the box then I would have switched to Linux.
A number of the Win 7 machines are silently downloading Win 10 despite my removing various windows updates. The file server has also copped the telemetry updates which Microsoft seems to consider mandatory. Apart from MS snooping they seem to want to force people onto Windows 10. A cynical person would suggest that the NSA had a hand in this current direction that Microsoft is going down. Well I haven't got anything to hide as most of my machines are dedicated number crunchers with nothing else on them.
Raspberry Pi's and Parallella's are running Einstein BRP4 work.
The Intel GPU machines were up until a few hours ago running Seti work, however there is no network connection to Seti or BOINC at the moment. I have switched them over to Asteroids for the time being.
The Nvidia GPU machines have been resting.
Windows 10
I have updated a couple of the Intel GPU machines from Windows 7 to Windows 10. Apart from having to set all the privacy settings and set things up again they seem to be working fine. If there are no problems for a week or so I will update the rest of the Intel GPU machines.
The only reason why I didn't switch to Linux is because setting up a GPU to work with Linux is such a pain and usually doesn't work. If the Linux distro people could get them to work out of the box then I would have switched to Linux.
A number of the Win 7 machines are silently downloading Win 10 despite my removing various windows updates. The file server has also copped the telemetry updates which Microsoft seems to consider mandatory. Apart from MS snooping they seem to want to force people onto Windows 10. A cynical person would suggest that the NSA had a hand in this current direction that Microsoft is going down. Well I haven't got anything to hide as most of my machines are dedicated number crunchers with nothing else on them.
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