Allo!

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Slaine
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Allo!

Post by Slaine »

Hi all,

Well I'm more of an off than on BOINC user, mostly SETI with a smidgen of Rosetta, I finally got round to getting a decent second hand PC & thought I'd let it stretch it's legs a bit. There was only so long that I could keep using the hand me downs from the kids pc's & coming up with excuses why they kept needed upgrading, so now I'm running a 2700x with a vega64 gpu that's keeping the house warm quite nicely.

And now of course I'm messing around with what else in the house that's been hidden in cupboards that can run Boinc, although getting the nippers nvida gtx1060 to be used has been more awkward than I thought, the same goes for an 820m on an old laptop. But that will keep me entertained sorting it & I'll probably scale down what I'm using once I've found a happy medium of what to use.

Depending on if the leccy meter starts glowing or not, I might use my old pc just for BOINC (fx8350 with a 1050ti), mostly to look at what other projects are out there now & have a bit more play on Linux.

Cheers

George
Woodles
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Re: Allo!

Post by Woodles »

Hello George,

Welcome aboard.

You'll find that most of the team are probably more-off-than-on crunchers ... apart from the people that frequent these forums, we're definitely more-on-than-off!

I believe most of us started on SETI then branched out, there's a lot of new and interesting projects available now, science, biology, astronomy, numeracy, monkeys writing Shakespeare ...

You've got it the wrong way around, the kids get to use the grown ups hand me downs! That's a nice setup, who needs heating when computers are just laying around waiting to be multi-tasked?

You'll have to be careful, crunching soon becomes addictive and you'll find yourself digging out anything with a CPU in it to "just get that one more percentage point of performance." And don't look at any league tables, you'll be struck with an insane need to climb up them

Having said that, if you're the competitive type, UBT normally takes part in a few challenges through the year as well as the year long Formula Boinc. There's more details in the team threads once Tim deems you worthy of being able to view them (usually once you've proved you're not a robot)

Any problems just shout and someone should be around to help out. We don't have a lot of experience with Linux in general but most of us have dabbled at one time or another and been through the problems and found solutions.

Mark
UBT - Timbo
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Re: Allo!

Post by UBT - Timbo »

Hi George and welcome to the foum.

Feel free to ahvea "nosey around" - this forum has a vast amount of accumulated knowledge on many BOINC (and non-BOINC) related issues...so dive in and see what takes your fancy.

As Mark mentioned we do have a members-only forum, with a couple of extra sections where members can chat about various team and BOINC topics, which we prefer to keep hidden from other teams, in case they see which project we are trying to overtake another team ;-)

This section will become available to you, if you meet the criteria, which is:
1) you must be a member of UBT on the projects you are active in
2) make a minimum of 5 posts within the public section(s) of the forum

Then we can initiate you into the members section, which may (or may not) involve some formal ritual ;-)

regards
Tim
Slaine
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Location: Cambridgeshire

Re: Allo!

Post by Slaine »

Cheers for the welcome.

I should of never looked at the damn tables or read about different gpu's on one system with boinc. :D
My old fx8350 pc is almost alive again & now contains a 1050ti & a 1050, so that's tonight project sorted.
For me it's more tinkering with the systems, but it's great that I can make use of what's just been sitting in a cupboard. Although this will probably kick off another project to offset the power usage.
damienh
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Re: Allo!

Post by damienh »

Welcome Slaine. If you like a good tinker with computer bits, then you're defninitely in the right place :)
UBT - Timbo
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Re: Allo!

Post by UBT - Timbo »

Slaine wrote: Mon Feb 24, 2020 3:29 pm Cheers for the welcome.
Hi George,

No worries :-)
Slaine wrote: Mon Feb 24, 2020 3:29 pmI should of never looked at the damn tables or read about different gpu's on one system with boinc. :D
My old fx8350 pc is almost alive again & now contains a 1050ti & a 1050, so that's tonight project sorted.
For me it's more tinkering with the systems, but it's great that I can make use of what's just been sitting in a cupboard. Although this will probably kick off another project to offset the power usage.
Firstly, if you plan on using both of the 1050's for BOINC GPU-based projects (such as SETI@home), then ideally you should create a file called "app_config.xml" (in plain text format) within the projects/setiathome.berkeley.edu folder, which should contain lines that say:
<app_config>
<app>
<name>setiathome_v8</name>
<gpu_versions>
<gpu_usage>1.0</gpu_usage>
<cpu_usage>1.0</cpu_usage>
</gpu_versions>
</app>

<app>
<name>astropulse_v7</name>
<gpu_versions>
<gpu_usage>1.0</gpu_usage>
<cpu_usage>1.0</cpu_usage>
</gpu_versions>
</app>
</app_config>
You will also need a file called "app_info.xml" in the same directory containing:
<app_info>
<app>
<name>setiathome_v8</name>
</app>
<app_version>
<app_name>setiathome_v8</app_name>
<coproc>
<type>NVIDIA</type>
<count>2</count>
</coproc>
<avg_ncpus>0.1</avg_ncpus>
<max_ncpus>0.1</max_ncpus>
</app_version>

<app>
<name>astropulse_v7</name>
</app>
<app_version>
<app_name>astropulse_v7</app_name>
<coproc>
<type>NVIDIA</type>
<count>2</count>
</coproc>
<avg_ncpus>0.1</avg_ncpus>
<max_ncpus>0.1</max_ncpus>
</app_version>
</app_info>


This *should* allow both GPU's to crunch SETI tasks concurrently (otherwise only "GPU0" will run any tasks, and the second one will stay dormant).

NOTE: It's been a long time since I ran 2 GPU cards in a SINGLE PC, so if any other members think I've got this wrong, please let me know and I'll correct this !!


Secondly, there is an Optimised SETI app (called Lunatics v0.46) for WIndows based PCs, that is discussed here:

https://setiathome.berkeley.edu/forum_t ... p?id=85144

and which has can be downloaded here:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... 4_ghseeST3

If you plan to use this optimised app, it's best to run down your cache of SETI tasks to zero (by setting the project to "No New Work") and then run the installer.


Alternative Secondly: If you are running Linux, I found this quote on the SETI "Number Crunching section of their forum:
For the Linux side, TBar's AIO is the easiest and best to use. Start with the default CUDA90 app. Update your drivers to the latest 440 series using the graphics-drivers ppa repository and after rebooting, edit the "app_info.xml" file with Find and Replace in the Text Editor to switch over to the CUDA102 application.

http://www.arkayn.us/lunatics/BOINC.7z for TBar's "All-In-One" package for BOINC.

and here:

https://launchpad.net/~graphics-drivers ... ubuntu/ppa for Graphics Drivers.
So, this should allow you get to get the most from your CPUs and GPUs on SETI.


Thirdly, I suggest you get the (free) download of MSI Afterburner for WIndows as this will allow you to underclock your GPUs which might reduce the amount of heat they exhaust.

https://www.msi.com/page/afterburner


regards
Tim
Woodles
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Re: Allo!

Post by Woodles »

For more than one GPU, you'll need

Code: Select all

<use_all_gpus>1</use_all_gpus>
setting in cc_config.xml.
And you may as well throw

Code: Select all

<fetch_on_update>1</fetch_on_update>
<report_results_immediately>1</report_results_immediately>
in there as well while you're at it :)
Slaine
UBT Contributor
Posts: 18
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Location: Cambridgeshire

Re: Allo!

Post by Slaine »

Thanks for the info, it's much appreciated, the new linux based pc is setup everything looks fine as far as I can tell config wise, but I'm not seeing the gpu's being used in boinc manager, even though they show as detected in the log. I have found a nice temperature reporting app in psensor though, so it's swings & roundabouts.

I'll go through whats been mentioned above & see what I've missed :)


EDIT:
After a bit of stupidity, where I hadn't ticked the use Nvidia cards in the SETI settings, everything's now working!
Woodles
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Re: Allo!

Post by Woodles »

Slaine wrote: Mon Feb 24, 2020 8:53 pmI have found a nice temperature reporting app in psensor though
That's the one I use, very useful and not just temperatures either.
Slaine wrote: Mon Feb 24, 2020 8:53 pmAfter a bit of stupidity, where I hadn't ticked the use Nvidia cards in the SETI settings, everything's now working!
Good news (we've all been there :) )
damienh
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Re: Allo!

Post by damienh »

Another good set of monitoring apps is available via nmon. That’s Linux software that Chris C found, and that I use regularly now.

I have not seen temps in it, but it does show good utilisation stats, including CPU clock speeds, which I’d not found elsewhere.
damienh
UBT Contributor
Posts: 1685
Joined: Mon Aug 26, 2019 2:16 pm

Re: Allo!

Post by damienh »

Just on the multi-gpu item, I've not had to use the <use all gpus> flag previously. BOINC seems to identify multiple GPUs automatically and leverages both.
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