UK BOINC Team Forum

Hey there, thought I should pop in and say Hi

I dabbled with BOINC way back with Seti but, for whatever reasons at the time, I stopped using it.

After recently hearing about Seti coming to an end (who'd have thought it eh?) it sparked my interest in BOINC again and I decided to go with Asteroids, it's all space after all and I think there are probably more than enough people crunching anything Covid related at the moment.

Looking at teams and UK Boinc Team looks an interesting place to be so here I am lol

Take care and stay safe
Martin

Hi Martin,

Welcome

I think most of us can trace our roots back to the sadly departed SETI, luckily Boinc has expanded greatly and there's a lot of different types of work to keep us all interested.

Good luck with Asteroids, I've dabbled a bit there in the past, not so much now. I agree with your Covid thoughts, with the amount of computing power there both from casual home users and the big corporations, another PC or two isn't going to make a lot of difference.

UBT participates in the Formula Boinc competition and there's a sprint on at the moment if you fancied doing a bit of Collatz for a few days?

Oh I'm sure 'interesting' applies to some of the people here!

Don't be a stranger, there's normally someone around at any time you fancy a visit (although being predominately UK based, the night hours are a bit quieter)

Mark

Hi Martin,

Welcome!

I also first dabbled in distributed computing via SETI. I think they call that a gateway drug??

Anyway, welcome aboard and see you around ...

Hi Martin

Welcome to the Team and the forum.

Feel free to have a browse around and if you need any help, then you will find we're a rather helpful and friendly bunch

And if you have a decent GPU in your PC(s) then you could join us between now and Sunday night, crunching tasks from the Collatz project - though don't run it on your CPUs as they take ages.

https://boinc.thesonntags.com/collatz/

or just use BOINC Manager and select it in the "Add Projects" tab.

regards
Tim

Welcome to the madhouse! Actually, everyone here is very friendly and willing to answer all sorts of questions.
Penny

Awwww, thanks for the warm Welcome peoples, I'm feeling the love lol

With regards to Collatz, I signed up for this, disabled CPU tasks and enabled Nvidia GPU tasks but it is not pulling any work units

I am using a GeForce GTX 1050 Ti on Arch, not the best but hey-ho

I got a message overnight from Collatz saying that my settings did not allow CPU tasks ( as expected) and also did not allow Nvidia GPU tasks (not expected)

Asteroids on my GPU is working fine so I don't believe there would be anything on my system stopping it. These units can be suspended at anytime as they have a long date on them.

I have noticed on Collatz message boards that there have been issues in the past with Nvidia on Linux so don't know if this is still a thing. Will drop a message on there this evening if I can't figure it out

If anyone has any idea what the issue might be then I would love to hear it lol

Cheers
Martin

Have a look at the BOINC event log (tools=>event log) when you initialise and check if it shows that you have opencl installed. That could be it?

I don't use Arch, but in Ubuntu flavours of Linux, I use the below to install opencl:
EDIT: I am running it on nvidia & Linux right now, so it is a current capability of Collatz

Hi Martin

Welcome to the team, Seti was also my gateway into keeping the house warm over winter.
I've got a pc running Linux mint with a 1050 & a 1050ti in it.

Thank you for your replies

Turns out Damien was spot on
I thought I had OpenCL installed but when I checked the event log there was no mention of it
Checking the files I had installed against what Damien listed and I was missing ocl-icd and clinfo
Installed those files, rebooted and bingo, downloaded Collatz work units

Thanks so much for the help with this

fightingdragons wrote: ↑Fri May 01, 2020 6:52 pmTurns out Damien was spot on

Law of averages

fightingdragons wrote: ↑Fri May 01, 2020 6:52 pmInstalled those files, rebooted and bingo, downloaded Collatz work units

Don't know if you've seen this? - viewtopic.php?f=93&t=6001#p111354
Collatz has some configuration files that can be used to speed up processing times on the GPUs. Numbers for the GTX1050 is: Should work on your 1050ti and speed up your time (and increase your credits ) Be aware though that your GPU WILL use more power so maybe more noise from the fans or a warmer GPU

fightingdragons wrote: ↑Fri May 01, 2020 6:52 pmThanks so much for the help with this

That's what belonging to a team gets you

fightingdragons wrote: ↑Fri May 01, 2020 6:52 pm Thank you for your replies

Turns out Damien was spot on
I thought I had OpenCL installed but when I checked the event log there was no mention of it
Checking the files I had installed against what Damien listed and I was missing ocl-icd and clinfo
Installed those files, rebooted and bingo, downloaded Collatz work units

Thanks so much for the help with this

Woohoo ! I got one right

I have had this exact problem ...

In Linux, the required file is within var => lib => boinc client => projects

.. and then inside the collatz project folder.

In my defence, I posted that thread in my pre-Linux days

So I tried the above with the config file

On my system it is in /var/lib/boinc/projects/boinc.thesonntags.com_collatz

and the config file is "collatz_sieve_1.40_x86_64-pc-linux-gnu__opencl_nvidia.config" and it's an empty file

I pasted the code above into it and I can say that it defo made it quicker, like 3 seconds to complete a work unit

Checking the event log shows the following Not really sure which bit to start messing with now lol

Martin,

Your tasks are all erroring out, try stepping the threads back to 9

Also, are you reserving a core for the GPU (Options -> Computer Preferences -> Use at most 99%)?

Mark

I did stop it once I twigged what was happening lol

I'm only using 50% of the cores and when it's running it shows "0.975 CPUs and 1 Nvidia GPU"

After playing about with it for while this is the config I have now: This gives about 25 minutes per work unit (down from 45 minutes) and it validates ok

Going to leave it alone at that for a bit now I think and see if I still have a grahics card left in the morning

Thanks for all the help and patience, it is appreciated

That looks like a reasonable set of numbers and as it's stable, I'd leave it alone as well

A 45% reduction in time isn't bad. The credits go down slightly but only by ~5-7% so an overall win.

The GPU will still be there in the morning, the fans might be screaming a bit though

No worries, we've all been there before

Good work Martin - that's a solid optimisation.

Thanks Damien and my cards still working as well which is a bonus

Thanks again for your help getting me up and running in the first place though, I would never have figured out that OpenCL stuff on my own

Looks like I was right in my first post, this is an interesting place

You’re welcome