Hiya

An area for greetings to (or from) NEW members of the Team and/or the Forum. Say "HELLO" here - no one will bite !!
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fightingdragons
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Hiya

Post by fightingdragons »

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 :-)
Woodles
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Re: Hiya

Post by Woodles »

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! :lol:

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
damienh
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Re: Hiya

Post by damienh »

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 ...
UBT - Timbo
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Re: Hiya

Post by UBT - Timbo »

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
UBT - PennyQ
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Re: Hiya

Post by UBT - PennyQ »

Welcome to the madhouse! Actually, everyone here is very friendly and willing to answer all sorts of questions.
Penny
The impossible we do today; miracles take a little longer

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fightingdragons
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Location: Merseyside

Re: Hiya

Post by fightingdragons »

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 :-)
damienh
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Re: Hiya

Post by damienh »

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:

Code: Select all

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt install ocl-icd-libopencl1
sudo apt install opencl-headers
sudo apt install clinfo
EDIT: I am running it on nvidia & Linux right now, so it is a current capability of Collatz
Last edited by damienh on Fri May 01, 2020 12:43 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Slaine
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Re: Hiya

Post by Slaine »

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.
fightingdragons
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Location: Merseyside

Re: Hiya

Post by fightingdragons »

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 :-)
Woodles
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Re: Hiya

Post by Woodles »

fightingdragons wrote: Fri May 01, 2020 6:52 pmTurns out Damien was spot on
Law of averages :lol:
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:

Code: Select all

verbose=1
kernels_per_reduction=48
threads=10
lut_size=16
sieve_size=27
reduce_cpu=0
cache_sieve=1
sleep=0
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 :)
damienh
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Re: Hiya

Post by damienh »

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 ...
damienh
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Re: Hiya

Post by damienh »

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

.. and then inside the collatz project folder.
Woodles
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Re: Hiya

Post by Woodles »

In my defence, I posted that thread in my pre-Linux days :P
fightingdragons
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Re: Hiya

Post by fightingdragons »

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 :D

Checking the event log shows the following

Code: Select all

Fri 01 May 2020 21:29:15 BST | collatz | Starting task collatz_sieve_c589764e-9e2a-48e2-a9e4-5108979c0f45_0
Fri 01 May 2020 21:29:18 BST | collatz | Computation for task collatz_sieve_c589764e-9e2a-48e2-a9e4-5108979c0f45_0 finished
Fri 01 May 2020 21:29:18 BST | collatz | Output file collatz_sieve_c589764e-9e2a-48e2-a9e4-5108979c0f45_0_r389835939_0 for task collatz_sieve_c589764e-9e2a-48e2-a9e4-5108979c0f45_0 absent
Not really sure which bit to start messing with now lol
Woodles
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Re: Hiya

Post by Woodles »

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
fightingdragons
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Location: Merseyside

Re: Hiya

Post by fightingdragons »

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:

Code: Select all

verbose=1
kernels_per_reduction=54
threads=8
lut_size=17
sieve_size=27
reduce_cpu=0
cache_sieve=1
sleep=0
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 :lol:

Thanks for all the help and patience, it is appreciated :)
Woodles
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Re: Hiya

Post by Woodles »

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 :lol:

No worries, we've all been there before :handgestures-thumbup:
damienh
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Re: Hiya

Post by damienh »

Good work Martin - that's a solid optimisation.
fightingdragons
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Location: Merseyside

Re: Hiya

Post by fightingdragons »

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

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 :)
damienh
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Re: Hiya

Post by damienh »

You’re welcome
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