Development for LHC@home

From the last Boinc Workshop, David Anderson presentation:

Future
● Run apps in Docker natively (no VBox)
○ Detect Docker in client, use a wrapper
○ Move boinc2docker into BOINC
○ Windows: conflict with VBox :-(

Seems that, with version 9 of the client (beta will be, probably, avaiable at December) we will have a first version of Docker support.

Are LHC admins working on it?

Meantime, the boinc admins released a new version of boinc vbox wrapper: release notes

A comment from Boinc developers..

We want to deprecate VBox functionality in future.

In reply to boboviz's message of 10 Apr 2025:

A comment from Boinc developers..

We want to deprecate VBox functionality in future.

I guess you refer to this comment:
https://github.com/BOINC/boinc/issues/6134#issuecomment-2740452125

If so you may have also noticed this:

Wait for a couple of releases for feedback, and remove this functionality completely together with VBox support (will take a couple of years for that until all the projects that use VBox now switch to WSL/Docker).

At least for now (in relation to LHC@home)
- docker apps are under heavy development and not even released on prod
- snapshots are not yet implemented/tested
- there is no long term experience; maybe there are currently unknown pitfalls

In reply to computezrmle's message of 10 Apr 2025:

If so you may have also noticed this:
[quote]Wait for a couple of releases for feedback, and remove this functionality completely together with VBox support (will take a couple of years for that until all the projects that use VBox now switch to WSL/Docker).

I noticed, i noticed. Indeed they do not say "near future", but it's an big switch and it's important to do things well..

At least for now (in relation to LHC@home)
- docker apps are under heavy development and not even released on prod
- snapshots are not yet implemented/tested
- there is no long term experience; maybe there are currently unknown pitfalls

The second point is important (IMHO)

WSL 2.6 (pre-released) from Microsoft is officially "open-source"

The docker version of Theory is running well for months
Do you plan (if it is possible) to migrate others app (CMS, Atlas, etc) to docker??

In reply to boboviz's message of 25 Nov 2024:

Meantime, the boinc admins released a new version of boinc vbox wrapper: release notes

New docker wrapper released

In reply to boboviz's message of 15 Oct 2025:

The docker version of Theory is running well for months
Do you plan (if it is possible) to migrate others app (CMS, Atlas, etc) to docker??

I presume Docker development for CMS and LHC is ongoing. Are there any roadblocks for either project? Docker seems to be very successful with Theory@Home.

Thanks.

Version 22 (pre-release) of dockerwrapper released...

In reply to rbpeake's message of 8 May 2026:

I presume Docker development for CMS and LHC is ongoing. Are there any roadblocks for either project? Docker seems to be very successful with Theory@Home.

No news about docker for CMS or Atlas apps...

https://www.google.com/search?q=how+is+docker+better+than+VB

Doesn't matter to me and the main problem has always been these pitiful servers

In reply to Magic Quantum Mechanic's message of 4 Oct 2026:

Doesn't matter to me and the main problem has always been these pitiful servers

??
Are you saying that switching from Vbox to Docker would increase the workload on the servers??

No I run both and have run VB since 2011
BUT these Dockers are not much good when they can run for days and I mean I actually check the runRivet and then after several days it decides to stop running and then I try to abort it and it can take hours to get the servers to take that and give me new work or almost every time I want to look at these tasks finished or not Valid or not these servers....even this one ends up spinning and doing nothing trying over and over for hours.

That is why this place never can get members doing this very long here or at production.....these servers always have been a problem and we shouldn't need squid just to look at our own tasks in our own accounts

And that includes CMS

I never care how long a task takes as long as it doesn't just stop running after 3 days and I guarantee new members won't run them at production very long having to do all these extra things and then end up wasting time

I have been doing this 24/7 since March 2011 as far as VB and now Docker and at production 24/7 for 22 years.
And here there is not many members or running that many tasks yet still these pages spend too long just looking at our own accounts tasks
Gateway Timeout
The gateway did not receive a timely response from the upstream server or application.

When you ping to one -dev Server, are there timeouts?

In reply to Magic Quantum Mechanic's message of 8 Oct 2026:

No I run both and have run VB since 2011
BUT these Dockers are not much good when they can run for days and I mean I actually check the runRivet and then after several days it decides to stop running and then I try to abort it and it can take hours to get the servers to take that and give me new work or almost every time I want to look at these tasks finished or not Valid or not these servers....even this one ends up spinning and doing nothing trying over and over for hours.

Ah, ok
I don't think the problem is docker itself (it's only a container), but the app code.
This is a beta project, so it is "normal" to have problems, but i agree with you that is unnerving to have problems after 2/3/4 days of calculation....

Hope that admins read this theard and start to working on code to solve this