Development for LHC@home

This version is the latest head build of the docker_wrapper. It contains the fix for the long names.

To be clear: The long file naming, causing long image-names was not a problem for Theory docker tasks on Windows 10.
This wrapper version (22a) is also running fine on Windows.

I have finished about 40 of this version and looks ok but then I was not having any problems with the previous version and I have a few thousand Valids with all the different event generator versions.......even a sherpa but only one of those.
Still have 5 of version 7.67 running so will those have a problem after this update?

v7.66 was the only one I had a problem with the Dockers but then I also had hundreds of Valids with that version too so I think there was a server problem when that happened

My linux box has cvmfs installed and has been running native atlas tasks successfully for quite some time (LHC@home). Since my last attempt a couple of days back at running linux docker tasks here (all failed), I did some digging around over at LHC@hoime and made a couple of changes.

In /etc/cvmfs/default.local, I added some repositories where some are or may be required for theory.

CVMFS_REPOSITORIES=atlas.cern.ch,atlas-condb.cern.ch,grid.cern.ch,alice.cern.ch,sft.cern.ch,cvmfs-config.cern.ch,cernvm-prod.cern.ch

Then ran

sudo cvmfs_config reload

I also made a change in /usr/share/containers/containers.conf that was suggested in many posts.

In the [engine] section of the file
cgroup_manager = "cgroupfs"

Thus far I have completed 2 tasks with version 7.68 of the new wrapper. More on the way.
https://lhcathomedev.cern.ch/lhcathome-dev/result.php?resultid=3780889

Looks like my running 7.67 had no problem
Computer ID 5326
Run time 3 days 4 hours 43 min 55 sec
CPU time 3 days 0 hours 46 min 37 sec
Priority 0
Validate state Valid - herwig7
Credit 3,149.07
Device peak FLOPS 4.92 GFLOPS
Application version Theory Simulation v7.67 (docker)
windows_x86_64
So I will finish running the last 3 of the v7.67

and plenty of the new version running ok too

In reply to biodoc's message of 8 Jun 2026:

Thus far I have completed 2 tasks with version 7.68 of the new wrapper. More on the way.
https://lhcathomedev.cern.ch/lhcathome-dev/result.php?resultid=3780889

127 linux docker-theory tasks completed and validated (no validation errors) so far. Looks good.

As for your CVMFS configuration

It looks good except for cvmfs-config.cern.ch.

Add the follwing line to /etc/cvmfs/domain.d/cern.ch.local (create the file if it does not exist):
CVMFS_CONFIG_REPO_REQUIRED=yes

Add the follwing line to /etc/cvmfs/config.d/cvmfs-config.cern.ch.local (create the file if it does not exist):
CVMFS_CONFIG_REPO_REQUIRED=no

You can then remove cvmfs-config.cern.ch from the repo list in /etc/cvmfs/default.local.
Run cvmfs_config reload after the modifications, and may be cvmfs_config probe to check if it works.

The reasons to do it that way are as follows:
- cvmfs-config.cern.ch is loaded automatically if another repo is configured to use it (and only then)
- order matters: it ensures cvmfs-config.cern.ch is loaded before any other repo
- updated global parameters can be distributed automatically. In most cases this affects the server list. Changes there happen not very often but they happen.


As for lots of failed tasks (at least on some Linux systems) during the last 2 weeks.
It looks like they were caused by a buffer in docker_wrapper that was too short.
Since the project decided to use longer task ids and those are used to create the container names docker_wrapper's 'is-a-task-alive' monitoring failed and it killed the containers with long names.

BOINC provided a patch for docker_wrapper which is now tested with the version here.
From that point all is fine if you can run containers for more than a few minutes that look like:
boinc__lhcathome.cern.ch_lhcathome__theory_2922-4881423-1107_1780985479_0

The older scheme was like:
boinc__lhcathome.cern.ch_lhcathome__theory_2922-4792878-1030_2

I made the changes you suggested. Thanks

Most of the task names that were completed are in this format:
Theory_2922-4774896-1106_1780960128_0

A few look like this:
Theory_2922-4775774-90_0

EDIT: I see, you were referring to container names

Using podman
creating container boinc__lhcathomedev.cern.ch_lhcathome-dev__theory_2922-4758270-1107_1780994692_0

Some errors on my Win11

(0x1) - exit code 1 (0x1)</message>
<stderr_txt>
docker_wrapper 22 starting
docker_wrapper config:
workdir: /boinc_slot_dir
use GPU: no
create args: --cap-add=SYS_ADMIN --device /dev/fuse
verbose: 1
Using WSL distro boinc-buda-runner
Using podman
creating container boinc__lhcathomedev.cern.ch_lhcathome-dev__theory_2922-4761695-1111_1781066312_0
running docker command: images
program: podman
command output:
REPOSITORY TAG IMAGE ID CREATED SIZE
docker.io/library/almalinux 9 4bf4f2bf0123 2 months ago 199 MB
EOM
building image
waiting for heartbeat
running docker command: build "." --retry 0 -t boinc__lhcathomedev.cern.ch_lhcathome-dev__theory_2922-4761695-1111_1781066312 -f Dockerfile
program: podman
read_from_pipe() error: timeout
build command failed: -182
build_image() failed: -1