Posts by Michael H.W. Weber

1) Message boards : Number crunching : Respect My Limits! (Message 3937) Posted 2 Aug 2016 by Michael H.W. Weber Post: OK, incoming multicore tasks (Theory, 3 CPUs) cause other vLHC-dev tasks in progress to be suspended. Not good. Priority settings checked? Michael.
2) Message boards : Number crunching : Respect My Limits! (Message 3935) Posted 2 Aug 2016 by Michael H.W. Weber Post: Two more ALICE tasks uploaded. One around 50 min. the other around 15 min runtime. Both showed numbers in the error console window. At least they terminate properly. Won't report more about this, because probably off -topic in this discussion thread here. If you need screenshots in the future please let me know... Michael.
3) Message boards : Number crunching : Respect My Limits! (Message 3934) Posted 2 Aug 2016 by Michael H.W. Weber Post: Are ALICE tasks differing in length? My i5 machine estimates a 6 hrs runtime but then this happens (and credits are granted, so task OK): 02.08.2016 13:39:09 \| vLHCathome-dev \| Starting task ALICE_16562_1470076953.252092_0 02.08.2016 14:19:30 \| vLHCathome-dev \| Computation for task ALICE_16562_1470076953.252092_0 finished One other ALICE task is already at 50 min. but barely CPU activity. ALT+F4 Console shows "job finished with unknown exit code". ALT+F3 indicates 0.3% CPU load... Michael.
4) Message boards : Number crunching : Respect My Limits! (Message 3933) Posted 2 Aug 2016 by Michael H.W. Weber Post: The default settings need to be fail save. One task, 1 core and a min of memory. Yes. Michael.
5) Message boards : Number crunching : Respect My Limits! (Message 3931) Posted 2 Aug 2016 by Michael H.W. Weber Post: First thing I encountered was the style of how the preference page is organized: (1) From what I see, it seems that one can check each of the (many) application types and then set the number of WUs associated which means PER CHECKED APPLICATION - is that correct? No. The limits are global. By default a new user should have the Theory app selected and be limited to 1 task with 1 core. Yes. SHOULD have. But hasn't. The default is "unlimited". (3) What does # of CPUS mean? CPUs or CORES? Please specify precisely in the settings page. What is this setting good for? For me it is cores but David A. chose the naming. Mwahahaha , such as "results" for the tasks sent out by the server? Just teasing... (4) Behind the name of each app, please indicate in red writing the amount of RAM in GB which that particular app will require/reserve at maximum FOR A SINGLE task. I find it important to make this crystal clear to whomever thinks he/she can modify these settings. We can do this but first should get the mechanics working. Ah, Laurence, please put it in. One more thing done... ;-) Michael.
6) Message boards : Number crunching : Respect My Limits! (Message 3930) Posted 2 Aug 2016 by Michael H.W. Weber Post: OK, now I got work. I set CPUs to unlimited as in the (dangerous) default setting, allowed 1 job and checked all APPS except for the classical LHC Sixtrack. On the i5 (Quadcore, no hyperthreading) where I reserved one CPU core for firing the Hawaii GPU, I got three tasks: 2x ALICE, 1x LHCb. So, I guess my asumptions above were correct. If I leave these preferences as they are, the Linux Quadcore with hyperthreading (and hence 8 possible tasks) would certainly crash as it would retrieve 7 tasks to be run simultaneously (again, one CPU core is reserved for the GTX770 GPU) and would run out of memory. Of course, maybe the BOINC manager interferes with its memory managment - but I wouldn't trust it. So, two options for me: (1) Setup an app_config.xml to restrict the number of CPU-cores (not CPUs!) to, say, FOUR. (2) Design another (additional) preference setup and assign that to this Linux box. Problem: I do not know how much of RAM each of the apps maximally requires... Michael. P.S.: Suggestion: You may rename the preference sheets from "home, school, work, etc." to "8 GB RAM / 4 CPU-Cores, 8 GB RAM / 8 CPU-Cores, 16 GB RAM / 4 CPU-Cores, 16 GB RAM / 8 CPU-Cores, etc." and preset these preferences sheets appropriately to never exceed the physical RAM by your apps. This would spare me an app_config.xml and allow even the less experienced to easily setup things in an optimized way.
7) Message boards : Number crunching : Respect My Limits! (Message 3927) Posted 2 Aug 2016 by Michael H.W. Weber Post: OK, I just signed up to help a bit. First thing I encountered was the style of how the preference page is organized: (1) From what I see, it seems that one can check each of the (many) application types and then set the number of WUs associated which means PER CHECKED APPLICATION - is that correct? Meaning, I check just CMS and allow for 4 tasks, so I do get 4 tasks of CMS on each machine using that preferences profile (e.g. default). However, if I check two apps such as CMS AND Theory while keeping those 4 tasks per app, I would receive 4 tasks for EACH of the apps, i.e. 8 tasks in toto. Correct? If so, then - well - I don't like it. ;-) A better solution to my point of view would probably be to check each app and (maybe directly behind that app) the corresponding number of tasks allowed. This allows for other combinations which are not possible at present (e.g. ONW task of CMS combined with TWO tasks of Theory, and so on). (2) The default settings as found now will crash almost any home computer. So, please limit number of tasks to only ONE and allow only the Theory app (which I find well-established). (3) What does # of CPUS mean? CPUs or CORES? Please specify precisely in the settings page. What is this setting good for? (4) Behind the name of each app, please indicate in red writing the amount of RAM in GB which that particular app will require/reserve at maximum FOR A SINGLE task. I find it important to make this crystal clear to whomever thinks he/she can modify these settings. Just last week, even a few of my boxes ceased operation with a nice blue screen, after the number of vLHC tasks had been increased (which is at the core of what we like to optimize here, as far as I understand). And finally, I don't get any tasks from this test project at present. So how is testing supposed to work? :) Michael. P.S.: For a start, I hoked up the following two machines for testing: (1) Windows 7 Ultimate 64 Bit with an Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-2500K CPU @ 3.30GHz [Family 6 Model 42 Stepping 7] and an MSI Lightning AMD R9 290X (Hawaii) GPU (probably not relevant here, but I use that card to compute in parallel to these tests). This box has 16 GB of RAM. (2) Ubuntu Linux 16.04 LTS 64 Bit with an Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU 870 @ 2.93GHz [Family 6 Model 30 Stepping 5] and a Gainward Phantom GTX770 GPU. This box has 16 GB of RAM. To my "surprise" BAM! reports this OS as 32 Bit Which is FALSE.

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