Einstein@Home on OLPC
4 Jan 2008 9:22:14 UTC
Topic 193418
(moderation:
Since I didn't see any mention of OLPC (One Laptop per Child) on this forum, I thought I'd let people know that I am successfully running BOINC and Einstein@Home on my OLPC XO, which I just received under the give-1-get-1 program. You can see it as the "AuthenticAMD Geode" under the Computer list in my user account.
I am running the CLI client. To do this, I opened the Terminal Activity and followed exactly the procedure in this post.
Notes:
1. I used http://boincdl.ssl.berkeley.edu/dl/boinc_5.10.28_i686-pc-linux-gnu.sh instead of http://boincdl.ssl.berkeley.edu/dl/boinc_5.10.21_i686-pc-linux-gnu.sh
2. I think wget is already on the XO, but if not it can be installed with "yum install wget". (I did several yum installs like gcc but don't remember if wget was one of them. I don't think anything else I installed is necessary for BOINC.)
Norm
Einstein@Home on OLPC
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Eric Myers got xeyes running on his. Here are his notes/log.
(caption added by me -- I couldn't resist)
Kathryn :o)
Einstein@Home Moderator
And BOINC! Michael
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And BOINC!
Michael
Team Linux Users Everywhere
Hey Norm. Your benchmarks
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Hey Norm.
Your benchmarks are really goofy. For one they're too high (Eric is getting about 100/300 on his). Second, the float and int benchmarks are both the same (1000/1000).
Any ideas about that?
Can you force a new set? I don't remember the CLI flag off the top of my head.
Kathryn :o)
Einstein@Home Moderator
RE: Hey Norm. Your
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I Guess you would have to force an update as well to transmit benchmark result to server, so:
# ./boinc_cmd --run_benchmarks
# ./boinc_cmd --project http://einstein.phys.uwm.edu update
Nice to see E@H run on this kind of machine, tho I'm afraid it will require roughly 10 days of 24/7 operation for a single result. I don't expect much from the Floating Point Unit of this CPU.
CU
H-B
RE: RE: Hey Norm. Your
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I did these updates, and it's 110/313 now. Not much compared to the big guys, but I guess if someday a neat screensaver gets millions of kids running it... I just hope it meets the completion deadline. :)
I wonder how the electrical energy per op compares. It runs pretty cool, just slightly warm behind the display screen.
Norm
RE: RE: RE: Hey
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I think the CPU consumes only up to 1.5 W or so (!!), and I understand the OLPC has flash memory instead of a HD. So I guess energy per op is quite good actually.
CU
BRM
My initial test of BOINC on
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My initial test of BOINC on my XO used short workunits from Pirates@Home, but after seeing Norm's post I also connected it to Einstein@Home. While it does run, I found the XO got really sluggish and non-responsive. The back of the screen was noticeably warm in one spot, presumably the location of the CPU. Eventually I had to shut it off by holding the power button down, since I could not get back to the "home" view to the shutdown menu. Details here.
I was thinking, however, that if the XO had accelerometers, either built in (in a newer model) or easily added via USB, then they could be used with the new project Carl Christiensen is working on, the Quake Catcher Network.
- Eric Myers
Hi Eric, So far
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Hi Eric,
So far Einstein@Home is still running on my XO, and the workunit is 41% done.
Most things I'm doing right now are lightweight CLI stuff, and I haven't noticed much sluggishness. Opera also seems reasonably crisp with 8 tabs open. I haven't played with the other Activities while Einstein@Home is on. I am using boinc_cmd; perhaps the BOINC Manager causes a problem? I downloaded the 1MB "command line interface only" version of BOINC, not the 4MB "standard GUI" version, if that makes a difference. ps aux shows Einstein@Home using 23% of memory (53MB) and boinc using 0.5%. I do have to turn off Einstein@Home for any yum install: if not, I get a memory allocation failure, even for very small packages.
I found it useful to add the /etc/init.d/boinc start and stop script described on your page, Installing and Running the BOINC client on Unix. (In that script, I changed the assignments to BOINCUSER=olpc, BOINCDIR=/home/olpc/BOINC, and BOINCEXE=/home/olpc/BOINC/boinc to conform to my instructions above. Eventually I might reorganize the directories per your description.) This way I can turn it off when using the XO heavily or showing it off to friends, and restart it when the computer is idle.
Norm wrote:So far
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Great. Let us know when it finishes.
In my case I think I may have had "run always" set instead of "run according to preferences", or the prefs/Venue were set to keep it running. I'll try again when I get a chance to see how well it detects user activity and suspends.
My benchmarks match your new ones pretty closely.
That's definitely better than what I did, which was just to run the client by hand in one Terminal Activity window, and control it from BOINC Manager running on another host. But I just wanted to see if it would run, not actually use it for crunching.
I've not tried running the Manager on the XO. I suspect you'd have a problem getting back to the window after switching activities, since that is what happened when I tried xeyes.
I see you are on the MIT team, and an alum. If you are still anywhere near Boston (or New York, where I am) then perhaps we could get together to see how two XO's interact? I feel like a kid who got only one walkie-talkie for christmas. :-) But a very cool walkie-talkie!
- Eric Myers
Eric Myers wrote:If you are
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Let me know if you're in the Lexington, MA area, and we'll see if the machines can communicate. I've heard it's strange to hear them hiss at each other when you ask them to calculate the distance between XOs
Will do. It is at 83% now.