Safe to switch to Linux now?

th3
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Topic 193017

I have made the final switch to Linux for my main OS, but am still running WinXP (through VMWare) for Boinc and some other apps. I got surprisingly high performance when using hardware-enabled virtualization so for efficiency theres no big reason to run Boinc under Linux.

What i worry about is validation errors, i dont want to use beta apps as i dont want to spend time experimenting.

I will run out of E@H workunits in less than 3 hours from now, should i get new units on XP or is it 100% safe to use Linux now?

Michael Karlinsky
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Safe to switch to Linux now?

Quote:

I will run out of E@H workunits in less than 3 hours from now, should i get new units on XP or is it 100% safe to use Linux now?

Of course it is safe to use Linux! But I might be biased. Never had a single validation error I know of.

Michael

Matt LO
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No validation issues here. I

No validation issues here. I was having crunching problems at the start of this run, but the release of the current official app fixed that for me.

th3
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Thanks for replies, am giving

Thanks for replies, am giving it a try now.

Havent gotten far into the first workunits yet but am already noticing the problem i had heard about, with Boinc slowing down the system more in Linux. Its worse than i expected in some apps, so i may go back to running Boinc under VMware/WinXP. Unless someone know a fix?

Matt LO
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RE: Thanks for replies, am

Message 70894 in response to message 70893

Quote:

Thanks for replies, am giving it a try now.

Havent gotten far into the first workunits yet but am already noticing the problem i had heard about, with Boinc slowing down the system more in Linux. Its worse than i expected in some apps, so i may go back to running Boinc under VMware/WinXP. Unless someone know a fix?

I'm curious what you mean. I've noticed that flash doesn't play "nice" with BOINC. My browser sometimes hangs when trying to view flash site, which is remedied by suspending boinc tasks.

What are you referring to?

Dave Burbank
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I think he is referring to

I think he is referring to the CPU time used by BoincManager, I've noticed this as well. The linux BM uses far more CPU time than the windows version, the Boinc client however is still resource friendly in Linux.

Solution: Only run BoincManager when you are checking the status of the WU's, for the rest of the time just kill the BoincManager process in System Manger. Do you really need BM running all the time anyways?

There are 10^11 stars in the galaxy. That used to be a huge number. But it's only a hundred billion. It's less than the national deficit! We used to call them astronomical numbers. Now we should call them economical numbers. - Richard Feynman

MikeB
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Well, you can always set the

Well, you can always set the niceness of it to 15 or some other number close to 20. There is a bare version of the boinc manager for kde (or any GUI if you have kde-libs and qt installed) kboincmgr. Although its abilities are quite limited, its nice and lets you monitor multiple computers.

"But it's turtles all the way down!"

th3
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Thanks for the good advices

Thanks for the good advices here, i had it fixed already, at least for now, the problem was with VMware.

What i ment is that the PC felt more sluggish now compared to when running Boinc under a virtual machine with WinXP. Some more testing shows that its not bad at all, it only happened when VMware run the WInXP virtual machine with 2 processors, setting it to 1 processor fixed all the sluggish behavior. The problems with 2 processors was there even if the virtual machine was idling, and in the VM itself it was REALLY sluggish, that was the clue that led me to the source of the problem.

KSMarksPsych
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RE: Thanks for the good

Message 70898 in response to message 70897

Quote:

Thanks for the good advices here, i had it fixed already, at least for now, the problem was with VMware.

What i ment is that the PC felt more sluggish now compared to when running Boinc under a virtual machine with WinXP. Some more testing shows that its not bad at all, it only happened when VMware run the WInXP virtual machine with 2 processors, setting it to 1 processor fixed all the sluggish behavior. The problems with 2 processors was there even if the virtual machine was idling, and in the VM itself it was REALLY sluggish, that was the clue that led me to the source of the problem.

I'll bite...

Why run BOINC in a Windows VM? Why not use the native Linux client? Or are there projects you're running (want to run) that don't have a Linux app?

Kathryn :o)

Einstein@Home Moderator

th3
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RE: Why run BOINC in a

Message 70899 in response to message 70898

Quote:
Why run BOINC in a Windows VM? Why not use the native Linux client? Or are there projects you're running (want to run) that don't have a Linux app?

Thats why i made the original post, is it safe to switch from the VM with WinXP to native Linux Boinc? (ref cross OS validation issues). Its not like i really want to run Boinc in a VM :)

No projects that require windows, just some other apps that dont run or dont run well under Linux, more or less important. For example Avisynth and all its plugins is hard to live without (waiting for v3.0 to move it into Linux)

Bikeman (Heinz-Bernd Eggenstein)
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RE: RE: Why run BOINC in

Message 70900 in response to message 70899

Quote:
Quote:
Why run BOINC in a Windows VM? Why not use the native Linux client? Or are there projects you're running (want to run) that don't have a Linux app?

Thats why i made the original post, is it safe to switch from the VM with WinXP to native Linux Boinc? (ref cross OS validation issues). Its not like i really want to run Boinc in a VM :)

No projects that require windows, just some other apps that dont run or dont run well under Linux, more or less important. For example Avisynth and all its plugins is hard to live without (waiting for v3.0 to move it into Linux)

For all that we know now, the cross-platform validation problem is history. There are a few remaining stability problems, but most (if not all) of them are dealing with rare hic-ups of the science app under Windows, so there is even more reason to change to Linux. I run most of my E@H clients under Linux or Mac OS and I'm very satisfied with them, performance- and stability-wise.

Cheers
BRM

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