Safe to switch to Linux now?
2 Aug 2007 13:52:59 UTC
Topic 193017
(moderation:
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?
Safe to switch to Linux now?
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Of course it is safe to use Linux! But I might be biased. Never had a single validation error I know of.
Michael
Team Linux Users Everywhere
No validation issues here. I
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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.
Thanks for replies, am giving
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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?
Team Philippines
RE: Thanks for replies, am
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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?
I think he is referring to
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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
Well, you can always set the
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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!"
Thanks for the good advices
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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.
Team Philippines
RE: Thanks for the good
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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
RE: Why run BOINC in a
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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)
Team Philippines
RE: RE: Why run BOINC in
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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