Following yesterday's conference, I couldn't help but keep coming back to the idea of tagging. Yes, I really do mean the popular concept of tagging used on so many social web sites like del.icio.us and MySpace.
Why tagging? It's popular and it could provide a possible answer to some of the problems discussed yesterday.
Finding Projects
If projects had various tags, a user could choose to subscribe to or ignore projects based on different tags they were labelled with. These tags could used by the account managers and other sites. Then as projects appeared and disappeared they could automatically be added to your client, if you chose to do so.
User Visibility
One of the questions yesterday had to do with retaining people and them being able to see where they sat in the BOINC world. Were they advancing or falling in the listings? Did their contributions matter?
What if users tagged themselves? Say I tagged myself with: Male, USA, Single-Computer, Linux, Missouri, MoBot. Then I could see how I placed within each of those tags. I may not show up on the overall CPDN list, but I might under Single-Computer+Linux+Missouri for example.
Well, good or bad, those were some of my thoughts.
Tuesday, December 19, 2006
BOINC Conference Summary
Here is a "brief" summary of the BOINC conference that was held online, December 18th. It took place over Skype with people from all over the world. At times the connections were a little week (at least on my end), but it was a very worthwhile couple of hours.
This comes from my quickly scribbled notes. Nothing is a direct quote (unless my hand and memory got lucky) and I am sure there are many errors. I may have even missed a question or two.
If you want the definitive source, get the mp3. It should be available shortly from the BOINC UK site.
The questions mostly broke down into two basic categories. Those about BOINC in general and those specifically related to SETI@home.
General Question
If you had one wish what would it be?
BOINC Questions
With all of the optimized BOINC clients available why do we still need the "vanilla" client?
How can we resolve issues with large workunits?
Have you considered subteams or a way to give users more visibility?
What scalability issues are there as the number of projects continues to grow?
What is the status of using GPUs for computation?
Question about clients and credits.
What do you see as the relationship between BOINC and the media?
What about sandboxing?
SETI@home Questions
What is the status of the Southern Hemisphere data recorder?
What does a data recorder cost?
What it the likelihood of Arecibo shutting down?
What is the status of optical SETI work?
What percentage of stars have been listened to?
What about picking up leakage of TV, radio, and other broadcasts?
What is the projected rollout date for astropulse?
What about VLA data?
Q. With all of the optimized BOINC clients available why do we still need the "vanilla" client?
A. The optimized client was a kludge for the older version of SETI so that users would get the "correct" amount of credit. Now that SETI has moved to flops based computation there is no need for the optimized client.
Now, if you are actually talking about optimized applications (projects) as opposed to the BOINC client software that coordinates fetching workunits and running the projects on your local machine, they help. But, the issue is that there are two many distinct architectures and sub-architectures to properly test all of them.
Q. Due to the size of the Climate Prediction work units, many users simply crash and are never heard from again. How can we resolve this? Perhaps with popups and other messages? --- Mo (Maureen?)
A. We support trickle messages that can update the user as they continue to work on very large work units. Climate Prediction could do a bit of work to provide screensaver updates through using these trickle messages.
While some would like popup messages that let them know when something goes awry or needs attention, others would see this as intrusive. --- Dr. David Anderson
Q. What is the status of the Southern Hemisphere data recorder for SETI at the Parkes Observatory? --- Mark (Ohio, USA)
A. With the threatened shut down of the Arecibo telescope in 5 years we have to focus there and consider the possible transfer of equipment after that. --- Dr. Eric Korpela
Q2. What does a recorder cost? --- Mike
A2. It depends upon the donations of equipment, but even with the donations received, the original recorder cost around $300,000 (US). --- Eric
Q3. What is the likelihood of Arecibo shutting down? --- Mike
A3. The problem is that there are no congressmen with voting power for Arecibo. It is in Puerto Rico and this is really a political financial decision. --- Eric
Q. What about Optical SETI work? --- Tiare (Chile)
A. The optical work we are doing is relatively primitive compared to the radio work. It would be highly unlikely for each of our three sensors to receive a flash, although it has been guessed that a laser pulse directed at us from extraterrestrial sources could give a pulse at all three wavelengths. --- Eric
Q. If you had one wish what would it be?
A. Something indistinct about Microsoft. --- David
Better hardware --- ???
A verifiable contact --- Eric
Accurate benchmarking --- David
Q. Have you considered subgroups within teams so that users would have a better chance of seeing themselves showing up on a top 10?
A. We thought that if the servers generated sufficiently refined lists based upon data available to them that this would happen automatically. So far, it has not.
Q. What percentage of stars have been listened to? --- John (USA)
A. Arecibo has had pretty good coverage, but it only sees about 25% of the sky. Multi-beam is 30%(?) more sensitive and allows us to listen to sources that are 5 times more distant. We have also done some targeting with high bandwidth, but it is a tradeoff, bandwidth vs. coverage. We can listen to a lot on a few frequencies, or listen to a few things on a lot of frequencies.
When you look at all three, bandwidth, distances and sky coverage, we have had relatively little overall coverage. --- Eric
Q. What about picking up leakage of TV, radio, and other broadcasts?
A. Omnidirectional signals like those do not go very far. Even with a directed beam we can only reach about 50(?) lightyears with broadcasts of our own, say from Arecibo.
Q. It seems the number of projects is growing rapidly. What are the limitations of BOINC as this continues? --- Maureen
A. Since the BOINC project does not supply centralized servers,there are really no limits with respect to that. It is more a problem in terms of project discovery. BOINC account managers are one solution to that problem. BOINC mutual funds may be another.
BOINC mutual funds would be where an individual could say they are interested in computing for cancer research, but they don't want to have to keep track of cancer research projects as they come and go, so they subscribe to a "cancer research mutual fund" that would keep track of these things for them. Essentially this would be using intermediaries like the American Cancer Society to keep track of these things. --- David
Q. ATI has expressed interest in working with BOINC on producing GPU accelerated interfaces and Folding@Home has had success with a similar initiative. What is the status or progress in this area? --- Ron (Missouri, USA)
A. We tried doing some work with the NVIDIA GPUs but the architecture was not really conducive to integrating with them. It is our understanding that ATI may have a more accessible architecture, but so far no projects have bit on the offer to work with them.
We are looking at using the Cell Processor in the PlayStation® 3. It may be much better. It is several times faster than a GPU and about 50x faster than a standard processor. It also give much better computational power per Watt of electricity making it more environmentally friendly. --- David
I have not given up on GPUs. If there are any GPU programmers out there that are interesting in helping out on SETI@home, I would be very interested to hear from them. --- Eric
Q. Indistinct --- Tiare (Chile)
A. We have created a new simple GUI in cooperation with the Community Grid. It will make the BOINC client skinnable. We are also looking at a unified credit system that would allow us to grant credit for donated storage space as well as for donated CPU time. We would like to retain a single credit scoring system. But, benchmarking this is difficult. --- David
Q. What is the projected rollout date for AstroPulse? --- Derek (Guam)
AstroPulse is a long promised set of work units for SETI@home. According to a previous interview there had been a grad. student that was supposed to be working on it, but he found it more interesting to work on other things, so the effort that was put forth never came to fruition.
A. We have a new grad. student working on it. Hopefully it will be in beta next month or so. That would be nice, since he will have some time off of class then. --- Eric
Q. When the BBC did its documentary on Climate Prediction.Net it greatly enhanced the participation in the project. What do you see as the relationship between BOINC and the media? --- Maureen
A. Media coverage helps greatly. But many of those participants did not stick around long, for reasons we've already discussed. --- David
Q. Indistinct question about Sandboxing? --- Ian
A. We are using user-account based sandboxing and we recommend that the application runs as a limited user. We have this setup on the Mac already. It works with a little help on Linux as well. The problem (as usual) is Windows. Although we expect to have a Windows version of sandboxing available in about 2-3 month. --- David
Q. Something about VLA usage? --- Derek (Guam)
A. None currently. Allen(?) telescope is expanding to 45 dishes. [Garbled] needs more dishes, less than 45 does not provide what we need. Originally [garbled] was supposed to have around 200 telescopes, but due to cutbacks this has not happened. --- Eric
Well that's all I have from my notes, and a little memory thrown in.
I'd like to thank Mike and all those that arranged the conference and David and Eric for taking time out to answer our questions.
This comes from my quickly scribbled notes. Nothing is a direct quote (unless my hand and memory got lucky) and I am sure there are many errors. I may have even missed a question or two.
If you want the definitive source, get the mp3. It should be available shortly from the BOINC UK site.
The questions mostly broke down into two basic categories. Those about BOINC in general and those specifically related to SETI@home.
General Question
If you had one wish what would it be?
BOINC Questions
With all of the optimized BOINC clients available why do we still need the "vanilla" client?
How can we resolve issues with large workunits?
Have you considered subteams or a way to give users more visibility?
What scalability issues are there as the number of projects continues to grow?
What is the status of using GPUs for computation?
Question about clients and credits.
What do you see as the relationship between BOINC and the media?
What about sandboxing?
SETI@home Questions
What is the status of the Southern Hemisphere data recorder?
What does a data recorder cost?
What it the likelihood of Arecibo shutting down?
What is the status of optical SETI work?
What percentage of stars have been listened to?
What about picking up leakage of TV, radio, and other broadcasts?
What is the projected rollout date for astropulse?
What about VLA data?
Q. With all of the optimized BOINC clients available why do we still need the "vanilla" client?
A. The optimized client was a kludge for the older version of SETI so that users would get the "correct" amount of credit. Now that SETI has moved to flops based computation there is no need for the optimized client.
Now, if you are actually talking about optimized applications (projects) as opposed to the BOINC client software that coordinates fetching workunits and running the projects on your local machine, they help. But, the issue is that there are two many distinct architectures and sub-architectures to properly test all of them.
Q. Due to the size of the Climate Prediction work units, many users simply crash and are never heard from again. How can we resolve this? Perhaps with popups and other messages? --- Mo (Maureen?)
A. We support trickle messages that can update the user as they continue to work on very large work units. Climate Prediction could do a bit of work to provide screensaver updates through using these trickle messages.
While some would like popup messages that let them know when something goes awry or needs attention, others would see this as intrusive. --- Dr. David Anderson
Q. What is the status of the Southern Hemisphere data recorder for SETI at the Parkes Observatory? --- Mark (Ohio, USA)
A. With the threatened shut down of the Arecibo telescope in 5 years we have to focus there and consider the possible transfer of equipment after that. --- Dr. Eric Korpela
Q2. What does a recorder cost? --- Mike
A2. It depends upon the donations of equipment, but even with the donations received, the original recorder cost around $300,000 (US). --- Eric
Q3. What is the likelihood of Arecibo shutting down? --- Mike
A3. The problem is that there are no congressmen with voting power for Arecibo. It is in Puerto Rico and this is really a political financial decision. --- Eric
Q. What about Optical SETI work? --- Tiare (Chile)
A. The optical work we are doing is relatively primitive compared to the radio work. It would be highly unlikely for each of our three sensors to receive a flash, although it has been guessed that a laser pulse directed at us from extraterrestrial sources could give a pulse at all three wavelengths. --- Eric
Q. If you had one wish what would it be?
A. Something indistinct about Microsoft. --- David
Better hardware --- ???
A verifiable contact --- Eric
Accurate benchmarking --- David
Q. Have you considered subgroups within teams so that users would have a better chance of seeing themselves showing up on a top 10?
A. We thought that if the servers generated sufficiently refined lists based upon data available to them that this would happen automatically. So far, it has not.
Q. What percentage of stars have been listened to? --- John (USA)
A. Arecibo has had pretty good coverage, but it only sees about 25% of the sky. Multi-beam is 30%(?) more sensitive and allows us to listen to sources that are 5 times more distant. We have also done some targeting with high bandwidth, but it is a tradeoff, bandwidth vs. coverage. We can listen to a lot on a few frequencies, or listen to a few things on a lot of frequencies.
When you look at all three, bandwidth, distances and sky coverage, we have had relatively little overall coverage. --- Eric
Q. What about picking up leakage of TV, radio, and other broadcasts?
A. Omnidirectional signals like those do not go very far. Even with a directed beam we can only reach about 50(?) lightyears with broadcasts of our own, say from Arecibo.
Q. It seems the number of projects is growing rapidly. What are the limitations of BOINC as this continues? --- Maureen
A. Since the BOINC project does not supply centralized servers,there are really no limits with respect to that. It is more a problem in terms of project discovery. BOINC account managers are one solution to that problem. BOINC mutual funds may be another.
BOINC mutual funds would be where an individual could say they are interested in computing for cancer research, but they don't want to have to keep track of cancer research projects as they come and go, so they subscribe to a "cancer research mutual fund" that would keep track of these things for them. Essentially this would be using intermediaries like the American Cancer Society to keep track of these things. --- David
Q. ATI has expressed interest in working with BOINC on producing GPU accelerated interfaces and Folding@Home has had success with a similar initiative. What is the status or progress in this area? --- Ron (Missouri, USA)
A. We tried doing some work with the NVIDIA GPUs but the architecture was not really conducive to integrating with them. It is our understanding that ATI may have a more accessible architecture, but so far no projects have bit on the offer to work with them.
We are looking at using the Cell Processor in the PlayStation® 3. It may be much better. It is several times faster than a GPU and about 50x faster than a standard processor. It also give much better computational power per Watt of electricity making it more environmentally friendly. --- David
I have not given up on GPUs. If there are any GPU programmers out there that are interesting in helping out on SETI@home, I would be very interested to hear from them. --- Eric
Q. Indistinct --- Tiare (Chile)
A. We have created a new simple GUI in cooperation with the Community Grid. It will make the BOINC client skinnable. We are also looking at a unified credit system that would allow us to grant credit for donated storage space as well as for donated CPU time. We would like to retain a single credit scoring system. But, benchmarking this is difficult. --- David
Q. What is the projected rollout date for AstroPulse? --- Derek (Guam)
AstroPulse is a long promised set of work units for SETI@home. According to a previous interview there had been a grad. student that was supposed to be working on it, but he found it more interesting to work on other things, so the effort that was put forth never came to fruition.
A. We have a new grad. student working on it. Hopefully it will be in beta next month or so. That would be nice, since he will have some time off of class then. --- Eric
Q. When the BBC did its documentary on Climate Prediction.Net it greatly enhanced the participation in the project. What do you see as the relationship between BOINC and the media? --- Maureen
A. Media coverage helps greatly. But many of those participants did not stick around long, for reasons we've already discussed. --- David
Q. Indistinct question about Sandboxing? --- Ian
A. We are using user-account based sandboxing and we recommend that the application runs as a limited user. We have this setup on the Mac already. It works with a little help on Linux as well. The problem (as usual) is Windows. Although we expect to have a Windows version of sandboxing available in about 2-3 month. --- David
Q. Something about VLA usage? --- Derek (Guam)
A. None currently. Allen(?) telescope is expanding to 45 dishes. [Garbled] needs more dishes, less than 45 does not provide what we need. Originally [garbled] was supposed to have around 200 telescopes, but due to cutbacks this has not happened. --- Eric
Well that's all I have from my notes, and a little memory thrown in.
I'd like to thank Mike and all those that arranged the conference and David and Eric for taking time out to answer our questions.
Monday, December 18, 2006
Visual SourceSafe 2005 on Linux
Getting Visual SourceSafe 2005 working on Linux was a little tricky. It required a lot of experimentation, and I did not keep exact notes. So, this is just a rough outline of how I got it working.
Start by getting the latest version of
Install ies4linux. Only Internet Explorer 6 is required. I used a base directory of
Run
The Microsoft .NET Framework Version 2.0 must also be installed. However, the installation procedure does not appear to work under
So, run
Some of the target directories will exist in
Then, you have to find the files listed for installation into those directories. They will not appear under in the extraction directory with the names shown in the info file. Rather, they will appear with a name like the
Using it as an example, the short name would be
When I did this, at least one file was specified to be copied into two different directories.
Visual SourceSafe requires some fonts that are not normally installed for
Copy the
You might want to copy that command into a script file or create a launcher for it instead of having to type that command every time.
Start by getting the latest version of
wine from git. When you configure it, install any missing dependencies and reconfigure. Then, build and install it.Install ies4linux. Only Internet Explorer 6 is required. I used a base directory of
$HOME/.wine when I ran the installation script:./ies4linux --basedir $HOME/.wineThen, I moved all of the contents of
$HOME/.wine/ie6 into $HOME/.wine and deleted the ie6 subdirectory. If you plan on using the desktop icon, you will need to edit it to match the modified path.Run
winecfg and change the Windows Version setting to Windows 2000.The Microsoft .NET Framework Version 2.0 must also be installed. However, the installation procedure does not appear to work under
wine.So, run
cabextract on the download and then run it on the netfx.msi. This extracts a lot of files with really long names. Look at the file whose name contains _INF_. In my case this was FL_NETFXUSA_INF_92947_____X86.3643236F_FC70_11D3_A536_0090278A1BB8.It contains a list of files and target directories.
Some of the target directories will exist in
.wine/drive_c, others will need to be created.Then, you have to find the files listed for installation into those directories. They will not appear under in the extraction directory with the names shown in the info file. Rather, they will appear with a name like the
FL_NETFXUSA_INF_... file shown above.Using it as an example, the short name would be
netfxusa.inf. Simply copy those files into the appropriate target directory under the shorter name.When I did this, at least one file was specified to be copied into two different directories.
Visual SourceSafe requires some fonts that are not normally installed for
wine. I suspect it really needs Tahoma, I didn't try to narrow it down, I just copied my Windows\Fonts directory from my XP partition into the .wine/drive_c/windows/fonts subdirectory.Copy the
Program Files subdirectory from the VSS installation CD into the wine/drive_c directory. Then, run wine $HOME/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files/Microsoft\ Visual\ SourceSafe/ssexp.exeIf everything goes well, Visual SourceSafe should display with some minor toolbar and menu issues. If you don't see a menu, pass your mouse over where it should be and the top-level items will appear.
You might want to copy that command into a script file or create a launcher for it instead of having to type that command every time.
Thursday, December 14, 2006
BOINC Server Shared Memory Error
When I first installed uppercase as a demo project on a BOINC server, I got the following message in my client messages window:
The first hint came from Nicolas Alvarez:
I had already configured
Message from server: Project encountered internal error: shared memoryLooking at the cgi.log on the server showed:
Can't attach shmem: -146 (feeder not running?)Running
bin/status also showed that BOINC was enabled, the daemons were running and also enabled (disabled=no).The first hint came from Nicolas Alvarez:
Maybe the shared memory block is owned by your user instead of boinc user as well. You should stop and restart server from the correct user.That was my exact problem. Then I got a more elaborate response from Eric Myers:$ ps aux | grep feederSee what user owns the feeder process.
The feeder has to be able to talk to the scheduler via shared memory. There are several ways to do this. I haveWell, that pretty well summed up the problem.chgrp apache bin/feederso that it runs as group
chmod g+s bin/feederapache, and thus can share memory with the scheduler cgi when it's started by apache.
Another way to do this (which I don't like as much, but works) is to make thefeedergroup 'boinc' and add theapacheuser to that group.
Either way, thefeeder(which always runs) needs to share permissions with the scheduler (cgi-bin/cgi- confusing name) so they can share memory.
I had already configured
apache to be a member of my boinc group and just needed to make sure that feeder was also running as the boinc group.
Thursday, December 07, 2006
Running libtool'd Binaries in GDB or DDD
When I started
But, having a rather bizarre gift for languages, I read what of it I could. It turns out that the problem happens when a program is built with
And... Oh, yeah this works for starting
The problem is not specific to the platform, but for the sake of the search engines, this was on CentOS-4, an RHEL4 clone, using gcc 3.4.6 20060404 (Red Hat 3.4.6-3).
gdb or ddd on my program I got a message that said:GNU gdb Red Hat Linux (6.3.0.0-1.132.EL4rh)After trying some different tools and things on my own, I searched Google. It gave me two hits on the entire web with my search phrase. The first was Programování pod Linuxem pro všechny (7), unfortunately that page is in Czech.
Copyright 2004 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
GDB is free software, covered by the GNU General Public License, and you are
welcome to change it and/or distribute copies of it under certain conditions.
Type "show copying" to see the conditions.
There is absolutely no warranty for GDB. Type "show warranty" for details.
This GDB was configured as "i386-redhat-linux-gnu"..."program": not in executable format: File format not recognized
But, having a rather bizarre gift for languages, I read what of it I could. It turns out that the problem happens when a program is built with
libtool. The solution is, instead of runninggdb programrun,
libtool --mode=execute gdb programvery simple, very easy.
And... Oh, yeah this works for starting
ddd with program as well.The problem is not specific to the platform, but for the sake of the search engines, this was on CentOS-4, an RHEL4 clone, using gcc 3.4.6 20060404 (Red Hat 3.4.6-3).
Viewing JPEG2000 Images in Linux
While the installation is not automated, there is a JPEG2000 Linux Browser Plugin. It should work in any Mozilla-based browser running on 32-bit Intel. This would include at least Netscape, Mozilla, SeaMonkey, Firefox and Flock.
I went to the downloads page and picked binary release. From there I selected the npjp2_linux_glibc2.1_jasper_pthread link. This downloads a zip file. When you unpack it, it contains a
Copy
At this point, you should be able to view JP2000 files in the browser. The same site that provides the plugin has a test page. I was also able to use Firefox to view
I went to the downloads page and picked binary release. From there I selected the npjp2_linux_glibc2.1_jasper_pthread link. This downloads a zip file. When you unpack it, it contains a
LICENSE file and a npjp2.so file.Copy
npjp2.so to your ~/.mozilla/plugins directory. Close all tabs and windows in your browser, then restart it.At this point, you should be able to view JP2000 files in the browser. The same site that provides the plugin has a test page. I was also able to use Firefox to view
.JP2 files on my local drive.Friday, December 01, 2006
Correcting delete errors
When I initially created a simple BOINC test server and project, I had the permissions set incorrectly on the
Edit
When I did this the size of the
projects/PROJECT_NAME/upload directory. This resulted in a number of "delete file" errors from file_deleter. This is easily corrected.Edit
config.xml so that the file_deleter line contains the -retry_error switch, for example:file_deleter -d 3 -retry_errorThen a simple:
$ bin/stop && bin/startwill restart the file deleter and it will retry the files that previously generated errors.
When I did this the size of the
upload directory dropped in half.
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