Posts by nsoveiko

1) Message boards : Problems : platform not found (Message 8912)
Posted 1737 days ago by nsoveiko

Just tried to help ABC. Loaded bionic from Debian Etch (Linux) dvd, for 64bit Intel x86 platform. But cannot seem to get work units, only the message that the server cannot find my platform. Help.

had the same problem. boinc client from etch repos is too old for abc@home. use debian backports (http://www.backports.org/) to install a newer version.

2) Message boards : Problems : Message from server: platform '' not found (Message 7827)
Posted 1946 days ago by nsoveiko

for the abc@home project manager(s):
if you are interested in attracting cpu time from linux servers, you have to make sure that:
1) your project works out of the box on boinc cluents included in major server distros (the ones with long term support). this means rhel and it's clones (centos, white box, etc), novell/suse, debian stable and ubuntu LTS.

I think they're interested in attracting cpu time from people who have a working BOINC installation. For those who don't there are the BOINC forums, forums for their distro, etc.

ok, let me explain you. suppose you're a sysadmin. you have a number of servers that have plenty of spare cpu cycles (to put things into perspective, each of them can do several thousand "credits" worth of work per day, just look at the top hosts list). all of these servers are sitting either in the server room with limited access or at datacenter(s) half way around the globe. most of them are running 64 bit. all of them are there to perform other important jobs, not to run boinc.

you know nothing about boinc or abc. you've read in mainstream computer press that there's a way to donate your spare cpu cycles to science and there's one this project in particular that is trying to solve an important mathematical problem and it greatly benefits from 64 bit processing. you check repos for your distro and bingo -- that boinc thingy is there. you go to your boss and surprise -- he's open minded enough to ok it as long as it doesn't compromise security or disturb operation of the servers.

now, you issue

aptitude install boinc-client

and it went fine. you go to http://abcathome.com/ and read 'When prompted, enter http://abcathome.com/'. nothing was prompted. you google for 'debian boinc how-to' and get http://wiki.debian.org/BOINC/Troubleshooting, follow it and get where i've started this thread.

and yeah, keep in mind that you can't post to this forum without creating an account first and there're no way of creating an account online.

that's not how it should be.

3) (link to) instructions on how to jump start the project using command line client clearly posted on the the front page.

Front page clutter issue there.

see above. one link won't create any clutter and without this link you're in catch 22.

4) open source abc app for security audit.

You've obviously never done much research or administered a BOINC project ;)

research is what i do for living. and the only reason for not opening source i can imagine is that they've incorporated some proprietary code to save time.

3) Message boards : Problems : Message from server: platform '' not found (Message 7825)
Posted 1946 days ago by nsoveiko

you found the answer and in fact found the same on a German website proposing to try a newer distro. http://www.boinc-team.de/portal/showtopic.php?threadid=1277

sorry, i don't speak german. and trying another distro is not an option.

4) Message boards : Problems : Message from server: platform '' not found (Message 7814)
Posted 1947 days ago by nsoveiko

The stock boinc executable generates all the xml and various files it uses in the same directory it resides in. It looks like your boinc executable has been altered to keep certain file types in certain directories to make it "easier" to organize and find things.

it is customary to keep all system wide config files in /etc/. this has many good reasons. boinc keeps it's configs in ./, that's why debian attempted to correct it by moving (what they thought) config files to /etc/boinc-client/ and placing symlinks in /var/lib/boinc-client/.

Looks like they generated 2 client_state.xml in 2 different places. The one has the platform name written in it but the other doesn't. I bet when it's time to build the scheduler_request they read the platform name from the client_state.xml that does NOT have the platform name written.

I'm no Linux expert and my choice is Fedora rather than Debian but... I bet if you edit /var/lib/binc-client/client_state.xml and put the platform name in there it will all work properly. On the other hand there may be other bugs. Still it's worth a try.

doesn't work. it appears that when boinc is (re)started it unlink()'s /var/lib/binc-client/client_state.xml and generates it from scratch.

If that doesn't work then uninstall the package and download the standard package from Berkeley.

server administration handbook, page 1, paragraph 1: thou shall not install random packages found somewhere on the internet on thy server ;^)

There's no installer, you just extract the files from the archive, put them in whatever directory you like. You can fire it up manually just by clicking the manager icon which starts the client if it's not already running. There are other easy options for a manual start, none of which are terribly inconvenient on a machine that runs 24/7. Or you can install it as a service though the docs I've read for that are not the best.

you have obviously never administered a remote server ;). there's no X, no gui, no icons to click. at best, there's some kind of web interface.

i think i'll pass. the whole idea was to donate some spare cpu cycles to the advancement of science with minimum fuss. it's bad enough that abc@home is using a closed source binary, which is doing god-knows-what. i'm not gonna risk putting it on a production server.

Well, never gamble what you can't afford to lose but you seemed to think it was a good idea at one time. If it's just the problems and frustration you've encountered so far then give it another think and keep asking questions... plenty of noobs with less Linux experience than you have made it work with not too much trouble and you can too. Plenty of help available here, just ask.

i thought it might be a good idea because (a) there are servers with plenty of spare cpu cycles and they are all running 64bit linux; (b) abc@home greatly benefits from 64bit platforms, and (c) on gentoo it just works(tm). ok, i had to email abc people asking how to register an account using command line, but their reply was quick and very helpful.

on debian, what should have been a 5-minute job, became several hours. and i don't think debian is to be blamed, rather boinc and abc developers.

for anyone interested, the problem was resolved after upgrading boinc-client to 5.4.11-4 from debian backports <http://www.backports.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=instructions>.

for the abc@home project manager(s):
if you are interested in attracting cpu time from linux servers, you have to make sure that:
1) your project works out of the box on boinc cluents included in major server distros (the ones with long term support). this means rhel and it's clones (centos, white box, etc), novell/suse, debian stable and ubuntu LTS.
2) minimum system requirements, including version of boinc client supported, are clearly posted on the front page.
3) (link to) instructions on how to jump start the project using command line client clearly posted on the the front page.
4) open source abc app for security audit.

5) Message boards : Problems : Message from server: platform '' not found (Message 7808)
Posted 1947 days ago by nsoveiko

Having the correct platform_name in client_state.xml is just the first step.

actually it sounds like boinc/debian bug, both or either. i'm not sure as i'm no expert in boinc and it's rather poorly documented.

it appears that the client actually ignores /etc/boinc-client/client_state.xml. on (re)start, it generates /var/lib/binc-client/client_state.xml and in that one <platform_name></platform_name> is empty. even tried

ln -s /etc/boinc-client/client_state.xml /var/lib/binc-client/

to no avail. it removes the symlink and generates wrong again.

i think i'll pass. the whole idea was to donate some spare cpu cycles to the advancement of science with minimum fuss. it's bad enough that abc@home is using a closed source binary, which is doing god-knows-what. i'm not gonna risk putting it on a production server.

6) Message boards : Problems : Message from server: platform '' not found (Message 7800)
Posted 1948 days ago by nsoveiko

client installed straight from debian repos.
/etc/boinc-client/client_state.xml says:

<platform_name>x86_64-pc-linux-gnu</platform_name>

what else could it need? i've searched for this error on both boinc wiki and forums, to no avail.

7) Message boards : Problems : Message from server: platform '' not found (Message 7783)
Posted 1949 days ago by nsoveiko

using command line client on Debian Etch amd64 (remote server):

16:15 0 rapture /etc/boinc-client # boinc_cmd --project http://abcathome.com/ update
16:19 1 rapture /etc/boinc-client # boinc_cmd --get_messages 0
[...]
ABC@home 1 1201101515 Sending scheduler request to http://abcathome.com/abc_cgi/cgi

ABC@home 1 1201101515 Reason: Requested by user

ABC@home 1 1201101515 Requesting 8640 seconds of new work

ABC@home 1 1201101521 Scheduler request succeeded

ABC@home 1 1201101521 Message from server: platform '' not found

16:19 0 rapture /etc/boinc-client # uname -a
Linux rapture 2.6.18-5-amd64 #1 SMP Sat Dec 22 20:43:59 UTC 2007 x86_64 GNU/Linux

what gives?