Message boards : Number crunching : CPU Usage down?
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In the past I have noticed that PS3Grid workunits take about 140% CPU (as seen from the TOP command.) Occasionally this drops down to 100% or less but never reaches the typical 140% mark again unless I completely uninstall the entire BOINC program and then reinstall BOINC all over again. | |
ID: 848 | Rating: 0 | rate: / Reply Quote | |
Hi, | |
ID: 849 | Rating: 0 | rate: / Reply Quote | |
Hi, I was thinking the same thing, but this has happened numerous times in the past as well. At some point the CPU usage drops to below 100 and never goes back up again. It usually takes a very drastic move such as a complete reinstall of BOINC. It became so bad with the pen drive that I actually had to reinstall YDL from scratch. Thanks for the reply. Anyone else have any info? | |
ID: 851 | Rating: 0 | rate: / Reply Quote | |
Here is an update: my current PS3GRID WU has been crunching at ~100% CPU for 42 hours now. I have no idea if any work is actually being done or if the CPU is simply spinning in circles. There is something going on here. Does anyone from the project (ie. someone who *should* take this project seriously) know why this has happened? | |
ID: 855 | Rating: 0 | rate: / Reply Quote | |
Another update: | |
ID: 858 | Rating: 0 | rate: / Reply Quote | |
I\'m currently in this state too, I have one WU that is at 1 day 16:12:41 work done and now it won\'t process any further. I tried suspending it, it kicked into the second WU, but that one won\'t process at all either. Not sure what I should do at this point, maybe a reinstall of Boinc? But then I\'ll lose the over 1.5 days of work that\'s been done already... Anyone? In case it matters, I\'m running with an installed version of YDL, not off a USB drive. | |
ID: 859 | Rating: 0 | rate: / Reply Quote | |
Sorry to hear that your problem sounds terminal Timothy. But, it seems like it can be solved in the short term by re-installing the client. But with no new WU\'s, that is not much of a solution. Unfortunately, not every project admin checks their server before going home for the weekend.... | |
ID: 860 | Rating: 0 | rate: / Reply Quote | |
I\'m currently in this state too, I have one WU that is at 1 day 16:12:41 work done and now it won\'t process any further. I tried suspending it, it kicked into the second WU, but that one won\'t process at all either. Not sure what I should do at this point, maybe a reinstall of Boinc? But then I\'ll lose the over 1.5 days of work that\'s been done already... Anyone? In case it matters, I\'m running with an installed version of YDL, not off a USB drive. Unfortunately, I do believe the only answer in this case is to completely reinstall BOINC and then reattach. I have done this 3 times in the past (maybe more?) and will most likely do it again soon. I have had this exact problem with both the USB drive and YDL so I think we are a bit out of luck. We\'re out of work right now anyhow so don\'t do anything until work is flowing again. Instead might I suggest attaching to YoYo@home to see if there WU will work on this build. Best of luck and thank you for posting. Timothy | |
ID: 861 | Rating: 0 | rate: / Reply Quote | |
Sorry to hear that your problem sounds terminal Timothy. But, it seems like it can be solved in the short term by re-installing the client. But with no new WU\'s, that is not much of a solution. Unfortunately, not every project admin checks their server before going home for the weekend.... Thanks for the words of encouragement :) I did process one YoYo@home WU that validated just minutes ago. I can\'t decide if it is this BOINC build or the PS3Grid app that is causing such problems but either way the frustration is mounting. Thanks for the reply, hopefully someone will be listening in soon. Timothy | |
ID: 862 | Rating: 0 | rate: / Reply Quote | |
I\'ve attached to Yoyo, I have a WU that seems to be processing right now. -Dave ____________ | |
ID: 863 | Rating: 0 | rate: / Reply Quote | |
Hey Timothy! | |
ID: 865 | Rating: 0 | rate: / Reply Quote | |
Hey Timothy! Hi Stefan, I\'ve checked my venue for the PS3 and all seems ok and the app does not stay in memory when switched to a YoYo WU. I did grab one WU last night that just started about 10 minutes ago and has CPU around 120% (this is pretty normal) the kicker though, I reinstalled BOINC last night too. I am nearly certain that had I not done so the WU would not be running over 100% CPU right now. I can\'t say whether this is an app issue or a BOINC issue and I agree that BOINC itself does not do the crunching but I do believe BOINC allocates the resources in the first place. If I were a betting man I would simply state that there is an issue with the allocation of CPU cycles after another app (yoyo) has finished a WU. At this point it could be a PS3 Grid problem, a BOINC problem and possibly a YoYo problem as well. I don\'t know but also its not my job to figure it out. At times my PS3 works perfectly but the instant PS3Grid switches to YoYo all hell breaks loose. There is definitely a bug here and it must be fixed. Don\'t get me wrong, I appreciate your advice and take it very seriously but the man who should be looking into this is simply not (and it seems never has nor will he ever). I hope you can understand my frustration. Look at the boards recently, this is happening to many people not just me. This is not simply a local issue, this is system wide, therefore a very serious problem. Timothy | |
ID: 870 | Rating: 0 | rate: / Reply Quote | |
An update on my system. I let it run all night with PS3Grid suspended, it did about 1175 credits of Yoyo, I then un-suspended PS3Grid, it started the over-1 day unit again, but made no process on it for several hours, so I aborted that WU. It then started on the other PS3Grid unit I have in my cache, but it\'s now made no progress on that one for some time, so in a little while, if it\'s still showing no progress, I\'ll be aborting that one, too. -Dave [edit] the second PS3Grid unit is currently showing some progress, so maybe the other unit was just bad? ____________ | |
ID: 871 | Rating: 0 | rate: / Reply Quote | |
Timothy, | |
ID: 872 | Rating: 0 | rate: / Reply Quote | |
Timothy, Thanks for the response Stefan, I appreciate it (and just because you moderate these forums does not mean you cannot voice an opinion, especially an opinion we all pay attention to!). I\'m not too Linux savvy, how does one install the 5.10.17 BOINC Client? I tried last night but was stuck pretty much after downloading it (its not an .exe like windows :) How do I unpack it and where do I install it at? Will I need to uninstall the current BOINC client and if so, how do I do that? Thanks for the help! Timothy | |
ID: 873 | Rating: 0 | rate: / Reply Quote | |
[ Timothy, First do: gunzip boinc51017_11.linux-ppc.tar.gz That should leave you with boinc51017_11.linux-ppc.tar in the directory you downloaded to, then do: tar -xvf boinc51017_11.linux-ppc.tar That should extract all the files, in verbose, so you can see what\'s being extracted. HTH, -Dave [edit] Oh, and if the files that get unpacked aren\'t put where you run Boinc from, you\'ll have to move them there, that\'s why the \"v\" arg, so you can see if they\'re going to the same place... ____________ | |
ID: 875 | Rating: 0 | rate: / Reply Quote | |
[ Thanks Dave. And this is all from the console right? | |
ID: 876 | Rating: 0 | rate: / Reply Quote | |
Hi Tim and Dave! boinc binary for Linux PPC ____________ pixelicious.at - my little photoblog | |
ID: 877 | Rating: 0 | rate: / Reply Quote | |
Hi Tim and Dave! Sorry, I don\'t know if the install works, I just know how to unpack the archive, I haven\'t tried the install myself. Once you do the gunzip and tar commands, you should be able to look at what\'s in the archive and maybe tell what to do based on that? If you do install it, and get it working, maybe post so others know... -Dave ____________ | |
ID: 878 | Rating: 0 | rate: / Reply Quote | |
the second PS3Grid unit is currently showing some progress, so maybe the other unit was just bad? Well, an update on the above unit, it\'s now over deadline, and 40 hours in, so between that and the last one, I\'m now at over 80 hours of wasted electrons... and it\'s still going. I guess I should just abort it at this point. -Dave ____________ | |
ID: 880 | Rating: 0 | rate: / Reply Quote | |
the second PS3Grid unit is currently showing some progress, so maybe the other unit was just bad? Hi Dave, As you know I had this problem as well. I aborted the WU and reinstalled BOINC (after unsuccesfully trying to restart my PS3, detaching, reattaching, etc). I have not heard anything from the \"Official Person in CHARGE\" but it seems that the only way to get your WU to proces correctly is a complete, fresh install of BOINC. I have not tried a new BOINC version yet, I will need to try this probably during this weekend or so. Good luck and continue to post here. This goes for anyone else too. Please be certain to post all problems in the forums. At some point I will probably be asking for others to participate with me in a week long boycott of this project. It seems that those in charge are only interested in CPU cycles not the actual participants and the problems we are having. Perhaps when work done=zero, we can start to get some help around here. (I\'m not scolding the forum mods, Stefan has been doing a great job of course). Take care, Timothy | |
ID: 885 | Rating: 0 | rate: / Reply Quote | |
Interesting to read this thread. I just use the usb stick install and the PS3 churns out results with monotonous regularity. Surely this would indicate that the client is consistently using the same percentage of the CPU i.e. all of it. I do note that my last task took double the usual time (perhaps it\'s one of the new units), but I still got the credit for the hours crunched. If this problem was universal them surely we would be seeing a gradual drop in the RAC? | |
ID: 887 | Rating: 0 | rate: / Reply Quote | |
Interesting to read this thread. I just use the usb stick install and the PS3 churns out results with monotonous regularity. Surely this would indicate that the client is consistently using the same percentage of the CPU i.e. all of it. I do note that my last task took double the usual time (perhaps it\'s one of the new units), but I still got the credit for the hours crunched. If this problem was universal them surely we would be seeing a gradual drop in the RAC? Hi Ian, Are you attached to any other project on your PS3, especially YoYo? All I had were problems when I used the USB stick so I switched to the full YDL Build thinking this would solve my problems, it did not. I have crunched through at least 1 PS3Grid WU since I reinstalled BOINC but I have not done any YoYo WU. There might be something there... Tim | |
ID: 888 | Rating: 0 | rate: / Reply Quote | |
Tim, maybe it is a problem with Yoyo? Have you asked about your problem on their message boards too? | |
ID: 889 | Rating: 0 | rate: / Reply Quote | |
Stefan, | |
ID: 894 | Rating: 0 | rate: / Reply Quote | |
Tim, no I\'m not attached to any other project on the PS3. I did have some problems initially with the USB stick, but these were more to do with PS3 firmware updates getting ahead of the current stick YDL install. I very nearly gave up and installed the full YDL but the stick install was updated just in time. Absolutely no complains here. | |
ID: 895 | Rating: 0 | rate: / Reply Quote | |
Hey Dave! | |
ID: 896 | Rating: 0 | rate: / Reply Quote | |
Hey Dave! Ok, I grabbed the archive from that site, installed it, and I\'m getting a message in the messages area when I run it: localhost.localdomain PS3GRID 2/28/2008 12:07:51 AM Message from server: platform \'powerpc-unknown-linux-gnu\' not found It\'s also generating a new host CPID each time it does this. So is there some way to get the client to report the proper platform? -Dave ____________ | |
ID: 897 | Rating: 0 | rate: / Reply Quote | |
Hey Dave! To override the platform, you need to create a project override.xml file. I havn\'t done this in quite a while and do not remember exact details. The best source for an example I can think of is on the SIMAP site. Look for the section on downloading the manual installs. There might be details in the boinc wiki, but I never looked there. The thread on the SETI@home board about running on the PS3 may have instructons also. | |
ID: 900 | Rating: 0 | rate: / Reply Quote | |
The only thing I\'ve been able to find is a tag in cc_client.xml, but the tag I need to use, <alt_platform> is only supported in version 5.10.26 and up, the one I downloaded from Dotsch is 5.10.17 and it does not seem to work, any other ideas on what I could try? -Dave ____________ | |
ID: 904 | Rating: 0 | rate: / Reply Quote | |
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ID: 914 | Rating: 0 | rate: / Reply Quote | |
Well It has been awhile since I updated this thread. As I wrote earlier there still seems to be issues with CPU Usage/PS3Grid/YoYo@home. I posted a message to the YoYo forums awhile back about the issues I and others have been having and I received a very prompt answer from the \"head guy in charge\" there and the standard response went something like this--there is nothing wrong with this application, what were you thinking even bringing this up, please be quiet now. (I\'m being sarcastic, no really I am) | |
ID: 943 | Rating: 0 | rate: / Reply Quote | |
I am having the same problem without running any yoyo. Just today found an app running for 20 hours with no progress. Quitting/restarting BOINC did nothing. required a reboot to resolve. | |
ID: 944 | Rating: 0 | rate: / Reply Quote | |
After \"updating\" Boinc towards the end of last month (I mean completely uninstalling BOINC and starting from scratch yet again, and FWIW that was the fifth time) things were going good until yesterday. As I write this CPU usage has peaked yet again at 95-100% not the typical 130% GDF claims is the norm for this project. My current WU has run more than 35 hours (also, this is not the \"Broken\" version, the one running currently is the \"fixed\" version) with no end in sight. Again it appears that either the YoYo app or the PS3GRID app is not working correctly. My Ps3 is not being utilized as it should be and that is a problem. I bought my PS3 solely to run PS3Grid and it ran quite happily, initially on ydl and lately on fedora7. When PS3Grid had some downtime 2-3 weeks ago I attached to Yoyo and then switched back to PS3Grid as soon as they came back up. After restarting ps3grid I noticed the same as you ie cpu usage down around 80-100% rather than the ~130% it used to run. What I found was that the last yoyo WU was still running in the background even though I had suspended the project. Dettaching from yoyo didn\'t help and I had to reboot & re-install boinc to sort the problem out but since then I\'ve had no problems. I will not be attaching to yoyo again | |
ID: 945 | Rating: 0 | rate: / Reply Quote | |
Thank You for writing this, this is exactly what I noticed this morning. Unfortunately, neither the project lead here at PS3GRID or the project lead at YoYo takes these claims seriously. I cannot tell which app (or even if the BOINC Manager) is broken but one of them is. This is one of the reasons why the current set of WU are taking so many hours, a portion of the CPU (SPE?) is not being utilized fully by one project or the other. Whatever mechanism that controls the release of SPE when not needed (such as switching from one project to the other) is BROKEN. Please GDF, I am begging you, attach to YoYO and let the WU run for awhile but make certain that PS3GRID interrupts the YoYo WU before it finishes and watch the behavior of the PS3GRID WU, I bet you a nickel you\'ll never see 130% again. | |
ID: 947 | Rating: 0 | rate: / Reply Quote | |
My latest WU has run for 65 hours. I tried to restart BOINC, then restart my PS3 but none of these worked. Tomorrow I will again uninstall BOINC and then reinstall......again.......and again.......and again. I really cannot wait for a PS3 BOINC application that works. I\'m out of here the instant a new app becomes available. I hope as many people leave this project as possible, perhaps our voices will finally be heard when GDF notices that no one crunches here anymore. | |
ID: 950 | Rating: 0 | rate: / Reply Quote | |
My latest WU has run for 65 hours. I tried to restart BOINC, then restart my PS3 but none of these worked. Tomorrow I will again uninstall BOINC and then reinstall......again.......and again.......and again. I really cannot wait for a PS3 BOINC application that works. I\'m out of here the instant a new app becomes available. I hope as many people leave this project as possible, perhaps our voices will finally be heard when GDF notices that no one crunches here anymore. Well Tim, I don\'t know what to say.... but this problem has been around for quite a while and seems only to occur if you run Yoyo and PS3 grid together. We just run one project at a time and all seems OK. That seems to be the easiest non-violent solution. Most BOINC projects have their teething problems that require some initial workaround until the Devs have time or the knowledge to find a solution. Maybe there will be no solution here. Maybe the PS3 will never be able to run more than one BOINC project at a time. Possibly the non-BOINC project Folding@Home would make you happier?? However, we think this project has great potential and won\'t be leaving anytime soon. | |
ID: 951 | Rating: 0 | rate: / Reply Quote | |
My latest WU has run for 65 hours. I tried to restart BOINC, then restart my PS3 but none of these worked. Tomorrow I will again uninstall BOINC and then reinstall......again.......and again.......and again. I really cannot wait for a PS3 BOINC application that works. I\'m out of here the instant a new app becomes available. I hope as many people leave this project as possible, perhaps our voices will finally be heard when GDF notices that no one crunches here anymore. I agree, this is a project with great potential but I think we need to understand that PS3GRID operates as a part of the BOINC environment. I am pretty sure BOINC was designed so that participants could run more than one project at a time due to the eventuality of a server going down, or having a bad app or any of the hundreds other things that can go wrong. We all know this project has had several of these problems (as all BOINC projects do) and I would like to be able to be certain that my PS3 DOES NOT sit idle, hence the BOINC application. If PS3Grid wants to run in this environment they really need to start playing by BOINC rules, ie share the wealth. The bottom line is, I run apps designed to run on the BOINC platform. There is something to be said there, a history of fairness, of proper discussion and of results, getting things done. I\'m not going to sit here and stroke the backs of the \"powers that be\" and tell them that everything is going to be OK like I would for a little child. Those same powers that be chose to make a statement when taking on the challenge of running BOINC on the PS3 but without being eyewitness to their own folly they are hurting the nature of BOINC. By ignoring the problems that exist here they are harming the participants in this project and that is as anti-BOINC as anyone can get. (perhaps this isn\'t even a PS3GRID problem? We will never know as long as the PS3GRID does not take on the responsibility of looking into it) Those of you who believe the fix to this problem is to \"just run one project at a time\" perhaps you need to go to folding@home. I run BOINC, I\'m proud to run BOINC and I support the nature of BOINC. If PS3GRID wants to run BOINC they need to get with the program, literally. | |
ID: 952 | Rating: 0 | rate: / Reply Quote | |
Since you\'ve quoted me directly I guess I should respond. If you read what I said very carefully I believe I implied that this was a workaround until a solution is found. Problems occur at most BOINC projects at some point in my experience. I believe you inferred that I was suggesting that it be a permanent solution. Not so. Your passionate support of BOINC has merit but let\'s give the Devs here some time to address this problem if they can.....Cheers, Rog. | |
ID: 953 | Rating: 0 | rate: / Reply Quote | |
My latest WU has run for 65 hours. I tried to restart BOINC, then restart my PS3 but none of these worked. Tomorrow I will again uninstall BOINC and then reinstall......again.......and again.......and again. I really cannot wait for a PS3 BOINC application that works. I\'m out of here the instant a new app becomes available. I hope as many people leave this project as possible, perhaps our voices will finally be heard when GDF notices that no one crunches here anymore. This problem occurs only with ps3grid and Yoyo because they are the only projects running on ps3 and the cell processor works differently than a standard processor. We have been saying this many many times in this forum. The spes are not sharable, CPUs are. Furthermore, the boinc client is unable to check how many spes are used at any given time. If two applications run at the same time, only the first one will start, the other one will hang. The solution of this is not in our hands, but boinc people are looking into it. As you see the ps3grid client is open to all other projects given than yoyo is using it. There are just few projects because it is difficult to produce efficient applications using cell. We can see if we can change the default behavior allocating SPES, i.e. the one from the IBM dev kit to simply abort if there are no SPEs available. It will not remove the problem, but at least you know that you are not running because there is some dead process locking the spes. We can check if this works better. GDF | |
ID: 959 | Rating: 0 | rate: / Reply Quote | |
Message boards : Number crunching : CPU Usage down?