Two new BOINC projects

[Daniel]

Two new BOINC projects have appeared recently that members here might be interested in ...

Physiome@home
http://physiome.lf1.cuni.cz/ident3/physiome/
Physiome@home is a research project that uses Internet-connected computers to do research in human physiology.

Van Der Waerden Numbers
http://www.vdwnumbers.org/vdwnumbers/
Van Der Waerden Numbers is a research project that uses Internet-connected computers to find better lower bounds for these numbers.

I haven't joined them yet.

[Dingo]

Two new BOINC projects have appeared recently that members here might be interested in ...

Physiome@home
http://physiome.lf1.cuni.cz/ident3/physiome/
Physiome@home is a research project that uses Internet-connected computers to do research in human physiology.

Van Der Waerden Numbers
http://www.vdwnumbers.org/vdwnumbers/
Van Der Waerden Numbers is a research project that uses Internet-connected computers to find better lower bounds for these numbers.

I haven't joined them yet.

I have created the Team on both these projects but will need to look into them more before putting them on the forum.  Thanks Daniel for finding them. 

[Daniel]

I signed up for both projects today and joined our team.
Unfortunately I didn't have any success with either of them.
Physiome@home didn't have any workunits and all the workunits I got from "Van Der Waerden Numbers" ended with computation errors.
I'll have to be patient, and wait a bit longer.

[Daniel]

My "Van Der Waerden Numbers" workunits are completing successfully now and I'm starting to accumulate some credit.
I see that kashi has joined up too.

Still no work at Physiome@home.

[Dingo]

I started using "Van Der Waerden Numbers" as well and it seems to be working fine on Windows.  All my tasks aborted on Linux because I did not have a new version of GLIBC.  I put in a ticket as the Debian 7 version I am using is up to date.

[kashi]

Van Der Waerden Numbers was working fine for me on Windows Version 280.00, except for a few tasks so far that were unable to validate due to too many errors of the iterations sent out.

Application was changed to Version 290.00 sometime in the last day and now uses too much memory for my computer. Didn't check computer all day because of cold/flu which meant I've been mostly in bed. Late tonight noticed constant hard disk red light, turned on the screen and everything was incredibly sluggish, hard disk thrashing was tasks hitting the page file as they were using over 600MB of memory each. A few tasks were just sitting there chewing up memory and thrashing the page file but not using any CPU, some others were progressing much slower than before with Version 280.00.

Version 280.00 used about 50% less memory on my computer so did not cause this trouble. Have limited it to 3 concurrent tasks and will do some Universe as well. Very slow progress that way but at least it's something. If it still mucks up will have to give it a miss and maybe go for my next Outsmart Ebola Together badge or some more POGS if available.

[stevenm]

I've just started running the vdwnumbers project and am having the same problem mentioned here with memory use.  The current version is using 1GB per job, which is killing my machine.  I can limit the number of CPUs used by BOINC but that means I can't run other projects either.  I was interested in Kashi's comment that he limited the number of concurrent vdwnumbers jobs running.  I have to confess that whilst I have been running BOINC projects for several years, I have avoided getting into the fine-tuning/tweaking that I'm sure some others do with finesse.  How can I limit the number of concurrent jobs for a specific project, so allowing me to keep using my CPU's to their full potential.  Thanks in anticipation.

[kashi]

Just saw this, so couldn't reply earlier.

Stop BOINC. For Windows, copy the following into Notepad:

<app_config>
<app>
<name>example_app</name>
<max_concurrent>2</max_concurrent>
</app>
</app_config>

Save it as app_config.xml and place it in C:\ProgramData\BOINC\projects\www.vdwnumbers.org folder.

Save as type All Files (*) not as a text file. That is, shouldn't have .txt extension but only .xml extension.

Restart BOINC Manager and click Options> Read config files.

Example config file above should limit it to running 2 tasks. If you want to run a different number of tasks then change <max_concurrent> value, save it and then click Options >Read config files again. Think you can do this without stopping and starting BOINC, can't remember for sure.

If you're running Linux, should be similar procedure except simple text editor you use is different and BOINC projects folder is in a different place.

And yes, the name of the application really is example_app.

Good luck, it really is a bit of a memory hog that project. My old computer only has 4GB of ram, so could only run a few tasks.

New one has 16GB, it really makes thing a lot easier for BOINC and also leaves sufficient ram to run a Linux or OSX VM if a certain project runs faster on a different OS. Dual boot would be more efficient but need Windows as main OS for GPU crunching.

[stevenm]

Thanks kashi