BOINC Installation is kicking my A$$

[joeschmuck]

So I'm using FreeBSD 9.3 and trying to install BOINC and SetiAtHome into a normal jail. What a pain in the but this is being. I guess this is where it pay to have some BSD/Linux knowledge.

I first thought I'd update all the packages and then the pkg (8) needed to be updated, so I did that. Then I ran into issues loading the linux.ko so now I don't update all the packages and just roll with what the jail originally provides. Then I run into patching orc which fails because it's the wrong version. Next I try something I didn't think would exist, pkg_add -r boinc-client and that "seems" to install everything until you try to get it to run.

I thought it would be a good idea to move off my SetiAtHome and other programs I run on my main computer since the FreeNAS machine is running anyway.

What I didn't want to do was put this into a Virtualbox jail but I may be forced to. I'm not giving up yet.

I have found very little in the way of instructions for this situation. If I ever figure it out, there will be some good instructions.

Sorry, just blowing off some steam. It sucks running into these types of road blocks when you don't have as much time to devote to them as you would like.

Cheers!

 

[cyberjock]

I am definitely interested in getting this to work. :P

Maybe we can tagteam this.

 

[depasseg]

Team FreeNAS! Sign me up.

 

[DaNilePharaoh]

I have found very little in the way of instructions for this situation. If I ever figure it out, there will be some good instructions.
It sucks running into these types of road blocks when you don't have as much time to devote to them as you would like.

same here, i miss my MDD project, can't wait to get back to it... but due to recent work loads, i hardly get my daily dose of sleep.
I'm sure you will figure it out :) though i need to read more about BOINC and SetiAtHome, it sounds interesting. good luck.

 

[joeschmuck]

I think I'm going to try to see if I can use FreeBSD 9 in my VM to see if I can make it work, maybe there is a jail issue keeping things from working. I'd like to rule that out before I have to use Virtualbox and use a completely different OS. It's not like I have any loyalty to FreeBSD, but I am trying to learn more about it and this is a great way of doing it, well until you run up against too many walls that is. I am moving at a snails pace because I can't spend much time on the project but whenever I come up with, I'll share it.

@DaNilePharaoh BOINC is a client which manages one or many different number crunching projects. Seti@Home is the original project and has been around long before BOINC. There are many different projects such as CERN, Cryptography, Astrophysics, Biology, Mathematics, etc... I give 20% of my main computers CPU time to Seti@Home, Milkyway, and World Community Grid.

But the skeptic in me sometimes wonders if the number crunching it for bad things like brute force hacks, I can only hope it is all for good. All of these projects are using distributive processing where we all get a very small sliver of a calculation to perform and as an entire group, we make up the largest super computer in the world.

 

[DaNilePharaoh]

But the skeptic in me sometimes wonders if the number crunching it for bad things like brute force hacks, I can only hope it is all for good. All of these projects are using distributive processing where we all get a very small sliver of a calculation to perform and as an entire group, we make up the largest super computer in the world.

lets hope its for the best,
I read the intro. but if you want my opinion, I usually don't trust such projects, the world is full of crazy scientists my friend
I salute your sense of responsibility and giving personality
Good luck :)

 

[cyberjock]

I looked into this a little more. According to this page you need to have some linux emulation stuff. Is that stuff required to be installed on the FreeNAS base image to work? I think so. If so, this might be a dealbreaker for boinc on the FreeNAS.

 

[joeschmuck]

The link you referenced, I've been there a lot but it's very old too.

Yes, FreeBSD is a piece of crap for any application which wasn't designed for it. So I'm attempting Virtualbox using Ubuntu right now but I was also thinking about ARCH just to see if a minimal distribution would work. I'm not too happy with the Virtualbox jail, the display is fixed at 640x480 and I've been unable to change it, but in fairness, I haven't looked very hard at the issue either. I've noticed Ubuntu runs pretty slow inside this jail which concerns me as well and if that is the speed I will get from a Virtualbox jail then I'm certainly doomed using it and I'll have to jump back to a FreeBSD jail. I will have no time to spend on it today, the wife is having a birthday today so it's time to make it her day.

 

[cyberjock]

Virtualbox isn't going to give great performance for crunching. Virtualizing hasn't been all it's cracked up to be when I used it for BOINC stuff in the past. :(

 

[joeschmuck]

Damn, back to FreeBSD then. The performance is terrible using Virtualbox but I knew this before starting which is why I was trying a FreeBSD jail. The downside if the FreeBSD jail isn't a full install of the flavor the jail is created from. When you start updating things, well parts start to fall apart. More work to do I guess on my part. Once I figure it out, I'll post something.

 

[joeschmuck]

UPDATE:
So I was able to install and run BOINC in a FreeBSD jail however Seti@Home does not support FreeBSD. Here is the message I got "This project doesn't support computers of type x86_64-pc-freebsd". That could be the nail in the coffin for me. I'll keep looking into this, I think I have one more option to try.

UPDATE II:
It's a bust I think. There are too many limitations with respect to the jail. If I had a full blow FreeBSD 10 Jail, maybe I could get it to work. I still have some other ideas but they are not realistic so I think this is a bust, unless I can create a plugin that works. First I'm going to work on a real FreeBSD 9.3 installation, see if I can make it work. I've never created a plugin before so I don't know what the limitations will be. Too bad I couldn't just get the thing to run.

 

[joeschmuck]

We have liftoff!

So I have been able to make some good progress. I need to ensure I can control it properly and add/remove projects but I do have it working. So far the BOINC application is running at 20% CPU usage as my preferences dictate in my BOINC webpage. I have increased it to 50% and the next time the application connects it will hopefully start using 50%. I have also established a 1 hour no use period to see if that works. After that I will have to test out the feature where if over 25% CPU is used that the application suspends, the problem is how do I test that out, what application can I use in FreeNAS which will suck CPU power down like crazy. BTW, running 'top' will show the instances of the work units in operation.

I ended up having to create an Ubuntu jail template with BOINC already installed and configured. Now I want to recreate the jail template but without boinc and see if I can install it from within the jail.

Lastly is to make the jail as small as possible which right now is not as small as I was hoping for but we will see.

I may have all this worked out by the end of this week.

 

[cyberjock]

An ubuntu jail template? How is that gonna work now that linux jails are dead? I'm sure you have an answer, but it seems to elude me. It is 5am though.. /shrug

 

[joeschmuck]

I created my own jail template and it's actually working fine. I just increased to BOINC projects to 50% CPU use to expedite some results getting turned in to the projects and to ensure they verify. If that works then I think I'm almost golden.

I tried to get a VNC viewer working but that was a failure once I ported it over to the jail.

What do you mean by linux jails are dead? Are you saying iXsystems will no longer build them (what I suspect) or that they will actually no longer be supported? I ask because when you add a template, it asks you if it's a FreeBSD or Linux jail, and it also asks if it 64 or 32 bit. All linux jails must be 32 bit as far as I know.

I will be building another Ubuntu 14.04-x86 jail shortly, hopefully a minimal sized one and giving it a shot to see if it work just as a jail.

One issue I've been having is with me loading and deleting so many templates and jails during my testing, I have to reboot my machine periodically to clean up some lingering hooks I believe.

Below are the only error messages I get when I run the linux jail. I need to look into this more to see what they impact. Keep in mind I'm not a Linux/BSD guy but I have no fear learning it.

Code:

Dec 22 16:16:31 freenas linux: pid 4082 (touch): syscall utimensat not implemented
Dec 22 16:16:31 freenas linux: pid 4089 (sort): syscall prlimit64 not implemented
Dec 22 16:16:41 freenas linux: pid 4120 (ionice): syscall ioprio_set not implemented
Dec 22 16:16:41 freenas linux: pid 4131 (kerneloops): syscall eventfd2 not implemented
Dec 22 16:16:41 freenas linux: pid 4162 (bash): syscall prlimit64 not implemented
Dec 22 16:16:42 freenas linux: pid 4116 (boinc): syscall dup3 not implemented
Dec 22 16:16:42 freenas linux: pid 4175 (boinc): syscall dup3 not implemented
Dec 22 16:16:51 freenas linux: pid 4131 (kerneloops): syscall syslog not implemented

 

[cyberjock]

linux jails aren't included at all. If you have a linux template I believe you can still make them, but if you didn't have one you are SOL. In my 9.3 installs I can't add the linux jail at all. It's not even an option. Are you running 9.3 on that box?

 

[joeschmuck]

Yes, it's the current 9.3-Stable and it was a clean install, not an upgrade. You must be overlooking something. Go to Jails -> Templates -> Add Jail Templates. You will see the OS dropdown lists FreeBSD and Linux.

So I'm running into some issues with the jail meaning anytime I use the Ubuntu Server iso, I cannot access the jail at all and I don't think it's running, maybe it failed. With Ubuntu Desktop iso I can make it run BOINC however I need to install and setup BOINC prior to creating the template because if I use a virgin template (just Ubuntu Desktop with no user installed applications) I am unable to properly install BOINC and control it.

Another possible problem is my currently working template might not be switching projects every 2 hours. I joined two projects, SetiAtHome and World Community Grid (WCG). So far I only have results posted for WCG and those posts were all validated.

I've even tried the Debain kfreebsd iso and that failed as well. There is something going on that I'm overlooking. Maybe the issue is me creating the template in VMWare Workstation so I'm going to give it a shot using my test rig.

I think something I need to figure out is are there any special requirements in building a jail such as forcing certain drivers to be included. I haven't found anything saying that but I'm definitely missing something.

 

[joeschmuck]

I can say one thing... The FreeNAS OS is too limited. It would be nice to see a full featured FreeBSD as the base and then maybe the jails would work better. Guess I'm looking into plugins now, maybe I can build one of those to work this issue out.

To date I have tried many Linux OS's and FreeBSD. I can install and get these to work on my VMWare machine but trying to make a jail that works too or even just using Virtualbox, these do not work so well. I can get one to work partially but you are locked into a single project, no task switching works. This is with Ubuntu Desktop 14.04, and built as a jail, not Virtualbox.

 

[joeschmuck]

Well this should be my final posting in this thread. The next time I post will hopefully be to write a How-To-Guide so a person can run a single BOINC project in a FreeNAS 9.3 jail.

I have been able to do a workaround in order to make it work and it does work fine. The BOINC projects are low on the priority list and "should" stop all together if I can ever get my CPU to hit above 25% usage (non-BOINC). I'll be working on that one too in the future.

I have found too many ways to fail and only one somewhat good way to do this but it's not perfect by any means. Right now I'm running both SetiAtHome and World Community Grid on my actual FreeNAS machine. Now I need to start checking my CPU temps and how much extra power the computer pulls and to ensure the settings on the websites actually change the usage of the projects.

So in general I was not able to get a jail or plugin (I'll try to work more on that over time) to work properly and it still doesn't. The idea is to create an Ubuntu Desktop VM (32 bit) and set it up for BOINC and attach your project. Then you create a jail from that and you can then use it for the one project you want to run. I have not been able to get it to switch tasks nor able to make any changes via the CLI (very disapointing).

 

[ChrisFor]

Hey joeschmuck,

I got it WorldCommunityGrid/Boinc running in a standard jail under latest 9.3. without too much hassle. I hope I find the time soon to put it all in step by step tutorial.

 

[joeschmuck]

How well the the application run? I have not attempted to setup Boinc again since I know when FreeNAS 10 comes out, a proper setup can be done but maybe you have cracked the case and figured it out.

I look forward to your tutorial, please be very clear so that even an idiot like myself can follow the steps.