Posts by Eric Driver

1) Message boards : Number crunching : Gerasim is not working (Message 4289) Posted 20 days ago by Eric Driver Post: Please contact Yoyo from the Yoyo@home project to shift the processing from Gerasim to Yoyo@home as a new subproject. Gerasim simply is not reliable at all. Michael. P.S.: For the second time, I lost massive credits - in fact, the entire output from 2026 is gone (not just a month or so...). It was about 4 million credits, which is half of my total output for that project so far. Most importantly, however, is the fact that all the results are gone. That is useless CO2 production to foster climate change at its best... I was downloading the results every week or two, so not much was lost. It was the crunchers who lost a ton of credit. Good to know about yoyo. I will give Gerasim a little more time - they are currently trying to find the root cause of the database crashes and are implementing more frequent backups.
2) Message boards : Number crunching : Gerasim is not working (Message 4285) Posted 20 days ago by Eric Driver Post: And there was yet another db crash. This time the backup was only a few days old. This explains the point difference on April 27th. This is extremely UNPROFESSIONAL and us crunchers have the right to be extremely upset about the lack of proper backup protocols. Have you tried complaining on the Gerasim boards? I have no control over their backup protocalls, I just upload work and download results.
3) Message boards : Number crunching : Gerasim is not working (Message 4283) Posted 21 days ago by Eric Driver Post: Why do I loose points in the last time? On april the 17th to the 18th and 26th to 27th. Two posts before yours, Eric explained why. And there was yet another db crash. This time the backup was only a few days old. This explains the point difference on April 27th.
4) Message boards : Number crunching : Request for Native Windows ARM64 support - Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme (Message 4280) Posted 25 days ago by Eric Driver Post: Here's my 2 cents worth... I built all the project executables by cross compiling using the gnu C++ compiler. It required me to put some pre-processor directives in the code and tweak the makefile, but after that I pretty much build with a single make file. For anyone who is good with linux and prefers its build environment, this is the way to go. Getting updated libraries for PARI and BOINC will probably be a pain in the butt. This is the output of Google Gemini; It looks promising but take it with a grain of salt: Yes, you can cross-compile for Windows ARM64 on Linux, but it is not yet as straightforward as targeting standard x86_64 Windows. While the traditional GNU GCC toolchain for Windows ARM64 is still in active development, there are reliable ways to achieve this using specific toolchains. 1. The Recommended Approach: LLVM-MinGW Because official GCC support for Windows on ARM is still being upstreamed, the most mature and widely used toolchain for this specific task is llvm-mingw. It uses Clang as the compiler but provides a MinGW-w64 environment, allowing you to use standard C++ and link against Windows libraries. Why use it: It supports all four modern Windows architectures (i686, x86_64, armv7, and aarch64) with a single toolchain. Availability: You can download prebuilt binaries for Linux from the llvm-mingw releases page. Usage: After extracting the toolchain, you can compile for ARM64 using: ./bin/aarch64-w64-mingw32-clang++ main.cpp -o app.exe
5) Message boards : Number crunching : Gerasim is not working (Message 4276) Posted 26 days ago by Eric Driver Post: From my understanding of the situation, the restored database was over a month old. Any points received after the date of that backup will be lost. I was told a backup mechanism was in place but had been disabled. It is now re-enabled. I was also told backups would be weekly, but I am trying to get them to change it to daily or every other day, so not as many results/credits are lost if the database crashes again.
6) Message boards : Number crunching : Gerasim is not working (Message 4268) Posted 19 Apr 2026 by Eric Driver Post: I heard that the database crashed again and the newest backup was over a month old. But I will let Demis or SerVal explain the situation.
7) Message boards : News : Batch plan (Message 4265) Posted 7 Apr 2026 by Eric Driver Post: I think I saw a small uptick of sf7 DS16x12 recently for a month or two. Curious if that was temporarily some Gerasim happening or if some work units was released in through numberfields I update that every week or two based on the work completed at Gerasim. In case you were unaware, Gerasim is up and running again.
8) Message boards : Number crunching : why later deadline executed first? (Message 4259) Posted 5 Mar 2026 by Eric Driver Post: Too late to edit things, but the initial deadline is 7 days (not 6 as i kept posting for some odd reason). Technically speaking, the deadline is 6 days, but there is a 1 day grace period before the WU gets resent to someone else. So you have 7 days, but if you don't start it within 6 days the manager usually aborts it. Pretty sure the only non-user cancellation is by server. BOINC Manager AFAIK will not cancel them (by default - there might an option for this). I guess it's possible the server could be telling the client to abort unstarted work units that are past their deadline. But according to Google Gemini: Yes, the BOINC Manager can and does automatically abort work units that it determines cannot be finished before their deadline, particularly if they are significantly past due or stalled.
9) Message boards : Number crunching : why later deadline executed first? (Message 4257) Posted 4 Mar 2026 by Eric Driver Post: Too late to edit things, but the initial deadline is 7 days (not 6 as i kept posting for some odd reason). Technically speaking, the deadline is 6 days, but there is a 1 day grace period before the WU gets resent to someone else. So you have 7 days, but if you don't start it within 6 days the manager usually aborts it.
10) Message boards : Number crunching : why later deadline executed first? (Message 4249) Posted 3 Mar 2026 by Eric Driver Post: At the moment on my system, 5 workers are executing tasks with Wednesday (Feb 4 2026) deadlines. Then there are 6 Wednesday tasks that have yet to start, then 10 Thursday tasks yet to start, followed by no Friday tasks yet to start. Then there are 15 running tasks with Saturday deadline, followed by several Saturday tasks yet to start, then several Sunday tasks yet to start. I do not understand why the Saturday tasks have started when there are unstarted Wednesday and Thursday tasks? I do notice that the executing and unstarted Wednesday and Thursday tasks have names ending in _1 whereas the started Saturday tasks have names ending in _0 I have noticed this behavior for many years and I believe it's a feature of the BOINC manager. The manager executes tasks based on when the manager receives the tasks and not the actual deadline. However, it will start running the tasks with the earlier deadlines when it gets close to the deadline - I have literally seen the manager suspend all tasks that were currently running in order to run the tasks ending in _1.
11) Message boards : Number crunching : NumberFields@home \| Project requested delay of 31 seconds (Message 4245) Posted 20 Feb 2026 by Eric Driver Post: I guess it couldn't hurt to increase it. I can always put it back if there's an unforeseen consequence. If the server has no problem it's not necessary to change something I think. However, it is probably a good option for competitions with high server load. That was also my thinking - it might help during the competitions. The change was made and so far no noticeable difference on either the manager or server. We will need to wait to see what happens during a competition.
12) Message boards : Number crunching : NumberFields@home \| Project requested delay of 31 seconds (Message 4241) Posted 19 Feb 2026 by Eric Driver Post: I guess it couldn't hurt to increase it. I can always put it back if there's an unforeseen consequence.
13) Message boards : Number crunching : Gerasim is not working (Message 4197) Posted 10 Feb 2026 by Eric Driver Post: I am not sure about others but I am unable to view https://gerasim.boinc.ru/ via Brave or Microsoft edge in New Zealand. I kept getting "403 - Forbidden: Access is denied." "You do not have permission to view this directory or page using the credentials that you supplied." No problems here. You could try clearing your cache and cookies.
14) Message boards : Number crunching : Gerasim is not working (Message 4193) Posted 6 Feb 2026 by Eric Driver Post: The ones on the computer now downloaded on the 4th and are due the 9th. I will abort them and download new ones and see what happens Thanks Conan EDIT:: those aborted tasks did not show up as aborted or invalids on my account, so I would not have reciened anything for them Maybe it was a communication glitch with the server. I notice when I upload WUs or download results, the communication periodically stalls and I have to start over. Could be related to the server being in Russia and strict internet policies over there (just a wild guess). Serval and Demis might know more about that.
15) Message boards : Number crunching : Gerasim is not working (Message 4191) Posted 6 Feb 2026 by Eric Driver Post: Is it normal for all my work units (that are still on my computer, 53 of them) to be wiped from my account on Gerasim? If I continue to run them will they be credited or do they disappear into the ether and not be counted? This has happened before more than once. Thanks Conan This is still happening to one of my computers (the one with the highest total) I have 32 CPU work units on it at the moment but all CPU work units have been removed from my account, even though I still have 3 days to go on them. I must ask again, if I process them do I get credit for them? I have a number of GPU work units running and they show up on my account, just not the CPU work units. It seems if you download and don't start processing straight away the work units get removed. They are not aborted and don't error out they just disappear from my account. Conan I uploaded the newest batch of CPU WUs on Feb 3rd. Did you get the problematic WUs before or after that date? Because anything dated before Feb 3rd was deemed a "test" and cleared from the database. If it's after that, then something weird is going on with the server.
16) Message boards : Number crunching : Gerasim is not working (Message 4188) Posted 4 Feb 2026 by Eric Driver Post: Is it necessary to host a GPU-enabled Linux application on the Gerasim platform? My question applies to everyone (including SerVal). Probably not worth the effort. There's usually very little demand for Win-AMD, and I suspect Linux GPU apps will be similar. If there was a way to have all flavors of GPU operate on the same set of WUs, then it might be worth it; but otherwise it's a logistical nightmare trying to manage all the different variations.
17) Message boards : Number crunching : Gerasim is not working (Message 4187) Posted 4 Feb 2026 by Eric Driver Post: @Eric Прошу добавить участникам задания для GPU. ( 100k for Win-GPU, + 100k Win-GPU (opencl_amd) ). **** I added tasks for Win-AMD and Win-Nvidia.
18) Message boards : Number crunching : Gerasim is not working (Message 4184) Posted 3 Feb 2026 by Eric Driver Post: Hi, Eric. ** Tasks Ready to send: 0 In progress: 0 Send work: Enabled @Eric Прошу обеспечить участников заданиями для CPU. ( 100k for Win-CPU, + 100k Linux-cpu. ) ** Regards for all. :) Done.
19) Message boards : Number crunching : Gerasim is not working (Message 4176) Posted 26 Jan 2026 by Eric Driver Post: Thanks Erik and Demis Don't worry too much about it, I was curious more than anything. The card is still put in computers that are set up as a cheaper entry point and it is mainly used for doing BOINC. It is my brothers computer so I will see if I can source a cheap 4060 or 5060 and get it too him, it will be better at the games he sometimes plays anyway. Thanks again Conan I bumped up the rsc_fpops_bound in the template file just for good measure, so newer batches are allowed to run longer. But one thing that's worrisome is that NumberFields uses the exact same template file and hasn't had this problem in many years. So I wonder if there's something else different between Gerasim and NumberFields server settings that is causing this, maybe a difference in version or a config parameter. @Conan: Have you used this card on a NumberFields WU and does it exhibit the same behavior? Can you compare the "Measured floating point speed" under computer details between NumberFields and Gerasim to see if there is a big difference?
20) Message boards : Number crunching : Gerasim is not working (Message 4173) Posted 26 Jan 2026 by Eric Driver Post: All my Nvidia work units fail with this message Boinc Manager 8.2.8 <message> exceeded elapsed time limit 1137.91 (100000.00G/87.88G)</message> All hit the same run time (to the second) and time out, my AMD runs fine. I think it's hitting the "rsc_fpops_bound" limit and then getting killed. I thought this bound was set conservatively, but I could revisit it. Either way, I don't think the parameter can be changed in the current set of WUs, but I can increase it in the next batch. Is it possible your benchmarks think your GPU is much faster than it really is? The benchmarks are used to convert the FLOPS bound into a time bound, and 1138 sec sounds too fast for your card. Maybe you could rerun benchmarks, or find a way to spoof them to make your GPU look slower.

Next 20