Lunatics Windows Installer v0.39 release notes

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Richard Haselgrove Project Donor
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Message 1174329 - Posted: 28 Nov 2011, 18:34:24 UTC
Last modified: 28 Nov 2011, 18:37:38 UTC

Lunatics are pleased to announce the availibility of the v0.39 installer in the Lunatics main download area
Please take care you use the right installer (32/64 bit) for your system.

Should you have any questions or problems - ask! Post in this thread or open a new one.


New in this installer:
Update of all CPU applications from AKv8b to AKv8b2
Update of MB CUDA from x38g_cuda32 to x41g_cuda32
Update of ATI OpenCL MB applications from r177 to r390


How to use the installer
For the CPU applications, you need to know what your CPU supports. Either check the Boinc startup messages or check with CPU-Z downloadable from http://www.cpuid.com
Tick or untick CPU AP and MB applications as desired. Tick CUDA MB if desired. Tick ATI (OpenCL) AP or MB if/as desired.
More details further down.

NB We use default values throughout the app_info.xml. If you have previously installed optimised applications and manually edited app_info.xml (e.g. counts for Fermi, cmdline for ATI) you WILL lose those edits on running the installer and have to redo them. You may wish to make a note of them.

Known issues - general
The installer is supposed to shut down the BOINC client whilst leaving the Manager running - noticable from the red 'disconnected' dot in the tray. After finishing the BOINC client should restart and the red dot vanish when the Manager reconnects. This make take a few minutes. On some systems however this fails to work. Please ensure BOINC has restarted.
Advanced users only: If you know you are going to edit app_info.xml, it may be easier to shutdown and restart BOINC manually, so you can get the changes into app_info.xml before the restart.

CPU apps - upgraded to AKv8b2.

This is to fix a bug in the triplet finding - in rare cases triplets were being missed. As it took over two years to notice this bug, we believe it only affects a very minor amount of tasks.
If you have any doubt at all about what instruction sets your CPU supports,download CPU-Z from http://www.cpuid.com/softwares/cpu-z.html
You will usually find that the SSSE3x application is fastest on the Intel processors which support SSSE3x, except on dual-core CPUs with especially fast memory subsystems, where SSE4.1 may be faster.
However, we have indication, that on Intel i3, i5 and i7 processor series SSE3 may be the fastest variant at most angleranges. The effect is smallest with VHAR (shorties).


NVidia GPU (CUDA) app - upgraded to x41g_cuda32

For compatible cards see http://developer.nvidia.com/cuda-gpus Requires minimum CUDA 3.2 capable NVidia driver: 263.06 (260.99 on notebooks)
Download drivers from http://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx?lang=en-us (or your national equivalent)
Should run on all NVidia CUDA cards with at least 512MiB video RAM.
Actual free memory required is in the region of 200-235MB, depending on driver and OS flavour.
Running on a 256MiB card is just possible, but you will have to free up as much VRAM as possible, e.g. by disabling Aero.
Used video RAM can be checked with GPU-Z downloadable from http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/2039/TechPowerUp_GPU-Z_v0.5.5.html
Watch closely on GPU-Z and in BOINC manager if the application finds enough memory.
Symptoms of insufficient memory are
- in BOINC manager: tasks start up and run a few seconds then go to 'waiting to run' and the next task tries to start
- on GPU-Z: the sensor for memory shows used VRAM ramping up and almost immediately dropping again.
In this case, there may be a BOINC bug putting the app in an infinite loop while it waits for more memory.
If you don't have enough memory, set BOINC to NNT, abort tasks and uninstall the CUDA application by rerunning the installer with CUDA MB UNticked.
If in doubt ask for help on NC: http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/forum_forum.php?id=10
To multithread on Fermi cards, find all instances of <count>1</count> in app_info.xml and decrease to 0.5 or 0.3 to run two or three tasks in parallel. Again, if you are uncertain of how to do this correctly, ask on the above mentioned forum.
'Your mileage may vary' - it depends on your specific system which count will give the highest throughput.
x41g has improved reliability, stability and accuracy over x38g.


ATI MB apps - upgraded to r390

We offer the application in two different variants, depending on card:
plain - for most HD4xxx owners and those with HD5xxx and HD6xxx cards who
suffer from driver incompatibilities.
HD5 - for most if not all owners of HD5xxx GPUs and HD6xxx GPUs.

The ATI MB application will not work on ATI cards with workgroup size 128 (e.g. HD43xx). To check workgroupsize run CLinfo, downloadable (at present) from {http://boinc.berkeley.edu/dl/clinfo.zip}
If you have problems running the HD5 flavour (anything from reduced performance to BSOD), you should run the plain variant.

The recommended apps (r521 for Astropulse, r390 for MultiBeam) need OpenCL support from the ATI driver - for recent driver versions, look for a driver *with* APP or OpenCL listed. For compatible drivers see http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/Pages/index.aspx
For cards, see http://developer.amd.com/gpu/AMDAPPSDK/pages/DriverCompatibility.aspx
On most systems GPU-Z (see above) will tell you if your setup supports OpenCL.
Minimum required driver: Something that is OpenCL capable. You can check with GPU-Z (see above).
Catalyst 10.7b with SDK
Catalyst 10.10 Accelerated Parallel Processing (APP) Technology Edition
The following drivers are known to be incompatible with the app:
11.10 and 11.11.
On some drivers the app shows increased CPU usage.

For cards without OpenCL support (from HD2xxxx on) use the 'hybrid' r453 Astropulse application. NB this is a combined CPU/GPU application and will only use the GPU for some of the calculations, while doing the rest on a CPU core.
Minimum driver version Catalyst 9.x.

NB using this installer will give you arbitrary default cmdline parameter entries.
If you are already running ATI applications: Make a note of what numbers you are using to be able to restore to those values PRIOR to running the installer. This also applies to setting the <count> variable according to your -instances_per_device variable for multithreading.

The Hybrid AP application uses about 80% of a CPU core and does only about 20% of the calculations on the GPU. Parameters have been choosen to reflect this usage. However present BOINC can not reserve '0.8' of a CPU core and therefore reserves none. This means your CPUs will be overcommitted and runtimes and DCF will suffer. You do increase the overall output though.


General Notes:
With Windows Vista and Windows 7, do not install BOINC in 'Service' or 'Protected Application Execution' mode for GPU crunching, and do not connect to a Vista/7 computer with Windows Remote Desktop while it is running a GPU application.
Switching users can also cause the GPU app to fail [BOINC versions before 6.12.28].

Tuning cmd line parameters:
For AP: If you get lags or worse driver restarts, decrease unroll. If you run stable you can try to increase it. ffa_block should be a multiple of ffa_block_fetch.
Start low e.g. -ffa_block 4096 -ffa_block_fetch 2048 and try increasing if it runs fine.
Sticking to the power of 2 line at first can help. There will be a system specific best combination - too low slows you down, too high slows you down as well.
Remember AP runtimes depend on blanking % so only compare runtimes on similar blanking %.
For MB: other way round - if you experience lag or driver restarts increase -period_iteration_num

Thanks go to Joe for noticing and fixing the CPU app bug and to Jason and Raistmer for their continued work to improve applications.

We would also like to take this opportunity to thank our active alpha testers (in no particular order and apologies to anybody we've forgotten):
Claggy, Jamie, arkayn, Mike, SciManSteve, msattler and Vyper.

The Lunatics Installer team AD MMXI
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Message 1174340 - Posted: 28 Nov 2011, 18:54:57 UTC - in response to Message 1174329.  

Sooo the new ATI MB app doesn't like the 11.10 and 11.11 drivers? time to back off again


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Message 1174342 - Posted: 28 Nov 2011, 18:57:16 UTC - in response to Message 1174340.  

Sooo the new ATI MB app doesn't like the 11.10 and 11.11 drivers? time to back off again

From the reports I've been getting, NO SETI OpenCL app likes the 11.10 or 11.11 drivers. But I'll ask one of the ATI specialists to post here and confirm.
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Message 1174345 - Posted: 28 Nov 2011, 19:07:08 UTC - in response to Message 1174342.  

The following drivers are known to be incompatible with the app:
11.10 and 11.11.


It mentions both the AP and new MB app as being incompatible. I assume it means the new MB since I'm able to run the current AP apps just fine on 11.11


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Message 1174346 - Posted: 28 Nov 2011, 19:10:51 UTC - in response to Message 1174345.  

Sorry, everyone seems to have gone offline at the critical moment. I'll post as soon as I can get some definitive information.
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Message 1174347 - Posted: 28 Nov 2011, 19:13:05 UTC - in response to Message 1174346.  

Thank you for the heads up.. I have it downloaded, waiting to hear some feedback before loading.
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Message 1174350 - Posted: 28 Nov 2011, 19:19:41 UTC - in response to Message 1174345.  

The following drivers are known to be incompatible with the app:
11.10 and 11.11.


It mentions both the AP and new MB app as being incompatible. I assume it means the new MB since I'm able to run the current AP apps just fine on 11.11


Yes, as far as I can tell it's just the MB tasks that have an issue with 11.10 and 11.11 drivers
I've never had any issues with the AP tasks running these drivers, but all ATI MB tasks return invalid results with these drivers (both online an offline runs)
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Message 1174354 - Posted: 28 Nov 2011, 19:32:45 UTC - in response to Message 1174350.  

well then back to 11.4


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Message 1174359 - Posted: 28 Nov 2011, 20:04:29 UTC - in response to Message 1174350.  

The following drivers are known to be incompatible with the app:
11.10 and 11.11.


It mentions both the AP and new MB app as being incompatible. I assume it means the new MB since I'm able to run the current AP apps just fine on 11.11


Yes, as far as I can tell it's just the MB tasks that have an issue with 11.10 and 11.11 drivers
I've never had any issues with the AP tasks running these drivers, but all ATI MB tasks return invalid results with these drivers (both online an offline runs)

I think 11.2, or in some cases 11.3, is still the preferred version for ATI MB.

Thanks Richard for the updated news & those lunatics for their work.
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Message 1174361 - Posted: 28 Nov 2011, 20:08:35 UTC

Tests on V7 tasks everytime gave false positive autocorrelation signals on each V7 task tested. On both Cat 11.10 and 11.11.
So I consider these driver badly broken (there is at least one another application for wich invalid computations already reported under these drivers). And recommend to stay away from them if possible. AMD trying to fix, but they do any software improvements VERY slow (and break working things very quickly...).

But looks likeon V6 tasks app give correct results. So, if you absolutely need to install new crappy Catalyst you may be as "after release" tester and check if all v6 processed OK or I was just lucky...
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Message 1174362 - Posted: 28 Nov 2011, 20:17:02 UTC - in response to Message 1174359.  

The following drivers are known to be incompatible with the app:
11.10 and 11.11.


It mentions both the AP and new MB app as being incompatible. I assume it means the new MB since I'm able to run the current AP apps just fine on 11.11


Yes, as far as I can tell it's just the MB tasks that have an issue with 11.10 and 11.11 drivers
I've never had any issues with the AP tasks running these drivers, but all ATI MB tasks return invalid results with these drivers (both online an offline runs)

I think 11.2, or in some cases 11.3, is still the preferred version for ATI MB.

Thanks Richard for the updated news & those lunatics for their work.

I'm unable to run the 11.2 drivers because they cause cause my system to lock up when the screen goes blank. I can't recover from it and I think it may be a reason I blew up a mobo earlier this year. I'll try 11.3 just for giggles though


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Message 1174363 - Posted: 28 Nov 2011, 20:17:49 UTC

On one of my crunchers I get this error when starting BOINC:

[error] State file error: missing application file Lunatics_x41g_win41_cuda32.exe

I looked in the directory where all these types of files are located (Win7-64, \ProgramData\BOINC\projects\setiathome.berkeley.edu) and the file is there. Any suggestions?

Thanks!
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Message 1174366 - Posted: 28 Nov 2011, 20:25:38 UTC - in response to Message 1174363.  

On one of my crunchers I get this error when starting BOINC:

[error] State file error: missing application file Lunatics_x41g_win41_cuda32.exe

I looked in the directory where all these types of files are located (Win7-64, \ProgramData\BOINC\projects\setiathome.berkeley.edu) and the file is there. Any suggestions?

Thanks!

Which host are you talking about? I'll have a look at your previous results.

Can you remember which application you were running before installing this one? What version number did it report on the BOINC Manager screen before you did the upgrade, and what plan class (cuda...) was showing on BOINC Manager?
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Message 1174367 - Posted: 28 Nov 2011, 20:28:09 UTC - in response to Message 1174363.  

On one of my crunchers I get this error when starting BOINC:

[error] State file error: missing application file Lunatics_x41g_win41_cuda32.exe

I looked in the directory where all these types of files are located (Win7-64, \ProgramData\BOINC\projects\setiathome.berkeley.edu) and the file is there. Any suggestions?

Thanks!


Let me guess, one of the hosts running 6.13.x?

On one of the BOINC/app upgrades I had a hard time getting the file(s) to stick. BOINC seemed intent on either deleting or simply not seeing them.

You can try the following:
-Reinstall with the installer
-make sure the file is in place or stick a new copy in
(all applications can be extracted from the installer by using 7z)
then edit the app_info.xml - e.g. remove the extra 6.09/6.08 appversion copies (make sure all you work is marked 6.10 before)

always shut down and restart Boinc in between.
I think I went through about 5 iterations of replacing apps and editing app_info.xml before boinc swallowed it...
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Message 1174369 - Posted: 28 Nov 2011, 20:31:39 UTC - in response to Message 1174363.  

On one of my crunchers I get this error when starting BOINC:

[error] State file error: missing application file Lunatics_x41g_win41_cuda32.exe

I looked in the directory where all these types of files are located (Win7-64, \ProgramData\BOINC\projects\setiathome.berkeley.edu) and the file is there. Any suggestions?

Thanks!


Err... - 'win41' ?! should be 32?

Are you sure you picked the right 32/64 bit installer in all cases?
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Message 1174370 - Posted: 28 Nov 2011, 20:32:37 UTC - in response to Message 1174366.  

[error] State file error: missing application file Lunatics_x41g_win41_cuda32.exe


I can confirm this. I think its a typo in MBCuda.aistub last filref for winX64

Lunatics_x41g_win41_cuda32.exe
That should be
Lunatics_x41g_win32_cuda32.exe


Otherwise working as it should

Best Regards
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Message 1174372 - Posted: 28 Nov 2011, 20:33:00 UTC - in response to Message 1174363.  
Last modified: 28 Nov 2011, 20:39:48 UTC

On one of my crunchers I get this error when starting BOINC:

[error] State file error: missing application file Lunatics_x41g_win41_cuda32.exe

I looked in the directory where all these types of files are located (Win7-64, \ProgramData\BOINC\projects\setiathome.berkeley.edu) and the file is there. Any suggestions?

Thanks!


Windows 41?

Edit: Looks as if it'll only affect people who were running Cuda 6.08 with a windows_x86_64 platform tag,

Claggy
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Message 1174374 - Posted: 28 Nov 2011, 20:35:24 UTC

yes to all the above. I also re-verified that I DL'ed the correct version (win 64-bit). Unless they compiledit with the wrond files, I have the right download. I tried it a few times. you got PM.
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Message 1174375 - Posted: 28 Nov 2011, 20:36:13 UTC

...yeah...the WIN41 thing threw me as well...dont know where the he77 that came from.
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Message 1174376 - Posted: 28 Nov 2011, 20:40:15 UTC
Last modified: 28 Nov 2011, 20:41:11 UTC

OK, I found it.

Apparently the Lunatics installer (I assume?) threw in Lunatics_x41g_win41_cuda32.exe as the filename. I renamed it properly and all is well once more.
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Message boards : Number crunching : Lunatics Windows Installer v0.39 release notes


 
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