I see several apps in the download area but I would like to know which one is fastest. This cpu has sse, sse2. sse4.1, sse4.2 and ssse3. I know sse2 is faster than sse so it's down to sse4.2 or ssse3, unless extra tweaks are done to make one of the others faster. I'm running the latest Ubuntu 17.10 so I don't think os support will be a problem. Any suggestions? (I used to know but that was a LONG time ago!)

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Jim

Some people plan their life out and look back at the wealth they've had.
Others live life day by day and look back at the wealth of experiences and enjoyment they've had.

Well on Intel, I think that AVX or AVX2 would be fastest but your processors don't have that. So next in line would be the SSE4.1 or SSE4.2 instructions. I am having very good luck with the SSE4.1 app on my Ryzen 1800X. You can find the the old r3306 SSE4.x apps at the Lunatics website. Multibeam for Linux

TBar compiled a r3711 SSE4.1 app over at Crunchers Anonymous, but he pulled it from the thread it seems. That is the one I am running. You might ask him for it. Or I can put it up at my Dropbox account for you to download. The base code is the same for the r3306 and r3711 versions, just used different compiler optimizations.

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Seti@Home classic workunits:20,676 CPU time:74,226 hours

A proud member of the OFA (Old Farts Association)

Hey Jim, I just looked at your host and noticed it had the low-latency kernel installed. I was just reading about that in Wayland issues. The posts I have read say that was a mistake in the installer to install those low-latency kernels as defaults as they are causing lots of issues. The recommendation was to remove those low-latency kernels and install the normal ones. You might want to Google for low-latency kernels in 17.04/10 issues.

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Seti@Home classic workunits:20,676 CPU time:74,226 hours

A proud member of the OFA (Old Farts Association)

Thanks for the info and I'll try the sse4.2 version and see how that works out.
As for the low latency kernel, I have to run it because I'm also using this machine to work with multi-track audio recording, and need the low latency. Actually I think I was wrong about the os. I am using the newest Ubuntu Studio release which I think is built on Ubuntu 17.04. I feed the audio straight from an 18 channel mixer into Ardour for recording and playback. It wouldn't matter about the latency for straight recording, or straight playback, but when it's used in a studio setting any lag of over a few milliseconds can become a problem. Later, after I get this thing set up and operating like I need it to I may look into installing a normal kernel for use when I don't need the low latency, but for now I'm stuck with it. (An older version of Ubuntu Studio that I have used came with both kernels and gave you a choice which to use at boot time. This one didn't.)

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Jim

Some people plan their life out and look back at the wealth they've had.
Others live life day by day and look back at the wealth of experiences and enjoyment they've had.

OK, as long as you were aware. Looks like you installed exactly the correct one for the primary purpose of the machine. I saw all kinds of posts to watch out for the low-latency kernels.

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Seti@Home classic workunits:20,676 CPU time:74,226 hours

A proud member of the OFA (Old Farts Association)

Actually I was NOT aware of the problem with low latency until you mentioned it, and actually this machine is overkill for the purposes I am using it for (first, a general purpose computer, second, working with the multi-track recording projects, and third, as a low volume web server.) but when I was looking for a replacement for my aging desktop computer I found this at a super good deal, and that is the reason I decided to get back into helping you guys here at SETI. I know I'll never have six digit RAC's like 'a lot of you', and I'm proud to have cracked into the 4k level but I'm now retired and don't have (and really never had) the resources to pursue it like others that I know here! (not gonna mention names, hehe), but I've studied the "Drake" equasions and believe that there is a very good probability of other life somewhere out there and just feel good about doing my part (however infinitesimal) of finding it!

Now I'm running into another problem. I might need to post this in another thread, but my settings are to use 80% of the cpu's (24) 75% of the time. I'm noticing a two or three second lag between my keyboard or mouse input about every ten seconds. (every ten seconds or so my keyboard and mouse 'freezes' for a couple seconds.) When I was running full blast I didn't notice this. Could this be because of my settings? If so how should I set them to eliminate it? I know when pausing and restarting the computations, unloading and loading them back into memory can cause something like this, but afaik I've set it to keep the wu's in memory (I've got 32g so that's not a problem).
Oh, and I'm gonna keep running the stock app until around the first of the week. I've noticed my RAC really beginning to level out now, so that will be about five days 'flat out', a weekend at 50% then a week at the current settings. By Monday it should give me a pretty good baseline to judge the new SSE4.2 app by.

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Jim

Some people plan their life out and look back at the wealth they've had.
Others live life day by day and look back at the wealth of experiences and enjoyment they've had.

Hey Jim. Not sure. For one thing I don't have a clue how you are configuring or starting BOINC that causes your stderr.txt output in ALL your tasks. I've never seen that before anywhere. You are running BOINC 7.8.3 but you are running some configuration parameters completely unfamiliar to me. You might look at the priority level the cpu tasks run at. In Windows, cpu tasks run at Idle priority level. In Linux, I run them at nice level 5 for Below Normal priority. I don't have any system lag. System lag is mostly a problem over in Windows with aggressive tunings on the Windows SoG OpenCL app on lesser gpus.

You might want to drop their priority and see if that helps. Another thing that you might try is to configure your BOINC Computing Preferences on the website to use 100% of the cpu and limit the number of cpu tasks run at any one time with the <project_max_concurrent>N</project_max_concurrent> statement in an app_config.xml file in the project directory.

You can read about client configuration here. Application configuration

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Seti@Home classic workunits:20,676 CPU time:74,226 hours

A proud member of the OFA (Old Farts Association)

Another thing that you might try is to configure your BOINC Computing Preferences on the website to use 100% of the cpu and limit the number of cpu tasks run at any one time with the <project_max_concurrent>N</project_max_concurrent> statement in an app_config.xml file in the project directory.

That make sense to me.

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This was configured exactly as it was installed by the Ubuntu package manager. I haven't even looked at the configs, as it was set to run at boot time and all I did was connect to the projects and it started crunching away. I started noticing high core temps so I changed the settings for the cpu. I first set them to run at 50% because I was going to be gone for the weekend then I tried setting it to use only 75% of the cpus at 100% of the time but my core temps went up high again. I cut it down to 75/75 which should keep them at a moderate temperature.
I haven't checked any of the wu's outside of checking to see if any errored out, so I didnt know about the stderr.txt files but I'll check into it, and thanks for the link on app configs. I used to know all this stuff years ago but I've forgotten over 90% of it! (I actually wrote and maintained the 'New Enhanced FAQ' when we made the transition to the 'enhanced' apps but again, that was a LONG time ago! hehe.)

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Jim

Some people plan their life out and look back at the wealth they've had.
Others live life day by day and look back at the wealth of experiences and enjoyment they've had.

This was configured exactly as it was installed by the Ubuntu package manager. I haven't even looked at the configs, as it was set to run at boot time and all I did was connect to the projects and it started crunching away. I started noticing high core temps so I changed the settings for the cpu. I first set them to run at 50% because I was going to be gone for the weekend then I tried setting it to use only 75% of the cpus at 100% of the time but my core temps went up high again. I cut it down to 75/75 which should keep them at a moderate temperature.
I haven't checked any of the wu's outside of checking to see if any errored out, so I didnt know about the stderr.txt files but I'll check into it, and thanks for the link on app configs. I used to know all this stuff years ago but I've forgotten over 90% of it! (I actually wrote and maintained the 'New Enhanced FAQ' when we made the transition to the 'enhanced' apps but again, that was a LONG time ago! hehe.)

Well . . . . . first, thank you for being a pioneer and contributing your work to the project in its early days.

What I was commenting on is this in your stderr.txt output for every cpu task.

<core_client_version>7.8.3</core_client_version>
<![CDATA[
<stderr_txt>
boinc-app-seti is invoked with the following arguments: 
--start
--end.
I: boinc_parse_init_data_file
I: boinc_get_init_data
I: sah_graphics_init
I: boinc_init
I: worker
I: worker() - common_init
I: worker() - read_wu_state
I: worker() - seti_do_work
setiathome_v8 8.00 $Revision: 1146 $ g++ (Ubuntu 7.2.0-4ubuntu1) 7.2.0
libboinc: BOINC 7.8.2

In all my time with Seti and the thousands of stderr.txt headers I have examined in hundreds of hosts, I have never seen this output at the beginning of the file. That is what has got me confused and intrigued how you managed it.

I have used the BOINC repository version and the Ubuntu repository versions of BOINC before and I never got that kind of output from a cpu task. So the basic question is where did you get that repository from?

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Seti@Home classic workunits:20,676 CPU time:74,226 hours

A proud member of the OFA (Old Farts Association)

Well, this is not the standard Ubuntu. It's Ubuntu Studio, so that may make the difference. That's why it auto installs the low latency kernel.
And than You Keith for your work with the pre-enhanced Seti.. I notice you'd been at it for five years before I joined!

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Jim

Some people plan their life out and look back at the wealth they've had.
Others live life day by day and look back at the wealth of experiences and enjoyment they've had.

I just wanted to comment further. I have friends who have Xeon hosts of the same family as yours and they don't have that output. I was thinking maybe it was something about the Xeon that the project detected and configured for or something. Your distribution is current as well as your BOINC version. A mystery I'd like to understand. This is one of Al's hosts with a similar cpu and Linux OS.

Al's GenuineIntel
Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU X5690 @ 3.47GHz

and one of his cpu tasks Task 6332633235

Don't see an issue with the tasks or system, they validate and all, just wanted to understand how you got that output.

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Seti@Home classic workunits:20,676 CPU time:74,226 hours

A proud member of the OFA (Old Farts Association)

Well, this is not the standard Ubuntu. It's Ubuntu Studio, so that may make the difference. That's why it auto installs the low latency kernel.

Ahhhh! That must be the difference. I'll have to investigate (Google) Ubuntu Studio. I like learning new things.

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Seti@Home classic workunits:20,676 CPU time:74,226 hours

A proud member of the OFA (Old Farts Association)

I've spent the last few minutes looking through every file I could see in the SETI directory and have not found anything so far that would put that info into every file! I'll go through a few of them that could possibly do it a little closer when I have more time, but you're right, that is a puzzle. I ran a few wu's when I started with this comp at Beta. I'll go check those to see if it's in those also.
EDIT" None of the Beta files I checked have this in them. So it must be something strictly involving regular SETI. I don't know what, though.

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Jim

Some people plan their life out and look back at the wealth they've had.
Others live life day by day and look back at the wealth of experiences and enjoyment they've had.

Probably a question for one of the old-timers like Richard Haselgrove or Rob Smith. They understand and know all the underpinnings of BOINC.

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Seti@Home classic workunits:20,676 CPU time:74,226 hours

A proud member of the OFA (Old Farts Association)

Probably a question for one of the old-timers like Richard Haselgrove or Rob Smith. They understand and know all the underpinnings of BOINC.

No one knows all about Boinc.

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Probably a question for one of the old-timers like Richard Haselgrove or Rob Smith. They understand and know all the underpinnings of BOINC.

No one knows all about Boinc.

Very true, not even DA probably.

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Seti@Home classic workunits:20,676 CPU time:74,226 hours

A proud member of the OFA (Old Farts Association)

This does seem to be a puzzle, why it's there in the first place. If it were all projects I would say it's definitely something about the OS, but since it's main SETI only, and not Beta it's beginning to look like it might be a combination of my specialized OS and the SETI app.

I'm going to switch to the SSE4.2 app tomorrow (Monday) so I will check to see if it's still there after the switch.

And also, I've not figured out about the mouse and keyboard freezing either, but it doesn't appear to be related to the crunching. After I tried switching to the lower number of cpus at 100% and my temps climbed I suspended all crunching for a while to let them cool back down, but the freezing was still there. It's going to be hard to pinpoint. As I said, this is a new system and I have been installing some specialized programs, which many of them run as daemons (a remote server admin program, etc.) at the same time that I started crunching, so it looks like I've got to start disabling stuff one at a time until I find the culprit!

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Jim

Some people plan their life out and look back at the wealth they've had.
Others live life day by day and look back at the wealth of experiences and enjoyment they've had.

I would think you can catch the offensive thread or whatever with Linux Process Explorer. Seems to be a clone of MS Sysinternals Process Explorer. Look for the process that is grabbing all the cpu time and stalling out the other processes.
Linux Process Explorer

[Edit] See that the program moved from SourceForge to GitHub

Linux Process Explorer

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Seti@Home classic workunits:20,676 CPU time:74,226 hours

A proud member of the OFA (Old Farts Association)

Probably a question for one of the old-timers like Richard Haselgrove or Rob Smith. They understand and know all the underpinnings of BOINC.

No one knows all about Boinc.

Richard gets pretty close.

Anyway, that different stderr is because not only BOINC was installed from repository but also Seti MB app. It's got some changes that adds those extra lines.