Old Weather Forum

What is BOINC?

The Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC) is an open source middleware system for volunteer and grid computing. It was originally developed to support the SETI@home project before it became useful as a platform for other distributed applications in areas as diverse as mathematics, medicine, molecular biology, climatology, and astrophysics. The intent of BOINC is to make it possible for researchers to tap into the enormous processing power of personal computers around the world.

(Wikipedia)

What is climateprediction.net (CPDN)?

Climateprediction.net is a distributed computing project [running under BOINC] to produce predictions of the Earth's climate up to 2100 and to test the accuracy of climate models. To do this, we need people around the world to give us time on their computers - time when they have their computers switched on, but are not using them to their full capacity.

http://climateprediction.net/

In September 2011 Randi and Caro formed a BOINC team with members of the Old Weather project. Philip Brohan from the science team lent his support:

philip.brohan wrote: I'd like to second Randi's recommendation of climateprediction.net. It's a different sort of citizen science (your computer does the work, not you) but it's just as valuable as OldWeather in extending our understanding of how the climate works. Give it a try - you could participate in CPDN and OldWeather at the same time - your computer can be simulating the climate of the future while you read the logbooks and recover the climate of the past.

It's not likely that we'll be using CPDN for building the weather reconstructions anytime soon - technical issues make the problem more suited to conventional supercomputers - but I am thinking about it.

Also from Philip: Scientific progress goes ...

Click here to set up BOINC framework and select projects + general info

If you have any problems post your question at the bottom of this thread or check here http://climateapps2.oerc.ox.ac.uk/cpdnboinc/quick_faq.php

Click here to see the list of members in the OW team ClimatePrediction.net stats for OW team. You get credits for donating your excess computer capacity. These don't buy you anything but satisfaction ;D. The more time you donate and the more powerful your computer, the more credits you accumulate.

In addition to the Climateprediction.net project, BOINC hosts a number of other distributed computing projects. See Choosing BOINC projects for more information. The following table shows the different projects the OW team members are running on their computers. CPDN accounts for almost 40% of our credits. You might consider also running the SETI project (search for extra terrestial intelligence) or MilkyWay in case the earth becomes uninhabitable for humans. This is a long shot, of course. ;D
Notes:

• Even if Climateprediction.net is your main interest, you might want to have another project or two to run when CPDN doesn't have any tasks available.
• If Climateprediction.net projects are too demanding for your computer (they are not generally recommended for laptops) try another project! You will still earn credit for the OW team

BOINC 7.24.3 released for Mac

This version fixes a problem that causes GPU apps to fail after a Mac OS upgrade to Sonoma.
Download it here.

From the CPDN message board:

WaH v8.29 bug leaves files behind in BOINC/data/projects/climateprediction -- please delete by hand

A bug has been found in the latest v8.29 Weather@Home app currently running EAS25 batches as app-name wah2_ri.

When the task finishes it mistakenly leaves some text files behind in the task directory inside the BOINC/data/projects/climateprediction.net directory.
[By default C:\Program Data\BOINC\Projects\climateprediction.net on Windows machines, where C:\Program Data\ is by default a hidden folder.]
Task directories have long names such as 'wah2_eas25_a3pf_200912_24_1007_012269659'.
This is the same as the task 'Name' column in boincmgr.

When a task finishes, it should delete the task directory (e.g. wah2_eas25_a3pf_200912_24_1007_012269659) in the projects/climateprediction.net folder, but unfortunately it leaves behind the 3 text files:
stdout_mon.txt
stdout_rm.txt
stdout_um.txt

Task directories with only these 3 files can be safely deleted.
DO NOT delete task directories which also contain 'datain', 'dataout', 'jobs' and any other files.
These indicate running tasks.
Also do not delete the entire 'climateprediction.net' directory as this will kill all running tasks.

Apologies for the inconvenience.
The bug has been identified and corrected. A new version will be issued before any more batches are released.

Thanks for posting

climateprediction.net: BOINC Needs Votes at a UN Upcoming Forum
BOINC is a finalist for an notable award, and needs your vote (*by Sunday)

The World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) (https://www.itu.int/net4/wsis/forum/2024 ) is a United Nations-sponsored initiative aimed at harnessing the potential of information and communication technologies to build inclusive and equitable information societies worldwide. BOINC has been nominated for a prize at the 2024 forum (https://www.itu.int/net4/wsis/stocktaking/Prizes/2024 ), and has passed initial hurdles; the next and last step ("Phase 3") requires public votes. The award would be a very nice boost and validation for BOINC and all our projects; if we can get our communities to vote, we should have a decent shot at this point...

Voting is pretty simple, takes just a few minutes; instructions are here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1x9X ... xvrXg/edit .

(*The deadline for votes is Sunday: 31 March 2024, 23:00 UTC+02:00)

I managed to do it, but it wasn't easy.
System was extremely slow and I had to retry several times.

Be sure to read the instructions: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1x9X ... xvrXg/edit

BOINC client 8.0.2 released

The 8.0.2 version of the BOINC client has been released for all platforms.
Download it here.
Release notes are here.

You may, or may not, have noticed changes to the CPDN website.
With these changes some website addresses have changed, also.

CPDN website: https://cpdn.org
Your account: https://main.cpdn.org/login_form.php
Message boards: https://main.cpdn.org/forum_index.php

No changes are required for BOINC, redirection will happen automatically.

More in this topic: https://main.cpdn.org/forum_thread.php?id=9314

Good to know the problem isn't at this end!

At the moment I am getting:
"9/16/2024 10:22:32 AM | climateprediction.net | Scheduler list fetch from https://climateprediction.net/ failed: can't resolve hostname"
I'll wait and see what happens.

Same message here.
People are reporting BOINC switched from climateprediction.net to cpdn.org at some point.
Unfortunately they also report their tasks were then aborted.

Of course it is a shame if your tasks are aborted.
However, should you be concerned, failed tasks will be send to other users, up to 2 times, and you won't lose the credit awarded for trickles already sent.

After sending an intermediate result zip file back to the project, everything seems normal again.
No transient error messages any more, and all trickles have been uploaded.
The task wasn't aborted either.

Yes!
Yesterday it wasn't communicating. This morning (after restarting) it was communicating.

I have two tasks Weather at Home that are rated at 46 days, I am 30 hrs at 64% progress. Stats look continual. I am using an old clunker for tasks.
New task started 10 min ago.

Then you might be better off limiting the number of simultaneously running tasks.
Tasks fighting for CPU cycles and memory run slower.

Yes, I had that experience myself.

Maikel wrote: ↑Fri Sep 20, 2024 6:49 am Then you might be better off limiting the number of simultaneously running tasks.
Tasks fighting for CPU cycles and memory run slower.

Thanks Maikel.
My old laptop has CPU heat damage so I have been running it at 60% CPU when it's not in use to keep it cool, Boinc is it's only task.
I have just upped it to 80% and will keep an eye on it.

How do I limit the number of simultaneously running tasks?
Two current ones have a 7/10/2024 deadline and approx 15 days still to run.
The new one has 10/10/2024 and 13 days to run.

To limit the number of concurrent task, for CPDN only, and at your own peril:
- Stop BOINC
- Go to the C:\ProgramData\BOINC\projects\climateprediction.net folder
- Create a plain text (ASCII text) file named app_config.xml, or open it if it already exists
- Add the following lines to the file (only the project_max_connurrent line if the file already existed):
<app_config>
<project_max_concurrent>1</project_max_concurrent>
</app_config>
- Save the file
- Restart BOINC

More information here: https://boinc.berkeley.edu/wiki/Client_configuration

P.S. C:\ProgramData is an hidden folder, you'll have to enable Hidden Items in the View options of Windows Explorer to see it.

Thanks Maikel.
Stopped BOINC.
Created file.
Restarted PC
Started Boinc

Nothing went bang so will see what happens.

Ah, so the smoke I can see isn't you?
Actually, it's from a nearby garbage processing facility that has caught fire.

Dr. David Baker of the University of Washington, creator of Rosetta@home, has won the 2024 Nobel prize in Chemistry.

Protein designer and structure solvers win chemistry Nobel
Award honors AI approaches to predicting protein shapes and designing new ones for medicine



https://www.science.org/content/article ... stry-nobel