Hi -

I've recently brought (2) dual xeon Linux based servers online for Rosetta@home. One supports 56 threads (28 cores hyperthreaded), the other supports 32 threads (16 cores hyperthreaded). Both machines have 192GB or more of memory.

I'm getting work on both machine, but not seeing more than 6 threads running on either. Sometimes less.

One Intel I5 (quad core) is only running with 2 threads.

My Xeon single-chip quad core is running full out with 4 threads.

Am I doing something wrong?

Do you have only have your BOINC computing preferences (in BOINC manager) set to only use 50% of the CPUs on those systems, but 100% on the Xeon quad core? I assume it's the same deal under Linux, anyway.

Also, do you have "Hyper-Threading Technology" enabled in the BIOS?

And maybe there are limits on the server, though I can run 16 thus far.
https://boinc.berkeley.edu/forum_thread.php?id=12877#90743

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I will triple check local settings.

Hyperthreading is enabled. But even it was wasn't, I should still be getting 28 and 16 threads, not 6.

Also worth nothing my Windows box is running full out at 24 threads - so I don't think its my project settings. That said, I just updated them to:

I would also suggest that you examine how much disk BOINC is allowed to use. Something like 1GB per task plus 10GB might be a good starting point for disk space. (can't wait to see your RAC when you get 'em humming!)

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Rosetta Moderator: Mod.Sense

You say that you’re receiving work, does that imply that you have WUs ready to run that are not starting or are you running all of the WUs that you’ve received?

I would stop and restart boinc, then look at the log to see how many CPUs BOINC detected and also look for any messages as to why it is being limited. I would also check to see if there are any local preferences overriding the global preferences from the website.

I would also suggest that you examine how much disk BOINC is allowed to use. Something like 1GB per task plus 10GB might be a good starting point for disk space. (can't wait to see your RAC when you get 'em humming!)

Set to use 100GB max, so should be good. Ah! Wait a minute... on Linux BOINC defaults to running in /var. My /var partitions are typically only about 16GB. Moving to a much larger filesystem to see if that helps.

** SOLVED **

I didn't realize how much disk space Rosetta required - most BOINC applications are pretty light.

Once I moved the BOINC run time directory off of /var/lib/boinc to a larger drive, all processes started up. The kicker was the "use at most 50%" of disk space setting. On a typical 16GB /var partition, that limited it to about 8GB of usage - minus what was already in use. Turns out that was the limitation.

This is truly a heartwarming sight: and

Thanks for helping track this down!

ps. On the 32G thread box, BOINC is using about 29G of disk space (easy to tell, I gave it a dedicated LVM partition). The drive (a mediocre 5400 RPM 4TB Seagate) seems to be handling the I/O load just fine:

cpuserv / # iostat -hm /dev/vg/boinc
Linux 5.4.28-gentoo (cpuserv)   04/07/20        _x86_64_        (32 CPU)

avg-cpu:  %user   %nice %system %iowait  %steal   %idle
           0.6%   24.8%    1.4%    0.8%    0.0%   72.3%

      tps    MB_read/s    MB_wrtn/s    MB_dscd/s    MB_read    MB_wrtn    MB_dscd Device
    22.60         0.6k         2.4M         0.0k       8.3M      33.2G       0.0k dm-14

Just one followup for those running dozens of threads:

The disk subsystem does matter. On my 32 thread box I routinely saw a half-dozen plus threads NOT at 100%. I moved the BOINC work directly from a single drive to a mdadm 6 member raid 6 cluster and that number dropped to 2 threads - and those threads were running around 98% vs. the 86-95% previously seen.

+1

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