Anonymous platform to be disabled for WCG GPU app.
From Kevin at WCG
Quote:
World Community Grid has never supported the anonymous platform mechanism. However, because of two bugs, one in the client and one in the server,
volunteers were able to fetch work using the anonymous platform at WCG.
The bug that is fixed in the BOINC client is that before 7.0.40, if you were using the app_info.xml file & your client supported an 'alt-platform', then the client would send 'anonymous' as the primary platform but also report an 'alt-platform' (which it should not have been sent).
The issue on the server side is as follows. When the server receives a request, it adds the primary platform and any alt-platforms that the project supports to an 'allowed platform' list. If the first platform on the allowed platform list is the anonymous platform, then the server code handles the request using the anonymous platform code path. If the list size is 0 then a message is reported back to the client that the platforms reported are not supported.
The server bug is that if the primary platform is the anonymous platform, then any alt-platforms should not be considered. Instead, the server code added the alt-platforms to the list anyway.
This is an issue for us because since we do not support the anonymous platform, that is discarded during processing and not added to the allowed platform list. However, the alt-platforms are added to the list. Since the list size is > 0, processing continues down the normal server side logic. It is this that caused the generation of the 'ignored app version' message. It also meant that if I user only specified hcc1 in their app_info.xml file, but they had opted into receiving work for more than hcc1, then they would be assigned work from those other projects and the client would immediately discard that work (and not report that fact to the server).
After discussing with BOINC, the decision was that volunteers should be able to have fine grain control over how many instances of a job are run on their GPU and that the anonymous platform mechanism is not the way that should be done. The decision was made to create the app_config.xml file so that volunteers could have control over this by making changes to the file which has been added in the 7.0.40 client. Volunteers at World Community Grid should be looking as this is stabilized as the way to run multiple copies of HCC1 GPU on your graphics card at one time.
Once the changes for the app_config.xml file are in a stable BOINC client release, we will disable the anonymous platform on the server side. We will provide warning in this forum before we do that and we will allow time for volunteers to upgrade to the stable client build before we disable the feature.
Discussion here.
The 7.0.40 was buggy and they are up to version 7.0.42 the last time I checked.
Re: Anonymous platform to be disabled for WCG GPU app.
To me, the news is that there is now such a thing as app_config.xml. I think this could be very good! Now we can more easily run multiple GPU tasks, without the complexity of a full-blown app_info.xml! I am going to post about this in a separate thread, so that people don't overlook this, thinking it is something unique to WCG.
Re: Anonymous platform to be disabled for WCG GPU app.
I am testing version 7.0.42 with an app_config.xml and it is much easier to configure. You can set your CPUs to run different projects at the same time or any combination of GPU/CPU tasks that you'd like. You can move it out of the project folder without losing all the tasks you have in cache if needed.
Re: Anonymous platform to be disabled for WCG GPU app.
Fixing it for WCG has caused problems on other projects causing people using an app_info.xml to not be able to get work. Fix one issue, break two. That's the BOINC motto.
Not sure why WCG gets so bent, but I know that at one time, I ported a Linux app to Windows and used the alt-platform in the cc_config to manage to get work on a Linux only project with a Windows box. (Sure, it would have been easier to run vbox or vmware, but where's the fun in that?)
Re: Anonymous platform to be disabled for WCG GPU app.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Slicker
Fixing it for WCG has caused problems on other projects causing people using an app_info.xml to not be able to get work. Fix one issue, break two. That's the BOINC motto.
Not sure why WCG gets so bent, but I know that at one time, I ported a Linux app to Windows and used the alt-platform in the cc_config to manage to get work on a Linux only project with a Windows box. (Sure, it would have been easier to run vbox or vmware, but where's the fun in that?)
I'll have to test the box using the app_config on WCG to see what it does with POEM. Since the new config file goes into the project folder at WCG I wouldn't think an app_info file in another project folder would be a problem. We' ll see.
I agree I don't know why WCG needed to do this. How could running 1 type of file over another have any effect on their servers?
Re: Anonymous platform to be disabled for WCG GPU app.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Slicker
Fixing it for WCG has caused problems on other projects causing people using an app_info.xml to not be able to get work. Fix one issue, break two. That's the BOINC motto.
Ah, so this is why SETI@home says "Project has no tasks available"...
...
Hang on:
14.12.2012 16:52:34 | SETI@home | Scheduler request completed: got 4 new tasks
Uhm, no, SETI@home still works with app_info.xml so clearly it's atleast not completely broken.
Now, if haven't overlooked anything, the changes to app_info.xml is one bug-fix for the client and two bug-fixes for the server. How these bug-fixes has any effects on any projects besides WCG I'm not sure of.
Quote:
Not sure why WCG gets so bent, but I know that at one time, I ported a Linux app to Windows and used the alt-platform in the cc_config to manage to get work on a Linux only project with a Windows box. (Sure, it would have been easier to run vbox or vmware, but where's the fun in that?)
Due to the bugs computers running WCG was assigned work for either applications or platform not specified in their app_info.xml and none of this work could be run by client. This coupled with WCG having re-issue of "lost" work enabled meant the un-runnable work was re-issued again and again, effectively blocking all other work leading to idle computers. Needing users to manually clean-up after these bugs was a bad idea for both users and the project and therefore the bug-fixes to handling of app_info.xml
As for app_config.xml, this is a nice addition to client and should AFAIK have zero impacts on usage of app_info.xml, except for projects like WCG choosing to block the usage of app_info.xml in their scheduling-server. Since WCG have never made any code available where's never been any optimized applications nor applications for platforms not already supported by WCG. This means the only usage of app_info.xml at WCG have been to run multiple GPU-tasks at once, and the new app_config.xml handles this better than using app_info.xml since isn't any of the common errors with making app_info.xml and also works with GPU-version being upgraded.
Oh, and not to forget, while app_info.xml blocks the ability to download beta-work, using app_config.xml doesn't have this limitation so more users can get their WCG-beta-badges. :)
