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World Community Grid Forums
Category: Support
Forum: BOINC Agent Support
Thread: sparc64-sun-solaris support? |
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Thread Status: Active Total posts in this thread: 21
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
Hi
There are some (7-8) sun ultra-60 with solaris8 at my work connected 24/24. I could make it work with seti@home but not with world community grid. The platform is not found. Is it planned? Regards |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
It's not really a high priority.
Most machines running Unix are critical servers and similar, and not really ideal for grid computing. Some of the more uncommon platforms supported by WCG already have very low numbers of clients. Solaris would simply not provide sufficient return for the work it would require. Sorry. |
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Sekerob
Ace Cruncher Joined: Jul 24, 2005 Post Count: 20043 Status: Offline |
Please also refer to the Sparc discussion in this thread: https://secure.worldcommunitygrid.org/forums/wcg/viewthread?thread=8654
----------------------------------------Sorry
WCG
----------------------------------------Please help to make the Forums an enjoyable experience for All! [Edit 1 times, last edit by Sekerob at Jan 4, 2007 4:43:39 PM] |
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Dotsch
Advanced Cruncher Joined: Feb 12, 2006 Post Count: 100 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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Most machines running Unix are critical servers and similar, and not really ideal for grid computing. Some of the more uncommon platforms supported by WCG already have very low numbers of clients. Solaris would simply not provide sufficient return for the work it would require. No. The troughtput is very great of the Unix boxes. The most Unix Systems are multi CPU systems since a lot of years, in the meantime the most actual systems has no more single core. Also the OSes (HPUX, Solaris, AIX, TRU64, IRIX...) are real 64 bit OSes since about 7 to 10 years. Please look at the RAC at SETI or SIMAP. For example the Unix boxes (exclusive Linux) at SIMAP, SETI and SETI Beta has a very good RAC. If you compare the RACs against the PCs, the RAC per system is a lot of higher at the Unix systems. I have seen in my porting history, that there a lot of Unix systems out there which are not used for critical applications, for example test system or workstations. And a lot of users would use them for distributed computing. Also it is a good for the image, if a project support a lot of platforms. If you have a running Linux source, it would not been any big problem to get it running at the other Unixes. I have offered my help for porting it to the different platforms some time ago. If the project is interested, I am still willing to help. I think, that a closed source should not be the problem. I think that this can be handeled with a formal obligation. |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
That may be true, but you are missing my point. Most Unix servers are in critical applications. You should not run any grid software on production servers. They need their memory and so on for other things, and unlike desktop workstations, they can be expected to be at high load for a large amount of the time.
----------------------------------------Of the remaining few in non-critical positions, or owned by hobbyists, or running as a personal fileserver or something, there simply aren't enough to make it worth the effort. A quick glance at the BOINC Stats site shows that none of the major Unix platforms have more than 200 hosts, and most have far, far fewer. Are you seriously suggesting that WCG should invest several man-months to support IRIX, when there are currently 19 hosts running IRIX? (n.b I'm not sure how accurate the BOINCStats data is, but I'm only taking it as a guide.) Making the situation even worse is the fragmentation of Unix. WCG would have to support seperate builds and work queues for Solaris, AIX, etc.... To put it bluntly, most projects will have finished by the time the ports are ready. And even if they were forthcoming, what's the point for a mere handful of computers? The nice thing about BOINC is that there is something available to run on nearly every system. But for purely pragmatic reasons, WCG have to limit themselves to the major platforms. edit: typo [Edit 1 times, last edit by Former Member at Jan 5, 2007 5:06:14 PM] |
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Dotsch
Advanced Cruncher Joined: Feb 12, 2006 Post Count: 100 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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I have a lot of contacts to BOINC users out there, resulting of my porting activities at BOINC. There ARE a lot of workstations out there which are not used for mission critical issues, for example as test system or workstations, where BOINC IS installed.
Also, your calculations are not right... SETI has about 6500 Unix hosts make a RAC about 160 000 to 165 000. If you compare these with the Windows XP systems, you need about 9200 Windows XP hosts for the same RAC. At SIMAP are about 115 Unix hosts with a RAC about 2500...3000. This RAC is comparable with is about 800 Windows 2000 hosts. The porting did not need about several man month. You are joking. I have made the several SETI and SIMAP ports after work at my spare time. For the inital porting and testing about 1 to 2 weeks for each application. For the furhter portings to a new platform about 2 days if it is working everything well. For updates of new releases about some platforms each evening (with parallised test runs). - All times in spare time (after work and weekend) Also, I think ports to the mayor unixes (HP-UX, Solaris, AIX, FreeBSD) would help you. The minor ones (Irix, TRU64, OpenBSD, NetBSD) did not make the high throughput. |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
WCG also need to test and support each platform build. There is a lot of work involved, and a lot of projects to maintain.
Believe me... if WCG had spare time, they would add support for niche platforms. There simply isn't time. Where are you getting your statistics from? They look inflated to me. |
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zombie67 [MM]
Senior Cruncher USA Joined: May 26, 2006 Post Count: 228 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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Just because machines run unix, it does not follow that they are being used as servers. There is no reason to assume the usage for unix hosts are any different from linux hosts. Both unix an linux are frequently used for non-server installations.
----------------------------------------(And lets not forget that all OSX boxes are unix.) Of the remaining few in non-critical positions, or owned by hobbyists, or running as a personal fileserver or something, there simply aren't enough to make it worth the effort. A quick glance at the BOINC Stats site shows that none of the major Unix platforms have more than 200 hosts, and most have far, far fewer. Are you seriously suggesting that WCG should invest several man-months to support IRIX, when there are currently 19 hosts running IRIX? (n.b I'm not sure how accurate the BOINCStats data is, but I'm only takking it as a guide.) Of course there aren't a lot of hosts listed. Most projects don't offer applications. The cause of the low number is lack of applications, not lack of willing machines. So as long as the stats are (incorrectly) used as justification, there never will be many applications. It's circular reasoning.  |
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Dotsch
Advanced Cruncher Joined: Feb 12, 2006 Post Count: 100 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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WCG also need to test and support each platform build. There is a lot of work involved, and a lot of projects to maintain. No. Please look in my first post, what I have written about my time frames in the previous portings. Do you know the difference between Linux and the different Unixes ? - There are not a lot of differences. So porting and testing is not a big act, as you have written. If you have a working Linux port, it is not hard to port it to the most Unixes. Believe me... if WCG had spare time, they would add support for niche platforms. There simply isn't time. As I have written, you could have still all the ports, if you would work together with volunteers. Where are you getting your statistics from? They look inflated to me. Boincsynergy. SETI had some problems with a DB table, so the stats was not right exported. - Could be, that you have calculated with the wrong stats... [Edit 1 times, last edit by Dotsch at Jan 5, 2007 4:11:05 PM] |
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Dotsch
Advanced Cruncher Joined: Feb 12, 2006 Post Count: 100 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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Of course there aren't a lot of hosts listed. Most projects don't offer applications. The cause of the low number is lack of applications, not lack of willing machines. So as long as the stats are (incorrectly) used as justification, there never will be many applications. It's circular reasoning. Ack ! [Edit 1 times, last edit by Former Member at Jan 8, 2007 2:56:41 PM] |
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