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World Community Grid Forums
Category: Support
Forum: BOINC Agent Support
Thread: Boinc slower on Linux? |
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Thread Status: Active Total posts in this thread: 8
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
Hi everyone,
Sorry if I'm hitting a dead horse, but I recently converted my old machine from Win XP to Xubuntu 8,10 (which I love btw) and after a few weeks of crunching noticed that my average points per WU are lower and the average time per WU is higher. It looks like the BOINC client is somehow running slower on Xubuntu. Found a bunch of threads out there that claimed the same but they were based on the benchmarks results which I don't trust because of the difference in compilers and such. Anyone else has noticed the same? Any solution to that problem? Running BOINC 6.2.x off the top of my head, I'll have to double check the version number tonight. Thanks. |
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TXR13
Cruncher Canada Joined: Dec 5, 2005 Post Count: 36 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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If you're using the stock Intrepid package for boinc-client, the version is 6.2.12. This was a development build of BOINC, so the benchmarks and metrics might be a little off, I guess? Not that I know in specific.
----------------------------------------Most of my machines are running Ubuntu Server 8.04.2 with BOINC 5.10.45. Exceptionally stable, and I have nothing to complain about. I do use Xubuntu 8.10 on my laptops, though. Again, nothing to complain about, though they do seem to run a bit slower than the others. If you felt like trying out an upgrade to 6.2.14, you could enable the intrepid-backports repository for Xubuntu and see if installing the upgraded package for boinc-client made any difference. It shouldn't affect the operation of any workunits you currently have downloaded. Personally, I'm content to wait until Jaunty (9.04) launches in a month. I'll upgrade my laptops then anyways.  |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
Any minor change is likely to be due to the changing nature of the work units.
But if you see a significant change, then the first thing to check is your CPU frequency settings. |
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JmBoullier
Former Community Advisor Normandy - France Joined: Jan 26, 2007 Post Count: 3716 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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If WUs of all projects are slower than they were under Windows it could be as Didactylos says that the power management feature of Linux is reducing the speed of your processor for saving energy when nothing else than Boinc is running. It is enabled by default in many Linux distros. Disable it under Linux or block it to the normal speed at BIOS level.
----------------------------------------But if it is only HCC which is slower it is another problem. HCC WUs had a very high number of soft page faults when this project has been launched but this problem had been fixed some time later. However after I upgraded my Ubuntu from 8.04 to 8.10 and Boinc from 5.10.45 to 6.2.1x at the same time I have found that HCC WUs are page faulting again at a very high rate, leading to much CPU time used by the kernel and WUs duration lengthening accordingly. Because of the current high workload for the techs this problem has not been addressed yet but I don't give up following it up when the pressure gets lower. One last thing: if you take the time to upgrade Boinc from 6.2.12 to another version go directly to 6.2.15 or at least avoid 6.2.14: there will be no difference regarding the duration but you will avoid the frustration of a bigger difference between granted and claimed credits: the benchmark of 6.2.14 for integer operations is 50 % higher than it should be.  Cheers. Jean. |
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TXR13
Cruncher Canada Joined: Dec 5, 2005 Post Count: 36 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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One last thing: if you take the time to upgrade Boinc from 6.2.12 to another version go directly to 6.2.15 or at least avoid 6.2.14: there will be no difference regarding the duration but you will avoid the frustration of a bigger difference between granted and claimed credits: the benchmark of 6.2.14 for integer operations is 50 % higher than it should be. Eh, that's good to know! At least Jaunty will have 6.2.18, so we'll avoid that particular issue. |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
Hello lancelot,
In general the Linux GCC compiler is not as optimized as the Windows compiler. A number of people have commented on the speedup of running on Linux 64 using the much faster Linux 64 support libraries for the 32-bit application. A different problem is that new Linux distros are starting to lower the CPU frequency (by default) when running low priority applications, which slows down BOINC. Lawrence |
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wchoff
Cruncher Joined: Nov 17, 2004 Post Count: 35 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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I run Ubuntu and had a similar problem. As suggested before, the CPU frequency settings should be checked. You can add the CPU Frequency Scaling Monitor to your Panel to see how your CPU is running. If it doesn't stay at max power, and by default it shouldn't, then there's a way to force it to. The available frequencies for your CPU are in the file /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_available_frequencies. Once you know those, issue the command 'cpufreq-selector -f biggest-number' (you'll probably need to sudo it) and you should be able to crunch much more efficiently.
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
cpufreq-selector -g performance should do the same with a little less trouble. |
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