Hello,



I am a returning user and I haven't used Boinc for around 4 years now. I installed it again for the first time a week ago and I'm trying to set it up correctly before letting it run for 6 months or so. I'm considering getting involved in the projects SETI@home and FightAIDS@home from World Community Grid.


The problem I'm experiencing is the following: When I'm registered to both projects (seti and fightaids), Boinc downloads and uses the 32 bit seti application (version 6.03) instead of the 64 bit one (version 5.28) as it should.


Where it starts to look weird for me is that when I do a clean install and register only to seti, then the correct version (5.28 / 64 bit) is being downloaded and used.


I've tried to reproduce the problem, and for me it can be made pretty easily no matter what the version of the installed Boinc is (6.10.58 or 6.10.17 I'm currently using now to ensure it cleanly installs or removes in Ubuntu). To do so I just execute the following steps:

* Cleanly uninstall using:


sudo aptitude purge boinc-client boinc-manager

* Install using:


sudo aptitude install boinc-client boinc-manager

* Register to World Community Grid and let it download its files,

* Register to seti (I've unchecked both Astropulse in seti preferences, because I was not sure at first if it was not a SETI@Home Enhanced application-only related problem).

A few minutes later seti downloads the 6.03 32 bit version of its program. To reproduce the correct behavior I do exactly the same except the step of registering to World Community Grid. Seti downloads the 5.28 64 bit version.


I've uploaded the stdoutdae.txt files corresponding to these two situations here:
http://pastebin.com/AFbzxVGU
and here:
http://pastebin.com/29Ghkvqf
The other debug files were empty. Sorry, if they are too long as I have no idea which part of them may be interesting yet. If you tell me which logging flags I should set, I'll be glad to post more of them.

One point that might be important to stress on is that fightaids provides only 32 bit client applications by now. I'm posting this on the Boinc support page though, because I find it hard to imagine it's a fightaids-related problem. How can fightaids get into seti parameters, and most of all, why should it do so? And I think it's no seti bug either, because it operates correctly as long as fightaids doesn't intervene. In the second log you can even see that seti downloads its prefs from World Community Grid all the time without otherwise showing any sign of dysfunction.



Interesting, don't you think?
Looking forward your help,
Best regards,
innobits

Well, your core client is 64 bit. I see Seti has 64 bit Linux apps. I have no idea. Jord?

---

Kathryn :o)

Perhaps to do with running a BOINC 6 client, that he gets the (newer) 6.xx applications. The 5.xx versions were for BOINC 5. It's the project that decides what to send to the client. Innobits could post the contents of his sched_reply_setiathome.berkeley.edu.xml file after the first time it's requested work from Seti. Then at the second request, post the renewed contents of sched_reply*.xml

Be careful with things like the <authenticator>, take those out before posting. Those are your business only, just as your PIN is.

You can also go ask at the Seti Linux/Unix forums. I'll monitor what's being said there then.

Although, in all, it doesn't really matter much as neither application uses more memory than ~32MB. In other words, there's no merit running a 64bit application here, as Seti doesn't address more than 4GB of memory or disk space.

---

Hi,


First of all, thanks to you both for your concern.

I'm not experiencing the same problem anymore today. Actually now it got worse: Seti downloads the 32-bit application version no mater what I do. No way to make it get the 64-bit version anymore. Looks somehow funny to me :)

Anyway I'm now reassured about that: I believe you are right saying that as any of the applications is using more than 4 GB of ram, there's no real difference which one to use. I had a 19% increase in performance using version 5.28 on average and that's not so much a big deal. Where I'm a lot more concerned is that Boinc or Seti appear to have a somehow undetermined behavior about this, and that may be a bug.

Here are the logs you asked for: (installs 32-bit version anyway now so no Fightaids log)

stdoutdae.txt:
http://pastebin.com/SnCHCwhf
sched_request_setiathome.berkeley.edu.xml
http://pastebin.com/Mx2aLqKD
sched_reply_setiathome.berkeley.edu.xml
http://pastebin.com/m5KrdMQh

I also posted on Seti here, we'll see:
http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/forum_thread.php?id=62727


Nice day to you!
innobits