Hi, All. Thank you for your help in the past. I have a problem which my googling has not been able to resolve and so I would like to ask about it here.

I run Universe@Home on a cluster of Raspberry PI 3s and 4s and a while back sought to add a PI 400 running PI OS 64-bit (buster) to the mix. I wanted to see if the 64-bit OS ran those tasks faster, which I was under the impression that it should.

I've installed boinc on the PI and added the Universe@Home project. The boinc manager pops up just fine on the PI, it also autostarts boinc (I see it running in the background). The boinc manager communicates with Universe@Home as the stats such as "total work done" and "average work per day" show up in the manager.

The problem is that no tasks are ever received by the PI and so the PI 400 sits there idly running boinc without the BHspin2 process that I see merrily chugging away on the PI 3 and PI 4 nodes.

Is there anyone out there running Bullseye 64-bit on a PI who can advise me on how to fix this? Thank You very much!

-Mike

At the moment we don't have Linux Arm 64bit app :(

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Krzysztof 'krzyszp' Piszczek

Member of Radioactive@Home team
My Patreon profile
Universe@Home on YT

Hi, All. Thank you for your help in the past. I have a problem which my googling has not been able to resolve and so I would like to ask about it here.

I run Universe@Home on a cluster of Raspberry PI 3s and 4s and a while back sought to add a PI 400 running PI OS 64-bit (buster) to the mix. I wanted to see if the 64-bit OS ran those tasks faster, which I was under the impression that it should.

I've installed boinc on the PI and added the Universe@Home project. The boinc manager pops up just fine on the PI, it also autostarts boinc (I see it running in the background). The boinc manager communicates with Universe@Home as the stats such as "total work done" and "average work per day" show up in the manager.

The problem is that no tasks are ever received by the PI and so the PI 400 sits there idly running boinc without the BHspin2 process that I see merrily chugging away on the PI 3 and PI 4 nodes.

Is there anyone out there running Bullseye 64-bit on a PI who can advise me on how to fix this? Thank You very much!

-Mike

I run Universe on my 32 bit and 64 bit Pi's. Universe does not have a 64 bit application so you need to run the available 32 bit application.

You just need to add the armhf architecture from the distro to your Pi400. Some additional libraries and add a setting to your cc_config.xml file.

sudo dpkg --add-architecture armhf
sudo apt update
sudo apt install libstdc++6:armhf libgomp1:armhf libboinc7:armhf
sudo reboot

Add <alt_platform>arm-unknown-linux-gnueabihf</alt_platform> into the <options> section of the cc_config.xml and restart BOINC.

You should pick up Universe tasks right away and see the added armhf architecture in the top of the Event Log at startup.

You can only get hamstrung if your distro does not offer the armhf architecture as my Nvidia Jetson Nano does. No chance of running Universe there as the locked down distro does not have any 32 bit libraries.

This is my Pi4 which you can take a look at. https://universeathome.pl/universe/show_host_detail.php?hostid=607777

This is my Pi3B+ so you can see that indeed the 64 bit OS is faster than the 32bit OS. Not withstanding the slight difference in SoC's.
https://universeathome.pl/universe/show_host_detail.php?hostid=563293

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A proud member of the OFA (Old Farts Association)

Krzysztof, Keith: thank you so very much for supplying the answers to my PI OS 64-bit problem!

Especially to you, Keith. Your clear instructions on setting up additional libraries and editing the cc_config.xml file worked on my PI-400, no problems.

Just in case anyone else is having the same issue, I edited my cc_config.xml file using the command:

sudo nano /var/lib/boinc-client/cc_config.xml

and it now looks like (edited as per Keith's suggestions)::

--
This is a minimal configuration file cc_config.xml of the BOINC core client.
For a complete list of all available options and logging flags and their
meaning see: https://boinc.berkeley.edu/wiki/client_configuration
-->
<cc_config>
<log_flags>
<task>1</task>
<file_xfer>1</file_xfer>
<sched_ops>1</sched_ops>
</log_flags>
<options>
<alt_platform>arm-unknown-linux-gnueabihf</alt_platform>
<options>
</cc_config>

Four threads of BHspin2 are now running on my PI400. I am looking forward to seeing how well it helps out with Work Units for Universe@Home. If it is an improvement to the 32-bit OS I might consider upgrading my PI3s and PI4s.

Thank You Very Much

-Mike

Krzysztof, Keith: thank you so very much for supplying the answers to my PI OS 64-bit problem!

Especially to you, Keith. Your clear instructions on setting up additional libraries and editing the cc_config.xml file worked on my PI-400, no problems.

Just in case anyone else is having the same issue, I edited my cc_config.xml file using the command:

sudo nano /var/lib/boinc-client/cc_config.xml

and it now looks like (edited as per Keith's suggestions)::

--
This is a minimal configuration file cc_config.xml of the BOINC core client.
For a complete list of all available options and logging flags and their
meaning see: https://boinc.berkeley.edu/wiki/client_configuration
-->
<cc_config>
<log_flags>
<task>1</task>
<file_xfer>1</file_xfer>
<sched_ops>1</sched_ops>
</log_flags>
<options>
<alt_platform>arm-unknown-linux-gnueabihf</alt_platform>
<options>
</cc_config>

Four threads of BHspin2 are now running on my PI400. I am looking forward to seeing how well it helps out with Work Units for Universe@Home. If it is an improvement to the 32-bit OS I might consider upgrading my PI3s and PI4s.

Thank You Very Much

-Mike

Happy to help, Mike. Glad you got your Pi400 running Universe.

FYI, to get a fully populated cc_config.xml file with all possible options configured with standard settings, all you need to do is open the BOINC Manager and change ONE Logging option from default to something else and Save the configuration.

That forces a complete full cc_configuration file. Then you can revert the option back to what it was before and you have a fully populated cc_config now.
I recommend just adding another logging option to the defaults. Toggle on the sched_op_debug option. I think that should be one of the defaults in my opinion. What it does for you is show you tersely in the Event Log exactly how many seconds of cpu and gpu work you are requesting at every scheduler connection.
You will get something like this.

13-Aug-2022 17:48:02 [Universe@Home] [sched_op] Starting scheduler request
13-Aug-2022 17:48:02 [Universe@Home] Sending scheduler request: Requested by project.
13-Aug-2022 17:48:02 [Universe@Home] Not requesting tasks: don't need (CPU: not highest priority project; NVIDIA GPU: )
13-Aug-2022 17:48:02 [Universe@Home] [sched_op] CPU work request: 0.00 seconds; 0.00 devices
13-Aug-2022 17:48:02 [Universe@Home] [sched_op] NVIDIA GPU work request: 0.00 seconds; 0.00 devices
13-Aug-2022 17:48:03 [Universe@Home] Scheduler request completed
13-Aug-2022 17:48:03 [Universe@Home] [sched_op] Server version 715
13-Aug-2022 17:48:03 [Universe@Home] Project requested delay of 11 seconds

Provides great information about why or why not you aren't/are getting work as expected. Saves a trip to the forums for debug help.

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A proud member of the OFA (Old Farts Association)

Mike you should get an improvement in your Pi3's if you upgrade to a 64bit OS as that usually gets you a newer kernel and release version. There was a major speed improvement in Universe tasks when the releases moved >=2.31 glibc standard libraries. 2.31 or better is great.

So look at your OS details and see what standard glibc library it is using. On the mainline distros like Ubuntu the change occurred when the OS updated from Ubuntu 18 to Ubuntu 20. We noticed the big speed improvement with the glibc update even though we were running the exact same kernels in Ubuntu 18 and Ubuntu 20. So the improvement was solely due to the improvement in the underlying base installation support files.

Or you can just look at your list of computers here at Universe and see the host details which also shows the glibc version in the Operating System column.

[Edit] Looks like all the rest of your Pi's should be upgraded in the release version to take advantage of the speed improvement in the glibc library. I see nothing but 2.28 glibc versions on every host except for your new Pi400 host.

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A proud member of the OFA (Old Farts Association)

Thank You for this excellent advise, Keith. -Mike