Forum de la Mini-Team Libristes de l'équipe de L'Alliance Francophone sur BOINC

> Concerning the choice of using a Virtual Machine, it's a really good idea,
> but don't you think it can waste resources ?

The answer is not a direct: yes or no. Let me explain. Some research
experiments need a very complex set up to run their problems, for
instance a simulation. At CERN, the need for some cases more than 10
GB of libraries and dependencies, just for running a simulation, so
porting that to Windows, GNU/Linux and Mac OS is impossible or to
heavy to do it in a reasonable time. Additionally, most of the
employed technologies used at CERN rely on *nix systems (Unix and
GNU/Linux), so porting those libraries and tools to Windows systems
could be very very difficult. The solution? Use virtual machines. Why?
Because within a Virtual Machine you can install whatever you need,
and run it in any OS or platform. It is obvious that you have some
overheads (in most of the cases is meaningful) but the benefits of
high end PC with nowadays have at least two cores, large hard disks,
high-end network connections, etc, are worthy in terms of losing some
computing power and use it directly without having to expend time in
porting and maintaining your software in three different platforms.
Thus, the employment of virtualization is a good approach for solving
these problems and let users also collaborate with more complex
problems. Additionally, virtualization provides an extra layer of
security for researchers and users, as Virtual Machines are very
secure thanks to its design.

I hope I have explained to you the motivation of using virtualization.
If I haven't make it clear, just ask it again. I will try to do it
better :)

> And on server system, are they going to be able to run the VM ? (Never
> tried)

Yes, it is possible, as VirtualBox supports a mode called Headless
Mode, where servers can run without an X session virtual machines.
Right now we have this feature enabled in our code, but we are not
using it because we are still in the alpha phase, and we want that
volunteers see behind the curtains :)

Elgrande71 a écrit : http://boinc01.cern.ch/test4theory/resu ... id=35 

Pascal94 a écrit :

Elgrande71 a écrit : http://boinc01.cern.ch/test4theory/resu ... id=35 

t'as une UT qui tourne depuis le 28 ?

moi ça part tout en sucette, une vrai cata

Choose a 32-bit version for now - we will later support 64 bit versions. Please download version 3.2.12,  the newer stable version 4.0 is not yet officially supported.

New work unit released
In our effort to test the system with new users, we have cancelled the prueba05 work unit, creating a new one called test06 that substitutes the old one. If you have any problem with the process, let us know. 1 Feb 2011 11:41:48 UTC ·

Pascal94 a écrit : bon, bah je vais re-essayer en 3.2.12 64b alors 


Edit :

New work unit released
In our effort to test the system with new users, we have cancelled the prueba05 work unit, creating a new one called test06 that substitutes the old one. If you have any problem with the process, let us know. 1 Feb 2011 11:41:48 UTC ·

Edit 2 : j'ai une Test06_53 en cours depuis 52 minutes, avec VB 3.2.12 64b, je croise les doigts 


Edit 3 : encore en sucette 


Edit 4 : en jetant un oeil dans le dossier Boinc du projet, il y a le fichier cernvm.vmdk.gz qui pèse 212 Mo. quand je fais un reset project, ce fichier lui ne semble pas rechargé. je l'ai donc supprimé, fait un reset, et là Boinc est en train de le DL à nouveau. je testerais encore une UT pour voir...


Edit 5 : re-sucette, basta