Progress as of 17th of April 2022

This is where Marks Rpi Cluster is as of the 17th of April for Einstein@home. Total credit is 14,735,049 and recent average is 17,608 credits.

 

As you can see things have started climbing quite nicely as the cluster switched to running Einstein BRP4 work around 15 days ago. I have suspended rosetta@home and Einstein FGRP5 work for the time being. Tomorrow will dip as I have the cluster winding down - Its forecast to be 36 degrees C. It will resume once it cools down again.

 

Here is the Rosetta certificate (Rosetta don't have a graph like Einstein). Total credit is 1,650,779 and recent average is 68.

As of the 17th of April the cluster is (still) made up of:

3 x Pi4 (2GB) as support nodes
9 x Pi4 (8GB) as compute nodes
5 x Pi3 as compute nodes

 

Usually I try to do the "Progress" blog posts quarterly but missed the end of the last quarter.

10th of April

Marks Rpi Cluster continues to run 24/7. All compute nodes are running Einstein@home BRP4 work.


Default user pi
After last weeks jump in kernel versions the Raspberry Pi foundation have this week changed their security policy so they no longer have the default user pi. They have issued updated SD card images. A link to the Rpi Foundation blog post is HERE

Instead when setting up a Pi it will ask for a user name and password. Most Linux distros, including Debian which the Raspberry Pi OS is based on, ask when installing so this is nothing new. I'm not sure how this will go with my headless installs (no screen and keyboard) so I will need to experiment. They do mention being able to create a file on the boot partition with a default user name and encrypted password in the blog post.


Out of stock
There are many complaints about the Rpi being out of stock everywhere. The foundation have said they are having difficulty making the 40nm models (Pi3 and older) and have prioritised business customers. They recommend people get the Pi400 or use rpilocator: https://rpilocator.com/ to check availability (it doesn't cover the Asia Pacific region).

A quick check on one of the supplier websites I use seems to have the Pi3 model B+ and the Pi4 model B 8GB out of stock. The 1GB, 2GB and 4GB models seem to be available in Australia. Personally I think they should drop the Pi3 and concentrate on the newer models but they committed to keep making the Pi3 B+ until January 2026.

2nd of April

Marks Rpi Cluster continues to crunch 24/7, although things have been a bit up and down due to the weather.


Updates
There was a Debian point release earlier this week, which they do every 3 - 4 months to update apps, this gave about 43 updates. The point release also bumped the OpenSSL version to fix a new vulnerability.

It was followed a day later with the Raspberry Pi kernel jumping from 5.10 to 5.15. Debian are still on the 5.10 kernel so the Pis are now more up to date.


Einstein@home news
Einstein@home decided to renew their interest in the BRP4 search that all my Pi's run. The project got new data from the Arecibo telescope and were running out of candidates for the FGRP5 search.

They have a new beta test BRP4 app (1.61) out which is somewhat faster than before, but still not as fast as the optimized BRP4 app written by user N30DG a couple of years ago. I'm still running the optimized app. They have also relaxed the validation of work units a bit, where two Intel iGPU work units would gang-up on the Pi and declare the Pi's result as invalid.

As a result of this renewed interest in the BRP4 search I have fired up my 5 Pi3's (which have been off for a while) so they can assist. They are slower than a Pi4 and can only run 3 tasks at a time due to their lack of memory but every little bit helps.