Marks Rpi Cluster continues to run 24/7. It currently consists of:
3 x Raspberry Pi4 (8GB)
2 x Raspberry Pi4 (2GB) as support nodes
10 x Raspberry Pi3
Current work
The three Pi4 (8GB) are running Einstein and the occasional Rosetta work. Even though they have the same project share (50%) and both projects are allowed work, they are making up for all the time spent running Rosetta. I expect they will even out next week and split the cores between the two projects.
The ten Pi3 are only attached to the Einstein project.
Operating Systems
All the Pi4's are running Raspberry Pi OS 64 bit. This allows them to run the Rosetta aarch64 app and the unofficial Einstein aarch64 app.
The Pi3's are running Raspbian (32 bit).
Future plans
The intention is to replace the Pi3's with Pi4 8GB. This will allow apps that want more memory (like Rosetta) to take advantage. The suppliers are still restricting how many Pi4 8GB that can be purchased at a time.
Another issue is around powering a number of them from a single power supply unit. There is no off the shelf power supply available for 4 or more Pi4's so you have to build your own or have power strips full of power adapters and lots of messy cables.
Saturday, August 29, 2020
Sunday, July 26, 2020
26th of July
MarksRpiCluster continues to run a mix of Einstein and Rosetta work. The Pi4's are running Rosetta and the Pi3's are running Einstein work. The 3 x Pi4's have got up to 244,000 credits for Rosetta. They been working there since the 6th of April 2020.
More cases
I have ordered a couple of the FLIRC cases.
The FLIRC cases are for the two support nodes, which are Pi4 2GB. At the moment they are sitting in the bottom half of an official Pi4 case with their tops off for cooling. I would prefer them fully enclosed to protect the Pi.
Replacing Pi4 4GB
I have ordered another two Pi4 8GB. I would have ordered more but they are still limiting the quantity that can be ordered. The two new ones will replace a couple of Pi4 4GB.
Rosetta recently has been sending work units that want up to 2.2GB of memory. It causes the Pi4 4GB to swap out the other tasks and that is with them limited to running 3 tasks at a time. The one Pi4 8GB that I have doesn't have this issue and is more productive as a result.
Update 30th of July
The two Pi4 8GB mentioned above arrived and are now in service. This is what the three (I already had one) look like in BOINCtasks as they run Rosetta work.
Friday, June 26, 2020
27th of June
Marks Rpi Cluster continues to run as I reduce the number of Pi3's. I'll be upgrading to Pi4's. Currently I have 2 x Pi4 4GB, 1 x Pi4 8GB and a couple of Pi4 2GB as support nodes.
In cluster news, the 3 x Pi4 are transitioning back to running
Rosetta work. Rosetta ran out of work so I had them doing Einstein
instead. The other Pi3's (10 of them) are running Einstein.
Give-away
I've removed 12 of the Pi3's from service and I am giving them away for free. The lucky winners will have to be in Australia though. I don't want to spend much on postage. They come in 3 of my Pi^4 cases (4 Pi3's in each case, 2 x 60MM fans on top) with USB power cables and I will even throw in the USB chargers that I have been using to run them. See http://marksrpicluster.blogspot.com/2018/03/pi4-case-mk-ii.html
If anyone wants the Pi2's they can have them too. Once again limited to Australia. They're in a variety of different cases. I have 4 of them and a single PiB (sometimes called the Pi1B) in a case.
If you are interested leave a comment with your email address. If you want one or all of them mention that too. Comments
don't get automatically published - I have to approve them.
Wednesday, June 10, 2020
Trying Raspberry Pi OS 64 bit
I received a Pi4 8GB so thought I would try it using the new Raspberry Pi OS 64 bit. At the moment there is only a full version. Normally I use Raspbian lite as my Pi's are running headless (no screen or keyboard). It just means its a bigger download.
It installed as normal and the setup process is just the same as for Raspbian. After I got it going the first thing I did was to remove the desktop with a "sudo apt remove x11-*" command followed by a "sudo apt autoremove". Then I updated it with a "sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade" command as there are a few updates. After the updates and a reboot it reports:
Linux *** 5.4.42-v8+ #1319 SMP PREEMPT Wed May 20 14:18:56 BST 2020 aarch64 GNU/Linux
That means its running a 5.4 kernel. For comparison Debian buster is using the 4.19 kernel. Here is the output from a free command to see how much memory its got:
total used free shared buff/cache available
Mem: 8054896 1421728 4474672 380 2158496 6507884
Swap: 102396 0 102396
Given its really running Debian adding buster-backports is a 1 line change to /etc/apt/sources.list and adding "deb http://deb.debian.org/debian buster-backports main" to the end, without the quotes. There is no need to add signing keys because its already using the Debian repositories.
Getting the latest BOINC is a simple matter of typing "apt install -t buster-backports boinc-client" which will get you the 7.16.1 version as I type this.
There is no need to use an <alt_platform> tag in the cc_config.xml to get aarch64 apps. I did have to download the aarch64 Einstein BRP4 app written by user N30DG and install it. Unfortunately I did this before I had attached to the Einstein project and had an issue with ownership of the einstein projects folder. A "sudo chown boinc:boinc /var/lib/boinc-client/* -R" command fixed that.
I've run one Einstein BRP4 task through using the optimized app. Run time was around 3 hours. By comparison the 32 bit app from the project takes 7 hours. Memory usage was 193MB using the optimized app compared to 133MB for the project app. That means its possible to run 4 at a time on a 1GB Pi3. I will have to try that some other time.
I have 3 Rosetta tasks running on it at the moment (they were running at the same time as the Einstein task). They normally take 8 hours and have been going for 3 hours now.
Overall its a much better experience than trying to run Raspbian with a 64 bit kernel. The extra memory will come in handy for the Rosetta apps, some of their work units use 1.5GB. With my Pi4 4GB I have had to limit them to only running 3 tasks at a time. As this is still considered beta expect frequent updates as the Raspberry Pi foundation resolve issues.
It installed as normal and the setup process is just the same as for Raspbian. After I got it going the first thing I did was to remove the desktop with a "sudo apt remove x11-*" command followed by a "sudo apt autoremove". Then I updated it with a "sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade" command as there are a few updates. After the updates and a reboot it reports:
Linux *** 5.4.42-v8+ #1319 SMP PREEMPT Wed May 20 14:18:56 BST 2020 aarch64 GNU/Linux
That means its running a 5.4 kernel. For comparison Debian buster is using the 4.19 kernel. Here is the output from a free command to see how much memory its got:
total used free shared buff/cache available
Mem: 8054896 1421728 4474672 380 2158496 6507884
Swap: 102396 0 102396
Given its really running Debian adding buster-backports is a 1 line change to /etc/apt/sources.list and adding "deb http://deb.debian.org/debian buster-backports main" to the end, without the quotes. There is no need to add signing keys because its already using the Debian repositories.
Getting the latest BOINC is a simple matter of typing "apt install -t buster-backports boinc-client" which will get you the 7.16.1 version as I type this.
There is no need to use an <alt_platform> tag in the cc_config.xml to get aarch64 apps. I did have to download the aarch64 Einstein BRP4 app written by user N30DG and install it. Unfortunately I did this before I had attached to the Einstein project and had an issue with ownership of the einstein projects folder. A "sudo chown boinc:boinc /var/lib/boinc-client/* -R" command fixed that.
I've run one Einstein BRP4 task through using the optimized app. Run time was around 3 hours. By comparison the 32 bit app from the project takes 7 hours. Memory usage was 193MB using the optimized app compared to 133MB for the project app. That means its possible to run 4 at a time on a 1GB Pi3. I will have to try that some other time.
I have 3 Rosetta tasks running on it at the moment (they were running at the same time as the Einstein task). They normally take 8 hours and have been going for 3 hours now.
Overall its a much better experience than trying to run Raspbian with a 64 bit kernel. The extra memory will come in handy for the Rosetta apps, some of their work units use 1.5GB. With my Pi4 4GB I have had to limit them to only running 3 tasks at a time. As this is still considered beta expect frequent updates as the Raspberry Pi foundation resolve issues.
Update - 5 July
I have converted all the Pi4's to Raspberry Pi OS (64 bit).
One bug I noticed is if the Bluetooth and WiFi modules are blacklisted it complains about /dev/wifi not being accessible to rfkill. It doesn't complain under Raspbian.
I have converted all the Pi4's to Raspberry Pi OS (64 bit).
One bug I noticed is if the Bluetooth and WiFi modules are blacklisted it complains about /dev/wifi not being accessible to rfkill. It doesn't complain under Raspbian.
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