Vboxdrv.inf

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Ifyou just want to run the Sixtrack application, you can safely ignore this message. Otherwise, if you wish to run other applications like ATLAS, CMS or LHCb that require virtualization, you need to install Oracle Virtual Box as described in the "Install Virtual Box" entry.

Many packages are included in CernVM. For example, Test4Theory is based on the RIVET analysis tool and includes the following high-energy physics event generators: ALPGEN, HERWIG++, PYTHIA, SHERPA, and VINCIA

If you have found an error or a bug in the application, the experiments, the project, etc. please write a post about the error in the message boards so the administrators and volunteers can participate in solving the problem.

VirtualBox is a powerful x86 and AMD64/Intel64 virtualization hypervisor for enterprise as well as home use. A hypervisor allows your computer to host one or more Virtual Machines, running different operating systems than your own computer runs. This is essential for all our projects (except for Sixtrack).

Virtualization, in computing, is the creation of a virtual computer that can run an operating system, applications, etc. within your real hardware. You can obtain more information about this topic in the Wikipedia.

The computing needs of the LHC, especially when it comes to comparing various theories with experimental results, are enormous. Basically, the physicists' appetite for computing power expands to fill all available resources, because there are always more theories to test than there are computers to test them with.

Since budgets are constrained, especially in these economically difficult times, access to volunteer resources is seen by CERN as a great opportunity to expand computing capacity. We'll never replace the Grid's core function of managing the data mountains, but we could augment its computing power considerably. While the LHC World-Wide Computing grid is used at full capacity to handle the analysis of LHC data, there is need for additional capacity for simulations of LHC physics, ranging from theory to simulations of detectors as well as design improvements for future accelerators.

It's also clear to everyone in our community that getting the public more directly involved in LHC physics has great outreach benefits as well. So we see this as a win-win situation. And who knows, perhaps one day we'll be able to announce an important discovery that will have been made in part thanks to the volunteers. That would be cool!

If the virtual machine named "boinc_wu_xxxx_..." in the VBox Manager window does not respond at all to BOINC (i.e. you suspend the BOINC task but the VM is still running) you can try the following steps to recover the project:

CernVM is a Virtual Software Appliance for the participants of CERN LHC experiments. The Appliance represents an extensible, portable and easy to configure user environment for developing and running LHC physics software both locally, on Grids and on Clouds, independently of Operating System software and hardware platforms (GNU/Linux, Windows, MacOSX).

The goal is to remove a need for the installation of the experiment software on each target platform, and thus to minimize the number of platforms (compiler-OS combinations) on which experiment software needs to be supported and tested. Visit the CernVM homepage for further details.

All our projects (except for Sixtrack) run very large CERN software packages with complex dependencies that cannot be easily ported to all the volunteers' operating systems (Windows, GNU/Linux and Mac OS X).

BOINC must not be installed as a service (Windows) or a daemon (GNU/Linux) because this project uses Virtual Machines. When BOINC is installed as a service or a daemon it runs as an unprivileged user and cannot run any virtual machine.

If BOINC is correctly installed, the main reason for that message is that the wrapper fails to remove an old virtual machine (VM) after it has expired, and so cannot register a new VM for the next Work Unit (WU).

You can change how much CPU time is used by the Virtual Machine going into your BOINC project account and changing the Preferences for this project -> Maximum CPU % for Virtual Machine. You can specify an amount between 0 and 100% (by default 100%), then save your preferences and update the BOINC project.

If you have installed BOINC with the Protected Application Execution option enabled, then you will not be able to run the project, and all the work units will fail. The reason is that when you install BOINC with that flag enabled, BOINC is run under an unprivileged user that cannot create, start, pause, resume virtual machines at all. Thus, the wrapper will not be able to run the required virtual machine of this project.

If you only have access to Internet via a Proxy, you may get Compute Errors in BOINC, as the Virtual Machine needs direct connection to Internet. For the moment there is no solution, but we will try to fix it.

VirtualBox warns the user about how the keyboard and mouse will be captured if you click inside the window of the virtual machine. This message will pop up everytime you run a virtual machine unless you tick the "don't show this window again" option in the message box.

(This is a Windows problem only).If you get that error it seems like your VirtualBox installation missed installing the vboxdrv.inf driver. Please first try to reinstall VirtualBox - if this does not solve the problem, go to C:\Program Files\Oracle\VirtualBox\Drivers\ and double click in the file vboxdrv.inf. After that, you should be able to run VirtualBox without problems.

The BOINC transfer at most network preference is not supported for the moment. If your ISP has a limitation in the bandwidth that you can use each month, bear in mind that the virtual machine will continue downloading/uploading data when needed.

We recommend to exit BOINC before powering off the computer, because the VBox Wrapper will capture that exit signal, and will try to save the virtual machine and avoid canceling the WU. This is not necessary when suspending or hibernating the computer.

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