Yes...
Validate errors and "very fast" Herwig 7 NLO.

I'm sure that most people have seen this message:

level=warning msg="The cgroupv2 manager is set to systemd but there is no systemd user session available"
level=warning msg="For using systemd, you may need to log in using a user session"
level=warning msg="Alternatively, you can enable lingering with: `loginctl enable-linger nnn` (possibly as root)"
level=warning msg="Falling back to --cgroup-manager=cgroupfs"

For me enabling linger never worked on my computers so I set in /etc/containers/containers.conf

[engine] cgroup_manager = "cgroupfs"

All was well and I had no issues to run tasks.

However, I had another issue and asked the BOINC team for help, they said my podman has issues, so it seems that its not recomeneded to use cgroupfs.

After many hours of trying settings I was able to get systemd to work.

I installed BOINC directly from BOINC as per instructions here https://boinc.berkeley.edu/linux_install.php via apt as I have a Debian based Linux.

However, as it common for LHC@Home the default settings are not compatiable, so you need to overide the defualts.

to get the nnn value you can run id -u boinc,

my numbers, were different on each computer, some were 120, others 125 and other 997.

systemctl edit boinc-client to edit the overide of the default BOINC setting:

[Unit] Requires=user@nnn.service #Wait for the users instance of systemd to start since BOINC is set to auto start at boot. After=user@nnn.service #Wait for the users instance of systemd to start since BOINC is set to auto start at boot. [Service] ProtectHome=false #Since podman need to read and write to /run/user/ folder this needs to be off so it can communicate with podman Delegate=cpu io memory pids #I needed this to ensure that the statistics about the containers are populated correctly MemoryAccounting=yes #I needed this to ensure that the statistics about the containers are populated correctly ProtectSystem=full #needed for VirtualBox to run correctly Environment="XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=/run/user/nnn" #I'm not sure if this is needed but seemed to help BOINC find podman Environment="DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS=unix:path=/run/user/nnn/bus" #I'm not sure if this is needed but seemed to help BOINC find podman

For me the boinc user that was created automatically had many services that were not needed (e.g. audio, firmware updater) so I could disable these, its more a cosmetic thing.

systemctl --user -M boinc@ mask \ pipewire.service \ pipewire-pulse.service \ pipewire-pulse.socket \ filter-chain.service \ wireplumber.service \ xdg-document-portal.service \ xdg-permission-store.service \ snap.firmware-updater.firmware-notifier.service \ snap.firmware-updater.firmware-notifier.timer \ snap.prompting-client.daemon.service \ snap.snapd-desktop-integration.snapd-desktop-integration.service

Hopefully this is useful to get your podman/BOINC running too.

In reply to Pascal's message of 29 May 2026:
... could you give me a step-by-step description. ...
My previous post describes the steps you need to do.

For example #3:
Use an editor you are familiar with and modify /etc/cvmfs/default.local as follows:
- add 'alice.cern.ch' to the repository list
- remove 'geant4.cern.ch'

For example #4:
Use an editor you are familiar with and modify /etc/cvmfs/default.local as follows:
Add 'CVMFS_USE_CDN=yes'

Similar with the other numbers.
I will not explain how to create a file, open a file in an arbitrary text editor, enter a line, modify some text, remove another line, save the file ...

... if I understood correctly, you have to install cvmfs + podman and that’s it.
Is the installation of CVMFS for podman identical to the one used to do the theory native tasks?
The docker/podman app replaced the older Theory native app.
Podman (or docker) is a MUST HAVE to run this app.

A local CVMFS is recommended as it avoids a lot of network traffic but it is independent from Podman.
If you don't install it, a CVMFS inside the container will be used.
If you decide to use CVMFS on the host it MUST be correctly configured!
As for CVMFS you got the links with step by step instructions and comments in your task logs.

Done its https://github.com/BOINC/boinc/issues/7100

In reply to ivan's message of 25 May 2026:
a record heatwave for May same here in Austria :-( and no end in sight :-(

Finally got the server to take back my finished Dockers and give me some new ones ....nothing at -dev yet

I used to get very long Theory work units, such as some more than 12 hours (on a 2 year old CPU) such as sent dates April 5, 13, 30 and May 1 and 8 (such as https://lhcathome.cern.ch/lhcathome/result.php?resultid=435330784). Some long tasks included those with Input file metadata indicating pythia8, sherpa, herwig, powheg-box, and likely other subtypes.

Since May 8, all work units complete in usually under an hour and a few within about 3-4 hours on that same PC system,

Has the generation of the long work units changed or is it just random over time?

Just wondering whether we still need to request a red message in the Event Log to warn users when a specific task may take a very long time to run.

Yup, I have started to get validate errors also.

Sadly, that's not the same problem. It completed on my end successfully and the task has online the status 'Completed, waiting for validation' but it has been waiting for 10 days.
Some tasks had similar results, but they got sent out again to another user, and when that was done, it finished up.
But here it seems that the sending-out part was not generated successfully.

In reply to ivan's message of 12 May 2026:
Occasionally, anti-virus programmes wrongly flag up VirtualBox. You may need to manually create an exception in your AV.

I'm not running any antivirus, I messed it up myself. Also had issues with updating/upgrading software, kept getting some errors.

Eventually I got lucky with the system recommening a version upgrade to Mint 22.3. Got the same error at the end of the upgrade, but running a manual update through the software manager somehow fixed everything (it didn't, before upgrading to 22.3).

Got the VB Extension pack ticked in green, but I'll wait with rebooting the system until I finish a running CPDN task (will take 4-5 more days). Until then I'll just work on Theory so no LHC-time is lost.

I don't have htop inside the container so I just used top e.g.

podman exec -it ed746bb7ffd4 top -n1

Tasks: 17 total, 2 running, 15 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie %Cpu(s): 0.4 us, 24.3 sy, 72.5 ni, 2.9 id, 0.0 wa, 0.0 hi, 0.0 si, 0.0 st MiB Mem : 511227.9 total, 447688.1 free, 53287.8 used, 17278.2 buff/cache MiB Swap: 8192.0 total, 8192.0 free, 0.0 used. 457940.1 avail Mem PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND 965 boinc 30 10 635044 269404 14120 R 100.0 0.1 3196:45 Herwig

Since I have more than 1 container I used podman ps to get the ID (ed746bb7ffd4 ) that I was intrested in.

In reply to Magic Quantum Mechanic's message of 7 May 2026:
I do hope when we come back to life here that they return to working as good as they were for the last month

(version 61.25 vbox64_mt_mcore_cms is working perfectly right now)
I'm nor sure why we had the dip in running jobs last week. People saving energy because of the Iran crisis? Or shutting down machines because of a heat-wave? I know there was a power outage at FNAL recently, but I don't think they give us substantial resources.

I just checked the tally for this afternoon. About 420 download errors and 50 successful.

This is the current mcplots statistic for that runspec:
run events attempts success failure unknown pp z1j 13000 55 - herwig7 7.2.0 nlo-pw 453000 10 5 0 5
So far the success rate is 50%, so there are computers returning valid results.
Be more patient.
It doesn't make sense to complain about each long running task that has not even reached the deadline.

Very cool. I had a bot modify it to run in wsl.
I am attached to 2 very slow huge tasks at the moment.
Both are over 26 hrs old and still chewing.

Thank you. I missed that one.

Please note that our servers will be unavailable for a while on Tuesday 5th of May due to a change of storage backend.

Hence uploads may fail and other BOINC client requests time out. Many thanks for your understanding and happy crunching!

Version 8.2.11 of the BOINC client has been released for all platforms. Download it here. Release notes are here.

When you install a local CVMFS on MacOS this is what 'cvmfs_config setup' originally does (copied from the CVMFS source code):
# Since MacOS 10.15 Catalina it is not possible anymore (without disabling # SIP) create directory in root `/`. # We decide to move the standard installation directory on # `/Users/shared/cvmfs` instead of `/cvmfs` # In order to keep the standard CVMFS mountpoint, we decide to implement # firmlinks from `/cvmfs` to `/Users/shared/cvmfs` if compare_versions $(sw_vers -productVersion) -ge "10.15"; then mkdir -p /Users/shared/cvmfs chown cvmfs:cvmfs /Users/shared/cvmfs chmod 777 /Users/shared/cvmfs if ! grep -q "^cvmfs\t" /etc/synthetic.conf 2> /dev/null ; then echo -e "# The line below was autogenerated by CernVM-FS, do not delete nor edit" >> /etc/synthetic.conf echo -e "cvmfs\t/Users/Shared/cvmfs" >> /etc/synthetic.conf fi # reload synthetic.conf - seems to return nonzero status code even on success /System/Library/Filesystems/apfs.fs/Contents/Resources/apfs.util -t || true else echo "Fuse4x and autofs bug" > /dev/null mkdir -p /cvmfs chown cvmfs:cvmfs /cvmfs chmod 777 /cvmfs fi
To run Theory (docker) without a local CVMFS you MUST ensure '/cvmfs' is present since the container requires it as mountpoint.
So, manually run the relevant commands from the source code above as admin, then reboot:
mkdir -p /Users/shared/cvmfs chmod 777 /Users/shared/cvmfs if ! grep -q "^cvmfs\t" /etc/synthetic.conf 2> /dev/null; then echo -e "cvmfs\t/Users/Shared/cvmfs" >> /etc/synthetic.conf; fi
The part between 'if' and 'fi' must be run as one command without a newline that may be inserted by the forum software here!
If you get permission issues you may not be admin!
In this case, consult your manual or visit MacOS related websites.

It's working fine.

The environment proxy is nice to have for CMS (only) since CMS requests many objects from a distinct CERN webserver (but by far the most from CVMFS!). Theory does not use any data not provided via CVMFS.

Since the scripts were developed for CMS but are now also used for Theory you get that message about the missing environment proxy.
The reason is not the script but a missing tool at Theory (VM as well as podman image).
So far it makes no sense to install that tool on Theory.
Just focus on CVMFS and ignore the message.