Get your Pi to fight COVID-19

[Howler_LI]

Balena
This only took a few minutes, Balena's directions make it easy

https://foldforcovid.io/



Please join in!

[Heater]

OK. 1 Pi 4 on the map for foldforcovid here in Helsinki.

[ejolson]

OK. 1 Pi 4 on the map for foldforcovid here in Helsinki.

Is there a way to join without downloading a whole new image?

[Heater]

Only for the PC is far as I can find.

Luckily it's only a small couple of hundred megabytes image.

But it's a shame I can't use my one and only Pi 4 for other things at the same time.

By the way it's getting roasty toasty crunching on whatever it is crunching on.

[ConfuSomu]

Is there a way to join without downloading a whole new image?

You can install the Rosetta@Home package on your Raspberry Pi, as foldforcovid.io is based on R@H for job distribution.

[LTolledo]

what assurance this system will not be used as a "backdoor" to my network?

[DougieLawson]

what assurance this system will not be used as a "backdoor" to my network?

There's none.
It would have been much better as an open source package with a *.DEB to install it on an existing RPi. I won't touch what they're offering with with a 40ft barge pole.

I suspect they're trying to get the credit from my RPi for their own Rosetta account if I run their closed SDCard image.

[Heater]

what assurance this system will not be used as a "backdoor" to my network?

There's none.
It would have been much better as an open source package with a *.DEB to install it on an existing RPi. I won't touch what they're offering with with a 40ft barge pole.

Normally I would agree with you dougie. I'm always warning people against downloading and running random images, debs, etc from the net.

As noted above BOINC is available as a Debian package so for the paranoid that is the way to go. I just installed it on a Jetson Nano, it's running fine.
https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/boinc
https://wiki.debian.org/BOINC

In this case I'm prepared to trust Balena. They have been around a long time. They have no incentive to do anything untoward, quite the opposite.

I suspect they're trying to get the credit from my RPi for their own Rosetta account if I run their closed SDCard image.

I really cannot fathom the motivation behind that statement.

[DougieLawson]

I suspect they're trying to get the credit from my RPi for their own Rosetta account if I run their closed SDCard image.

I really cannot fathom the motivation behind that statement.

Because with a closed package you don't known what they're doing. They could be turning your RPi into a spam spewing botnet.
Also why do I need this, if I want to run Rosetta why would I chose this rather than doing it myself with my own Rosetta account.

[Heater]

I suspect they're trying to get the credit from my RPi for their own Rosetta account if I run their closed SDCard image.

I really cannot fathom the motivation behind that statement.

Because with a closed package you don't known what they're doing. They could be turning your RPi into a spam spewing botnet.
Also why do I need this, if I want to run Rosetta why would I chose this rather than doing it myself with my own Rosetta account.

That is true of course. However I think that is really unlikely and I have some trust in Balena. For reasons I mentioned above. Ultimately we have to put our trust in some people, we can each judge who and when for ourselves.

I suspect the idea behind this Rosetta image is that it is drop dead easy for those with little or no experience with the likes of Linux and the Pi to get up and running. Of course the rest of us can install and run it whatever way we like.

However none of that was what I was questioning about your statement. I can't for the life of me see why Balena would be doing this to get credits as you suggest. Even if that was their motivation for some perverse reason, so what?

[ejolson]

I really cannot fathom the motivation behind that statement.

Because with a closed package you don't known what they're doing. They could be turning your RPi into a spam spewing botnet.
Also why do I need this, if I want to run Rosetta why would I chose this rather than doing it myself with my own Rosetta account.

That is true of course. However I think that is really unlikely and I have some trust in Balena. For reasons I mentioned above. Ultimately we have to put our trust in some people, we can each judge who and when for ourselves.

I suspect the idea behind this Rosetta image is that it is drop dead easy for those with little or no experience with the likes of Linux and the Pi to get up and running. Of course the rest of us can install and run it whatever way we like.

However none of that was what I was questioning about your statement. I can't for the life of me see why Balena would be doing this to get credits as you suggest. Even if that was their motivation for some perverse reason, so what?

One possible difficulty with the Balena etcher image or any similar image from a well-meaning third party is not that it contains an intentional botnet, but that it may not receive security updates in the future. Moreover, it may not have been put together by someone with the requisite Linux packaging skills needed to ensure, for example, that a newly installed copy regenerates unique ssh host keys and various passwords. All these things could lead to the Pi joining a botnet in the future, or not. It is also possible, in particular, that the Balena image is put together very well and has none of the above shortcomings.

Although an intentionally hidden Trojan or maintenance backdoor can be quite difficult to find, has anyone made a quick check whether the system, for example, regenerates the ssh host keys? What about automatic updates? While not super critical on their own, if these simple things have not been done properly, this would indicate, in my opinion, a level of danger with the entire setup.

[Heater]

Although an intentionally hidden Trojan or maintenance backdoor can be quite difficult to find, has anyone made a quick check whether the system, for example, regenerates the ssh host keys? What about automatic updates? While not super critical on their own, if these simple things have not been done properly, this would indicate, in my opinion, a level of danger with the entire setup.

As far as I can tell that Balena Rosetta image is not running any ssh server.

The Balena system is all about deploying applications to remotely deployed Pi and other systems inside docker containers. Updating the application containers easily is a prime function of the system.

Meanwhile the underlying Linux run time is as minimal as possible. I'm sure what the story is for updating that.

Balena, formerly Resin.io, have been doing this since the Pi was new. I'm pretty sure they have covered as many security angles as possible.

[ejolson]

Although an intentionally hidden Trojan or maintenance backdoor can be quite difficult to find, has anyone made a quick check whether the system, for example, regenerates the ssh host keys? What about automatic updates? While not super critical on their own, if these simple things have not been done properly, this would indicate, in my opinion, a level of danger with the entire setup.

Balena, formerly Resin.io, have been doing this since the Pi was new. I'm pretty sure they have covered as many security angles as possible.

It does sound like their experience and security credentials are good enough. I suspect it is a good idea to run any of the @home projects in a container or other virtualized environment, in case the project gets hacked at the source and starts sending out buggy workloads.

I'm about to join, but still looking for a spare power supply. Do you think that Nokia phone charger rated 2A will do?

[Heater]

I'll bet that a 2A charger will work. Even though Rosetta does max out 4 cores and the Pi gets roasty toasty. We have no peripherals attached.

As noted above you can always install BOINC into your normal Raspbian installaton:

$ sudo aptitude install boinc-client boinc-manager

The point it at the rosetta project.

https://boinc.berkeley.edu/wiki/Install ... _on_Ubuntu

Which worked fine on a Jetson Nano here.

[mrlinux2u]

I used the following guide (see link below) to get rossetta@home working on two of pi 4's (2GB & 4GB) - works like a charm. I've also got two Pi 3B's ready to go once I've got new SD cards for them (on order).

FYI overclocking the Pi 4 does make a difference when running BOINC.

https://www.reddit.com/r/BOINC/comments ... pberry_pi/

Cheers

[cpc464]

Because with a closed package you don't known what they're doing. They could be turning your RPi into a spam spewing botnet.
Also why do I need this, if I want to run Rosetta why would I chose this rather than doing it myself with my own Rosetta account.

Quite so. If they bunged it into a docker image or something I would feel a bit safer.

[pi-anazazi]

Why does nobody question the usefulness of this whole thing in the first place? Classic case of we-have-to-do-something-itis...

[Heater]

Why does nobody question the usefulness of this whole thing in the first place? Classic case of we-have-to-do-something-itis...

Because for most of us we have no way of judging the answer to any such question. We would have to take the opinion of some expert on trust.

The Baker lab at the University of Washington has set this up and asked for help. They sound quite respectable and trustworthy. I'm simply trusting they would not do all that if they thought it was useless.

This is a zero cost exercise, almost, a few minutes to set up, low power draw, employs a Pi that would be otherwise idle. Hardly warrants searching questions.

Unless you know better of course...?

[bensimmo]

bakerlab have been doing this for over 15 years, my join date is 2005ish I think.
they had already found proteins of use before this kicked off bigger time.
it cuts down search time, that's the aim... red their site https://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/

join if you want, don't if you don't. no one is forcing you.
ask them questions too, read their papers etc if you want to find out more.

the DIY method was pretty easy (enable 64bit, install boinc , reboot, config change for work unit type, personal setup, restart boinc service )
also
sudo apt install boinctui
and use that to set it up, much easier. can use a mouse.

if you go the balena method, you can switch it back to your own name/team read it here.
https://github.com/balenalabs/rosetta-at-home

[bensimmo]

FYI overclocking the Pi 4 does make a difference when running BOINC.

what do you base that on?

[mrlinux2u]

I ran BOINC on two different Pi 4's, one at stock speed and the other one overclocked to 1950 Mhz on two Pi 4's and the Average processing rate (for example) went from approx 2.15 GFLOPS on the stock speed Pi and approx. 2.90 GFLOPS (I did get a peak 3.01 GLOPS at one point) on the overclock Pi.

It's not a definitive test but it's a noticeable difference when processing WU's (on average they now take approx. 7.5 hours to process).

FYI my overclocked RPI3B (1350 Mhz) had an average processing rate of around 1.13 GFLOPS.

Hope that helps a little.

[pi-anazazi]

@Heater You remember this "duck and cover" and "put the brief case on your head" during cold war?

[ejolson]

FYI overclocking the Pi 4 does make a difference when running BOINC.

what do you base that on?

Could the difference with overclocking be that the CPU gets hotter? Maybe it's also more fun.

I suspect each workload, while similar in size, may take less or more time based on differences in the energy landscape.

In my opinion, just like seti@home, the benefits of this project will be significant even if the cure turns out to be a booster vaccine for Rubella. In particular,

• The Balena image provides an easy way to get started.
• This encourages setting up other computers that require configuration.
• Setting up, running and monitoring computers is what some do for a job.
• People think about how distributed computing works.
• They improve infrastructure so even the BOINC is more general.
• Many people develop the knowledge to write distributed code.
• Eventually one of those programs does something useful, or not.
• Anyway useful CPU cycles are still offloaded from supercomputers.
• This allows supercomputers to be used for other things.
• Levels of computer literacy increase for all involved.

Tomorrow I'll work on getting mine set up to run. We're still on the exponential curve here, so everything helps. The good news is my wife ordered bathroom tissue for home delivery tomorrow. If it actually comes is a different thing--it's currently about a 50 percent success rate with that local store. Back on topic, I've decided to run the 2B from a phone charger (less current needed) so the 3B+ can have the official supply back.

[Heater]

Well, I lived through the cold war. And I don't recall any such silly advice. In fact I don't recall anyone even discussing it let alone worry about it.

I don't see what that silly advice gas to do with donating a few compute cycles to a research group that has asked for them. If it helps in anyway at all I am under no illusions that it is very likely to do me much good.

[mrlinux2u]

@ejolson

Yep - CPU does get hotter - but both Pi's have decent cooling (one is in an two piece aluminium heatsink case and the other has a large heatsink on and I've got a 80mm case fan slowly blowing air over both cases) - but even overclocked neither of them go above 60 degrees C (in fact the heatsink cased one barely goes above 50C).