F@H Arch Linux Team - Recruitment & Stats thread - HELP US !.

Pick2 · 2008-02-01 22:49:53

FAH has a BLOG up now , with the Stanford group posting the latest buzz ... for what it's worth
http://folding.typepad.com/news/
And for the latest speculation , the new folding forums is here:
http://foldingforum.org/
Stanford has always been tight lipped and secretive.

Pudge · 2008-02-05 03:21:57

Tip for users folding with multiple Linux computers.

I have six Arch Linux computers that I use for folding. The six computers are in 3 different locations spread throughout the house. Here is an easy way to keep track of the progress of your folding machines.

From my main computer, I open a terminal window, then ssh into one of the remote computers, as such:

$ ssh user@host

Once you are logged into the remote computer, use the tail command to view the last few lines of the FAHlog.txt file. By using the -f option, the tail command will update any time any lines are added, constantly giving you an up to date listing of the file. So, any lines added to the FAHlog.txt file will also appear in this terminal window. Enter the tail command as such:

user@remote$  tail -f ~/folding/FAHlog.txt

of course your path for FAHlog.txt may vary. I open a terminal window for all six of my Linux computers in workspace 3, and it looks like this:

Now any time I want to see the status of my folding clients, I just click on workspace 3 and I can see how all six of my Linux computers are doing. Notice that since you enter the ssh command first, then the tail command once logged into the remote computer, user@host appears at the top of the window. This uses just a tad over 1 MegaByte of RAM for each window, and doesn't seem to increase my network traffic hardly at all. Bear in mind, I am doing this in my home, so my computers are in a secure area. You may not want to do this in a dorm, work, etc where you can't control who will sit down at the computers.

Anyone needing a tutorial on ssh can find one here on my website.

Pudge

Last edited by Pudge (2008-02-05 03:34:03)

crouse · 2008-02-05 04:55:28

You could make this even quicker

in your .bashrc file, create alias's to your machines

Example:

alias folding3='ssh 192.168.0.2 tail -f ~/folding/FAHlog.txt'

and if you wanted to make it FASTER yet...... use passwordless login using gpgkeys..... then you could simply open a terminal and type folding3 and up pops the screen

samoturk · 2008-02-05 08:17:56

I also have a tip. I have multi cpu workstation and I wrote a simple script that outputs a progress of each CPU.

Script:

#!/bin/bash
X=1
F_DIR=~/foldingathome/CPU
while [ $X -le 8 ]
do
INFO=`cat $F_DIR$X/unitinfo.txt | grep Progress`
echo $X $INFO
X=$((X+1))
done

Output:

1 Progress: 48% [||||______]
2 Progress: 12% [|_________]
3 Progress: 81% [||||||||__]
4 Progress: 11% [|_________]
5 Progress: 63% [||||||____]
6 Progress: 60% [||||||____]
7 Progress: 9% [__________]
8 Progress: 99% [|||||||||_]

Pick2 · 2008-02-05 13:48:12

I use "qd" along with "qdinfo.dat" to display my fah stats:
http://linuxminded.xs4all.nl/?target=so … -tools.plc
the normal output will give you all 10 queue entries , the current WU and the last 9 finished WU , so I use it like this:

 cat ./wuvu
#!/bin/bash
cd ~/ ;echo " ";echo " "
./qd -cif FAH1|tail -n11|head -n5|cut -b -79;echo "*LL1*"
echo -n "***  LL  X2 6000+  ***  "; date ;exit

which gives me:

 Index 6: folding now 1760.00 pts (58.783 pt/hr) 3.21 X min speed; 58% complete
   server: 171.64.65.56:8080; project: 2605, "Protein in POPC"
   Folding: run 7, clone 218, generation 26; benchmark 0; misc: 500, 200
   issue: Mon Feb  4 14:07:01 2008; begin: Mon Feb  4 14:11:39 2008
   expect: Tue Feb  5 20:08:05 2008; due: Fri Feb  8 14:11:39 2008 (4 days)
*LL1*
***  LL  X2 6000+  ***  Tue Feb  5 07:36:09 CST 2008

Each machine has a "wuvu" bash script along an "amdt" script to give me a tail:

cat ./amdt
#!/bin/bash
# amdt   Version 0.2 AMD Time
FAH_PATH="/home/pluto/FAH"
PUTER_NAME="LL"
echo ""
if tail -n6 $FAH_PATH\1/FAHlog.txt | grep -q Shutdown;then :
else tail -n20 $FAH_PATH\1/FAHlog.txt ;echo "     ***"$PUTER_NAME"1***"
fi
exit

( obviously my bashing skills are not up to par )

And lastly , from my Mac Mini , I use an alias to log into or view whichever remote Folding Blade I want , or all of them:

<Snip>
alias lal='laz;lbz;lcz;ldz;lez;lfz;lgz;lhz;liz;ljz;lkz;llz'
alias lala='laa;lba;lca;lda;lea;lfa;lga;lha;lia;lja;lka;lla'
alias laz='ssh pluto@192.168.0.31 ./wuvu'
alias lb='ssh pluto@192.168.0.32'
alias lba='ssh pluto@192.168.0.32 ./amdt'
alias lbz='ssh pluto@192.168.0.32 ./wuvu'
<Snip>

Pick2

dmartins · 2008-02-06 01:16:56

Hi everyone! First up, well done team! Over a million points in a month is pretty impressive

Second, as discussed earlier in this thread, the SMP client sometimes hangs before submitting a WU.
See: http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php? … 47#p321347

I wrote a small bash script to watch the log file and if it sees things are hung up, it will kill the remaining cores. As Pudge mentioned before, this causes the WU to finish and the results to be sent to Stanford. As a bonus, the script will start the client if it's not running already.

This script is only useful if you are running the SMP client AND only one instance of the client per machine, it's not sophisticated enough to handle multiple clients on the same machine

If you're interested, the current version is available here: http://www.danman.ca/downloads/scripts/fah-start.sh

Please be sure to edit the options at the start of the script, mainly point to the directory your client lives in!

edit: Updated script, fixed a harmless bug which caused my 'debug' statements to always be sent to the log file!

Last edited by dmartins (2008-02-09 20:11:58)

crouse · 2008-02-06 03:13:17

I'm 29 points from my goal of making it into the top 20 !!!! I knew I'd make it eventually lol !

Pick2 · 2008-02-06 13:40:23

Congrats Crouse ! Looks like you Made 20th Spot !

We had a bunch of storms roll thru last night , weirdest time ever with My blades ...
I have 8 on UPS and another 4 thru surge protectors only , the lights did a brief flicker , and One UPS blade and One surge blade shut down !
An hour later , I heard a single UPS go Bleep .. and the Other 3 surge blades shut down ... but the First surge blade kept running !

Pick2 · 2008-02-07 13:45:29

I could have Sworn you were at 20th yesterday !
now your shown as 22nd ?
Come on , Man , we're getting impatient !

quad3d@work · 2008-02-07 14:36:06

He was at 20th.

crouse · 2008-02-07 21:16:51

Ok..... who just bumped me........ ?

/me looks around for the PS3 and any spare computers........

Last edited by crouse (2008-02-07 21:23:50)

Pudge · 2008-02-08 01:57:40

dmartins wrote:

I wrote a small bash script to watch the log file and if it sees things are hung up, it will kill the remaining cores. As Pudge mentioned before, this causes the WU to finish and the results to be sent to Stanford. As a bonus, the script will start the client if it's not running already.
This script is only useful if you are running the SMP client AND only one instance of the client per machine, it's not sophisticated enough to handle multiple clients on the same machine

Thanks! I am trialling your script on one of my machines. So far it has performed as expected. If things are going well on Sunday, I will put it on all my SMP machines. Good job of scripting.

Pudge

paul2lv · 2008-02-08 02:08:40

crouse wrote:

Ok..... who just bumped me........ ?
/me looks around for the PS3 and any spare computers........

Oops sorry. My bad...
I'll vacate the 20th spot for you ASAP.

drewbug01 · 2008-02-08 04:56:55

...not that i have much interesting to add...
but i'm folding@home too now! woohoo!
:-D

crouse · 2008-02-08 15:22:20

Thanks drewbug01 Welcome to the club

Pudge · 2008-02-08 15:30:07

Welcome to the fold drewbug01! Every single person and every single CPU helps, it all adds up.

Hey, there is a Linux / BSD oriented web site out of Michigan (I don't think it is too far from Detroit) called Raiden's Realm. They have tutorials, distro reviews, and discussions of different distros without the fanboy flame wars. You might want to check it out.

Pudge

EDIT: Darn you Crouse, you beat me to it!

Last edited by Pudge (2008-02-08 15:31:27)

drewbug01 · 2008-02-09 06:49:37

thanks, i'll have to check it out!

dmartins · 2008-02-09 22:01:18

I quite like that site's Top 25 games list. Now I have a few new ones to waste my time on!

BTW, I updated my script a little to fix a harmless bug. Pudge and anyone else trying the script, you may have noticed an awful lot of info being sent to the log file. Most of this was supposed to be turned off by setting DEBUG=false near the start of the script, however it was still being logged. That is fixed now.

New version, and future versions can be found here: www.danman.ca/scripts

Pick2 · 2008-02-12 02:57:18

Very interesting script there , dmartins !
About 3 X longer and 8 X more complex than what I have had to bash together so far

Welcome to the fold , drewbug01 !
It's not the speed , but the stamina that counts , every WU adds up !

@ Crouse:
Looks like you are firmly into the top Twenty ! Next stop is a Single Digit Midget

and last but not least:
Go Pudge ! We are on track for another 1,000,000 point Month !
Go Team !!

Last edited by Pick2 (2008-02-12 03:00:51)

Nihathrael · 2008-02-12 07:56:56

I've been folding for some time now. Sometimes I run over WU's that seem to take ages, usually a WU would take me somewhat between 1-3h per %. Then one I'm with now takes about 12 or more. Is this normal behavior, or did I get a bad WU? (Running on a Athlon64 3500+ SingleCore)
So long!

Pudge · 2008-02-13 02:09:52

If when the WU starts up, it says "protein in POPC" and gives "Warning: long intervals 1-4" or something similar, then yes that is normal for a single core CPU.

Pudge

samoturk · 2008-02-13 10:21:20

I have an idea how to recruit more people for folding. We could convince site administrators to add link for this forum thread or wiki folding@home entry under "Community Links" on Arch Linux first page ...

kendosperling · 2008-02-14 08:35:56

A new recruit is working on some units

crouse · 2008-02-15 01:33:26

kendosperling wrote:

A new recruit is working on some units

Very cool !

Pudge · 2008-02-16 05:07:55

In order to cut down on hardware expenses, a lot of people try to utilize thin clients for dedicated folding computers. These thin clients would ideally be headless (no video monitor or keyboard) and diskless (no hard drive). Basically a mother board, CPU / CPU cooler, RAM and a power supply and nothing else. This cuts down on initial hardware expenditures, and on power consumption.

Micro ATX mother boards with integrated graphics fill the bill nicely as the integrated graphics are great for installation. Most new BIOS have a setting to ignore keyboard errors (such as no keyboard installed) and with integrated graphics you won't get video errors when booting with no monitor attached. So, after installation and configuration, you can remove the monitor and keyboard and still be able to boot. You then do administration from a remoter computer using ssh. This takes care of the headless part.

To take care of the diskless part, most people try to use the boot from lan option in the BIOS to boot from a network server. This Building A Diskless Folding @ Home Farm article describes how to accomplish this. As you read through this, you can see it gets complicated real fast. There has to be an easier way to eliminate the hard drive. So I thought why not a USB Flash stick instead of a hard drive. USB sticks are getting ridiculously cheap, are much faster now, and draw very little power. That's almost as good as diskless and a whole lot easier.

I am now running one Arch Linux dedicated folding computer from a USB Flash drive. There is no hard drive attached to this computer. Eliminating the hard drive cuts down on cost, heat, and power consumption. Since I have fans cooling the hard drive on all my dedicated folders, this also cuts down on fan noise.

To accomplish this, I simply plugged in a Corsair Voyager 4 GB USB flash drive into one of the rear USB connectors. I temporarily hooked up a CD/DVD ROM drive. With no hard drive attached, I booted into the Arch installation CD. Since the USB stick was the only mass storage unit installed, it showed up as SDA. Using the "Prepare Hard Drive" section of the Arch installer and cfs, I set up the following partitions on the USB drive, listed as they appear in /etc/fstab.

/dev/sda1 /boot ext3 defaults 0 1 # (50 MB)
/dev/sda2 swap swap defaults 0 0 #(512 MB)
/dev/sda3 / ext3 defaults 0 1 # (The rest of the 4 GB stick)

I then did a FTP install of Arch Linux base. A base install of Arch is all you need to run a dedicated Folding@Home computer. I then installed ssh, fuse, and sshfs. This installation will fit comfortably on a 4 GB drive without the need for any file compression. Just be sure to keep the /var/cache/pacman/pkg directory empty. This setup boots into a runlevel 3 CLI only console window surprisingly fast.

The main problem with a Flash drive is the limited number of writes. With a Corsair Voyager drive, each memory location is guaranteed for 10,000 writes. With a Corsair Voyager GT drive, each memory location is guaranteed for 100,000 writes. As do most, if not all USB dirve manufacturers, Corsair uses a flash drive dynamic wear leveling algorithm. If you keep writing the same file over and over, it writes it at different locations all the time to prevent wearing out a section of the Flash memory. Even with this, running a folding client on a USB directory might very well shorten the life of a USB Flash drive as the files in your folding directory and the "work" subdirectory are very dynamic. To prevent this, I use ssh and sshfs to mount a network hard drive which is located on my server. Fuse and sshfs trick the computer into thinking a directory on a remote server's hard drive is actually part of the local filesystem. I then run folding@home from the networked hard drive. Thus the USB stick is mainly used to boot up Arch Linux base, then start the folding client on the networked hard drive. After that, the USB drive basically just sits there. An occasional entry into a log file should be the only USB Flash stick activity while running the folding client. Hopefully, this will solve the longevity problem of the USB Flash.

I then use the following script to start the folding client:

#!/bin/bash
sshfs user@remote_computer:/server/folding1  /home/user/folding
cd /home/user/folding
./FAH504-Linux.exe
cd
fusermount -u /home/user/folding
exit

user@remote_computer:/server/folding1 is a directory on the server's hard drive which contains the folding@home client and associated files. /home/user/folding is an empty directory on the local filesystem (the USB stick) that is used as a mount point for the remote hard drive directory.

Right now I am trialling this on a spare i686 machine. If everything proves to be stable and reliable, I will try it on one of my 64 bit dual core machines with the smp client. I have four computers in my "Folding Farm". Three are dedicated folders, and one is my server / folding computer. If this works out, I will be able to eliminate three hard drives from my Folding Farm.

Pudge

Arch Linux

#101 2008-02-01 22:49:53

Re: F@H Arch Linux Team - Recruitment & Stats thread - HELP US !.

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Re: F@H Arch Linux Team - Recruitment & Stats thread - HELP US !.

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Re: F@H Arch Linux Team - Recruitment & Stats thread - HELP US !.

#104 2008-02-05 08:17:56

Re: F@H Arch Linux Team - Recruitment & Stats thread - HELP US !.

#105 2008-02-05 13:48:12

Re: F@H Arch Linux Team - Recruitment & Stats thread - HELP US !.

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Re: F@H Arch Linux Team - Recruitment & Stats thread - HELP US !.

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