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

Pudge · 2008-01-22 03:02:44

krazyshane wrote:

Jamie wrote:
OK people, joining in the folding fun soon and further both world science and Arch Linux in one fell swoop. Only one CPU to add into the mix though...
Just a question: If I leave my desktop on the whole time (through the night, nonstop for an indefinate time) doing all this intense CPU work, isn't it bad for the hardware in some way?
As long as things are keeping cool, which is usually the case unless your overclocking, then no -- it's fine. Might hurt your power bill a bit though
Shane

I agree with Shane. In fact, some people believe that folding actually extends the life of hardware. The theory being that a CPU, or any VLSI (Very Large Scale integration) chip, consists of many different types of materials bonded together on a silicon wafer. Every material has a different expansion coefficient. So all these materials with different expansion rates create stress on the different components as the temperature changes. These stresses are believed to shorten the life span of VLSI devices. Since folding 24 X 7 causes the CPU usage to always be close to 100%, the CPU temperature does not fluctuate very much thus extending the life of the CPU. A lot of people including IT managers of large corporations believe that leaving a computer on 24 X 7 extends the life of a computer as compared to shutting it off all the time. Having the CPU run at a constant load expands on that belief.

I'm not an electrical or thermal engineer, so I don't know if the above is true or not. I can tell you this however. I have folded for several years. I currently have eight computers folding 24 X 7. Over the years, including the eight currently in use, I have used at least 14 to 16 different computers for folding. The current computers all have Thermalright CPU coolers so they run well within AMD's thermal parameters. They are all running at stock settings, no overclocking, etc. They all are connected to APC 1100 VA UPS units, at least two to a UPS, so power outages, power surges, and brown outs do not affect the computers. Under these conditions, I have had only one computer die while in service. I shut this computer down for general house keeping, including blowing the dust out of the CPU cooler, etc. When I turned it back on, it was dead. Funny it died during a power cycle. I have had several computers fold for 2, 3, even 4 years with out any problems.

The big key is proper cooling, which is why I don't recommend folding with a lap top.

Hope that helps.

Pudge

dyscoria · 2008-01-22 08:43:56

Ah good to hear (mostly). Guess i'll just leave me desktop on 24/7.

Pudge wrote:

The big key is proper cooling, which is why I don't recommend folding with a lap top.

Bad news, i'm about to replace my desktop with a laptop

Pudge wrote:

Over the years, including the eight currently in use, I have used at least 14 to 16 different computers for folding.

And that just about explains why you're at the top of the arch team

Last edited by Jamie (2008-01-22 08:44:10)

dyscoria · 2008-01-22 13:16:41

Pudge wrote:

A lot of people including IT managers of large corporations believe that leaving a computer on 24 X 7 extends the life of a computer as compared to shutting it off all the time. Having the CPU run at a constant load expands on that belief.

An interesting and somewhat believable theory, although I imagine pretty difficult to prove. I'm now wondering if this would affect other hardware. Would it even perhaps increase the lifetime of hard drives, as they aren't being mounted and unmounted every day during bootup and shutdown? If I remember correctly, hard drives can undergo a certain number cycles before they become degraded.

Also, to increase productivity of my 24/7 folding desktop, how do I increase productivity such as utilizing all the RAM available? Would adding:

bigpackets=yes

to the config file allow this?

Thanks.

Last edited by Jamie (2008-01-22 17:28:54)

Pudge · 2008-01-23 02:42:07

Jamie wrote:

Also, to increase productivity of my 24/7 folding desktop, how do I increase productivity such as utilizing all the RAM available? Would adding:
bigpackets=yes
to the config file allow this?
Thanks.

Yes, setting bigpackets to yes helps.

Also, when the config asks, "Change advanced options" answer Yes. This brings up more options to set.

One option will ask how much memory you want to make available to F@H and show the amount available.

"Memory, in MB, to indicate (1885 available) [1885]?"

I usually tell it to use all available.

Another option will ask if you want the more advanced cores which are more complex and take longer, but yield more points.
The main reason they have this option is so if you are using an older CPU you can not get these cores. But if you have a 1.4 Ghz CPU or higher, go for it and answer yes.

Set -advmethods flag always, requesting new advanced scientific cores and/or work units if available (no/yes) [no]?    yes

Those are the 3 main options that effect productivity, bigpackets, memory allocation, and advmethods.

Welcome to the fold.

Pudge

Edit: To change options I recommend the following. Don't change options in the middle of a work unit. Stop the folding client. Start the folding client right back up with the -oneunit option. When F@H completes the current work unit, it will not start another one.

Once the work unit is complete, you can change options before running a new one by starting the client with the -configonly option. Once configured, start the client and get a new work unit.

Last edited by Pudge (2008-01-23 02:59:43)

Pudge · 2008-01-23 04:19:13

WARNING to all folders using the SMP Beta clients!!

All SMP clients are currently in the Beta stage. As such they have expiration dates build into them. The current SMP Beta clients expire February 1, 2008, which is rapidly approaching.

Keep your eye on Stanford's folding web site for the availability of new Betas with new expiration dates. They should be available shortly as there are only 9 days left on the old ones.

Post here if you notice they have been released.

Pudge

Pick2 · 2008-01-23 04:35:15

The current SMP beta client will continue to run after the 1st of February.
Once you stop it tho , it will not start back up , and you will need to get the newer version.

Pudge · 2008-01-24 04:42:03

Tip for SMP Beta users.

When a SMP work unit is running, you will see four instances of ./FahCore_a1.exe -dir work/ - when you run ps au in a terminal window, such as this snippet:

[user@my_computer folding]$ ps au
USER       PID %CPU %MEM    VSZ   RSS TTY      STAT START   TIME COMMAND
don       7115  0.0  0.0  35012  1008 pts/1    Sl+  Jan22   0:00 ./fah6 -smp
don      23157  0.0  0.0   8180   656 pts/1    S+   18:54   0:00 ./mpiexec -np 4 -host 127.0.0
don      23158 52.6  3.7 110292 72016 pts/1    SNl+ 18:54  72:04 ./FahCore_a1.exe -dir work/ -
don      23159 57.4  3.1  99016 61408 pts/1    SNl+ 18:54  78:43 ./FahCore_a1.exe -dir work/ -
don      23160 39.7  2.8  93248 55276 pts/1    SNl+ 18:54  54:25 ./FahCore_a1.exe -dir work/ -
don      23161 24.5  2.8  92352 54528 pts/1    SNl+ 18:54  33:37 ./FahCore_a1.exe -dir work/ -

When a work unit ends, sometimes not all instances of ./FahCore_a1.exe -dir work/ - will get shut down at the end of a work unit. When this happens, the last line of the FAHlog.txt will be

[17:38:51] Folding@home Core Shutdown: FINISHED_UNIT

and then it will sit there doing nothing. To remedy this and save the completed work unit, enter the ps au command in a terminal window. You should get something that looks like this snippet from a ps au.

[user@my_computer folding]$ ps au
USER       PID %CPU %MEM    VSZ   RSS TTY      STAT START   TIME COMMAND
don       7115  0.0  0.0  35012  1008 pts/1    Sl+  Jan22   0:00 ./fah6 -smp
don      23157  0.0  0.0   8180   656 pts/1    S+   18:54   0:00 ./mpiexec -np 4 -host 127.0.0
don      23158 52.6  3.7 110292 72016 pts/1    SNl+ 18:54  72:04 ./FahCore_a1.exe -dir work/ -

Notice in this instance, three of the ./FahCore_a1.exe -dir work/ - instances have shut themselves down, but one instance is hung up. This one instance must be killed to save the work unit and have it uploaded to Stanford. To do this, note the PID (Process IDentifier) of the hung instance (in this case 23158) and use the kill command on it in a terminal window as such:

[user@my_computer folding]$ kill -9 23158

The hung instance should be killed and the folding client will upload the completed work unit and download a new one. One time I have seen two instances hung up, so you would need to kill both instances.

Pudge

crouse · 2008-01-24 19:10:27

5.8 Days
Then we should pass team Microsoft
http://folding.extremeoverclocking.com/ … s=&t=45032

Last edited by crouse (2008-01-24 19:10:57)

dmartins · 2008-01-24 22:06:50

Pudge,
In response to your previous post:

I started experiencing this a month or so ago. I tried reinstalling the client, reinstalling 32 bit libs, etc. I even made a post on foldingforum.org
No one has responded with a real fix yet, but I have found that instead of killing processes, you can press ctrl+z in the terminal the client is running in to suspend the process, wait about 5 seconds, then type fg to resume the process. It will quickly finish up what it is doing and submit the work unit!
Previous to this I was pressing ctrl+c and restarting the client. Unfortunately, this makes you lose the entire work unit.. gah!:(

BTW, the team seems to be gaining some serious momentum so three cheers to crouse for starting this thread and Pudge for starting the original "3 million points" thread!:D
Oh, and now we are at nearly 6 million points.

Last edited by dmartins (2008-01-24 22:07:55)

Pick2 · 2008-01-24 23:47:46

dmartins , are you using " &" to background your SMP folding ?
Mine were hanging at 100% EVERY time when I did. ( Running Debian Etch )
for some reason , replacing the single " &" with this works just fine:

 < /dev/null > /dev/null 2>&1 &

the full string I use is:

./fah6 -local -forceasm -smp -verbosity 9 < /dev/null > /dev/null 2>&1 &

Last edited by Pick2 (2008-01-24 23:49:01)

dmartins · 2008-01-25 00:18:35

No, I leave the client running in the foreground, inside a screen session, like so:

[dmartins@skynet ~]$ cd ~/FAH
[dmartins@skynet FAH]$ screen
[dmartins@skynet FAH]$ ./fah6 -smp

It's only sometimes that it hangs, recently I turned in 5 WUs in a row before it stopped - now that we have a couple of work arounds which don't lose the entire WU it's not really a big deal.

Last edited by dmartins (2008-01-25 00:20:18)

samoturk · 2008-01-28 10:36:01

Hi!

I decided to join your team. I added 4 dual core opteron and 3 xeon (pentium 4 based) processors to your team. I hope I'll be able to add some more in few months. I use them for molecular docking here at work but when they are idle, they'll help folding!

By the way is it better to have hyper threading on or off for folding?

crouse · 2008-01-28 16:59:24

If you have it on, you can run 2 instances of F@H
I always use hyperthreading.

crouse · 2008-01-28 20:35:42

Setting up folding@home as a daemon for ArchLinux.

The quick and dirty way. (IE: My Notes) I do it this way on remote machines. This way I don't have to worry that the client goes down when the computer gets rebooted for whatever reason.

I'm not sure this is the "recommended way" ....... as it uses "makepkg --asroot" and the client runs as root, it does work though. A wiki page going into more details if you prefer : http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/FoldingAtHome

AS ROOT:

mkdir -p /var/abs/local/foldingathome
cd /var/abs/local/foldingathome
wget http://aur.archlinux.org/packages/foldingathome/foldingathome/PKGBUILD
wget http://aur.archlinux.org/packages/foldingathome/foldingathome/foldingathome.conf.d
wget  http://aur.archlinux.org/packages/foldingathome/foldingathome/foldingathome.install
wget http://aur.archlinux.org/packages/foldingathome/foldingathome/foldingathome.rc.d
makepkg --asroot
pacman -U foldingathome-*i686.pkg.tar.gz
/etc/rc.d/foldingathome start
/etc/rc.d/foldingathome stop
nano /opt/fah/client.cfg  #EDIT USERNAME AND TEAM NAME (45032)
/etc/rc.d/foldingathome start
nano /etc/rc.conf  #EDIT DAEMON list to include @foldingathome

Now let it run and forget it

Watch client with :
tail -f /opt/fah/FAHlog.txt
Look at %progress with:
cat /opt/fah/unitinfo.txt

Mr Green · 2008-01-28 21:54:41

would it not be safer to change permissions on /var/local to allow user building...? not sure its the Arch way ....

Or better still build in $HOME/foldingathome then load as root with pacman -U [or A!]

or I am being too picky lol 8)

Last edited by Mr Green (2008-01-28 21:55:06)

Pudge · 2008-01-30 03:16:07

crouse wrote:

We still need more people to help crunch for team Arch Linux ! We are currently at #242
We've made it into the top 250 out of over 96,000 other teams and we are STILL climbing !!!
Add your machine to the herd ...............
The team as a whole has went from producing 200,000 points a month to well over 800,000 points per month. Lets break a million points in Jan 2008 and keep it up all year .... a million+ per month

Well crouse, you got your wish for Jan 2008, we have over one million points with two days yet to go.

Crouse, somewhere in one of your posts you said one of your goals was to reach the top twenty. Well you are ALMOST there, currently twenty one. Way to go crouse. In 9 or possibly 10 days you should have number 20.

Pudge

Last edited by Pudge (2008-01-30 03:37:43)

crouse · 2008-01-30 10:53:04

WOOT ! Team Ranking 231 of 101093

I have been watching ..... waiting to get into that top 20...... alllllllllllmmmmooooostttttt there

1 million+ for Jan, WOW Now, to see if it can carry on into Feb and on......... we are almost past the Microsoft team

I noticed there are ALOT of inactive members ...... 117 ?
Would be nice if we could convince them to start crunching again
http://kakaostats.com/t.php?filter=inac … arch_text=

KimTjik · 2008-01-31 10:47:07

We Past Microsoft!

Pick2 · 2008-01-31 20:36:49

Down with Microsoft !

Last edited by Pick2 (2008-01-31 20:37:15)

paul2lv · 2008-02-01 01:08:34

Pudge wrote:

WARNING to all folders using the SMP Beta clients!!
All SMP clients are currently in the Beta stage. As such they have expiration dates build into them. The current SMP Beta clients expire February 1, 2008, which is rapidly approaching.
Keep your eye on Stanford's folding web site for the availability of new Betas with new expiration dates. They should be available shortly as there are only 9 days left on the old ones.
Post here if you notice they have been released.
Pudge

The new beta SMP clients were released today.

http://foldingforum.org/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=996

Pick2 · 2008-02-01 02:56:42

I just finished updating my 12 Linux boxes , all went off without a hitch !
Two versions of Kubuntu and ten Debian Etch , only one Debian has a GUI
I'm still waiting on the new Mac OS X (PPC) client , but it looks like all the rest are there.

Pudge · 2008-02-01 03:25:06

paul2lv wrote:

The new beta SMP clients were released today.
http://foldingforum.org/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=996

Thanks paul2lv. Nice, the new clients do not expire until August 2, 2008.

Pudge

smartcat99s · 2008-02-01 03:37:15

New PKGBUILD is uploaded now -- thanks for the flag.

KimTjik · 2008-02-01 10:13:38

Maybe a stupid question, but I can't find any difference in packages for download neither here or at Folding@home. I can't figure out how to tell when the client expire.

???

Edit some days later: OK now I get it, there's different clients and the SMP one has been updated. Didn't notice that at first glance, but on the other hand F@H is something new to me.

Got a fatal error at 98 % yesterday. No clue to why, but it's the first time and no other sign of anything odd, so there's probably nothing more I can do than accepting that 2 days for nothing went by.

Last edited by KimTjik (2008-02-03 09:18:37)

samoturk · 2008-02-01 16:14:52

Does anybody know how far is development of FAH for AMD 3xxx graphics cards running Linux?

Arch Linux

#76 2008-01-22 03:02:44

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

#77 2008-01-22 08:43:56

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

#78 2008-01-22 13:16:41

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

#79 2008-01-23 02:42:07

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

#80 2008-01-23 04:19:13

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

#81 2008-01-23 04:35:15

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

#82 2008-01-24 04:42:03

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

#83 2008-01-24 19:10:27

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

#84 2008-01-24 22:06:50

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

#85 2008-01-24 23:47:46

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

#86 2008-01-25 00:18:35

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

#87 2008-01-28 10:36:01

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

#88 2008-01-28 16:59:24

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

#89 2008-01-28 20:35:42

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

#90 2008-01-28 21:54:41

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

#91 2008-01-30 03:16:07

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

#92 2008-01-30 10:53:04

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

#93 2008-01-31 10:47:07

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

#94 2008-01-31 20:36:49

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

#95 2008-02-01 01:08:34

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

#96 2008-02-01 02:56:42

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

#97 2008-02-01 03:25:06

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

#98 2008-02-01 03:37:15

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

#99 2008-02-01 10:13:38

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

#100 2008-02-01 16:14:52

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

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