Folding@Home

[Groltz]

Team stats sorted by weekly total. Teams with lower ranking but higher weekly output are highlighted.

Member stats sorted by Least to Most productive in weekly total.

 

[Jake the Dog]

fancy swapping places with me Tea?

 

[Tea]

Nope. But I guess the Jakearnaught will be running me down soon enough, 'less I climb a convenient tree. Great folding effort, Jake. Darn it, I've bought enough high-power hardware from you to hold you off for a good while longer, but that damn Tannin kepps on selling it all out from under my feet.

I did manage to find a few moments to bolt some folders together this last day or two, but they are all littlies. In addition to the Athlon 1900 at home, I currently have ... er ... Durons in the 850 and 800 flavours, Celerons in the 800 and 433 varieties, a P-II 333 and a K6-2/500 running. Or I would have the K6 running, if only I could figure out how to make it hook up to my network.

Bloody thing: it's perfectly straightforward, but I can't make it go. I've had three known good NICs into it, used a known good cable that, if I plug it into another machine, leaving the other end in the hub without touching it, synchs up right away, reinstalled from scratch including format .. It's got me beat. Just now I spat the dummy and slipped in an old 3Com ISA NIC. That works: I can see the rest of the network no problem using NetBEUI, copy files, whatever I like. But it absolutely, positively refuses to TCP/IbloodyP. Guess I'll try another clean install, using the 3Com from scratch this time. Or maybe Tannin will do something useful for once in his life, and sell it on me first.

Then I'll be able to find a spot to make another one and slip that XP 1700 in.

 

[Tea]

Take that, you horrible little computer. Play up on me, will you? Well, we saw about that, didn't we. Now you're singing a different tune. :evil:

Yup: the fresh install did the trick. I used Windows 95 this time, instead of W98SE. Not that that was the reason, I don't think. I think the problem was that it's a horrible little brown A-Trend board, as nasty a pile of electronic turd as have ever been built around a perfectly decent MVP3 chipset. A-Trend, of course, are yet another of the phoney names PC Chips think up for themselves, or so I believe. Certainly, the qualities of those A-Trend ATC5200 boards live up to the PC Chips reputation.

This particular one, I think, has something nasty going on with its PCI bus, such that it's loading the PCI NIC drivers no problem, but failing to initialise things properly. I used two known working Realtek cards, an A-Open and a C-Net, and though they showed up just fine in the device manager, and would talk to the network, neither one would TCP/IP, even when I asked nicely. The USB thingo is up the spout too: something about "Windows has disabled this device due to excessive bus retries".

But the third clean install with an ISA NIC has done the trick and I can now fold away at the lightning pace of a ... er ... a K6-2/500.

Um ... Why did I bother?

 

[CougTek]

Clocker is off since yesterday We lose a big player.

 

[The JoJo]

Clocker off???? Why?

 

[Handruin]

Folding@home Scientists Report First Distributed Computing Success:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/10/021022070813.htm

 

[SteveC]

Folding@home Scientists Report First Distributed Computing Success:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/10/021022070813.htm

That's very good news! There's another story on MSNBC.

Steve

 

[Prof.Wizard]

I think team Google will eventually surpass everybody... they have this damn button on every toolbar now...

 

[Clocker]

Hello-

I'm back. Been real busy lately.

I shut of F@H for a while to see the difference in heat build-up. The difference is large indeed on my dual Athlon system..

Everything is back and crunching now (including my spare machines).

C

 

[blakerwry]

I ahd to bring my AThlon 800mhz down... hopefully I'll have a Duron 1.3 to replace it tomorrow

 

[James]

When are we going to see Jake's new dual box adding to his folding results?

 

[Jake the Dog]

when i get myself a case in which it'll fit! it's seems to be about 8mm bigger than max ATX specs.

 

[Buck]

when i get myself a case in which it'll fit! it's seems to be about 8mm bigger than max ATX specs.

:?:

I ran mine in a In-Win and Addtronics case. I never realized the board was beyond ATA spec.

 

[Buck]

ATA=ATX

 

[Handruin]

I found this interesting results site:

http://team.macnn.com/fold/rank3.phtml

 

[Handruin]

Does anyone know how we can extract results from the folding page? We could code our own competition page once we get the FAH page going... I'd hate to have to write some type of web page extrction, but if folding@home offers an easier method, that would be great. Other people do it, so there has to be a way.

 

[Tannin]

I think that the Statsman site has a section on that somewhere.

 

[Handruin]

I think that the Statsman site has a section on that somewhere.

Thanks for the motivation. I did some searching and I've found this:

http://folding.stanford.edu/daily_team_summary.txt
and
http://folding.stanford.edu/daily_user_summary.txt

Now I need to write some php to parse the heck out of it, and dump it to a DB! Then we can have some fun! Off to the books for some ideas on what to do...

 

[timwhit]

Hey Handruin, I just dumped all the team data into an Access database. There wasn't any coding involved.

All you have to do is do an import in Access and give it the text file. Access figures out everything for you and dumps it all into a table.

 

[Will Rickards]

I just download and installed the console wth firedaemon.
All I have is a lowly PIII 667 but I'm folding for team 10047!
This replaces my distributed.net client.

Does this thing automatically dial when no internet connection is present or what? I'm on a modem connection and share the main phone line. So I'd like it to sync up only when an internet connection is present.

 

[SteveC]

You can set it up to ask before it dials out. Run it with the -config option, and it should give you the option to change whether or not it asks for permission to dial out.

 

[Tea]

Neat! Great to seee you folding with us, Will.

 

[Jake the Dog]

you can run Tea but you can't hide! i'm a comin'

 

[Tea]

Hmmm ... Maybe.

I added an Athlon 2000 earlier today, to give me three XPs (2000, 1900 and 1700), plus various assorted Durons, Celerons, a K6-2 and a P-II 333. I got very discouraged a while ago when the Stanford servers were causing all sorts of problems and not leting work units go through. I see, looking at the upload stats, that they seem to be little better now. For people running multiple machines, there seem to be a lot of zeros in the daily totals. With a little luck, I'll sell two or three of my current folders before too long. With a little extra luck, they will be the K6, the P-II and the Celeron 466, not the Athlons!

PS: wanna buy an XP 2000?

 

[Fushigi]

Just thought I'd mention that the F @ H servers suck. It seems like about 2/3rds of the time I cannot upload results & download new work units without continual retries. I know my connection is fine as I've no problem with general 'net access & am currently using the company connection (I forget what the pipe is, but it's faster than a T3).

What annoys me about the failures is that it idles my machines. Add that to the lack of a decent queueing mechanism to let me download additional WUs in advance, and the F @ H project comes across as more primitive that SETI. I'll stick with it, but I do hope they improve the programs soon.

- Fushigi

 

[blakerwry]

I dont seem to have any problems.... I leave my machines on automatic... looking back at the logs I dont see anytime where my WU didn't get excepted immediately or anytime where I had to wait for more WU.

I believe there are several servers you can connect to, mybe you should change your server to something that is more closely related to your backbone(less hops/fastest ping).

 

[Fushigi]

Thanks, Blakerwry. The console is running at whatever it defaulted to. I have not seen anything regarding changing servers but will look into it when I have some time.

Several hours later and it still hasn't pulled down more work.

On a more positive note, I may recruit my wife's Athlon 800 shortly. She mostly uses my PC to go online and as such doesn't really need one of her own anymore.

- Fushigi

 

[Tea]

Fushigi, there is a wealth of information in the earlier pages of this thread about strategies to deal with Stanford's poor servers, and with the design of F@H which does not (and according to the Stanford team) cannot "bank" results. They say the design is as it is because they need te results of current calcuations in order to be able to set the new calculations: in other words, that the nature of the particular scientific task requires tht they use their current non-dialup- friendly setup.

Personally, I wonder if they couldn't try at least a little harder.

 

[Cliptin]

I suspect once they finish fully integrating the Genome and Folding cores they will at least offer this option whle crunching a Genome project.

 

[Fushigi]

Fushigi, there is a wealth of information in the earlier pages of this thread about strategies to deal with Stanford's poor servers, and with the design of F@H which does not (and according to the Stanford team) cannot "bank" results. They say the design is as it is because they need te results of current calcuations in order to be able to set the new calculations: in other words, that the nature of the particular scientific task requires tht they use their current non-dialup- friendly setup.

Personally, I wonder if they couldn't try at least a little harder.

I'm not sure if I'll have the time to scour through several hundred posts any time soon, but I'll keep that in mind for when I have some spare time.

I can only partly buy their one-at-a-time excuse. They could probably work on another protien which would not have any dependencies on current calculations.

Anyway, for the moment I have been able to send in my results & gather new WUs to crunch. Or fold. Or whatever.

Thanks for the responses.

- Fushigi

 

[Pradeep]

I have no problem getting work, but any results that are sent to server .107 fail to send. The .122? or whatever the other results server is, works fine. If only I could tell the client to only use the frigging functioning server.

 

[NRG = mc²]

and the F @ H project comes across as more primitive that SETI

It certainly is. When will someone make something like Seti driver?? I mean, an exact cole with all the functionality and layout? :x

 

[SteveC]

+ Attempting to send results
- Connecting to server (171.64.122.109:8080)
+ Network send failure
- Error: Could not transmit unit 04. Keeping unit in queue.
+ Attempting to get work packet
- Connecting to assignment server
- Successful: assigned to (171.64.122.109).
+ News From Folding@Home: Welcome to Folding@Home
- Connecting to server (171.64.122.109) on port 8080
- Error: Getwork #1 failed, and no other work to do. Waiting before retry
+ Attempting to get work packet
- Connecting to assignment server
- Successful: assigned to (171.64.122.109).
+ News From Folding@Home: Welcome to Folding@Home
- Connecting to server (171.64.122.109) on port 8080
- Error: Getwork #2 failed, and no other work to do. Waiting before retry
+ Attempting to get work packet
- Connecting to assignment server
- Successful: assigned to (171.64.122.109).
+ News From Folding@Home: Welcome to Folding@Home
- Connecting to server (171.64.122.109) on port 8080
- Error: Getwork #3 failed, and no other work to do. Waiting before retry
+ Attempting to get work packet
- Connecting to assignment server
- Successful: assigned to (171.64.122.109).
+ News From Folding@Home: Welcome to Folding@Home
- Connecting to server (171.64.122.109) on port 8080
- Error: Getwork #4 failed, and no other work to do. Waiting before retry

Why do they have so many problems with their servers?

 

[Buck]

Wow, I've never seen that before. I connect on the first time, every time, for each computer.

 

[Handruin]

I noticed the same thing today. I generally don't have problems connecting, but it looks like I had the same issue.

+ Attempting to send results
- Connecting to server (171.64.122.112:8080)
+ Network send failure
- Error: Could not transmit unit 09. Keeping unit in queue.

+ Attempting to send results
- Connecting to server (171.64.122.112:8080)
+ Network send failure
- Error: Could not transmit unit 09. Keeping unit in queue.
+ Attempting to get work packet
- Connecting to assignment server
- Successful: assigned to (171.64.122.112).
+ News From Folding@Home: Welcome to Folding@Home
- Connecting to server (171.64.122.112) on port 8080
- Error: Getwork #1 failed, and no other work to do. Waiting before retry
+ Attempting to get work packet
- Connecting to assignment server
- Successful: assigned to (171.64.122.112).
+ News From Folding@Home: Welcome to Folding@Home
- Connecting to server (171.64.122.112) on port 8080
- Error: Getwork #2 failed, and no other work to do. Waiting before retry
+ Attempting to get work packet
- Connecting to assignment server
- Successful: assigned to (171.64.122.112).
+ News From Folding@Home: Welcome to Folding@Home
- Connecting to server (171.64.122.112) on port 8080
- Error: Getwork #3 failed, and no other work to do. Waiting before retry
+ Attempting to get work packet
- Connecting to assignment server
- Successful: assigned to (171.64.122.112).
+ News From Folding@Home: Welcome to Folding@Home
- Connecting to server (171.64.122.112) on port 8080
- Error: Getwork #4 failed, and no other work to do. Waiting before retry
+ Attempting to get work packet
- Connecting to assignment server
- Successful: assigned to (171.64.122.112).
+ News From Folding@Home: Welcome to Folding@Home
- Connecting to server (171.64.122.112) on port 8080
- Error: Getwork #5 failed, and no other work to do. Waiting before retry
+ Attempting to get work packet
- Connecting to assignment server
- Successful: assigned to (171.64.122.112).
+ News From Folding@Home: Welcome to Folding@Home
- Connecting to server (171.64.122.112) on port 8080
- Error: Getwork #6 failed, and no other work to do. Waiting before retry
+ Attempting to get work packet
- Connecting to assignment server
- Successful: assigned to (171.64.122.112).
+ News From Folding@Home: Welcome to Folding@Home
- Connecting to server (171.64.122.112) on port 8080
+ Closed connections

+ Processing work unit
Core required: FahCore_65.exe (found)

 

[Cliptin]

http://folding.stanford.edu/serverstat.html

The "NETLOAD" is how busy the server is. Yesterday, when Steve was complaining, .109 was over 200. 30 is supposed to be high.

 

[Fushigi]

Having a highly utilized server is still not an excuse. Haven't they heard of load balancing? For distributing & receiving WUs, a single IP that load-balances to several machines would be a simple, effective, and scalable way to accomodate traffic.

BTW, what Steve listed is exactly what I see almost every day. Hence my frustration...

- Fushigi

 

[Handruin]

Having a highly utilized server is still not an excuse. Haven't they heard of load balancing? For distributing & receiving WUs, a single IP that load-balances to several machines would be a simple, effective, and scalable way to accomodate traffic.

BTW, what Steve listed is exactly what I see almost every day. Hence my frustration...

- Fushigi

perhaps they do not have the funding to load balance their servers?? I know SETI@home had server and bandwidth issue many times.

 

[Handruin]

Here is an interesting read about cheating with SETI@home...

http://www.zdnet.com.au/newstech/security/story/0,2000024985,20269509,00.htm

The summery of this reflects that people are able to cheat by distributing a work unit that is 99% completed to every member of the team. This way they only have to process the remaining amount and even though it is a duplicate unit, they are still credited.