Folding@Home

[Fushigi]

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

Perhaps, and I will try to be more forgiving as they are still somewhat in their infancy as these things go.

Still, they already have the servers .. all they need is the load balance appliance. These aren't too expensive; there may even be linux-based load balancers available; Microsoft's ISA server can handle it (among other things).

- Fushigi

 

[NRG = mc²]

Wierd. I'm sure what they're suggesting can't be done - I used to run SETI and know for a fact that duplicate WUs are not credited - I don't know how they calculate the accuracy with three identical units but I've tried in the past and it didn't work :wink:

 

[i]

Duplicate work units already contributed by yourself may not be counted ... but work units contributed by others that happen to be duplicates of your work are counted. Remember, that has been one of the long-running complaints about the SETI@home project: that so much effort goes into processing work that's already been processed by others.

 

[NRG = mc²]

Hmm.. perhaps.. what an obvious oversight on their part... :-?

 

[Cliptin]

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

Perhaps, and I will try to be more forgiving as they are still somewhat in their infancy as these things go.

Still, they already have the servers .. all they need is the load balance appliance. These aren't too expensive; there may even be linux-based load balancers available; Microsoft's ISA server can handle it (among other things).

- Fushigi

I understand your frustration Fushigi especially for people on dialup. I am not trying to minimize your contribution to a solution but it is really not as straight forward as it may seem.

Take another look at the link I posted above.

WEIGHT reflects how frequently the AS will assign clients to that particular server. Higher numbers means more frequently. Zero means never.

They already do load balancing albeit manually. Additionally, not all of the servers do the same things. Note the OS, STATUS and PROGRAM columns.

RE: The resources the have to work with, they do not even have the ability to hard reboot a server remotely or pager/cell phone notification of a sever that's not responding.

 

[Fushigi]

I understand your frustration Fushigi especially for people on dialup. I am not trying to minimize your contribution to a solution but it is really not as straight forward as it may seem.

Take another look at the link I posted above.

WEIGHT reflects how frequently the AS will assign clients to that particular server. Higher numbers means more frequently. Zero means never.

They already do load balancing albeit manually. Additionally, not all of the servers do the same things. Note the OS, STATUS and PROGRAM columns.

RE: The resources the have to work with, they do not even have the ability to hard reboot a server remotely or pager/cell phone notification of a sever that's not responding.

They are just applying a weighted-average model for their distribution of WUs to servers, which would be fine if the WU distribution to clients could come from any server at any time (through round-robin, failover, or weighted average distribution). But WU distribution just isn't happening that way. Their method of distribution of WUs to the AS would be fine if the client would switch from one AS to the next to the next etc. when attempting to get a WU to process. Neither the client nor their infrastructure seems to have any intelligence for that.

Since I started having problems receiving WUs, I have been checking the server stats page with some frequency. Every time except once, the IP my PC was trying to talk to was "Accepting".

In the mean time, my ability to get WUs seems to have improved over the last couple of days. Perhaps they have corrected a problem or two.

- Fushigi

 

[Tea]

The power went off yesterday and I lost 18 hours folding time. And now that horrible doggy creature has gone past me.

 

[Tannin]

I think what Tea meant to say was "Congratulations, Jake, that is an excellent achievement and I wish you the very best, sir!"

 

[Tea]

no i didn't

 

[Dozer]

Tea, am I dyslexic, or did your avatar switch with Tannin's?

 

[Buck]

It switched, that is why I referred to Tea as Tannin earlier.

 

[Cliptin]

It switched, that is why I referred to Tea as Tannin earlier.

Now I can use the term Monkey-Boy. I've been holding it in for soooo long!

 

[Tannin]

mon·key n. pl. mon·keys

Any of various long-tailed, medium-sized members of the order Primates, including the macaques, baboons, guenons, capuchins, marmosets, and tamarins and excluding the anthropoid apes and the prosimians.

 

[Tea]

That, Tannin, was a selective quote, and you well know it. The full text reads:

mon·key n. pl. mon·keys

1: (as per Tannin's post).

2: One that behaves in a way suggestive of a monkey, as a mischievous child or a mimic.

Go right ahead, Clippy. He fits definition #2 perfectly!

 

[Buck]

A better avatar for Tannin would be those same owl eyes on a deer looking into the headlights of a Sterling.

 

[Jake the Dog]

The power went off yesterday and I lost 18 hours folding time. And now that horrible doggy creature has gone past me.

oh well, there was no sense in delaying the inevitable anyway!

 

[Pradeep]

Strangest thing happened just now. I loaded up the Statsman page and up came a 120KB pic of some sort of car show held on a grassy lawn. Hit reload and the normal site finally came up. Am I losing it? Too much of that fine Bombay Sapphire?

 

[Jake the Dog]

i had the same thing yesterday except the image i saw looked like a bad scan of a book cover called "Book of Shadows"

 

[Tea]

Mmmmm? Are you sure, Mr Dog? (About the inevitable, I mean.) :roll:

 

[Jake the Dog]

well, if i didn't have to take our quad xeon box offline then i'd say yes. now i'm not so sure as i need it for a few weeks for testing.

we'll know in a few weeks i guess!

 

[NRG = mc²]

I've just realised my machine has not been folding for three days.

Time for a restart!

 

[CougTek]

Ok guys, which one of you add a bunch of computers to my profile? Oh wait, I still only use 5 computers. Then why do I suddently almost tripled my daily output from my past ~20-25 points to my current 55-65 points? Oh well, I won't complain for the free boost.

On another subject, my main box will now fold a bit quicker than it used to. I update the BIOS of my Soltek SL-75DRV2 motherboard to revision K41 (from the K4 I have used during the last year or close to) and I have managed to increase the FSB frequency from 142MHz to 146MHz. Since the K41 BIOS revision already O/c the FSB a little bit, my system tools report that the FSB is at 148MHz in reality, not 146MHz. After 3 successful passes of Memtest86 v3.0, I have concluded that my system handles that frequency fine. So my Athlon XP now operates at 1475MHz instead of its past 1436MHz. Not much of an increase, but still, it's a half CPU speed grade.

I tried Sandra 2003 (lot of time to kill today) and compared to the default frequency of my CPU/memory (Athlon XP 1500+), the jump from 133MHz FSB to 146MHz FSB resulted in an overall 10% increased on most of the benchmarks. 3dMark 2001 SE build 330 showed a lesser improvement (about 4-5%). Benchmarking my hard drive showed, unsurprisingly, no change at all.

Overclocking is a great way to improve the value of our computer equipment

 

[NRG = mc²]

For some reason my machines arenot folding - its been like this for some days.

As I have the program running as a service I can't tell what the problem is.

How can I get the console to appear?

 

[Cliptin]

For some reason my machines arenot folding - its been like this for some days.

As I have the program running as a service I can't tell what the problem is.

How can I get the console to appear?

Stop the service and set the service to manual if you want. Double click the FAH....exe in whatever directory you have it installed. Alternatively you can just not mess with the service but view the log file in the installation directory.

 

[NRG = mc²]

I couldnt tell anything from the log files - they were mainly made up of white spaces...

I just fired up a second instance as the first one is running but sitting idle.

Should do for the time being.

 

[i]

WOW!

I just completed a work unit!

 

[Handruin]

WOW!

I just completed a work unit!

congrats!

:beer:

 

[The JoJo]

I must be out of the loop, so could someone please fill me in on who the new people are that are crunching for us?

Great seeing some new people helping us out!

 

[i]

New?

I've been working on that damn work unit for weeks.

Here's my post in this very discussion from October 8th ... when I started on the project:

I'm still having a hard time believing that the RC5-64 project at distributed.net is finally over. Like so many others, I dedicated years to that project.

I guess I'll try Folding@Home for a while.

It took more than a month (granted somewhat intermittent) to finish one measly work unit. Do they think everyone has a 3 GHz PC nowadays?

So far I'm not impressed at all with F@H.

 

[NRG = mc²]

The FAH software sucks, thats true.

 

[Cliptin]

i had the same thing yesterday except the image i saw looked like a bad scan of a book cover called "Book of Shadows"

I just got a page of terraced farmland. The option to view source was greyed out even though I was clearly looking at HTML as identified by the address. I'm beginning to think these are browser problems.

If I use the right-click menu on the link and try to "save as" 2K wants to save the page as a jpg. If I choose translate (comes with google toolbar) I can see the stats. Weird.

 

[Groltz]

The Tech Report has a fairly long article posted that looks at the impact of FAH on system performance.


--Steve

.

 

[The JoJo]

Ahh, the embarassment and depression sinks in....

Embarassment part:
I only glanced at statman the last time, and saw a lot of new names. Now I rechecked, and they must have been people who have a typo in their group number.

Depression part:
Those people haven't done any work after the first unit.

Oh well, I guess I'm getting old.

On the brigth side, I've got hopes on getting a dual MP1800 to cruch for us. Keep working people!

 

[Groltz]

Ahh, the embarassment and depression sinks in....

Embarassment part:
I only glanced at statman the last time, and saw a lot of new names. Now I rechecked, and they must have been people who have a typo in their group number.

Depression part:
Those people haven't done any work after the first unit.

Oh well, I guess I'm getting old.

On the brigth side, I've got hopes on getting a dual MP1800 to cruch for us. Keep working people!

Can we purge erroneous and longtime-inactive members from our roster?

 

[Tannin]

Do we have any erogenous members?

 

[The Grammar Police]

Erroneous, you fool.

 

[Buck]

Do we have any erogenous members?

Horny cow!

 

[blakerwry]

The Tech Report has a fairly long article posted that looks at the impact of FAH on system performance.


--Steve

.

I don't really like that article.... It is decent, however, They should have a lower low end system.... Duron 1.3, 256MB of PC2700..... that sounds midrange to me... a low end would be more like PIII 600 with 128MB SDRAM

That way we could see how performance is affected in low memory situations. my linux box seems to be using only a paltry 1mb.. however, I would bet the windows client is using more.

 

[CougTek]

Duron 1.3, 256MB of PC2700

PC2700 with an unoverclockable Duron normally working with a 200MHz DDR FSB???

 

[Tea]

PC 2700 at 1600? Yeah. Celerons used to run PC-133 at 66, so WTF?