PSA - DIMES is something everyone can run, no impact on other DC'ing

Hehe, I've added 5 more VMs since and I'm on around 85K per day now :) free DC stats estimates 10 days till I overtake you and another 7 or so till I'm in the top 10 - although that may be pessimistic as I think my average as counted by that site is still rising ;)
 
We took 11th place tonight. It was a big earner day. bigted must have forgot to kick the ESXi box because it didn't seem to do its normal amount. The good news is that it keeps me ahead of him for just a while longer. :)

~6 days at our current production would put us in the top 10. However, since today was a high earning day, that approximation may be off a little.
 
Gil, I turned off the esxi box, finally gonna use the hardware for the reason I purchased it. I'll still be running about 10 instances, maybe build another dimes box if I have any spare parts in the future.
 
We are about a day and a half from taking 10th place. Great achievement everyone.
 
Jathanis said:
You can have the ground beef, but since I'm in CA, try to save me a few nice cuts of Tri-tip!
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I'd like my tri-tip untrimmed please as I love seeing the flames leaping from my grill due to the fat from the tri-tip burning.
 
Now ranked #10 on the team :) and #4 worldwide for production today! The top 3 are all [H] members too, nice job!
Also looks like we've now taken 10th place overall, awesome!

Oh...stats look a little glitchy actually so I'm not entirely sure how accurate that is?
 
I was just looking at this too. Stats get glitchy quite a bit from DIMES, but it sounds about right. When I last posted, they may not have had all of the stats updated. Good job on being 10th on the team. I took down my DIMES box that had 6 VM's running. It is becoming a donation PC very shortly and I need to get the software ready. Single mom going to community college. Perfect timing since I need to begin making room for a few additions. I noticed we slipped a spot in Enigma and looks like we will slip another one very shortly.
 
The stats finally list us as 10th place. Now we are in the tough race. ~90 days at current production to hit 9th place.
 
I'm finally started playing with VMs. What should I use for processor count? I have my VM installed on a 4 core i5 rig.
 
What VM software and what OS are you using for the VMs?
I have 10 XP VMs running on my rig and they use very little processing power, the main usage is obviously when they're starting up. As it is, all 10 of them use around 5-8% CPU once they've started up, so they don't need much.
 
1 processor per VM is plenty. Memory depends on the VM OS. My XP VMs have 192MB allocated, and they work fine. If you go with Win7, I think you need somewhere around 384 MB. CentOS with what looks like gnome2 needed 512 MB per VM. 8 GB virtual disks dynamically allocated should be fine for any OS, and won't waste disk space.

A couple bits of advice:

Don't install Dimes on a VM before you clone it. I never got that to work right. You should be OK to install Java on your "template" VM.

Add a scheduled task (Windows) or cron job (Linux) to restart your Dimes clients daily. There is a memory leak in the client, so they eventually will use up all of your available memory if you don't stop and restart them regularly.

With an I5 host, memory will most likely be what limits the number of VMs you can run. Load up your host with as much memory as you can.

I like VirtualBox on Linux for the host, running "headless" and using phpVirtualBox to control the VMs remotely. There are some good guides to set this up. ESXi (or whatever VMWare is calling it now) is also a good choice for your host I have been told - check with bigted if you go this route.
 
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musky said:
1 processor per VM is plenty. Memory depends on the VM OS. My XP VMs have 192MB allocated, and they work fine. If you go with Win7, I think you need somewhere around 384 MB. CentOS with what looks like gnome2 needed 512 MB per VM. 8 GB virtual disks dynamically allocated should be fine for any OS, and won't waste disk space.
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I run with 192MB of RAM too, agree that that's enough for XP. I only allocated 2GB per VM though, so you might be able to cut that down a little if you're in need of the space. Ah...dynamically allocated, I see, I went the other way and had it fully allocated. In that case, ignore me!

Add a scheduled task (Windows) or cron job (Linux) to restart your Dimes clients daily. There is a memory leak in the client, so they eventually will use up all of your available memory if you don't stop and restart them regularly.
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Indeed? I didn't know that, thanks. My VMs have been pretty reliable for the most part, I think since I started running them I've only had to reboot a few of them. I'll have to check how much RAM they're each using, I haven't seem any crash out due to lack of RAM yet though.

With an I5 host, memory will most likely be what limits the number of VMs you can run. Load up your host with as much memory as you can.
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Agreed. I run 10 on a Phenom 850 quad, with BOINC running on 3 cores so one core left for two BOINC GPU projects, the VMs, and my general browsing, watching films etc. I do have them on a separate drive though, that's something to consider if possible.
 
The daily restart should also help when the DIMES client just decides to close without warning. This happens from time to time as well.
 
CaptainUnlikely said:
What VM software and what OS are you using for the VMs?
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Bwahaaaaa! Ubuntu 12.04 LTS 64-bit! :):D:):D:):D:)

4p1f.jpg


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I did a lot of reading and had a few failed attempts before it worked. Damn typos.
 
Gilthanis said:
And an update to the DIMES installation guide... :D
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You betcha.
I also need to try this install on a stripped down Linux Distro because the full blown 12.04 64-bit is a bit of overkill for the VM. The OS can be 32-bit to run Linux DIMES. Any suggestions?
 
WooHoo! I took first place on the team. (at least until Razor decides to raise the Kraken)
 
Progress report on Linux installation:
I've been able to build a few working VMs. A couple more tweaks and I'll be done.

Teaser: the instructions are very brief and do not involve performing any animal sacrifices. :p
 
I'm running VMWare Player and system monitor is reporting using 165 MB of 500 free for the Debian and Lubuntu installs. Ubuntu 32 bit uses about 185 MB if you dump Unity in favor of the lubuntu desktop.
 
Your'e welcome.

Yesterday I noticed something strange about the Windows client. I opened Task Manager on my Win 7 Daily Driver and the Windows Agent was chewing up 700 megs. :eek: I closed the agent and re-opened it and all is well now. Has anybody else had memory usage go crazy?
 
I haven't actively seen it happen to spike, but I do know that it will from time to time have a memory leak that a good ol restart typically takes care of... This is why I recommend automating a restart of the VM's once a day or two.
 
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I dropped my VMs on my main box for now, will be starting them back up again later this week - hopefully with a few new companions :)
I need to monitor memory usage across a few of my machines before I start loading those up too, but I think I'll probably have two boxes with 10 VMs and possibly 2-4 on other rigs too. I'm going to trial a version of XP I stripped down a little, see if it reduces the RAM and disk requirements somewhat to hopefully squeeze one or two more VMs out of my resources.
 
I had emailed netdimes about their stats not running for a few days. Pretty slow email reply, but here is what he said..

Hello

Thanks for your reply.
Indeed the process of updating the stats was down. I restarted the process and the stats should be updated in the next few hours.

Best Regards
Ido
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