[H] Ubuntu DC Appliance -- alternative approach to Linux crunching/folding

Ummm ... this is awkward
from what i can tell ... this setup
will automatically put you in team 33
thats not going to work for me as my sponsors
have their own little team and i am the
"make it work" guy
how do i put in another team?

Make it work...
by reading step 15...
 
I'd say step 19.

Step 15 are just log-in credentials which are unrelated to folding.
 
Windows (post 1)
I'd say step 19.
...

Linux (post 2)
Make it work...
by reading step 15...


Fahinstall will then download and run the client in -configonly mode which will ask you
for your donor name, team number and passkey.
Enter the values as requested..

 
If you don't have a passkey, request one at:
http://fah-web.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/getpasskey.py
 
Add'l passkey info is available at:
http://folding.stanford.edu/English/FAQ-passkey
 
Ummm ... this is awkward
from what i can tell ... this setup
will automatically put you in team 33
thats not going to work for me as my sponsors
have their own little team and i am the
"make it work" guy
how do i put in another team?

error. does not compute.
 
About the [H] image...

Will it support raidcards? I wanted to set up an NAS, but if my G34 is gonna be on all the time anyway... I might as well use that...

I've got a LSI SAS 8708EM2 is that helps...
 
About the [H] image...

Will it support raidcards? I wanted to set up an NAS, but if my G34 is gonna be on all the time anyway... I might as well use that...

I've got a LSI SAS 8708EM2 is that helps...

Yes provided there is a driver for ubuntu for it.
 
About the [H] image...

Will it support raidcards? I wanted to set up an NAS, but if my G34 is gonna be on all the time anyway... I might as well use that...

I've got a LSI SAS 8708EM2 is that helps...

Bob_Dole, I can confirm this as I've installed the [H] image on LSI-based RAID-1 arrays.
 
What hardware is your server? Which CPUs? How many sockets for CPUs?

Yes this can be used with GPUs, you need to do a little bit of changes in that case. The no bigadv on windows, its your choice, how much is contributed will depend greatly on the hardware you have at your disposal.

Edit: JTG If you have any F@H questions please make a thread. Any more posts lets keep on topic relating straight to the [H] Image
 
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Ummmm ... i would like to say again that these are my first server builds ever ... so i need some guidance getting them to a useful place respective to the OS ... i have 1 Super Micro H8QGI+-F with 4x 6174's in it and i have 2 Super Micro H8SGL-F's one with a 6174 and the other with a 6176 and i have 6x 6276's sitting on the table
(no MB has an empty socket)
and i am looking at video cards trying to figure what i am going to keep ...what i am going to build/rebuild and what (if anything) i am going to sell/buy ...
(there will be no more than 4 boxes)

is this what u wanted to know?

if it were me, i'd use the 4p board as bigadv with this [H] appliance to fold exclusively on.

i would then take the other 2 single processor boards and fold gtx780's/Titans on. on these systems i would use Windows 7. i only say i would use windows 7 because that is what i know, and i know it works. i have never tried to fold gpu on ubuntu or any other linux distro. this would also allow you to run other things on these servers. you could even get yourself a couple of these adapters and have 2 or 3 GPUs per board.

you could even run SMP on the single procs if you wanted, but it would likely not be worth it in PPD to wattage used, but thats really up to you.

my 2 cents :)
 
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Overclocking GPU's from my understanding isn't supported in Linux. last I heard, higher performance in linux.

Windows you can OC, but you need a windows license.
 
As said for 4p machines for AMD use the [H] image, and 2p machines with a GPU.


JTG, to find answers on optimizing PPD, or what hardware to get, please POST a new thread in the general DC Section, found here, and leave this thread for questions pertaining to the [H] folding image only, which your questions are veering away from.
 
You need the USB drive for fahbackup to run. If you shut down how do you save your Wu or configuration??
 
A "ramdrive" setup with automatic backups and transparent restores is already included in
the appliance == no dedicated setup is required.

Also, I think you may be under impression that USB drive is additionally required for some
special purpose. It is not.

I'd rather suspect someone may have mentioned USB as his preferred way of using the appliance.

In fact, the appliance can be installed on regular hard drive, SSD drive as well as USB drive.
It boils down to your preference and you only need one drive.
 
No, the USB acts as your hard drive, its not a live distribution as in it lives in your ram, it lives on the USB.
 
No, the USB acts as your hard drive, its not a live distribution as in it lives in your ram, it lives on the USB.

Exactly. You'd need one USB/HDD/SSD PER boxen. Most of us use a USB because an 8GB one will run you about $10 and if you are running a dedicated boxen that has no other tasks, you dont need more than an 8GB USB stick.

So in a perfect world...


You load the [H] folding appliance on your usb stick---> plug into box ---> boot up ---> update with your info ----> leave it alone for the rest of your life.
 
ok i am getting the impression you need one drive per box ... i was thinking since linux is so stable ... just boot off usb ... start folding ... pull the usb and leave the box for a month or two before reboot and stick the same usb in the next box ... and so on and so on ... one jump drive for all boxen ...and when its time to reboot ... just finish current WU and bounce the box .. but it doesnt sound like it works that way

If you want to go driveless, you can roll your own and do iscsi or pxe booting. The purpose of this is to be a painless way to get up and folding very quickly and very effectively.
 
Yes, practically you'll always need some backing store. Be it USB/HDD/SSD, network-mounted drive
or whatnot.

What you're describing is possible but I don't know any off-the-shelf solutions that would let you do that
so, most likely, you'd need to develop such environment yourself.

From experience though, I would advise against doing so; USB drives are very cheap nowadays so
unless you're setting up hundred systems the development effort (which is significant) just won't
pay off.

Plus, if you have a backing store, you will not need to start folding from scratch in case of, say, power
failure.
 
Y'all come back now ya hear and tell us how awesome this is:)
 
Pause, no. If you stop the client, it resumes from last point on Wu.
 
Pause, no. If you stop the client, it resumes from last point on Wu.

The utility has a f@H backup utility type of deal. Thats why you may see it taking a little longer to shutdown on reboot/shutdown. As long as everything is setup correctly and you're not doing dirty shutdowns, f@h should always resume at its last point.a
 
The utility has a f@H backup utility type of deal. Thats why you may see it taking a little longer to shutdown on reboot/shutdown. As long as everything is setup correctly and you're not doing dirty shutdowns, f@h should always resume at its last point.a

so fahinstall/fah H image will run backup every 15 minutes. so if you shutdown, when you restart fah, you will be within 0-15 minutes of where you were when you shutdown/restarted.

going from what i learned the hard way, if you stop the client at the wrong time ( about a 3 second window every 15 minutes) you will corrupt the backup files. SO, it is recommended to NOT stop the client to shutdown (CTRL+C or pkill). instead, just shutdown the rig since there is an automatic backup.

also, fahinstall will keep 2 backup points, so if you kill the client instead of shutting down and start the client again and it says "corrupt files" and starts at 0%, there is another backup location you can load so you don't have to start over. i learned all of this the hard way the other day and restarted a wu from 0% when i didn't NEED to.
 
Yes and no.

The image has a backup script that runs every 15min. When you shutdown, it backs up where you left off, so, if the 15min backup ran 8 min ago, it is going to put a new backup there. It has proven to be a life saver.

Speaking of life savers, you do not see those commercials on TV and now I want some classic fruit flavored life savers. Perhaps, even some in gummy.
drooling.gif
 
your not hearing me ... dirty shut down ... yeah ... really? ... whats that?
how do i tell the client to save current data and stop processing ? ... without shutting down the OS
linux/egyptian/swaheley ... no difference ... all a language i dont understand

you'd have to kick off the fah backup command, then once that's ran, pkill fah6. these would both be ran from a different terminal window.
 
how do i tell the client to save current data and stop processing ? ... without shutting down the OS

Answer:
Code:
pkill fah6

You *can* (but you don't really have to) precede it with:
Code:
fahbackup

Also, to clarify a bit, FAH client makes checkpoints every 15 minutes but fahbackup is run
at the top of the hour.


your not hearing me ... dirty shut down ... yeah ... really? ... whats that?
Dirty shutdown is any unordered shutdown == reset button pressed, power interruption,
OS crash, etc.
 
tear:

is there a procedure for restoring a backup when files are corrupt? i only ask because it happened to me one night where i killed the client at the exact instant it was making a backup and it would have been nice to know before i had to start the wu over.
 
Restore code should pick previous (secondary) backup if current (primary) backup is found
to be inconsistent.

If you have reasons to suspect it did not, let know and see if you can find relevant logs as
this shouldn't be happening :)
 
Thanks, I did go over the data.

It looks like what you experienced was a corrupted FAH checkpoint (due to a bug in FAH
itself).
So, while the backup (as made by fahbackup) was consistent, it happened to have archived
inconsistent data...

Best mitigation techniques of FAH's checkpoint bug that we know of are:
1. Not shutting down the client unless absolutely necessary; if you're powering down the
  machine, plain "sudo poweroff" will suffice, there's no need to explicitly stop the client;
  same goes with rebooting -- use "sudo reboot"

2. When needing to shut the client down, not pressing Ctrl+C in the terminal and using
  "pkill fah6" (ran in another terminal) instead.
 
Firstly, thanks, gave it a try on a new build today and worked a treat.

Just a suggestion, do you think it would be worthwhile doing a version based on the server OS? I'd love to have one without all the GUI bloat.

Or an optional script to run after install to rip out X and setup autorun etc.

But great job regardless! :
 
Firstly, thanks, gave it a try on a new build today and worked a treat.

Just a suggestion, do you think it would be worthwhile doing a version based on the server OS? I'd love to have one without all the GUI bloat.

Or an optional script to run after install to rip out X and setup autorun etc.

But great job regardless! :

Follow the "Boot to CLI" section HERE to not boot to the GUI. You could actually get rid of the GUI, but there is no reason I can see for doing so. You would think that it would slow things down, but it does not.
 
Are there any implications to changing the password for the default user?
 
There are no adverse implications of changing the password.

One should not, however, change user name (or otherwise run fah as a different user)
without extra care (fahbackup/ramdisk/Langouste are tied to user name).
We plan to cover this use case at next release.
 
This was the easiest setup I have ever done with FAH. Thanks for your effort! And it works for all teams!
 
set it up on some AMD 6 core machines. jumpped PPD from abou 8500 up to about an average of 12500 over windows.


Loading it on a 4P machine this weekend.
 
That is awesome.

What are the 6 core chips? What's int he 4p?
 
Drive confirmed to not work: For the FAH Appliance*
Kingston Digital DataTraveler SE9 8GB USB 2.0 DTSE9H/8GBZ http://www.amazon.com/dp/B006W8U2MU
Device only has 7.25GB available with a clean partition.
 
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