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Borging my own LAN center?

M

matt fury

Supreme [H]ardness
Joined
Oct 12, 2001
Messages
4,520
I used to do crack RC5 with the Goons of Defcon at distributed.net but when that was completed I just kinda stopped, but now I have a 12-16 computer LAN center that I would like to contribute to the [H]orde. However, we have enough problems as it is with stability under load and performance, so I couldn't Fold the entire time the machine was on. Luckily enough, the software I use to run the clients runs a .bat file whenever a user logs in or logs out. So I was thinking I could use the .bat to start up the folding client when a customer logs out and then kill it when a customer logs in. That way, whenever a machine was idle it would be Folding. Not the greatest way I do it, but hey, every WU counts, right? Could someone give me a little advice on a good way to implement this or where I could read up on it? I apologize if the info is somewhere obvious and I'm just being dumb about it, but you guys seem to really know yo' shit.

I also have an kinda beefy Duron box running ipcop that I could have fold 24/7...I don't think it should be that rough installing a Linux folding clinet, but I'm just not sure quite how stripped the ipcop distro is and what problems that may or may not cause.
 
"Mr. Fury, may I please borgx0r teh pcs?"
"Yes Mr. Fury, go with god."
"Thanks, Me."
"You're welcome."
 
matt fury said:
lol..guess it's not really borging then, huh?
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naw, it's still borging.

i think you have some serious misconceptions about performance under load. i have an A64 3200+ w/ a Radeon 9800PRO and 1GB of Corsair XMS RAM. When playing CS i still have ~30% free CPU Cycles.

just install the service client and set the core priority to "idle" (and disable -advmethods and bigpackets -- the FAQs can enlighten you to that).


Linux client works like a charm -- i have a Duron running Mandrake that folds.
 
What OS are the LAN boxen? IPcop has been borged before, not by me but many folks here are good with nix...or so they say.... :p
 
Carnival Forces said:
naw, it's still borging.

i think you have some serious misconceptions about performance under load. i have an A64 3200+ w/ a Radeon 9800PRO and 1GB of Corsair XMS RAM. When playing CS i still have ~30% free CPU Cycles.
Click to expand...

F@H can be a pain in the ass to some users, I don't run it on my own machine as it would slow me down at certain times. You are comparing a brand new rig to a game released in 1999. (unless of course you meant CS:S)

If you are doing video editing, CAD or other 3D modeling you really are better off not running F@H at the same time.
 
ZROUT said:
F@H can be a pain in the ass to some users, I don't run it on my own machine as it would slow me down at certain times. You are comparing a brand new rig to a game released in 1999. (unless of course you meant CS:S)

If you are doing video editing, CAD or other 3D modeling you really are better off not running F@H at the same time.
Click to expand...
this is true. i don't play computer games anymore though, and of the ones i did play seriously (StarCraft, Diablo II, and CounterStrike), CS was the most "recent" one.

if you get the text-based client and set its core priority to "idle", you'll be fine. An even better idea is to do that, and have the games' priorities set to "High" (one notch below realtime).

i.e., every time someone double-clicks on a game icon, a .bat flie will also execute, setting that game's priority to High.

i think that'll work fine. especially since he should have -advmethods and bigpackets off. He'll just be getting Tinkers/Gromacs/Ambers/GBGromacs... he'll be fine.
 
If the boxen are XP machines, this thread has information on how to create the .bat files. These are dependent on it being setup as a service however.

The other question is what kind of uptime with the client be running? If these machines are only on during business hours, an only see a couple of hours of downtime, you might have to even consider the timeless WU's.

 
Half are:

Barton 2500+
512mb HyperX
Geforce 5600 or 5700

The other half are:

AMD 64 3000+
1gb pc3200
Geforce 6600GT



All run WindowsXP. I don't leave the computers on 24/7, but each spends at least a few hours every day turned on but not being used, and they all spend a fairly decent number of hours on and being used (5-15hrs). I also have a 24/7 Dell Poweredge with a 2.53ghz Celeron 326 & 512mb of ram running XP and the afforementioned 24/7 1.6hz Duron box running ipcop.

I know that ideally you can set the client to a low priority and everything will be dandy, but we have some slowdown issues as it is, even with the bigger machines. What do you guys think?
 
These sound like good machines ot use the 5.04beta f@h client on. It dynamically will release memory when it is needed as well, which usually causes the slowdown on many machines. The machines I've tried it on, both windows and linux, work quite well with it.
 
sandmanx said:
These sound like good machines ot use the 5.04beta f@h client on. It dynamically will release memory when it is needed as well, which usually causes the slowdown on many machines. The machines I've tried it on, both windows and linux, work quite well with it.
Click to expand...


HUH..... 5.04bete to my knowledge lets you set a "soft" RAM limit, I've never seen anything about releasing memory.

Folding does a wonderful job releasing CPU clicks, as for memory usage/bandwidth your screwed on that from to my knowledge.

Honsestly, if you run the console version (abslutly manadtory here!!!), normal WU's you could just do a basic install and let it run 100% of the time. I've never really heard of anyone having problems with normals WU's, the big ones are the trouble makers.

An idea, start with timeless WU's running 24/7 (or what ever). They have the smallest RAM foot print, smallest bandwidth usage of all.

Under normal WU's your only taking about 1-10 meg RAM used here, very small in my book.

Good luck!
 
marty9876 said:
HUH..... 5.04bete to my knowledge lets you set a "soft" RAM limit, I've never seen anything about releasing memory.

Folding does a wonderful job releasing CPU clicks, as for memory usage/bandwidth your screwed on that from to my knowledge.

Honsestly, if you run the console version (abslutly manadtory here!!!), normal WU's you could just do a basic install and let it run 100% of the time. I've never really heard of anyone having problems with normals WU's, the big ones are the trouble makers.

An idea, start with timeless WU's running 24/7 (or what ever). They have the smallest RAM foot print, smallest bandwidth usage of all.

Under normal WU's your only taking about 1-10 meg RAM used here, very small in my book.

Good luck!
Click to expand...

i think timeless will definately be fine, and i'm confident that regular (so long as, for the third time, no -advmethods or bigpackets) WUs will be great. you should have *no* "slowdown" with regular units. i'm confident.
 
Carnival Forces said:
i think timeless will definately be fine, and i'm confident that regular (so long as, for the third time, no -advmethods or bigpackets) WUs will be great. you should have *no* "slowdown" with regular units. i'm confident.
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I'm 99% sure he could run large WU's and score some major points too! Just trying to error way on the side of caution here. It's only ~16 boxen, and he has direct acess to them so a reconfig on WU type, or killing the whole mess off would be about as easy as can be.

"Just Do It"

:D
 
i am running an almost identical rig to you a64 3k+ except i have 2 gigs of ram. I have played HL2 with no noticible lag at lan partys or even just playing the game.

i am also running large WU
 
I don't run large WU on the machine in my sig but I have no slowdown at all in CS:S, HL2, BF2, or Farcry and I run them all in 1920x1200 with everything full tilt AND have F@H running 100% on both cores and have never seen a hiccup at all. Just slows down how fast the WU gets turned in :)

 
I run large WUs on "idle" on my Athlon XP 1800 with 512MB RAM. It seems to have absolutely no ill effect when I'm playing UT2004. It sounds like the general consensus here is to use the following settings:

-no advmethods
-Idle priority
-you choose whether to use bigpackets or not
-timeless will ensure success

It's only ~16 boxen, and he has direct acess to them so a reconfig on WU type, or killing the whole mess off would be about as easy as can be.
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QFT. It's a small enough farm that a reconfig wouldn't be that hard. Go ahead and try it one way. If it causes problems, you can make adjustments.
However, we have enough problems as it is with stability under load and performance, so I couldn't Fold the entire time the machine was on.
Click to expand...
Sounds like there are some other problems that need solving, too. I'd hate to see precious cycles taken up by some piece of malware.
 
ZROUT said:
F@H can be a pain in the ass to some users, I don't run it on my own machine as it would slow me down at certain times. You are comparing a brand new rig to a game released in 1999. (unless of course you meant CS:S)

If you are doing video editing, CAD or other 3D modeling you really are better off not running F@H at the same time.
Click to expand...

I've got the client running on a machine that I use for SolidEdge v16 and AutoCAD 2000 (Full Version). Running the client, IE, Outlook, SolidEdge, and AutoCAD all at the same time. It's a P4 2.53GHz with 512MB Ram.....With no problems - now switching apps is a little slow, but it would be even without the client running because I'm beating the hell out of my pagefile.
The only time I do run into a problem is when I get into a HUGE assembly. Then the pagefile even gets accessed for screen redraws when your doing pan and rotates in the 3D editor window, But I even have that problem when I shut everything else down.



 
Thanks a lot for all the suggestions guys, I'm going to install everything and try the suggested methods and see what works. I'll let you know how it goes.
 
Try it on a few test ones first.... I use it on my gaming rig and it works fine.... just set core to idle.

Another thing you could do is change the game startup shortcuts to run them as High priority. On my duel proc gaming system, I just go into taskman and change the game to Realtime so it beats the hell out of one proc and uses the other for OS, folding, etc.
 
I would definitely suggest only running it on one of each system to begin with. That way if there are any problems it only affects a couple of machines. After running it on those machines for a few days and there are no problems, then install it on a few more. Stagger the installation so that you know if there are any problems and to make sure you can fix any problems that crop up before they become major.

 
Be a man and borg the whole lot under large WU's!!!

When in doubt, go for broke.
 
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