Done with it....

[digital_exhaust]

Another 2605 wu completed on my diskless 4400+ boxen. Yep, third one.

Third one that finished, no problems at all. Two days ahead of the deadline even. And this is also the third time that I'm left with "Folding@home Core Shutdown: FINISHED_UNIT"....and that's it. No new unit, no results sent in, nothing.

I'm done with it. This has turned into nothing more than a frustrating waste of time and money. My production has gone through the roof (based on my production over the last year anyhow) with the addition of my wife's clinic, and I simply can't justify this any longer.

And the thing is, nothing I have tried has worked. Michael has been nice enough to spend his time with me on the phone trying to resolve this, I have communicated with notfred regarding this issue, I have abandoned FAHmon in hopes that the queue was hanging. To compound the frustration, for the life of me, I can not get the backed up work to send in... and I hate to see this work go to waste....

End rant.

So, I need some advice. I've been folding on my old P4 2g boxen running Ubuntu 7.10 just fine. Is there anything specific I need to know before attempting to run the SMP client on this machine under Ubuntu? Do I need to use the 64bit variety of Ubuntu?

Specs are A8N-Sli Deluxe, 4400+, 2g PQI memory, some old NVIDIA pci video card, DVD/RW and a WD 120g Caviar (that I was hoping to donate to the upcoming contest)... Can I expect some degree of stability? I have no intentions of using this boxen for anything other than folding.....and sorry for the rant and stupid questions... I'm a bit pissed off right now and I would really like to get this rig back to folding asap.... Thanks in advance.

 

[APOLLO]

AFAIK, with Linux clients it needs to be 64-bit. Anyone correct me if I'm wrong.

 

[Charlie_D]

the SMP clients require the 64bit distro, that's correct.

Sorry to hear about the problems DE. Good luck with Ubuntu (not my first choice personally, but the favorite of many none the less!)

 

[schenks]

I personally prefer Xubuntu myself for its somewhat smaller footprint, but whatever works.

I used to run it pure OS on an A64 X2 4800, 2 gigs Corsair Value Select, ATi x800 XL, random HD and DVD drive....it ran perfectly stable while I had it running. I'm now running Xubuntu in all my VMs perfectly stable as well, so I'd say as long as the hardware is stable you should be good. Just remember the 64 bit distro

 

[EvilAlchemist]

Sorry Digi,

I know you must be upset with all this.
Out of my five boxes, i still have one that likes to hang sometimes.

I have no clue what causes it. Will be glad when we get out of beta stage of F@H.

If you need anything, just let me know!

 

[Kendrak]

Sorry Digi,

I know you must be upset with all this.
Out of my five boxes, i still have one that likes to hang sometimes.

I have no clue what causes it. Will be glad when we get out of beta stage of F@H.

If you need anything, just let me know!

A thought just occurred to me... They wont lower the PPD on the SMP when it leaves beta will they?

 

[EvilAlchemist]

A thought just occurred to me... They wont lower the PPD on the SMP when it leaves beta will they?

No one really know.
They have said their will be point bonus if you use the new "passkey" but that is all.
Not even sure what that bonus will be.

Even if they do lower the points, it don't matter.
Everyone will be affected the same way

 

[APOLLO]

A thought just occurred to me... They wont lower the PPD on the SMP when it leaves beta will they?

You mean lower the point allotment per WU? I seriously doubt it and don't believe there's a precedence for this unless I'm not aware of it.

 

[Kendrak]

No one really know.
They have said their will be point bonus if you use the new "passkey" but that is all.
Not even sure what that bonus will be.

Even if they do lower the points, it don't matter.
Everyone will be affected the same way

I'll still need a paper bag and soft music.

 

[BillR]

A thought just occurred to me... They wont lower the PPD on the SMP when it leaves beta will they?

I’d love to tell you no, they won’t drop points. Problem is I can’t. Frankly I’m amazed the point structure has stayed where it is.

Stanford recognizes we have spent big money on hardware, many of us for the umpteenth time and I figure they will keep the points as is for a while longer. The real inequity here hits the people who have been at this for many years and are sitting on 30 to 50k work units being passed by guys with 5k work units. In other words, the points bear no reflection on the science done.

As for diskless folding I’ve tried it several times and just had no luck at all. The concept is as old as folding of course, but over the years I really haven’t seen anyone stick with it for any length of time.

As to Linux distros so far, for me at least, nothing has been as stable as Suse. In fact none have been as easy to use either. For the moment I still have one full Linux box and the only time I ever touch it is for a client update, it just sits there headless and I know it’s running.

 

[Tigerbiten]

Stanford has said that at some time in the future its going to rebalance to points to reflect more the science done per work unit.
How this will affect points I've no idea.

I use CentOS-5, a free version of Red Hat.
You need a 64 bit OS to run the Linux client and you may need to download a 32 bit lib as well to make the 32 bit part of the client compatable with it.
Some distro's have the 32 bit already installed and the client runs fine, others you will need to download/install it before the client will run.

Luck .............

 

[digital_exhaust]

Alright, thanks guys. I'm downloading Suse right now, going to give that one a shot as many of you here speak so highly of it...

I doubt I'll get around to installing it tonight, work comes really early tomorrow and I honestly need to rest up.... but thanks for your responses, I really appreciate them all.

 

[Killer[MoB]]

You'll be happy with that choice. I used to run it on my Opty170 @ 2.85. It ran the LinuxSMP client and I would check it about once a month to keep it from being too lonely.

 

[SmokeRngs]

I have openSUSE installed on 5 systems here. I think that's the best recommendation I can give. I should be able to help you with about any problems you have as well. Well, as long as they aren't too obscure.