having problems with emiii..

[bradyapba]

All of a sudden its not updating on any of my machines.. and now when it moves to a new peotein it wont tell me how many points it is. Is there and update or something?

Also how do we all feel about the new update to our stats page? I kind of find it harder to follow now....

just my 2 cents.

Chris

 

[Kvothe]

Are you running 3.1.9? Thats the most recent version, and it looks like a new protein data file was published yesterday..

I can't remember, but I think I read that a few other people were having a similar problem.

 

[LPerry]

Sometimes when something goes wrong with the FAH client, it leaves behind some files that confuse EM. I have been working to get rid of this issue, but my time lately has been very restricted.

Look in the work folder for numbered files that don't match the majority. You might find a couple of them with an 02 while most are 03 or maybe 04. Delete the files that don't match the majority. The numbers I used are only an example of course.

 

[Mohonri]

I just recently noticed a similar problem. All is fine on one of my machines, but not on the other. em3 has no problem pulling up the log file, but has trouble with everything else for that machine. Here's a screen cap(sorry about the size):

Can you confirm this is the same problem?

 

[bradyapba]

fixed the problem.. i updated to 3.1.9 and updated to the new protein file.. i dont know which one fixed the problem.. but all is fine now on my 3 systems! I think it might have been the protein file.

 

[Mohonri]

I have done all three suggestions:
1) Downloaded and installed em 3.1.9
2) Got the latest protein file
3) Looked in the work directory. Everything there was numbered 01.

I'm still getting the same problem. It works on one machine, not on the other. Exactly like in the screen cap above. EMIII can tell what protein it is, but nothing else. It can get to the log file just fine, but no progress indicators.

Anybody have any other suggestions?

 

[Kvothe]

How far into the protein are you? EMIII will only start updating once it has seen the client finish a frame and then it takes a few frames for the times to even out.

 

[Mohonri]

Well, in that screen cap, it was about 40 frames out of 400. Currently it's somewhere about 250 frames/400.

Also, things went south during a previous WU. So that box finished that WU, got the new WU (which you see now), and EMIII doesn't have a clue what to do with it. Could it possibly be a protein that somehow didn't get defined in the new protein file?

 

[Kvothe]

Well to throw out a few more ideas, have you tried setting that box up through a UNC (\\box\share), and is the share have write access?

Those are the only other things I can think of off the top of my head.

 

[LPerry]

EM doesn't need the protein file for anything but the value of the points.
If that is a networked machine it needs read/write access...
That's about the only reason EM won't track something properly.

No other reported issues from others so I have to assume it's a read/write issue.

 

[Mohonri]

EM doesn't even know how many points the WU is worth. The machine with EMIII has read/write access to the directory. I mapped the network share to a drive, and for a long time it was working just fine. Then I moved all the F@H stuff to a subdirectory (remedying a noobish mistake--I ran F@H for the first time from a directory with a whole bunch of other stuff). I fixed the path on EMIII, but now the only thing EMIII can see is the name of the protein.

 

[LPerry]

Yep, sounds like another "noob" mistake...
It is obvious that folding probably isn't going on where you think it is...
EM only breaks for a reason... LOL

Not sure what folder you say you moved things from, but my bet is work is still being done right there.

If you look in the registry I'll bet that the folding client path still points to where you moved it from. You can solve the problem in 1 of two ways. Delete the registry path or launch the client using the -local flag... forces the client to work only in the folder it resides in.

 

[Mohonri]

I'm a noob alright, but not THAT much of a noob. Everything was in t:\ (from the perspective of the computer running EMIII). I moved it all to t:\fah\. It is indeed running from that location--there is no F@H executable in t:\ anymore. The registry is running it (as a service) from t:\fah\(well, e:\exes\fah from the running computer's perspective), and the fahlog.txt in that directory is being updated. So I know that everything is within that folder.

Now, there is one possibility that just occured to me--does the registry contain a key (besides the one used to start it as a service) which points to the fah directory?

 

[Kvothe]

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\PandeGroup <- only in graphical as best I can tell.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\PandeGroup <- part of both console and graphical.

Those are the only other two places I can find any registry entries for F@H.

 

[LPerry]

Not that much eh?

 

[LPerry]

Since I've lost count of the the number of times someone has started out using the GUI version of F@H and then switched to the console client and had the issue where the program continues to fold using the old path info, I suggested to Stanford that they fix the issue in the Version 6 client. It appears that they will do that and I will have one less issue to address when that new client is released. I never see the issue myself because I always launch the client using the -local flag which forces the client to ignore the registry path. It is especially needed when running two clients on a dual CPU situation.

 

[DevilDoc]

Off Topic: LPerry, it looks you might have an answer to one question regarding F@H on a dual CPU machine.

I looks as though my dualy has downloaded the same work unit for both F@H processes to work on. Is this normal, or is it essentially doing the same unit twice?

How do I stop it from doing that?

On Topic: I had a bitch of a time trying to get EM3 to run here at work for monitoring my @werk borgs, and eventually gave up. Maybe i'll give it a try tomorrow and see if I can trudge through it.

 

[Kvothe]

I looks as though my dualy has downloaded the same work unit for both F@H processes to work on. Is this normal, or is it essentially doing the same unit twice?

How do I stop it from doing that?

Are the run/clone/gens the same? Although it may appear to be the same protein to all outward appearances, those three listings truly are what differentiate one from the other.

You're not going to be able to specify what you want unless you run one with -advmethods, or one with timeless WU's, and even doing that doesn't mean you'll get something else.

 

[LPerry]

Off Topic: LPerry, it looks you might have an answer to one question regarding F@H on a dual CPU machine.

I looks as though my dualy has downloaded the same work unit for both F@H processes to work on. Is this normal, or is it essentially doing the same unit twice?

How do I stop it from doing that?

You should never see the same run/clone/generation numbers on two machines. They are working on the same work unit if you do. When running on a dual system you must add the -local switch to force the client to do all work in that folder, and you need to make sure that you use a different "Machine ID" (numbers 1 - 8) when running multiple clients on any machine. Having the same machine id is where most of the problems start when running two or more clients per machine.

On Topic: I had a bitch of a time trying to get EM3 to run here at work for monitoring my @werk borgs, and eventually gave up. Maybe i'll give it a try tomorrow and see if I can trudge through it.

If all anyone ever did was supply the path to the client, and nothing more, EM would work right off. It does need read/write access to the files, but other than that the only thing it really cares about is the path to the client. When unzipping the zip files you have to expand it so that all folders are created when decompressing, but that's about it for the install. Seems easy, but I guess when people see dozens of options they start using them before they really know what they do??? Either way, there is lots of help in these forums that can be had from those that use EM...

 

[DevilDoc]

You should never see the same run/clone/generation numbers on two machines. They are working on the same work unit if you do. When running on a dual system you must add the -local switch to force the client to do all work in that folder, and you need to make sure that you use a different "Machine ID" (numbers 1 - 8) when running multiple clients on any machine. Having the same machine id is where most of the problems start when running two or more clients per machine.

I knew about setting the separate processes. I'm running the console client, and incremented the Machine ID # for each instance. It seems like I'm unable to set the -local switch within services.msc. Know how to do that? Or do I have to just run each copy by switching to its respective directory and running each with the -local flag?

If all anyone ever did was supply the path to the client, and nothing more, EM would work right off. It does need read/write access to the files, but other than that the only thing it really cares about is the path to the client. When unzipping the zip files you have to expand it so that all folders are created when decompressing, but that's about it for the install. Seems easy, but I guess when people see dozens of options they start using them before they really know what they do??? Either way, there is lots of help in these forums that can be had from those that use EM...

I got EMIII to run on my XP box, but I have to get VB onto my 2K3 boxen in order for them to werk.... meh. I don't know if this is going to break security protocol or not. Itshay.

 

[Kvothe]

To add the local switches to the service, you have to edit the registry, the key can be found here:

HKLM\System\ControlSet001\Services\FAH@.....

Under that key there is an entry for ImagePath, you can append the -local key on there.

Or if regediting isn't your idea of a good time, I suggest using this tool to easy the editing.

 

[DevilDoc]

To add the local switches to the service, you have to edit the registry, the key can be found here:

HKLM\System\ControlSet001\Services\FAH@.....

Under that key there is an entry for ImagePath, you can append the -local key on there.

Or if regediting isn't your idea of a good time, I suggest using this tool to easy the editing.

Thanx p[H]antom, I figured there was a registry tweak, I just didn't dig into it yet. I set the -local switch in the fugging services.msc console, but it wouldn't retain it. I don't even know if the slot I was entering it into was the appropriate spot to do so.

A large part of my job is screwing around with registries. It's not for the timid or basic user, but it can be pretty powerful if done right.

At any rate, that little problem is squashed. Now to install VB w/o breaking security on the boxen so I can have EM3 on 2k & 2k3 servers. =)

 

[LPerry]

The new servers do not have the VB5 runtime dll...
Install that first (you can get it from my site, download page)

Then, EM should install and run ...

 

[DevilDoc]

The new servers do not have the VB5 runtime dll...
Install that first (you can get it from my site, download page)

Then, EM should install and run ...

Beat you to it. Don't think I need to run EMIII on the remote machines though. Is there some benefit that can be gained from it?

Side note: I was looking at the EM install on my primary workstation here, put two and two together and realized that WeatherMan & LPerry were one and the same. The man himself! Heh - relatively new to the folding forum here, so please forgive me for sounding like a n00b. I've been cranking WU's for a little while though.

Why does "Time remaining show up as "00:00:00" for most of the boxes, including my Primary Workstation?

Also, I'm making the remote folder "read only". Should I make it RWX for some reason?

 

[Kvothe]

The remote folders have to have full read/write access in order for EM3 to work properly. That's probably why they are showing no time remaining.

Also, if you restart EM3, you have to give it a little while so that the times can equalize out.

 

[LPerry]

Beat you to it. Don't think I need to run EMIII on the remote machines though. Is there some benefit that can be gained from it?

Side note: I was looking at the EM install on my primary workstation here, put two and two together and realized that WeatherMan & LPerry were one and the same. The man himself! Heh - relatively new to the folding forum here, so please forgive me for sounding like a n00b. I've been cranking WU's for a little while though.

Why does "Time remaining show up as "00:00:00" for most of the boxes, including my Primary Workstation?

Also, I'm making the remote folder "read only". Should I make it RWX for some reason?

You can monitor up to 100 clients using EM (it is being done right now so I know this works).
You should only use EM on one machine and track the rest via network. MHO
You can minimize the CPU usage by turning off the protein drawing if that concerns you.
I use low res graphics myself... super fast and allows me to see something.

Until EM sees at least one frame complete, it can't calculate the time remaining. If you go to the options menu and have EM save your stats, it will use them to give immediate feedback if you get the same protein again. There are a couple of weird proteins that Stanford has been sending out that EM can't see the finish frame on. I've tried to fix it, but so far no luck. It is rare, but it does happen. Frame times have increased a lot over the years, so it takes longer to calculate the first data.

 

[DevilDoc]

EM3 is now nicely reporting most of my b0rg3d b0x3n stats'

A follow up question just reared it's ugly head.

One of the CPUs on the dual rig is reporting a "Time Per Frame Problem". What does this mean to me?

Thanx for all your help guys. I'll return the favor when some neophyte runs in here with "teh oh noes"

 

[Kvothe]

Are you doing anything on the dually that could be stealing cycles? Or are you doing anything on it? Thats the only time I've ever had problems with that message, like during gaming.

 

[LPerry]

EM tries to guess how long between frames sometimes when you start it. Sometimes it is right on, sometimes it isn't. That can cause a false error once in a while.

If the client being monitored is on the network and the icon turns red, a connection problem or a frozen computer can alert you. And, like above, sometimes the frame time is miscalculated. Usually this only happens because of a restart of the client.

 

[Tormond]

I have that problem pretty constantly on my duallies. My netserver constantly has an error but when I telnet to it the client is chugging right along. Happens on my Dual Xeons as well (Dell Poweredge 1800) and from time to time on my AMD X2. I normally can restart EM3 and the problem goes away except that the dual xeon takes a while to update as it is almost always doing 4 600 pointers and they take a while.

 

[DevilDoc]

I think network traffic may be an issue as well. We've got a 10mb lan here in the cube farm
That's what I'm monitoring the entirety of my machines over.

 

[LPerry]

I have that problem pretty constantly on my duallies. My netserver constantly has an error but when I telnet to it the client is chugging right along. Happens on my Dual Xeons as well (Dell Poweredge 1800) and from time to time on my AMD X2. I normally can restart EM3 and the problem goes away except that the dual xeon takes a while to update as it is almost always doing 4 600 pointers and they take a while.

Normally this can happen when someone is using Windows 2000 ...
Damn thing by default will disconnect anyone after some set period of time.
XP, I never see this issue...
If you're using Win2K and you're seeing this issue, you'll have to change the security settings so that the connections aren't just shut down. I solved the problem by switching to XP on all machines so I wouldn't have to deal with it again. Pain in the butt.

Might be your issue, don't know.

 

[LPerry]

I think network traffic may be an issue as well. We've got a 10mb lan here in the cube farm
That's what I'm monitoring the entirety of my machines over.

That's fast enough... EM only reads a couple of bytes until a frame change.
You might have a Win2K issue also???

People don't often mention what OS they are running so I forget about this problem.

 

[DevilDoc]

That's fast enough... EM only reads a couple of bytes until a frame change.
You might have a Win2K issue also???

People don't often mention what OS they are running so I forget about this problem.

Interesting. The box that's having trouble is a Dual CPU Win2K server. What's the poop, praytell?

BTW, I'm only running one instance of EM3 - on my workstation. The rest of the machines are running the console folding client.

Would there be any benefit in running EM3 on every machine?

How 'light' is that em3 server thingie you have on your site, Weatherman?

 

[Kvothe]

Running EM3 will do you no good unless you plan on watching each machine individually. The entire point of EM3 is so that you can monitor all of your boxen from a single location and get all of the stats produced in a single location. The server chunk will then just aggregate all of your stats that your EM3 session is showing and produces a website to view the stats, again negating the need to go machine to machine.

 

[Tormond]

All of my machines run either Win XP Pro or Win2003 Server (of some flavor) so my prob is not Win2K. Not sure what the deal is but that isn't it. Like I said I can usually stop EM3 and restart it and all is good with it.

 

[LPerry]

Interesting. The box that's having trouble is a Dual CPU Win2K server. What's the poop, praytell?

BTW, I'm only running one instance of EM3 - on my workstation. The rest of the machines are running the console folding client.

Would there be any benefit in running EM3 on every machine?

How 'light' is that em3 server thingie you have on your site, Weatherman?

While you can monitor each machine individually, as p[H]ant0m points out, that kinda ruins what EM can do for you... monitoring from a single machine combines all data and makes it simple to see at a glance that all is ok or that something is wrong.

The EM server is ultra lite...

 

[LPerry]

Even though EM has a ton of features, it has one basic feature and that is it tracks frame changes and calculates the frame times. Everything else is just gravy.

Problems usually come about because of these few issues:

1) There are occasions when the F@H client stops updating the file containing the frame information. It is weird, but it happens.

2) Read/Write access is not set.

3) The OS disconnects the logged in user (EM).

4) The VB5 runtime is not installed on the machine. This is mostly seen on the new Windows Server OS. While M$ has dropped support for VB5, it runs just fine when the runtime dll is installed. EM will not run at all if the dll is not there.

5) Wireless connections work pretty well, but there have been issues because a 100% full time connection is needed and wireless sometimes doesn't give you that. You don't notice it normally because you don't need a "wire type" connection to surf the internet or check your email.

 

[Kvothe]

5) Wireless connections work pretty well, but there have been issues because a 100% full time connection is needed and wireless sometimes doesn't give you that. You don't notice it normally because you don't need a "wire type" connection to surf the internet or check your email.

I'll go on record as saying that this isn't even the issue as I've been able to monitor my boxen from my laptops wirelessly for quite some time now with a variety of hardware (routers, cards, etc.) without any issues at all.

 

[LPerry]

All of my machines run either Win XP Pro or Win2003 Server (of some flavor) so my prob is not Win2K. Not sure what the deal is but that isn't it. Like I said I can usually stop EM3 and restart it and all is good with it.

If the computer icon turns red, it is a connection issue. I have found that my network cables need replacing sometimes and all goes back to normal. I also had to replace a defective router because it started having connection issues. Very difficult to figure out unless you have a spare. I also have several hubs and switches that have issues from time to time that can't be seen under normal use. Monitoring a F@H client over a network requires a perfectly working connection, and I mean perfect. I should package EM as a network testing software. It shows a network weakness when all else appears to be ok. When I replace either cable or hub/switch the problems go away. Nothing else can prove that to you until you've done it as many times as I have. It took a long time for me to convince myself that my network was the real issue because normal use didn't detect any problem... my latest network setup has been going for almost 8 months with no detected problems by EM. Still, I keep extra cables and a new, in the box switch around in case I need to replace an existing one.