Holy $[H]!+ Batman linux is Awesome

Untitledone

[H]ard|DCer of the Month - April 2012
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Feb 28, 2011
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So I finally got my computer back up and running and folding again. I am 8 frames into a 7140 and decided to look at HFM. HFM is estimating 6500 PPD!!! or 6:45 TPF. I don't have any data specificly on the 7140 since my HFM log got hosed when windows died. However on jebo's sheet I had uploaded some stats with other 71xx projects. Most of which were in the 8:21 to 8:26 TPF which is around 4500 PPD for the lot. Thats a god damn 44% increase WTF? 6500-4500= 2000PPD increase. 2000/4500 = 0.44

I have been wanting to use linux for many years but never really got around to it. Thanks [H]ard folding members for the kick in the ass I needed. I am glad that one machine is off the Microsoft cool aid.
 
yeah Linux is awesome. I've used this new rig build to go for a graphic linux install. I've been living in a command line world for so long I had no idea how awesome the gui had gotten.

Welcome to the wonderful world of linux :) it's a good place to be
 
Linux is pretty cool, the freedom is a breath of fresh air. But since My folding rig is also my main rig plus my work revolves around windows I can't switch 100%
 
Wonder if you could run a 64-bit Linux VT-x VM on top of a 32-bit Windows install to get the SMP bonus?
 
Have any of you 2600K guys tried a Linux VM yet? I did on a 950 a while ago and it was terrible. I just wonder if a Linux VM under Windows is better than the native Windows client right now.
 
Have any of you 2600K guys tried a Linux VM yet? I did on a 950 a while ago and it was terrible. I just wonder if a Linux VM under Windows is better than the native Windows client right now.

I will give it a try when I get back home.

I have a non OC-ed 1155 xeon that it be fun to give this a try on.
 
It would be interesting to see how that virtualization works out.

On a side note, crunching a 6950 right now. I have a 6950 in jebo's SMP TPF database. 7:53 TPF previously 3500 PPD, with linux 6:05 TPF 5300 PPD, 51% increase!!! That was about the worst WU I have on record, and linux turned it into higher PPD than what was previously my best WU the 11020 at 4900 PPD.

Note 2: I just realized that there is some overclocking increases since the ones posted in jebo's thread. I am running 140mhz higher and on linux. However I attribute most of the gains to linux, at least 40% gains. I only gained a few hundred PPD with the overclock, linux gave me a few thousand!!!
 
It would be interesting to see how that virtualization works out.

On a side note, crunching a 6950 right now. I have a 6950 in jebo's SMP TPF database. 7:53 TPF previously 3500 PPD, with linux 6:05 TPF 5300 PPD, 51% increase!!! That was about the worst WU I have on record, and linux turned it into higher PPD than what was previously my best WU the 11020 at 4900 PPD.

Note 2: I just realized that there is some overclocking increases since the ones posted in jebo's thread. I am running 140mhz higher and on linux. However I attribute most of the gains to linux, at least 40% gains. I only gained a few hundred PPD with the overclock, linux gave me a few thousand!!!
you should load up haitch's benchmark live monitor
 
It is starting to sound like Linux is where it is at. I have to admit that it does sound tempting.
 
It is starting to sound like Linux is where it is at. I have to admit that it does sound tempting.

I'll be in Cinncinnati in a couple weeks....don't make me come over there and rough you up to make you install Linux.... :)
 
I'll be in Cinncinnati in a couple weeks....don't make me come over there and rough you up to make you install Linux.... :)

What's bringing you into this dive called Cincinnati? You have to remember that i'm a person who values simplicity along with the ability to just set and forget. As a result, I love Windows. I'll probably give Linux another try at some point, but I just need the time along with buying another wireless router that I can flash with that DD-WRT thing so that it can act as a bridge to my main router.

When you come through here, at least make sure to hit up Montgomery Inn for ribs on the boathouse, Skyline Chili, and so on.
 
I gained about 6k ppd on a i7 2600 machine(non k). PPD with Windows on bigadv was 29-30k, now its just shy of 37k. I was lazy,....just popped a spare drive into the machine and used the linuxforge image.
 
What's bringing you into this dive called Cincinnati? You have to remember that i'm a person who values simplicity along with the ability to just set and forget. As a result, I love Windows. I'll probably give Linux another try at some point, but I just need the time along with buying another wireless router that I can flash with that DD-WRT thing so that it can act as a bridge to my main router.

When you come through here, at least make sure to hit up Montgomery Inn for ribs on the boathouse, Skyline Chili, and so on.

It is work-related, unfortunately. I am from the area (lived in Dayton for many years), so I am familiar most of the local treats.
 
I've got a question. I have been having problems with the machine ignoring ports. What I normally do is I unplug my mouse, keyboard, and everything besides the power cord, network cable, and VGA cable to save on power (mouse and keyboard are lit). When I go to plug the stuff back in when I want to check how the thing is doing, they dont get power! I thought that maybe the machine had hung or something, but it was still running and warm like it was under full load. So before hitting the reset button I tried the rear ports thinking the front ports are messed up or something. Still nothing, so I tried one last thing before I hit the reset button, I plugged in a legacy PS2 keyboard and that didn't even power up! I reset the machine, and it booted fine, everything is fine. F@H appears to have been working the whole time, sending and recieving work units fine.

I am stumped as to what the problem is. Its obviously a linux issue of some sort, because this has never happened before with windows. I had all of the power saving options enabled in power management. So I thought maybe that was the issue, so I disabled all of those, and set it to never turn anything off and that didn't work either!

I am running Ubuntu 11.04 x64. I noticed a post about some Kworker process or something that was causing some issues with some people, but I checked and I have none of those running.

So, I am not sure what I need to do. Any of you linux guru's have any suggestions?


EDIT: I forgot to mention that it does not happen immediately. This happens usually after I wake up in the morning after not touching the thing for 8 hours, or when I have been gone for most of the day with the stuff unplugged.
 
I plugged in a legacy PS2 keyboard and that didn't even power up!

AFAIK, PS2 keyboards will only work if they were plugged in when the computer booted. I have had this issue before.

As for your usb keyboard, I don't have a clue. I'm running my linux system without a keyboard or video card plugged in. I access the system via ssh (all console, no GUI). I check the status through HFM.net generally.
 
At this time I just have one folding machine and I am new to linux so I did not follow the instructions to get it down to command line only. I am running on intergrated video so I cant remove that. I dont have another power efficient machine that I would want to run 24/7 to act as a HFM server/consoling machine. I have a laptop that I am currently typing on, but it doesnt have enough hard drive space to warrant a triple boot.

I had a feeling that the PS2 keyboard would have had to been plugged in on startup. I am going to leave the USB mouse and keyboard plugged in and see if it does it while they stay plugged in.

This is a really odd problem!
 
At this time I just have one folding machine and I am new to linux so I did not follow the instructions to get it down to command line only. I am running on intergrated video so I cant remove that. I dont have another power efficient machine that I would want to run 24/7 to act as a HFM server/consoling machine. I have a laptop that I am currently typing on, but it doesnt have enough hard drive space to warrant a triple boot.

I had a feeling that the PS2 keyboard would have had to been plugged in on startup. I am going to leave the USB mouse and keyboard plugged in and see if it does it while they stay plugged in.

This is a really odd problem!

Does it work fine on windows or does it exhibit the same problem?
 
Does it work fine on windows or does it exhibit the same problem?

Never once did it on windows. Longest I went on windows was 11 days, and there was no issue on windows.

EDIT: It appears to spin down the hard drive even though in power options I told it not to. It seems like the system is suspending or hibernating of some sort. I left the keyboard and mouse plugged in, and they stayed powered however I just tried to check on the computer and I get a mouse cursor now, however it does not prompt me for my password or login details. It is just on a black screen. The most appears to freeze in place at times.

Maybe I should disable those security settings that lock the computer when it goes idle?
 
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Just checked about a half an hour ago. Whenever it locks the computer requiring a password to use it again it seems to stop responding to input. I have tried to disable the requiring a password thing but I have not be able to find it. I cant tell if folding@home continues to run while in this. If it does, I might just say screw it and let it run like that making sure I check my stats regularly.
 
Try typing your password anyway after the computer locks. When I was running my laptop with 11.04 and unity it would do the samething not display the password box, but it would still take my password and take me back to the desktop.
 
I had a feeling that the PS2 keyboard would have had to been plugged in on startup. I am going to leave the USB mouse and keyboard plugged in and see if it does it while they stay plugged in.

This is a really odd problem!


Try CTL+ALT+F2 for a console login the next time you have this problem.

then you can `pkill screensaver` , log out, then CTL+ALT+F1 to try to get back to the GUI.

At least that's how it goes down on 10.04, Unity might have screwed with some stuff.
 
Try CTL+ALT+F2 for a console login the next time you have this problem.

then you can `pkill screensaver` , log out, then CTL+ALT+F1 to try to get back to the GUI.

At least that's how it goes down on 10.04, Unity might have screwed with some stuff.


Well one of the problems I had was the the mouse and keyboard would not power on when plugged back in. I will have to see what happens next before I try anything else.
 
I thought one of the new releases evened out windows and linux..

In my case no way! Linux has been 44%-51% faster than windows so far. 44% on my slowest WU, I havent had my fastest WU yet but I am sure excited to find out what it will be!

Problem solved. I think! I will know tomorrow for sure though. It had something to do with my overclock. It was perfectly stable running F@H for hours. However when it would do the security thing when you bring it out of idle the code or something would hang. I down clocked my HT from 237 to 235, and bumped my vcore,IMC, and northbridge by 25mv and all is good so far. I may pop that extra 2mhz back on since I did increase voltage. I did a clock reduction and voltage increase all that at the same time to test a theory and so far it worked.
 
Yeah, problem solved, checked this morning and everything worked fine. Silly overclock giving me headaches with no warnings/clues!
 
Man this sucks. I had no real problems other than a failed overclock the month before this and was able to make 124k points. Then the overclock had to be dropped more on linux so I lost a day there, and I finally get everything going and I forgot to close the system monitor and lost a small about of points due to that. Now I had to shutdown today after my last WU because there is a planned power outage tomorrow Doh! Sucks not having a UPS, and definitely not trusting PG&E to hold their time table. Don't want to risk what little folding hardware I have.

All should be good by mid-afternoon tomorrow. Thankfully the points increase from linux should more than make up for the stuff that started this month/end of last month off.
 
Huh, that is interesting! Well I guess if the hardware supports it that will work. I thought one of the points of virtualization was to have the two instances separate. So I guess to the hardware it should be no different than a 64 bit OS running a 32 bit VM.
 
You bet, I thought that was impossible.

(I wonder if it is only ok if the guest does not request more than 4GB memory?)

IIRC With Linux a host with a 32-bit OS on a 64-bit CPU can have up to 48GB of memory and can allocate any portion of that to a VM, but there is a limit on CPU count.
 
Ok, it happened again. I dont think it is the overclock. This time I plugged the mouse in and it powered up, and I plugged the keyboard in and it go no power. I shook the mouse around and the password prompt didnt come up.

I did a little searching and I may have found a solution. I do not know what the problem is, but when it does the whole fade to black screen saver thing and locks the computer, at some point it hangs or something and wont wake up. I had tried editing user settings, power options, system settings. Never once did it occur to me to check the screen saver icon. I found a post about it on Ubuntu forums that pointed me to that. There was the option to ask for password, so I disabled the screen saver and password prompt. We will see if that works!

If this doesnt fix it, then I will have to keep looking!

EDIT: When it does this FAH does not continue, I believe the OS is hanging after a certain amount of time in screen saver mode, and doesnt wake back up. I will have to see if the screen saver fix worked.
 
FML!!! What can cause linux to hang? I got up this morning and turned my monitor on and was thinking that all was good after disabling the screen saver lock thingy. I can see that I was at 82% on a WU and everything seemed to be in order. I went to plug the mouse in and no luck it didnt power on. I looked at the time that was on linux and it said like 12:30 PM, so I checked what time it was on my cell phone 2:30PM NOOOO!!! it froze a few hours before. It runs fine while I am up and about checking it every few hours. As soon as I go to sleep a few hours later it freezes! I went to bed around 5am so it was about 7 hours before it hung.

How can you tell on linux if your overclock is the problem? Windows was easy, it would give a lovely little blue screen for you in the morning. I have been adding more voltage, and slightly lowering clocks, but it hasnt changed anything. I know my overclock cant be that unstable because it ran for weeks on windows, and F@H hasnt been acting up.

I am still at a loss.
 
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