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Why does SMP stop folding???

gwarren007

gwarren007

Fully [H]
Joined
Apr 15, 2006
Messages
25,129
Why does SMP stop folding??? I have a deticated folder for the smp program and I find it idle nearly every other day. I can't seem to get consistant points- today at 6am it was at frame 20, taking 21.5 min/frame. I came home at 11pm expecting it to be well on its way, and its at frame 27 with no activity. :(
Nothing had changed, so whats up?

 
gwarren007 said:
Why does SMP stop folding??? I have a deticated folder for the smp program and I find it idle nearly every other day. I can't seem to get consistant points- today at 6am it was at frame 20, taking 21.5 min/frame. I came home at 11pm expecting it to be well on its way, and its at frame 27 with no activity. :(
Nothing had changed, so whats up?

Click to expand...

Stop (ctl+c) the client and restart it, with luck it should come up with work done up to date and be fine after that.

Let me know if that doesn't make it;)

Oh, the SMP client is very sensitive to newtork connections, make sure you have your network setting set to not power off when not in use.



 
gwarren007 said:
Why does SMP stop folding??? I have a deticated folder for the smp program and I find it idle nearly every other day. I can't seem to get consistant points- today at 6am it was at frame 20, taking 21.5 min/frame. I came home at 11pm expecting it to be well on its way, and its at frame 27 with no activity. :(
Nothing had changed, so whats up?

Click to expand...

the only this box this happens to me on is a dual- quad core Dell server. It's my best machine running and it halts sometimes. Billr is correct though, I have heard this before about the network connectivity.
 
Sounds like your loosing your network connection every so often.
That will stop the client without shutting it down.

If for any reason I need to switch my switch off, then I must remember to cycle through all my boxen to restart the SMP client once the switch is back on.

Luck ........ :D
 
I have 2 SMP client boxes, all they do is fold. They are only connected to the internet when they send a WU. I have to manually restart the client when I disconnect the internet. For some reason the SMP will stop dead cold when you fuss with its connection.
 
magoo said:
I have 2 SMP client boxes, all they do is fold. They are only connected to the internet when they send a WU. I have to manually restart the client when I disconnect the internet. For some reason the SMP will stop dead cold when you fuss with its connection.
Click to expand...

You did double check that the network doesn’t power down, right?

Another thing to check is that you did a fresh reload of the clients after July 1 because those expired. As a rule an expired client will simply refuse to even start, but not always.

My last thought is temperature. It is possible for your CPU to reach a temp where it stops folding but won’t kill the machine.

Oh, my other last thought is double check the amount of RAM you have allocated to the client. I use a value of 512 Megs on all my machines and have seen a slight performance increase. If you don’t limit the maximum allocated RAM sometimes the client will act very strangely.

I’ve run into a lot of little quirks in the SMP client, if I think of anymore I’ll let you know.

Luck


 
Thanks for the suggestions.
I reloaded the new clients on 30 June.
My machines are on my home network that never sleeps. But I manually hard-disconnect the folding boxes after they load new work......dont want any zombie boxen!!!!
My folders are pretty new and run cool.

I think the disconnect quirk is just that. Ive tried all sorts of stuff and they still shut down if I'm not there to restart them after I disconnect the cable. Now if I run the client in the background and use the network to access the web for whatever, a disconnect from the web will not interfere with the client. Its just when the entire machine disconnects from the hard wire that causes the shutdown, in my case,anyway.
 
BillR said:
Oh, my other last thought is double check the amount of RAM you have allocated to the client. I use a value of 512 Megs on all my machines and have seen a slight performance increase. If you don’t limit the maximum allocated RAM sometimes the client will act very strangely.
Click to expand...
So, what you're saying is that it's better to limit the maximum amount of RAM than give the client the whole amount of available system memory? A limit of 512MB actually improves performance?
 
APOLLO said:
So, what you're saying is that it's better to limit the maximum amount of RAM than give the client the whole amount of available system memory? A limit of 512MB actually improves performance?
Click to expand...

Not necessarily 512 Mb but the point here is to try using a hand coded limit instead of letting the client detect the max amount of RAM itself. Some clients are buggy in this area, especially the Linux client so it's a good habit to always set to 512 Mb - 1024 Mb manually when configuring the client.

As for the OP issue, the SMP client is sensitive to networking issues so each time a IP got renewed, a connection is dropped or the TCP/IP stack is messed, it will stall the client forever. A restart will fix this usually and it seems Vista are more immune to this sort of issues (I unplugged the network in Vista while the SMP client is running and it works fine so this may be due to the rewritten TCP/IP stack).

 
Xilikon said:
Not necessarily 512 Mb but the point here is to try using a hand coded limit instead of letting the client detect the max amount of RAM itself. Some clients are buggy in this area, especially the Linux client so it's a good habit to always set to 512 Mb - 1024 Mb manually when configuring the client.

As for the OP issue, the SMP client is sensitive to networking issues so each time a IP got renewed, a connection is dropped or the TCP/IP stack is messed, it will stall the client forever. A restart will fix this usually and it seems Vista are more immune to this sort of issues (I unplugged the network in Vista while the SMP client is running and it works fine so this may be due to the rewritten TCP/IP stack).

Click to expand...

For the record, ONLY the linux clients, and only on some distributions, will have a memory detection error.

And not all computers on DHCP will have problems with the SMP client's networking changes sensitivity. None of my computers at work have problems with the SMP client, and they are all on DHCP with 24 hour renewals. It may only be a problem if the lease renewal causes an IP address change. No one has done enough testing to figure out the real problem there.
 
I've had nothing but problems with the Windows SMP client so I reverted my Windows quad-core server back to 4 individual standard clients. The Linux QC server is running along nicely, though it doesn't actually seem to want to use 100% of each core. I'm really not getting a load higher than 3.5 (and the 4 standard clients give me a load of exactly 4.00 when the server is otherwise idle).
 
The past four days I have experienced at least 3 stalls and associated anomalies using the SMP client that with the exception of one incident, cannot be explained by network issues. I'm at a point now where I have to seriously reconsider whether to run four standard clients or continue using the SMP client on my quad-core Opteron server.

One of the reasons I had interest in running two SMP clients was to have another client running in case of such events. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get that working. If anyone is having numerous issues, it doesn't seem worth continuing to run the SMP client on a science or points basis when a large portion of your production time is wasted this way.
 
APOLLO said:
The past four days I have experienced at least 3 stalls and associated anomalies using the SMP client that with the exception of one incident, cannot be explained by network issues...
Click to expand...

Network issues are not the only cause of SMP client errors. Overclocking the CPU and/or memory too much is actually a more common cause of problems. The SMP client stresses a system more than a CPU client. As such, a system may run 4 CPU clients without issue, but fire up one SMP client, and watch the problems stack up. OC's need to be backed off about 10% (more or less) to increase system stability, and the SMP client runs much better.

If you are not OCing or having network problems, then it comes down to hardware problems. Most people report few issues once the client is up and running. On two machines at work, the only time the SMP client has stopped was to update it when the Beta client expired.
 
think I found my reason.. I noticed while at 266fsb and 100% usage that my Vcore was at 1.280. I took the limit from Auto to 1.35Vcore, and the processor V came up to 1.31. this is still lower that the 1.325 that intel suggests for a high limit, and it has rewarded me with 2 non-idle WU. :D
So I bumped it to 320fsb. :D
 
gwarren007 said:
think I found my reason.. I noticed while at 266fsb and 100% usage that my Vcore was at 1.280. I took the limit from Auto to 1.35Vcore, and the processor V came up to 1.31. this is still lower that the 1.325 that intel suggests for a high limit, and it has rewarded me with 2 non-idle WU. :D
So I bumped it to 320fsb. :D
Click to expand...

Yes, never let it in auto since this can screw a good overclocking for sure. Glad you figured it out and I can say that you will be able to do 9x333 :)

 
I don't want to take it much further, it is near the end of its life cycle with me. I will be selling it soon for a less stressfull life (stock fsb). Go Q6600 :D
 
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