World Community Grid Install Thoughts

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marty9876

[H]ard|DCer of the Month - February 2006
Joined
Jun 11, 2003
Messages
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Ok, I installed the first client and I swear the thing >>>IS<<< UD. Even says powered by UD and all that. Same install near as I can tell.

Problem is this is a dual core notebook and WCG was only using one core. So I tried the BONIC client..... BONIC installed with 2x SETI instances be default (for me anyways). So I removed the SETI projects and installed a WCG instance- cool. However the thing will only let me install 1x WCG instance.

Anyone know how to use this BONIC shit? I've used it a few times, all in all it's sucks Moose ass but... I'm guessing just attach to another project but...

http://boinc.berkeley.edu/projects.php

"Partial" list of projects below from that link.

Climateprediction.net http://climateprediction.net

Astronomy/Physics/Chemistry
SETI@home http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/
Leiden Classical http://boinc.gorlaeus.net/
uFluids@home http://www.ufluids.net/
Spinhenge@home http://spin.fh-bielefeld.de/
Einstein@home http://einstein.phys.uwm.edu/
Quantum Monte Carlo at Home http://qah.uni-muenster.de/
LHC@home http://lhcathome.cern.ch/

Mathematics and strategy games
SZTAKI Desktop Grid http://szdg.lpds.sztaki.hu/szdg/
PrimeGrid http://www.primegrid.com
Riesel Sieve http://boinc.rieselsieve.com/
Chess960@home http://www.chess960athome.org/alpha/
Rectilinear Crossing Number http://dist.ist.tugraz.at/cape5/
ABC@home http://abcathome.com/

Biology and Medicine
Predictor@home http://predictor.scripps.edu
World Community Grid http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/
SIMAP http://boinc.bio.wzw.tum.de/boincsimap/
Rosetta@home http://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/
Tanpaku http://issofty17.is.noda.tus.ac.jp/
Proteins@Home http://biology.polytechnique.fr/proteinsathome
Malariacontrol.net http://www.malariacontrol.net
 
When I installed the Boinc client for the R@H install, it was very straight forward. I too have yet to get it to see both cores, but I have bigger problems. I can't get it to D/L the WUs, since they are .exe form.
 
Updated WTF!!!!!!!!!!!!1

2x wgc processes running, nice CPU plot....


wcgbonicwd5.jpg
 
Ohh hey, what do you know I've got 2x WGC things there- the fcg1 tabs!!!!

:)
 
I've been running WCG since it's release. The windows BOINC client that I'm running on my X2 doesn't have that pretty gui but it does get my cpu to 100&#37; on both cores. Instead of running one process on both cores it runs two separate processes. (They both appear in Task Manager along with the BOINC client)

I'm at work right now and WCG is blocked on our network, but I'll investigate it more when I head home if you're still having problems.

A Couple other things worth mentioning about WCG are:
You can select which project(s) you want to work on in your profile online. If work units are available for those projects that's what you'll receive. (Useful if you have religious beliefs against the FightingAIDS@Home project...:( )

The WCG client has the ability to limit the cpu utilization to a certain percentage. If you're worried about keeping your cpu at 100% all the time (LoL) then you can cap it. (I'm not sure about the BOINC client, never bothered to check)
 
Home from work now. I was running BOINC client 5.4.x and just upgraded to the newest version 5.8.15. They've added the "Simple View" which is the screen shots you posted earlier with the pretty gui.

You can change the cpu-utilization by either editing the config file or using the customize option in the simple view.
 
How would an older Laptop (P4 2.6ghz Celeron), 512mb RAM run this new project? I retired it from FAH because it was getting a little slow for my taste vs power consumed...I'd consider firing it back up again if I could do useful work with it.
 
I'll have to turn my notebook back on but I recall seeing cpu usage setting of 60%. Made be wonder what the heck that was about as from FAH land I'm usta everything 100% default. That up and down stuff must be how it limits the CPU usage instead of a flat 60%.
 
Yeah, my notebook was running at 60% too. Never bothered to check it until today as I don't use it as a primary cruncher.

I was wrong before, it's not a config file for the standard windows client. Instead there's a stand-alone program you run that allows you to change the cap.
Link to the page about cpu-utilization
http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/help/viewTopic.do?shortName=cpuuse

Link to the stand-alone program: (The link is also found on the cpu-utilization page)
http://worldcommunitygrid.org/files/WCGridMaxCPU.exe


Bill: Your laptop meets all the speed requirements. It's a little low on the memory side to run the Cancer project but it's more than adequate for the other four projects. I don't have any benchmarks though as to how many results per day or points per day you could expect though. sorry.
 
WCG seems easy. Especially using BOINC. Trying it on one box for now.
 
Out of curiosity, does WCG or R@H support a console service like F@H, or are they GUI only like UD was?
 
When installing, service install was an option. I haven't tried it yet.

Technically, it's BOINC that has the option of being loaded as a service...
 
It's a known error for the moment that BOINC will sometimes throw a fit under Vista installing as a service. Your mileage may vary... But shouldn't have a problem under XP. Fair warning: 'show graphics' will not work when it's installed as a service. I just have it installed as 'shared' and it starts in the tray upon entering windows under any account.

Not much has been said about the projects beyond WCG & R@H, but I've run almost every BOINC project at least some. Einstein & CPDN are nice stable projects along with R@H and WCG, but many of the others are of beta quality and occasionally throw problems. Not BOINC's fault itself, but the projects themselves.

The BOINC client itself defaulted to me to use up to 16 cores if available (using 5.9.4), but many times when you first attach it'll only request one WU for whatever reason. If you check the 'Messages' tab in BOINC you'll see it got one WU and decided to back off for two or three minutes. I guess it gives you time to set how many days of WU you want to stockpile before the client calls in again and pulls down your alotment of WU. That might explain some of the behavior you saw. You can set all that sort of stuff under 'Advanced' -> 'Preferences'. Also, a clean install of it shouldn't of attached to any project by default; if it connected to SETI by default, perhaps you DL'd it from Seti@Home's site, but a clean copy from BOINC's main site wouldn't exhibit that behavior.

In general though, 'advanced view' will set you free.

This stuff about WCG only using 60% CPU or something is WCG-specific. No idea what's going on there -- that's not a BOINC thing.

I was also just looking at their website, noticed a discrepancy between their reported stats and those of BOINC stats aggregator sites, and see another symptom of not being fully integrated in to BOINC. From their FAQ:

Points on agent and web are different
World Community Grid is running two types of agents. The UD (Windows) agent and the BOINC (Windows/Linux/Mac) agents. The points displayed in each agent only include the points earned by that type of agent. The website will display the total points earned by both types of agents.
Click to expand...

Why does my BOINC agent show different points than the web site?
The BOINC agent and the UD agent compute points differently. In particular, BOINC points are much lower than UD points. As a result, World Community Grid multiplies the points granted to a user for a result by 7 when the statistics are imported into World Community Grid's web site. The BOINC client is not aware of this multiplication, and it thus reports the points that were granted by BOINC.
Click to expand...

I don't know if UD credits get divided by 7 and become comparable to other BOINC projects or what the deal is, but there you have it. Makes me wonder on average if there's any advantage to running BOINC for the multiplier or the native UD client...
 
The points the clients display is funky but the points shown on the website appear to be accurate. My laptop runs the Windows WCG client and reports me as having 282k points, the BOINC client on my desktop says I've done 73k points. My profile online lists me at 790k.
 
Another thought is team name for WCG. There are currently 3 HardOCP teams that are actively running on WCG:

HardOCP with 64 active members (69 active/retired) and overall point rank (362).
http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/team/viewTeamInfo.do?teamId=BP5XNJBR9N1
[H]ard|OCP with 1 active member (1 active/retired) and overall point rank (12,886).
http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/team/viewTeamInfo.do?teamId=D85RSMBR9N1
[H}ardOCP with 5 active members (5 active/retire) and overall point rank (11,646).
http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/team/viewTeamInfo.do?teamId=PL5XNJBR9N1

No reason to have three teams running, even if things haven't been hammered out.
 
Hito Bahadur said:
Another thought is team name for WCG. There are currently 3 HardOCP teams that are actively running on WCG:

HardOCP with 64 active members (69 active/retired) and overall point rank (362).
http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/team/viewTeamInfo.do?teamId=BP5XNJBR9N1
[H]ard|OCP with 1 active member (1 active/retired) and overall point rank (12,886).
http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/team/viewTeamInfo.do?teamId=D85RSMBR9N1
[H}ardOCP with 5 active members (5 active/retire) and overall point rank (11,646).
http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/team/viewTeamInfo.do?teamId=PL5XNJBR9N1

No reason to have three teams running, even if things haven't been hammered out.
Click to expand...

I don't know if we can ask them to consolidate the temps, especially if we are to make a official one ?
 
I broke it.

Don't seem to be getting any work, not sure what is going on with it.
 
Fixed it...

At least the dual core grabbed one unit.


4/30/2007 12:18:00 PM|World Community Grid|Message from server: Not sending work - last request too recent: 81 sec
4/30/2007 12:18:00 PM|World Community Grid|Deferring communication for 5 min 3 sec
4/30/2007 12:18:00 PM|World Community Grid|Reason: requested by project

Too recent, bite me!!!! See it it grabs work in 5 minutes I guess. I think hitting the updaet button helped grabbed the 1x instance.
 
Boinc/WCG is kind of wacky with multi cores.

It'll grab all your work (say 5 different projects) then start working on however many cores you have (usually 2, if it's more than 1). But it'll only utilize a percentage that's set on the website (75% total capacity by default) SPREAD across however many cores you have. WCG, if run separately, will only run at 60% unless you utilize a third party plug-in (that you can readily find through searching their forum) which allows you to turn it up to 100%.

Boinc/WCG is different, you have to set the percentage at the WCG site (and then maybe affinity on task manager as well, but without doing it on the site first affinity won't fix it). Only when you've raised your Boinc/WCG to 100% will it actually, smoothly use both cores. Otherwise you get that pulsing schiz.

I'll try to remember to post the thing they sent me for this same issue.
 
It grabbed work for the second core after I left it alone.

I checked the box to override preferred settings, set to 100%, and tacked it to 100%. It's working on -

1x Human Proteome Folding
1x FightAIDS@Home

The AIDS is odd I thought cuz the only project I have selected if WCG. I guess as someone else said you get a mix of stuff under the WCG umbrella.
 
marty9876 said:
It grabbed work for the second core after I left it alone.

I checked the box to override preferred settings, set to 100%, and tacked it to 100%. It's working on -

1x Human Proteome Folding
1x FightAIDS@Home

The AIDS is odd I thought cuz the only project I have selected if WCG. I guess as someone else said you get a mix of stuff under the WCG umbrella.
Click to expand...

On the WCG site, under your Boinc settings, there's 5 projects selected by default. You can pick the ones you want, make them exclusive or preferred, pick your favorite....
 
Anyone else thing this whole thing is a little too complicated.... :D

Bonic this, R@someplace, set your preferred twinkie type someplace else.... :p
 
Guess FAH ain't the only resource pig... This AIDS thing is taking 300+ meg of ram.
 
I'm justing thinking how the hell is someone going to write a how to on all this.

Download this, or maybe that.
Install it
Unpick default projects
Pick a project
Log in and de select sub projects

That type of stuff.
 
marty9876 said:
I'm justing thinking how the hell is someone going to write a how to on all this.

Download this, or maybe that.
Install it
Unpick default projects
Pick a project
Log in and de select sub projects

That type of stuff.
Click to expand...
When I installed the BOINC client from the R@H page, the only project I got was R@H, which is the one I wanted. Where do you get the client from?
 
WCG has a collection of "projects" just like UD had. You can select which ones you want to participate in.

A bunch of different DC programs use BOINC, including R@home and WCG. BOINC is what installs on you computer. You can select which projects you want to have using the BOINC client. I have R@home and WCG on one system but am only processing R@home WUs at the moment. On another system I am just running WCG.

It's actually pretty straightforward although the paragraph above isn't.
 
AtomicMoose said:
The R@H install is more involved. That is for sure.
Click to expand...

I didn't find it all that bad. I grabbed the BOINC client from the R@H site and installed it. It then asked me to attach to a project and I cut and paste the URL that R@H specified. When I didn't do that I had no projects attached.

Seems simple to me so far.
 
charpman said:
I didn't find it all that bad. I grabbed the BOINC client from the R@H site and installed it. It then asked me to attach to a project and I cut and paste the URL that R@H specified. When I didn't do that I had no projects attached.

Seems simple to me so far.
Click to expand...
Well, it is involved for me as I have to set proxy settings, and sneakernet an .exe file to each machine. :)
 
marty9876 said:
So did you add WGC or R@H or am I missing something. WCG is a collection of various DC projects one of which is R@H?
Click to expand...

Hito Bahadur said:
WCG has a collection of "projects" just like UD had. You can select which ones you want to participate in.

A bunch of different DC programs use BOINC, including R@home and WCG. BOINC is what installs on you computer. You can select which projects you want to have using the BOINC client. I have R@home and WCG on one system but am only processing R@home WUs at the moment. On another system I am just running WCG.

It's actually pretty straightforward although the paragraph above isn't.
Click to expand...
What he said.

I only attached to R@H for now.
 
Broke it again, was sitting doing nothing for awhile. I clicked the update button and grabbed 1x instance of the AIDS stuff.
 
marty9876 said:
Broke it again, was sitting doing nothing for awhile. I clicked the update button and grabbed 1x instance of the AIDS stuff.
Click to expand...
This must be a trait of BIONC...Although, mine grabs new work, it just doesn't always return the finished work. Wonder why?
 
I grabbed a second instance after leaving it alone. The log is messy and I don't feel like poking in it much but I say a delay in uploads too.
 
Makes the fan spin up on my notebook more than FAH SMP.
 
AtomicMoose said:
That a good or bad thing? ;)
Click to expand...

Well it makes more noise.... I think overall the FAH SMP client runs things much cooler, there are reports of ~ 10C drops in temps etc. Maybe it's not hitting all the SSE instruction sets or some shit like that.
 
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