Posted on 01/03/2006 7:46:46 PM PST by Klutz Dohanger
Welcome to the folding at home thread. The previous thread has gotten too large, so we move on to yet another.
While this folding@home team is not officially sanctioned by Free Republic, it's members, or it's founders, it is comprised primarily of Free Republic members in good standing, who have banded together, to donate their excess CPU cycles to a worthy cause. Via Distributed computing, millions of computers around the world, contribute directly to scientific research, in the quest for a greater understanding of diseases such as Alzheimers, Cancer, and Mad Cow (BSE).
Currently, the team is in 777th place, having moved up from 1200th place, a week earlier, and is now in the top 100 teams, for daily contributions.
This is an entirely voluntary program, and if you want to learn more, links are provided to the program, or it is easily googled by "folding@home".
While there's prolly a million ways to resolve this.
Here's a suggestion.
click. start--Run
in the box type cmd. hit enter.
do a c:\ping 171.65.103.100:8080
if the firewall barks, there's the answer. If it doesn't, it's probabably blocked already.
The stanford server could have been down at the time.
Lots of reasons. shrug.
LOL! We are an odd couple, I suppose. It's also a play on our real names.
Thanks, checking them out now!
What I can say about Antec is that you're going to pay a premium. You can get a powersupply for like $15-20 bucks from some Chinese hop sing vendor. If you a buy an Antec powersupply, not only will it adjust fan speed if it starts heating up, it'll protect your motherboard by shutting itself off it it fails entirely. I've never had one of them do that but it will allow you to monitor it if your motherboard supports it and you'll know way ahead of time that it's time to go. Good equipment, worth the money.
Well, I did the command you suggested:
c:\ping 171.65.103.100:8080
All I got was a blinking cursor.
c:\ping 171.65.103.100
(leave off the ":8080" bit at the end).
ok, I took the :8080 off the end and got 4 replys back to the ping. I also pinged the ip address on the latest 'send results' attempt, and got a reply back also, but so far it hasn't been able to send the 1st work unit completed. I have about 1.5 hours left on the packet it's working on, so I'll see what happens when it finishes. I've tweaked the configuration to use the Internet Explorer Connection Settings.
Somehow or another one of my computers had Windows Update in auto mode. Downloaded and applied the patch and restarted the box.
Bad thing is my folding is comand line and not installed as a service so it didn't restart(grr).
Some of my computers like to have the "use IE Connection Setings" in the connection tab of the config options. Others like to have the firewall [Zone alrum] momentarily reduced from High to Medium. Most just go with the standard config.
Can anyone explain, please?
| RebelTex | Last updated: Sat Jan 7 01:00:03 PST 2006 Sat Jan 7 09:00:03 UTC 2006 |
| Date of last work unit | 2006-01-07 01:15:22 |
| Total score | 867 |
| Overall rank (if points are combined) | 212172 of 522369 |
| Active processors (within 50 days) | 1 |
| Active processors (within 7 days) | 1 |
| Donator | RebelTex |
| Team | Free Republic Folders - A Tribute to Ronald Reagan (36120) |
| Score | 867 (certificate) |
| Donator Rank | 212172 of 522369 |
| WU | 14 (certificate) |
| Date of last work unit |
2006-01-07 01:15:22 |
I believe that the client keeps track of the number of WUs completed by that particular client. The clients can have their counts reset by likely all sorts of things - e.g. reloading the client.
The Stanford stats seem to do a fairly good job of keeping track of what has happened - including partial credit for units that won't run to completion, for legitimate WUs that they have lost track of, etc.
As far as checking progress on a given WU, I find that the best way is to check the log file for that WU, figure out if the log is maintaining a percentage completed or just a frame count. Then figure out the fraction completed along with a estimate of the time required to complete another 0.01 fraction and extrapolate to the finish. Anything else frequently turns out to be questionable.
Note that the simulation seem to have a time step of a nanosecond and seem to run for some quatity of milliseconds. This results in quite a few "frames". The reported frame count seems to be reduced by a number of orders of magnitude. The number of magnitude orders of reduction are not necessarily reported consistantly. [See the first sentence above].
We've moved up to 654, this morning!
Mine is moving up, too.
We are SMOKIN'!
I lost a WU the other evening also. Still not sure exactly what happended, by I think it's because my backup program kicked off on the laptop when I wasn't expecting it. All of a sudden F@H complained about not being able to do I/O to its work file and decided to give up on that WU. 2 days of crunching down the drain.
Folks, for many the HT (HyperThreading) issue is one that they just don't understand. While Stanford allows you to run more than one instance of the Folding@Home client on your computer, you are not really helping them if the number of clients you are running is not equal to the number of REAL CPU's you actually have. While running two instances of the F@H client will return two work units more quickly than doing one at a time, that is not what is important. Returning one work unit 70% faster and starting the next generation of tests on the work unit, is what Stanford wants. Speed in working through each protein generation is very, very important. Sometimes quality is better than quantity. Quality in this case is work being returned more quickly. While it is well known that an HT CPU can run 2 work units because the OS treats it like two CPU's, and you can gain a possible 15-30 percent increase in points for that computer, it also means that each work unit is returned more slowly. In simple terms, if the project has 300 generations needed to test a theory on a protein model, and running two instances at once delays the return of work for 1 day each time, you end up with a 300 day delay. That translates to about a 10 month delay in examining your data for the final result. The bottom line is simply this: Run 1 instance for each CPU you have. An HT CPU is not two CPU's, it is one. Let's work to advance the science and spend a little less time worrying about the number of points you get.
This is a direct quote from Dr. Vijay Pande:
1) If you care primarily about points, running 2 procs on HT is still the best bet. We are grateful for all contributions and if people choose to run 2 procs on HT, our approach is that all contributions are welcome.
2) If you care about the science foremost and are interested in our recommendations, then do not run 2 procs on HT, but please just run one process. That won't be best for points, but is best for the science.
3) If your machine cannot make the deadlines, then one should run the timeless WUs.
So... running two consoles on a HT system might help a little; it's a tradeoff between getting points and returning results more quickly.
Thanks for posting that HT info direct from Mr Fold himself. We'll, I did move up from 90-something to 60-something in 1 day. :) Given your info, I may go back to the GUI after my current 2 consoles complete. Guess I'll have to bounce them using -pause switch. I may play with overclocking a bit...I'll have to read up on good settings for my P4-3.0Ghz CPU. The Phoenix BOIS that came with my Albatron MB has a ton of settings, but I never took the time to mess with it. I got myself a nifty variable speed monster (size of a CD) copper finned heatsync/fan for xmas, so should be able to handle the heat!
Glad to have you participating. Since some WUs can take one or more days to finish it's not uncommon to bounce around in the standings. What's bugging me now is that my P4-3Ghz machine is chunking away on a measly 51 pointer... even after I set it to request big WUs. Oh well, maybe they're out of them for now. At least my study is nice and warm with all these machines running. :-)
Just stopped BOINC and started this one. Pentium D with 2 GB RAM at your service.
(I woke up this morning and my computer was still running, woohoo)
What version are you running?
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