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cass · Sat Nov 13, 2004 9:57 pm

I am going to try wine then.. what the hey.... I'll try anyting to get 15% performance boost.... except buying windows.

It would be nice if stanford would try to tweak the linux client some more... especially for tinkers.

You probably know, but the 3100 sempron is socket 754, and I have a kt800 and a SIS MB running. I have only had the k8t800 running for 12 hours so I can't conclude much there. the MP table is OK in the k8t, I get complaints from the OS about the MP table in the SIS. Of course the MPtable in the NF3 150 is screwed too so SIS is not alone.

I bough both my socket 754 as newegg refurbs. The 3100 sempron comes with cooing fan in retail pkg for $111. some sites have took the thing to 2.4Ghz with air just fine. Of course that requires a NF3 250.

I have also bought two msi km3m and (2) asus km4? Newegg refurbs all have been fine.

oz_eod · Sat Nov 13, 2004 10:43 pm

Looks like the BIOS is 3.0 on my km3m. I'll need to upgrade that to 3.2 it looks like from the MSI site. I haven't had a chance to get an accurate time with the new system but 9:30 (p112) looks like a close average with the km3m and a 1.33 t-bird. I found the FSB settings in the BIOS of my km2m and I'm 99% sure they weren't there in the km3m BIOS.

cass · Sat Nov 13, 2004 10:57 pm

got last months power bill today for those of you interested. It was $174.00

currently 25 folding nodes runing 24x7.

have 2xwindows home systems,
one htpc with TV for monitor,
office machine 17" monitor dvd, cd, 4hdds etc.

4 disk based FreeBSD systems

19 diskless FreeBSD systems (some fbot some mine)

I have gas dryer and water heater and heat with gas. some AC was on that bill.
My wife cooks here an average of 5 nights/week.

There are just me and my wife here.. house was built in 1947, brick veneer with 6" walls original 6x6 double hung woodframe windows. there are 19 external windows (roughly 30x54) and four external doors.

Just a little more info for anyone curious about cost/power usage of folding.

cass · Sat Nov 13, 2004 11:05 pm

oz_eod I am running the 3.2 bios, and the only option I see is to select 133 or 166 ram speed. the frequency page has no adjustment for fsb or mult. don't look like the km3m is a good OC board.

cass · Mon Nov 15, 2004 7:15 pm

1400 mobile amd xp got here today. Don't know if I will get it up tonight or not, but it won't be long.

anybody here have a frame time under windows for a P1311? My time for freeBSD running the linux client using a 3100 sempron oc'd to 232 clock (2.088Ghz) is 16min 15sec.

I am trying to get wine going, but it takes about a day to get XORG and Gnome built.

heyal256 · Mon Nov 15, 2004 7:49 pm

I can't help you with a frame time for a p1311, but on my athlon 1.2ghz (tbird) running win2k sp4, a p1308 takes about an hour per frame.

this is just a sample of what I've been getting when I'm just doing some light work (surfing mostly).

hope that this is the kind of data you were looking for.

[14:52:39] Core required: FahCore_78.exe
[14:52:39] Core found.
[14:52:39] Working on Unit 09 [November 10 14:52:39]
[14:52:39] + Working ...
[14:52:39] 
[14:52:39] *------------------------------*
[14:52:39] Folding@home Gromacs Core
[14:52:39] Version 1.67 (July 13, 2004)
[14:52:39] 
[14:52:39] Preparing to commence simulation
[14:52:39] - Looking at optimizations...
[14:52:39] - Files status OK
[14:53:25] - Expanded 3006701 -> 23267593 (decompressed 773.8 percent)
[14:53:28] 
[14:53:28] Project: 1308 (Run 1328, Clone 2, Gen 7)
[14:53:28] 
[14:53:29] Assembly optimizations on if available.
[14:53:29] Entering M.D.
[14:53:55] (Starting from checkpoint)
[14:53:55] Protein: p1308_1ryp_sv2_a4_k150_2fs
[14:53:55] 
[14:53:55] Writing local files
[14:53:56] Completed 19141 out of 200000 steps  (10)
[14:54:11] Extra 3DNow boost OK.
[15:22:41] Writing local files
[15:22:41] Completed 20000 out of 200000 steps  (10)
[16:20:26] Writing local files
[16:20:27] Completed 22000 out of 200000 steps  (11)
[17:17:11] Writing local files
[17:17:12] Completed 24000 out of 200000 steps  (12)
[18:18:15] Writing local files
[18:18:16] Completed 26000 out of 200000 steps  (13)
[19:16:45] Writing local files
[19:16:45] Completed 28000 out of 200000 steps  (14)
[20:15:54] Writing local files
[20:15:55] Completed 30000 out of 200000 steps  (15)
[21:17:49] Writing local files
[21:17:50] Completed 32000 out of 200000 steps  (16)
[22:15:35] Writing local files
[22:15:36] Completed 34000 out of 200000 steps  (17)
[23:13:58] Writing local files
[23:13:59] Completed 36000 out of 200000 steps  (18)

cass · Mon Nov 15, 2004 11:53 pm

got wine runing and got FAHConsole running under wine in X. I am really amazed that it works.

Rounded up 256m of memory and a a7vs66c motherboard for the 1.4 mobile.. went and got a 1000 feet of cat5e. maybe I can get the little mobile running tomorrow.

meantime we will see how wine performs with a P112.

cass · Tue Nov 16, 2004 12:20 am

Its official, Wine running under X using the Winxp 5.02 console just flat out smokes the linux client.

Linux Sempron 3100 @2.088Ghz with P112 about 5min 39s /frame

Wine Sempron 3100 @2.088Ghz with P112 about 4min 59s/frame

assme 5:00 and 5:39 300s/339s = .885

13% more output with tinkers.

Whazzamit! now I have to figure out how to run Wine and X diskless.... Oh welll that ought not take over 2 or three weeks.

I really am thinking that the linux client is faster with gromacs, but I have to do some serious log diving to confirm that. Its going to be tough scripting the client to flip-flop depending on which type WU. Hopefully Wine will be close with Gromacs.

Tue Nov 16, 2004 12:33 am

Hmm... looks like I should look into setting up Wine, at least for my disk-based Linux systems. Yet another side project. Must... resist... temptation... to... do... before... finishing... LTSP... folding... article! :lol:

Edit: cass, LTSP actually does have a mode which enables diskless X operation (that is kinda the point of LTSP, actually... I just happen to use it strictly in command line mode on my farm). However, I have no idea if LTSP is compatible with Wine.

cass · Tue Nov 16, 2004 12:46 am

I'll forward you my wine.conf file for reference in the morn.

I used /usr/local/lib/win/windows/winfold
for my folding directory. Wine wouldn't let me do it under /usr/winfold.
Probably some wine.conf you have to do to get it to work outside the Windows path.

winehq.com
onlamp.com (search wine .. this is BSD but handy ref)

Somehow I see getting X running on every diskless machine being a bastard.
I have the directory structure and shares in place, but each machine will have to have its own Xorg.conf. Somehow I will have to run Xorg -configure on each diskless and then store the resulting setup file in {diskless_ip}:/etc/X11/xorg.conf And I see a bad wreck happening when I try to run that without a video card. Maybe there is a setup to redirect X to the serial port.

anyhow, It is worth a shot because 13% is a bunch to leave on the table.

Tue Nov 16, 2004 10:21 am

Two thoughts on this:

Cass - rather than running X on the video card of the diskless machines, maybe use Xvnc, the X server part of VNC (probably want TightVNC rather than the ordinary one). You could then configure it once and run anywhere.

JBI - I've started looking at putting together a very simple diskless folding setup that just runs off the initrd and doesn't use NFS at all. This has the advantage of being a lot easier to setup (just need the DHCP and TFTP server, may even be able to get some of our Windows bretheren folding with diskless farms). The disadvantage is that if you power cycle the diskless client, you lose what work it had done. I'll race you to a write up of our individual efforts, you have a head start as I have various Real Life commitments that will keep me from working on this till the weekend.

One other thing, anyone know how to do log rotation and stop FAHlog.txt filling up?

cass · Tue Nov 16, 2004 10:58 am

Notfred, I don't know much about vnc, and I have not run it to understand further due to other "side projects".

Is it possible to run Xvnc without having X running properly to start with?
If X is not even running how is VNC going to port it back to the server?

I will do some googling and reading.

Tue Nov 16, 2004 11:35 am

When you start up a VNC server it actually runs its own X server on that machine locally that X clients (like WINE running folding) can then render to without touching the actual video client. You then use a VNC client to connect to the remote VNC server and actually see it.

X is actually running, but it is running on the VNC Xserver which doesn't care about video cards and each setup is the same. It's going to be hard to set it up initially, but once you are there it should work on any diskless machine.

Tue Nov 16, 2004 11:43 am

Yeah... think of VNC as a virtual video card for X, the output of which you can redirect anywhere you want over the network.

I have no experience setting it up on diskless systems, but currently use it with most of my disk-based Linux systems. While a little bit more difficult to set up than XDMCP (which you can enable simply by checking "Enable XDMCP" on most modern distros), it has the advantage that the GUI session doesn't get nuked if the network connection is lost, or the system with the display gets rebooted.

cass · Tue Nov 16, 2004 9:28 pm

wine would not build on the diskless server without Xorg. It gave a message about X being a dependency and started building X. Maybe it will run over vnc, but somehow I think you will have to start x, start wine then export using vnc.... I hope not but the fact it won't build without x dims my hope.

just brew it! wrote:
Yeah... think of VNC as a virtual video card for X, the output of which you can redirect anywhere you want over the network.

I have no experience setting it up on diskless systems, but currently use it with most of my disk-based Linux systems. While a little bit more difficult to set up than XDMCP (which you can enable simply by checking "Enable XDMCP" on most modern distros), it has the advantage that the GUI session doesn't get nuked if the network connection is lost, or the system with the display gets rebooted.

OMG.... let me just say either I am a complete idiot or Linux is a different game. You don't "click a check box" and ever I mean ever get anything like that to happen in FreeBSD. Most of the time you have to add in Kernel options for the server and client, ecit rc.conf to enable the new kernel options at boot, then maybe modify loader.conf so as to not hard lock, reboot, then edit 4 different .conf files. run a -configure program. reedit the same 4 .conf files then copy them to their working directories.

It took 2 days just to build Xorg and Gnome... on an sempron 3100 ocd to 2.088. Maybe I will get wine and vnc built tonite. I will work on configuring tomorrow.

cass · Wed Nov 17, 2004 1:29 am

got wine running on the server, put it to folding under wine.

chrooted over to the diskless home, installed wine and tightvnc. copied in config files, started the tightvnc server from a diskless station went to the server and fire up a vncviewer. it logged in ok, put when I try to do a "pwd" command the window disappears. I got it back up and tried wine. nothing. I get a fcntl error from the diskless monitor. after the fist time it crashed, all I had was a white window ( no X framing) in a gnome terminal. When it first started, I had a default X window inside the Gnome terminal.

I have vnc installed on my test server and the diskless server, I will play back and forth between them tomorrow and see what happens when X is actuallly setup and working and the machines both have local storage.

Wed Nov 17, 2004 3:54 am

cass wrote:
OMG.... let me just say either I am a complete idiot or Linux is a different game. You don't "click a check box" and ever I mean ever get anything like that to happen in FreeBSD. Most of the time you have to add in Kernel options for the server and client, ecit rc.conf to enable the new kernel options at boot, then maybe modify loader.conf so as to not hard lock, reboot, then edit 4 different .conf files. run a -configure program. reedit the same 4 .conf files then copy them to their working directories.

Linux has come a long way in this regard. 2-3 years ago, things were much as you describe; but major distros like Redhat/Fedora, SuSE, etc. have added GUI-based setups for most of the commonly used stuff. Samba is another good example... it used to be a bitch to set up under Linux; but nowdays if you just want to do basic stuff (e.g. share your Linux home directory with a Windows box), it is point-and-click.

This comes at a price though... mainstream Linux distros have become horrendously bloated. A fairly minimal GUI install of Fedora Core 2 takes over a GB of disk now. The Linux camp can no longer accuse MS of producing bloated software, as they finally seem to have beaten MS at that game...

cass · Wed Nov 17, 2004 9:55 pm

I can get wine to run from the diskless root, but I cannot get it to run from the diskless machine. when I try to start I get a fcntl error operation not supported.

Xvnc and vnc viewer works.

I don't know... I will keep trying...

I did recieve another processor today, I need to put wine on the back burner and get the other two nodes going.

I tried starting rpcbind, stat, and lockd, but that created more errors and didnot resolve the fcntl

cass · Sun Nov 21, 2004 10:22 pm

Wine only works for the 1st work unit, and then sometning goes awry and the wineserver and wine processes both start sucking 48% processor and cutting the rate of progress in half. Currently I just kill and restart. Wine is giving some errors upon statup.

# Windows Console Edition #####################################################
###############################################################################

                       Folding@Home Client Version 5.02

                          http://folding.stanford.edu

###############################################################################
###############################################################################

Launch directory: C:\windows\winfold
Executable: FAH502.exe
Arguments: -forceasm -advmethods

Warning:
 By using the -forceasm flag, you are overriding
 safeguards in the program. If you did not intend to
 do this, please restart the program without -forceasm.
 If work units are not completing fully (and particularly
 if your machine is overclocked), then please discontinue
 use of the flag.

[21:22:35] - Ask before connecting: No
[21:22:35] - User name: TRFrankenbot (Team 2630)
[21:22:35] - User ID: 9EF6A521A387C17
[21:22:35] - Machine ID: 1
[21:22:35]
[21:22:36] Loaded queue successfully.
[21:22:36] + Benchmarking ...
fixme:console:SetConsoleCtrlHandler (0x421463,1) - no error checking or testing yet
fixme:console:SetConsoleCtrlHandler (0x401d5b,1) - no error checking or testing yet
[21:22:38]
[21:22:38] + Processing work unit
[21:22:38] Core required: FahCore_65.exe
[21:22:38] Core found.
[21:22:38] Working on Unit 04 [November 21 21:22:38]
[21:22:38] + Working ...
fixme:ntdll:NtQueryVolumeInformationFile device info not properly supported on this platform
fixme:console:SetConsoleCtrlHandler (0x4091f0,1) - no error checking or testing yet
fixme:console:SetConsoleCtrlHandler (0x470d78,1) - no error checking or testing yet
[21:22:38] Folding@Home Client Core Version 2.53 (June 29, 2004)
[21:22:38]
[21:22:38] Proj: work/wudata_04
[21:22:38] Done: 22963 -> 142981 (decompressed 622.6 percent)
[21:22:38] nsteps: 5000000 dt: 2.000000 dt_dump: 250.000000 temperature: 355.000000
[21:22:38] xyzfile:
[21:22:38] "   393  p112_p678_L939_K12M_355K
[21:22:38]      1  N      5.413805   74.840808  -83.223557..."
[21:22:38] keyfile:
[21:22:38] "parameters  ./proj1124.prm
[21:22:38] NOVERSION
[21:22:38] ARCHIVE
[21:22:38]
[21:22:38] cutoff        16.0
[21:22:39] taper         12..."
[21:22:39]
[21:22:39] Hashes matched on file work/wudata_04.dyn
[21:22:39] ARC file integrity verified
[21:22:39] Restarting from checkpointed files.
[21:22:39]
[21:22:39] Protein: p112_p678_L939_K12M_355K
[21:22:39] - Run: 75 (Clone 77, Gen 6)
[21:22:39] - Frames Completed: 45, Remaining: 355
[21:22:39] - Dynamic steps required: 4437500
[21:22:39]
[21:22:39] Writing local files:
[21:22:39]
[21:22:39] parameters          work/wudata_04.prm
[21:22:39] - Writing "work/wudata_04.key": (overwrite) successful.
[21:22:39] - Writing "work/wudata_04.xyz": (overwrite) successful.
[21:22:42] - Writing "work/wudata_04.prm": (overwrite) successful.
[21:22:54] - Writing "work/wudata_04.key": (append) successful.
[21:22:54]
[21:22:54] PROJECT="work/wudata_04", NSTEPS=4437500, DT=2.0000, DTDUMP=25.000000, TEMP=355.00
[21:22:54] TINKER: Software Tools for Molecular Design
[21:22:54] Version 3.8  October 2000
[21:22:54] Copyright (c)  Jay William Ponder 1990-2000
[21:22:54] portions Copyright (c)  Michael Shirts 2001
[21:22:54] portions Copyright (c)  Vijay S Pande 2001
[21:28:11] Finished a frame (46)
[

I cannot get the Fahcore_78 version 1.70 to run diskless on some WU's the thing runs for about one minute and the machine hard locks. Tinkers and some gromacs are fine. This affliction does not affect my freeBSD 4.8 diskless machines which are using the same glibc. I have tried numerous kernels and options, but have yet to solve the riddle.

Sun Nov 21, 2004 11:27 pm

cass wrote:
I cannot get the Fahcore_78 version 1.70 to run diskless on some WU's the thing runs for about one minute and the machine hard locks. Tinkers and some gromacs are fine. This affliction does not affect my freeBSD 4.8 diskless machines which are using the same glibc. I have tried numerous kernels and options, but have yet to solve the riddle.

How much RAM have you got, and have you enabled large WUs? Perhaps there is an issue with large WUs under wine.

cass · Mon Nov 22, 2004 10:25 am

I should have been more clear.. the machines locking up are not running wine. they are jsut running the linux client diskless. All the diskless machines have 256mb installed and are showing 140MB or so free when they lock. I have a duron, Tbird, Tbred, and socket 754 sempron.. all behave the same. P1310 is one of the offenders. right now a P724 is running fine under the version 1.70 core. everytime I get a P1310, I jsut delete it. that sucks for points and research, but it is the only way to keep going. The disk based machine running the same OS, and FAH client and core has no trouble.

The two machines I have running wine are disk based. one is the trFbot server, and the other is my future diskless server I am building to eventually replace my freeBSD 4.8 server. The only problem they have is that after you finish the first WU, there are two wine processes that split the processor usage between them when the second WU starts. I have to manually kill the two wine processes and restart. then all is fine till that WU finishes. I can get around that using cron and the -one unit option..

I have yet to get wine running diskless. I think it has to do with file locks and the difference between windows and BSD. Since I am trying to run multiple machines from the same server files, I wonder if there isn't some issue with multiple clients using the same file... anyhow it gives me a fcntl error.

Mon Nov 22, 2004 10:41 am

Hmm... my diskless nodes appear to be running Fahcore_78 v1.68, not v1.70.

I will try renaming the Fahcore_78 file to force them to download the v1.70 one, and see what happens. I can always put the v1.68 back if v1.70 is a problem. (Also if you would like a copy of v1.68 I could send it to you...)

cass · Mon Nov 22, 2004 10:11 pm

JBI, you are right. I looked at my freeBSD4.8 system and everyone of them is runnig the version 1.68. I reexamined my freeBSD 5.3 systems, and they are only running the version 1.70 in the Wine windows client the linux clients are running the version 1.68. I have copied the 1.68 client to all the diskless folders for Fbot. I have my fingers crossed. a few WU are coming off the Fbot soon we shall see.

Mon Nov 22, 2004 11:50 pm

Ahh, OK. So maybe the Windows client is at 1.70, but the Linux one is still at 1.68.

cass · Tue Nov 23, 2004 12:06 am

I don't know I have posted the question to the folding forums. I start all the diskless folders with an empty dir. I just copy in the client, run -configonly and then start letting the client fetch its own stuff. I guess the client could have crossed its wires....

cass · Tue Nov 23, 2004 1:41 am

got the axp1400 mobile running finally. It does not agree with the av133 MB and random assorted memory. I got it going finally, but I expect it to be unstable for a day or three while I tweak.

cass · Wed Nov 24, 2004 12:53 am

here I am ill and put out because I can't figure out why in the world the FAHcore_78 version 1.68 and 1.70 lock up on my freeBSD fbot system when I unmount all the fancy bullcrap I had going on and let the thing boot totally from default loading to memory disk, and the last thing I do is nfs mount the folding dir. Well the thing STILL locks.

Just blowing off some steam, and out of frustration I type "wine" and hit return..... SHAZAAM... I get a version# and help menu back. I just about fell out of my seat. I quickly switched to the windows dir and tried wine on FAH... it ran but gave me some errors because the /usr was mounted mfs read only.

I switched the wine config file to use ttydrv and mounted the folding dir read write over the ro mfs version, and did wine -- FAH502.exe .... Wine is running diskless like a top.

currently cranking out a P724 in 7mins 17sec /frame. For a speed reference, I checked one of my axp2400's running freeBSD4.8 linux client... 11mins 12 sec/frame. That Oc'd sempron running diskless wine is right speedy in comparison.

I had a TRFbot board to die on me.... swelled caps.

I have a replacement I will get going. I have to write some cron scripts to handle the wine folders, because I will have to run them -one unit and restart everytime, but TRFbot and Farm Cass are about to have a 15% increase in production...

Wed Nov 24, 2004 2:40 am

You can probably send it to JBI for repair, he has done several boards for people before.

Wed Nov 24, 2004 3:03 am

Starfalcon wrote:
You can probably send it to JBI for repair, he has done several boards for people before.

Yeah, assuming the mobo is for a dedicated folding system, I'd be willing to try repairing it gratis... or walk you through the procedure, if you'd like to give it a try yourself.

cass · Wed Nov 24, 2004 8:14 am

I guess I can rip some caps off one of the several junk boards I have lying around and transfer them to the sick one. I will probably just replace the board with a new one to get everything back running and to make sure that the processor and power supply are OK.

It really don't make sense to ship a board to JBI and take his time up over a $15.00 MB. I appreciate the offer, but I will attempt it in spare time and probably just ebay/pricewatch another el cheapo.

I am just guessing the caps (or the MB in general) are the problem at this point....

Right now, I need to concentrate on getting Wine running diskless on the other FBot nodes with cron checking every five minutes to see if a restart is needed. I wonder if there is anyway to make the diskless server vnc login to each node and run "ps | grep "FAH" " every five minutes?

I would really like to use the server for checking nodes because I could then tell within five minutes if a node was locked.

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