Beep Beep

[IronBits]

Coming thru, make way. :D

7 Supp 2146697 4.397500
8 Angus 2127254 4.488600
9 IronBits 2022266 4.644500

[IronBits]

/me gives a friendly wave as he slides on past ;)

7 IronBits 2212266 4.644500
8 Angus 2182254 4.488600
9 Supp 2161697 4.397500

[Angus]

Can you say 'flip=flop' ?

7 IronBits 2212266 4.644500
8 Angus 2182254 4.488600
9 Supp 2161697 4.397500


I'm starting to feel like the inside of a sandwich....

[TGC Virus]

I have 2 pc's set up identically except for 1 thing. One is on ethernet and 1 is on token ring. For some reason folding isn't connecting to the outside world. I've put the proxy info in and nothing. All other internet apps work fine and sengent works fine. Any suggestions?

[Angus]

Sounds wacky to me...

Maybe try an email to the distributedfolding folks - they are *very* responsive. Use this address: mailto:trades@mshri.on.ca

[IronBits]

Quick! Someone throw out an anchor to xj10bt ;)
He is cruising up the ranks fast - I think I'm doing about 200,000 per day and he is still pulling away.
I wish I could figure out how to make my stats go into a database so we could tell how much we were doing per day :(
Some day... (I think I can, I think I can, I think I can) :D

[xj10bt]

I won't be cruising this fast for long.

There are problems with running DF as a service, even when the machine is shut down normally the foldtrajlite.lock file isn't always deleted and so the service doesn't restart when the machine does.

I put it on 50 computers on Monday and Wednesday morning 22 of them weren't still running. Plus I've gotten a few complaints of it slowing down machines too much. It looks like I'll be running just on machines I control directly, or not at all.

[IronBits]

That sux :(
We will be #2 by tomorrow morning, and need a few more boxen to take the #1 spot back. 3d Headquarters is coming up fast to.

[FoBoT]

Originally posted by xj10bt
Plus I've gotten a few complaints of it slowing down machines too much.

i have heard this also, more than with other DC software

i don't know how it does the priority thing, but it doesn't seem to get out of the way as well as RC5 for example

[Darkness Productions]

Well, I do know for a fact that it causes problems with Outlook. My mom complains about how long it takes to synchronize her mail, but this is actually a Microsoft problem (really??? I'd have never guessed it :D). They coded outlook to use the lowest possible thread priority, so that it wouldn't get in a users way... Poopy on Microsoft.

[Paratima]

I've borged it onto a couple of machines at work. The faster ones, say 850MHz & up, seem to handle it OK. Anything slower (like the PII-450 on MY desk :mad: ) get nasty. Cursor moves jerky and like that.

These are all Windoze machines. I've tried running with the TEMP directory on RamDisk, plus running the whole thing from RamDisk. Nothing seems to help much.

On the faster machines, it really isn't as noticable. Has the feel of going into a short, tight loop with interrupts disabled. On a faster machine, this wouldn't be as noticable. In fact, on my home machines, of which 850 is the slowest, I don't detect a problem at all.

A fine mystery!

[pointwood]

Hi Free-DC ;)

Yes, there is a problem with running the client as a service, I have just posted in the Ars DC Arcana about it right here:
http://arstechnica.infopop.net/OpenTopic/page?a=tpc&s=50009562&f=122097561&m=2300912693&r=2300912693#2300912693

If you know how to fix the service install in Windows, then please post either in the Ars thread above, on the Yahoo messageboard or mail Howard directly about it.

Regarding the priority of the client:
In the latest client, it is possible to set the priority - from the readme1st.txt file:

Changing the priority of the client
-----------------------------------
You can change the default priority of the client by modifying the foldit
script as described above for quiet mode and increasing the buffer size.
Simply add the switch '-p ##' where ## is the desired priority. This can
range from -20 (extremely aggressive; will pre-empt most other tasks) to
the default of 20 (very passive, only runs when the CPU is idle). On UNIX
the full range from -20 to 20 is available. Windows defines three process
priority levels: Low, Normal and High. Within each of these are several
thread priority levels which allow 'fine tuning'. Thus the same range
[-20, 20] is used On Windows and mapped accordingly. Use 15 for Low, 0
for Normal and -15 for High. Other values will more finely tune the
priority further.

[pointwood]

Regarding the priority setting, it actually defaults to the lowest setting. That is however not as low as the priority setting of the Dnetc or the F@H2 client.

I don't know how exactly the Dnetc clients priority setting works - it defaults to a priority setting of 0 (zero). If I change it to 2 (two), the dnetc client and the DF client splits the CPU time ~50/50.

[pointwood]

Originally posted by Paratima
I've borged it onto a couple of machines at work. The faster ones, say 850MHz & up, seem to handle it OK. Anything slower (like the PII-450 on MY desk :mad: ) get nasty. Cursor moves jerky and like that.

These are all Windoze machines. I've tried running with the TEMP directory on RamDisk, plus running the whole thing from RamDisk. Nothing seems to help much.

On the faster machines, it really isn't as noticable. Has the feel of going into a short, tight loop with interrupts disabled. On a faster machine, this wouldn't be as noticable. In fact, on my home machines, of which 850 is the slowest, I don't detect a problem at all.

A fine mystery! Remember to report this problem to Howard. Either in the forum (or even better use the bug database he has just created on the Yahoo Group!) or mail him directly. He cant fix problems he doesn't know about ;)

[xj10bt]

I asked Howard about the rebooting and priority issues. Here's what he said:


If you reboot the machines often I don't recommend running as a service. The service does NOT run at lowest possible priority either. Just run the client in quiet mode in a DOS box which you can set to load at startup if you wish. The latest client lets you specify the exact priority you want. The disadvantage is it won't end automatically. If you always turn the machines on and off at set times, you could use the Task Manager to start it up, at say 9 am and the shut it down at 5pm by removing the foldtrajlite.lock file. Thats the best I can suggest for you.
I don't consider shutting down the machine at night and restarting it in the morning "often", and if it is running correctly as a service it shouldn't matter how often anyway. Also note that when running as a service the priority is neither low or changable. The service implementation is simply broken.

[megadose_]

Agreed, I had no luck testing it as a service. I won't be running it at this time because of that problem. I have to baby sit genome enough. This would be even worse.:( Not to mention there is no "nonet" function. It says in the readme first something about erroring out after a while if it's not connected. Sounds to me like Howard isn't ready to support the corporate farmers of the world because the service is an absolute must. (atleast for me)