How do you use the client with Linux?

[ColinT]

OK, I can't figure it out. No clue at all. Where are the instructions?

Can I get some help here? mandrake8.0/KDE

[FoBoT]

download the client
my favorite way to do this is with the command line ftp
like this

open a terminal if you are inside KDE/GUI
change to the directory you want to put distribfold into
i like to make a dc directory in home for this

so i do a

cd /home
then make the dc directory

mkdir dc

then change to that with

cd dc

now connect via ftp to download the file

ftp ftp.mshri.on.ca

then log in as

user: ftp
pass: (your email address)

then make sure you are in binary mode

binary

now download the client file

get /pub/distribfold/download/distribfold-current-linux-i386-icc.tar.gz

it will download the file into your dc directory, when its finished, leave the ftp program by typing

by

now you are back to the command line and can unzip the file

type

tar xzvf distribfold-current-linux-i386-icc.tar.gz

and it'll unzip into a new subfolder inside your dc folder , so change to that new directory

cd distribfold

now you need to make some changes to the foldit and create your autoupdate.cfg files
i like to use the text editor vi for this, so i do

vi foldit

now use the arrow keys to get to the end of the last line, where you need to add the -df switches

when you have the cursor lines up, press "i" to enter insert mode
push the right arrow key and then type "-df", now press escape to leave insert mode

next you need to write the file/save it and exit vi
so you do

:wq

this puts you back at the command line, now make your autoupdate.cfg file

type

vi autoupdate.cfg

you'll see a blank file in vi

so enter insert mode (type "i") and then put your "1" in there, hit escape to exit insert mode and then save and exit (:wq)

you can know launch your DF, just type

./foldit

and away you go, it will ask you for your handle and start crunching

i don't know the uber l33t way you get it to run without a console and automagically start every time you re-start your pc and all that stuff

good luck!
linux crunches DF faster than the same hardware running winders

[ColinT]

OK, I figured all that out. What I need to know is which linux client to DL. I tried both with poor results

[ColinT]

I get the Found Using xxx Window and it hangs there. That is with both clients.

When I first tried it, it actually completesd a structure and then hung.

[ColinT]

Never mind. I gave up on Linux. Thanks for the help though!

[Paratima]

Fobot made it a teensy bit harder than necessary, since you said you have the KDE GUI, but then, he's a blood & guts mechanic.

I think you ought to give it another try. It really IS a sweet OS and it sounds like the problem is something simple.

Why don't you see if one of our Linux sharpies can telnet in or dial in and have a heart-to-heart with this errant box?

[FoBoT]

and besides, you get many extra structures running DF in linux

its much faster!!!

[ColinT]

Sorry guys, the desktop lacks functionality. And the client refuses to run

The whole thing reminds me of a nightmarish cross between BeOS and QNX. It is not ready for the general public

Who thought up that thing? They should be ashamed!

[ColinT]

Actually Fobot's help was very clear. I can manage that OK. I could just never get the client to run. ./foldit

[bwkaz]

Originally posted by ColinT
Actually Fobot's help was very clear. I can manage that OK. I could just never get the client to run. ./foldit

Were there error messages? What were they?

[ColinT]

No, nothing.

[Brian the Fist]

OK, you claim it doesn't work so please tell us exactly what happens after you untar/gzip it, go to the dir, and type './foldit'

What do you see on the screen, step by step. Also is there an error.log file generated and if so, what is in it?

[ColinT]

It shows the "Handle Found, Using xxxxxx" screen and then never proceeds past that.

The error log gets one of these every time I try to start it:

========================[ Apr 13, 2002 8:43 PM ]========================

It's OK Howard. I will not try Linux again. Bad experience. My friends have hyped it up for years so I tried it. It's just not for me. It looked very much like BeOS with touches of Unix and the Amiga all wrapped up in one strange ball.

Sorry, I could never deal with Vi Pico is OK, but Vi and Emacs are killers. I don't program any more. Not for me.

[plaidfishes]

I have been trying all day to get the linux client from ftp.mshri.on.ca

WinXP ftp client says can connect unkown error.
Using the DL page at DF.org gets me page not found for all of the clients
Using the Linux box ftp lets me log onto the ftp but gets lots of no such file or directory errors. I finally did a step by step cd into each directory and yep, the download directory is completely empty.

How can newbies and the folks that Fobot just pimped over actually start if the DL of the client is impossible to get from the main web site?

[Brian the Fist]

The links on the Download page are fine. The files are 'hidden' so you cannot see them from normal FTP.
Try refreshing the Download page in your browser Window, that's why it doesn't work for you. The page has changed recently and your browser is using a cached copy.

[FoBoT]

Originally posted by plaidfishes
I finally did a step by step cd into each directory and yep, the download directory is completely empty

you will note i didn't say to do a "ls" or "dir" because as howard says, it won't show any files, but they ARE there

if you ftp into the \pub\distribfold\download directory on the ftp server, you can get the files, you just have to know ahead of time what the name is, i have it mesmorized from getting it for so many boxen

[plaidfishes]

Howard and Fobot,

Thanks for trying but those aint the problem.

Did the refresh before, did it again, still get page can't be displayed when trying to DL the win text client. Looks like the URL has NOT changed. (pasted from the page)

ftp://ftp.mshri.on.ca/pub/distribfol...rent-win9x.zip

Tried to get the Linux client

ftp://ftp.mshri.on.ca/pub/distribfol...386-icc.tar.gz

Resulting in a blank page without error but no download either.

In IE 6, always shows as page can't be displayed

Using WinXP commandline> ftp ftp.mshri.on.ca returns
ftp: connect:Unknown error number

Using Debian Linux on a completely different machine, ftp logs into ftp.mshri.on.ca but every variation of get with /pub/distribfold/download/distribfold-current-linux-i386-icc.tar.gz results in "No such file or directory" just like yesterday which is why I stepped into the directories yesterday.

ISP is telus.net, DSL (4MB symetrical) everything running fine AFAIK.

Confirmed each of these methods works on unrelated downloads (bought a lot of porn yesterday) so it doesn't appear to be anything broken here. Checked the computer operator for sanity but the results while not optimal don't show any degradation from previously established norms. So why is everyone else able to get these files and I can't?

The only obvious point of failure seems to be at the server. However, I would note the screensaver version on a WinXP box updated unattended just fine yesterday. I might be missing something major here but I sure can't seem to figure it out.

Thanks for trying though

[FoBoT]

wow, weird
i just ftp'ed the linux file down with that exact line on a WinXP box behind a linux NAT box connected to a cisco router on a DSL line (don't ask )

that is very strange, this must be one of the 1/1,000,000 weird/bizarre problems that is extremely hard to pindown

later this afternoon i will put the file onto my ftp server and you can try to pull it, see if you get the same failure or what, i have a meeting now

[plaidfishes]

Thanks again Fobot, putting it up on another server would isolate the problem to either my ISP or mshri's server. Please let me know when you make the file visible. I should be here until late.

You've been a lot of help. and I really appreciate it

[bwkaz]

I could grab it from the link you posted earlier too, so I'm not quite sure what's going on.

It's on my personal FTP server now, the address is given below. The filename is the same as your link, i.e. distribfold-current-linux-i386-icc.tar.gz

And it isn't hidden or anything, so if you log in via ftp (logon as anonymous, send your email as a password, pretty standard stuff), you'll be able to "ls" and see it.

ftp://3dguios.resnet.mtu.edu/

Just in case Fobot doesn't get it online today

[FoBoT]

Originally posted by bwkaz

Just in case Fobot doesn't get it online today

i realized i don't have access to an ftp server with anonymouse access

[plaidfishes]

Thanks bwkaz

I was starting to believe there was some sort of vast conspiracy to convince me a linux client existed. Its not paranoia if there really is an evil force inside the machine trying to get you. Yes, I sometimes run Microsoft products.

Anyway, the ISP seems to have been at least part of the problem. Turns out they had installed some new equipment and it was mangling any packets that weren't on port 80. I explained that my office overlooks the entry to their facility and that I am a really good marksman. No jury in the country would convict me. Linux suddenly worked fine. XP is still screwed up of course but I will accept partial victory.

Hey, everyone has been really nice to me helping with this. I really appreciate it.

[brsullivan]

Thanks Fobot, those instructions got me up and running DF in my Mandrake 8.2 install. In retrospect it wasn't too hard, but then again I'm a linux noob.

Quick question though...I tried running DF at the command line and from within the Shell in KDE. Both work great, but I did notice that when working in the Shell it skips numbers when creating a structure, ie it will jump from 1 to 20 to 21 to 50 to 70 to 76 or something like that. When I run it on the command its just a very fast 1,2,3,4,5...76 with no jumps. I am assuming this is happening because there is some overhead with KDE and all my other apps running. But, the real question is does anyone know if the command line is that much faster?

[Paratima]

But, the real question is does anyone know if the command line is that much faster?

Well, br, how many slices can you get out of a pie?

Doing GUI takes some processor time, whether its Windoze or KDE or Gnome, or whatever. Painting gobs of individual pixels is simply more work than blasting out ASCII character-codes, even though modern graphics cards give us a lot of help.

One of my systems runs SuSE Linux 7.3. This particular one has an MSI K7T266 Pro2 mobo, an AMD XP1800+ running at 1.6 GHz, and 256 MB of DDR memory. And yeah, it's quick. If I bring it up under KDE and run DF, I see DF getting 94-97% of the CPU, with nothing else running. If I bring it up in console mode, DF gets 97-99%.

What this says is that the GUI front end, all by itself, is taking maybe 2-5% of the system's horsepower. With more things going on, you're going to have higher overhead in context switching as well, although this is harder to measure. Is that "that much faster"? You decide!

[Jodie]

Colin,

The description of your problem says to me - No Problem.

Prehaps it was running in quiet mode. Your description sounds exactly like what I see running in quiet mode (which is my preferred form)

the error log showed standard startup. Unless there's a problem, you won't see anything else.

Prehaps looking at "progress.txt" would have shown more.

---

Before you start belittling an operating system, it might behoove you to know a bit more about it. Not ready for prime-time? I have more than 1000 nodes running Linux right now on mission critical application, plus a couple thousand more in the field as settop boxes. Orders for them totaling in the hundreds of millions of units. I have an additional 50 node home cluster (moved to a leased space and now running DF) and 27 single and multiproc machines running non-clustered at home. Some of those non-clustered machines have four YEAR uptimes under loadaverages of 2.00+ for single processors.

Also a few dozen more linux machines scattered around the office doing various tasks. The linux boxes around here outnumber the windows machines about 2500:1 - and my help desk spends more hours assisting the windows machines than all the linux boxes combined. They are literally fire-and-forget.

I might agree with you that it's not a great general purpose desktop. But it is a far superior operating system to anything not running on a 'frame as far as high-uptime, high-reliability mission critical failsafe application goes.

Operator Error does NOT equal Bad Operating System. If that were the case, Windows wouldn't exist and all the silly users would be computerless. Just my two cents worth...

--- Jodie Reynolds

[Shaktai]

Well I for one am a total Linux newbie and a diehard Mac fan. Still I managed to get Mandrake 8.2 loaded, and get dist fold running under it. I downloaded using mozilla from the website, saved to my home directory, and then using the Konsole terminal in the GUI got things going. However I wasn't very satisfied with the performance compared to Windows XP. I am running a 1900+ Athlon with SDRAM and was only getting around 2600 structures per hour. However I look forward to trying it again in straight text or shell mode (whatever you call it without the GUI) The instructions given by FoBot make it look pretty straightforward. I also need to see if there is something else out of sorts with my config, because I have gotten 2400-2500 structures per hour running a 1600+ under Win XP, so felt that the 1900+ wasn't running up to par.

[Jodie]

I'm not sure at this point what 'good' versus 'poor' performance is as I'm new to the project and haven't had a chance to benchmark windows against linux against solaris yet.

About all I know is that I'm doing about 3.25Mil/day and beyond that, haven't a clue....

[collin]

I've installed Mandrake 8.2 without GUI, and running DF using -df -qt -p -20. The rate of production with a AthlonXP/DDR setup roughly equals what I previously got under WinME after about 2 days of observation. The load average with just DF running is at .99. The IDLE and JCPU is roughly the same. Is there anything I can do to improve this further?

[brsullivan]

I don't think KDE/GUI vs. Non-KDE/GUI makes a huge difference. I tested it on SUSE 8.0 for a twenty minute timed period. I can't remember the numbers, but running under KDE was actually slightly faster. I'll have to test it out again and get some exact numbers.

Also anyone experiencing freeze ups running DF in Linux and playing 3D games with a geforce. I have a Geforce 2 GTS and if I play a 3D game with DF running the whole system freezes after about 5 minutes. This is a deathly freeze, that can only be remedied by pressing the reset switch. Well i guess the easy solution is to quit DF while playing 3D stuff.