dfGUI v2.0 for Windows available (With Source)

[Digital Parasite]

A new version of dfGUI has been released (v2.0). This new version has some exciting new features that I'm sure many of you have been looking forward to.

You can get it in the regular location:
http://gilchrist.ca/jeff/dfGUI/

v2.0 (Jan. 4, 2003)
- Fixed tab order so it makes more sense

- Changed status bar to be red when client stopped to attract more attention

- Added option to make all text use Windows Text colour setting to handle a larger number of colour schemes

- Made GUI smaller by adding ability to hide configuration options

- Added option to automatically restart DF Client after a specified # of minutes of inactivity (no update to progress.txt file) to recover from crashes

- Added counter to show how many automatic restarts were done

- Added option to stop DF Client and exit GUI after a specified # of hours. When activated, a timer is displayed showing the time remaining.

MD5 Sums:
917a1028d08fc8a6eb98fdd45a84844f dfGUIv20.zip
ef8e40fa0f6abba403af17b3f6640135 dfGUIv20src.zip

If you have any problems please let me know.

Jeff.

Screen Shots:
http://gilchrist.ca/jeff/dfGUI/dfGUIv20noconfig.jpg

http://gilchrist.ca/jeff/dfGUI/dfGUIv20.jpg

[KWSN Grim Reaper]

Well done!

The only thing I'd change is the maximum amount of minutes before restart, to 1440 (24 hours). That would make it a lot easier for borging machines say, during the evening when nobody is using them.


Ni!

[Digital Parasite]

Actually the way that feature works wouldn't allow what you want. It checks to see if a client has crashed by looking at the progress.txt file to see when the last update time was. If you tell the client to shutdown after say 12 hours or whatever, it will gracefully shutdown and the progress.txt file will no longer be there. So if you had Restart set, it would never activate because there is no progress.txt to monitor to see how long the client had been inactive.

I think what you want is a way to start the client at a certain time and then stop it again at another time right? If your clients are installed as services you can do that now in Windows. If you use the "Scheduled Tasks" software in Windows, you can tell it to start your DF service at a certain time and stop it at a certain time. I am using that now to stop certain clients in the morning just before people come in and then start again at night, but not on weekends when there is nobody there, it runs 24/7 then.

Jeff.

[Kileran]

i'm very new to this project. is your program another different client, or is it a frontend for the official ones? does it even use the same servers for getting blocks as the official clients?

[tpdooley]

dfGUI is a windows front end that helps set the right DF client switches, gives an estimate of the daily production- and will now restart the client if it crashes. if you're like me, the daily production estimate is the best part as you test out the various settings - or tune your system.
(I now know how much each of the games I play cut into DF production. ;)

[Brian the Fist]

Actually, I'd be interested in any hard numbers on how much DF 'interferes' with game playing and other CPU or disk intensive activities, etc. (when set to the default priority) so please post any info if you have. Thanks.

[Digital Parasite]

I don't have any hard numbers but so far it hasn't interfered with anything that I have tried at the default priority setting. I have used many different applications and even used CPU intensive games but didn't notice any difference. The only time it does affect a system is if you run low on RAM because the DF Client is using too much RAM and your system starts to swap.

The only complaint that I had was a person using WindowsXP on a P4 2.6GHz machine with 512MB of RAM was using VMWare to boot a session of Linux and it seemed to slow the display down quite noticably. Once he stopped DF, it started working fine again. I'm not sure if it was DF itself or just the fact that it was using a lot of RAM and the system was swapping.

I guess what you really need is someone to perform a bunch of standard benchmarks with and without the DF client running and post the results. This was done with the F@H client I believe and published last year. I would be interested in seeing any results myself.

Jeff.

[Kileran]

aside from the ram issue, DF should never theoretically interfear with anything. if you ever have a problem, set the priority of DF idle, and whatever else you want to run, to one level higher than idle. i've done this with many applications, and never run into a problem.

in fact, due to the way that DF works, i can even run the D.net client behind DF. for some reason, DF can never quite use 100% of my processor. it uses inbetween 85 and 98 percent, probably due to the breaks between protiens (log creation) i can devote that other 2-15% to D.net without any hassles.

even with both running though, as soon as i run a game or anything else, they both go quietly behind, only using what the game does not use

ahhhh, i love idle proccesing.

Sean

[tpdooley]

actually, I was talking about the games having a horrible effect on my folding scores. ;)
The Realm Online uses 100% cpu resources when you run it on an Athlon; so my DF folding plummets when I'm online playing it with the default priority of (+20). If I want DF to give me reasonable values during Realm, I have to switch to a priority of (-1).
It's bad when you look at all your machines and think about how business and pleasure applications are ruining your folding scores.. *snicker*

[Kileran]

LOL, there's not much you can do about this. MANY applications and games use 100% of your processor, regardless of what it's actually doing. i've got this little program, it's basically a computeriezed tomagochi. if i dont turn the process to idle, NOTHING else can run, and it's a little peice of crap program that uses a 20X20 resolution window.

there are other similar programs that are just as bad on processor resources. you should keep an eye out and place these on idle if they are not really that important (assuming you use NT or XP)

Sean

[cygnussphere]

:|ot|:

But Wacky

anyone else got a bench mark post like this?

------------------------------------------------------------
Distributed Folding Windows dfGUI v2.0 Benchmark

Sample Size : 122865 structures over 2665 seconds.
Protein Size: 129AA

Structures Per Second: 46.10
Structures Per Minute: 2766.2
Structures Per Hour : 165971
Structures Per Day : 3983316

OS : Windows XP MHz: 1994
CPU: AMD Athlon(tm) XP 2400+
Client Switches: -df -qt -rt -g 15
------------------------------------------------------------

No I didn't make this up.

[Kileran]

you must have one of those new Pentium 27's, dont they run at about 15000 mhz? :notworthy

looks like the time stamp is fudged. did you change the time on your computer recently? run a time-synch program or anything?

[cygnussphere]

I un checked quite mode and it settled back down to normal?:confused:

[Darkness Productions]

The client got confused. If you hit the upload button, it will erase the progress.txt, and dfGUI will return to reporting correct information after a short while.

[[DPC]Mobster]

Due to the fact I''m running DFolding (with DFGui) behind a firewall I want to create packages with 10k structures instead of 5k. Without the gui and using the -s 10000 parameter it works fine but when I start the gui and set the numstructures to 10000 (editting results in a error message btw) it doesn't seem to work... Am I doing something wrong?

My dfGUI.ini
v2.0
RefreshRate 015
StartOption 1
CustomStart 0 1 1 1 0 0 1 0
GUITotalTime 81343
NumStructures 10000
AutoStart 1
AutoStop 1
AutoBattery 0
ServiceInstalled 0
AutoWriteBench 0
UseWindowsColour 0
RestartClient 0
RestartClientInterval 10
RunClientFor 0
RunClientForInterval 00
ProgressUpdate 015
UploadFrequency 00999
ClientPriority 20
StartTray 1
DFClientPath .\
TitleBar CPU1

[Darkness Productions]

Set the number of the bolded text below to 10000. It's currently set to upload at the server interval, which, IIRC, is 5000.

Originally posted by [DPC]Mobster
Due to the fact I''m running DFolding (with DFGui) behind a firewall I want to create packages with 10k structures instead of 5k. Without the gui and using the -s 10000 parameter it works fine but when I start the gui and set the numstructures to 10000 (editting results in a error message btw) it doesn't seem to work... Am I doing something wrong?

My dfGUI.ini
v2.0
RefreshRate 015
StartOption 1
CustomStart 0 1 1 1 0 0 1 0
GUITotalTime 81343
NumStructures 10000
AutoStart 1
AutoStop 1
AutoBattery 0
ServiceInstalled 0
AutoWriteBench 0
UseWindowsColour 0
RestartClient 0
RestartClientInterval 10
RunClientFor 0
RunClientForInterval 00
ProgressUpdate 015
UploadFrequency 00999
ClientPriority 20
StartTray 1
DFClientPath .\
TitleBar CPU1

[Digital Parasite]

As Darkness Productions said you want:

UploadFrequency 10000

and

NumStructures 10000

All the settings at the right hand side of dfGUI are command line parameters passed to the DF Client when you start it.

The # Structures field on the left hand side of the GUI just tells the GUI how many structures per file the DF Client will be using so it can calculate what % you have finished, etc...

Jeff.

[Stargazer]

Question about the graphics.......

When I hit the new arrow to hide the lower section, I get the following....

http://home.attbi.com/~stargazer-2000/dfgui.jpg

It seems to shrink too much (not much of a problem I know)...just wanted to point it out ;)


With regards to gaming.....when I play UT 2003 on this box, the production drops to about 250,000 from 380-400,000 that I normally see.

[Digital Parasite]

Stargazer, another user also found this "feature". What I didn't realize is that the GUI will automatically resize if you are using a font or font size that is not the standard one so when you go to roll-up the config area, it will either roll up too much or not enough.

It looks like I will have to redo this part and maybe open it as a seperate window to take into account people's different setings.

Jeff.

[m0ti]

NumStructures just sets the scaling for the nifty progress bar across the top.

Use UploadFrequency to set how often to upload.