General Phase2 questions

[Calavaro]

How easy is it to roll out over, say 100 boxen?
How big are the WU uploads (in KB per WU)?
Is there a scheduled upload feature? (ie. upload WU at 3am every 3 days)
Anyway of monitoring the boxen remotely (ie over WAN IP)?
Can the client be made completely hidden (ie no tray icon nor any other "visible" clues it is running) without the use of an external addon program?

Thanks.

[tpdooley]

I'll let someone that actually has dealt with a 100 system rollout answer the first question.

The size of the old client's (wu) was about 23k; I'd assume the size of the packet hasn't increased much if any. (haven't looked at the size of the files that disappear for each generation)
I noticed my AXP 1800+ system finishing generation in around 5 days. (add a day or two if the system gets hung up alot; I got stuck on a generation for over a day - and another fellow got stuck for 2 days). Verify the actual (wu) size, and you can estimate how many get sent by estimating how much faster/slower your system is than my AXP 1800+ with 256Megs with the "use extra ram" switch under win98se.

For scheduled uploads - you can run with the "nonet" switch, then stop the client and run with the "upload" switch, then switch back to "nonet". List your machine operating systems; and perhaps folks here have scripts/batchfiles they've written to help out. Take a look at dFQ - which supports collecting from large groups of nonet machines, uploading from a single internet connected system - and see if it has scheduling abilities.

I've seen a few folks using a variety of ways of monitoring their windows systems; are you running WinNT (4.0, 2k, XP), Win9x (95, 98, ME), Mac, Unix/Linux etc? Mention the operating systems run by the slaves, and we'll get a few suggestions for you.

Under windows, you have the option of running the client in Quiet mode. (an active black screen box appears). It can be run hidden. (supposedly the black box disappears). And for WinNT (4.0, 2k, XP) it can be run as a service, and it doesn't show up on the desktop.
The readme text file has a description of the switches mentioned here; and how to run the foldtrajlite.exe /install to set it up as a service.
Granted.. I cheat and use dfGUI 3.01 to setup the command line switches in either service.cfg (for the service), or foldit.bat (for the text client).

(hopefully, this will con a few people into filling in the blanks I left..
Good luck..

[bwkaz]

Originally posted by tpdooley
For scheduled uploads - you can run with the "nonet" switch, then stop the client and run with the "upload" switch, then switch back to "nonet".

You could also set up a script run from your crontab to stop it by removing the lock file, wait for it to exit, start it again with the upload switch, wait for it to exit, and then restart it with the original switches. Assuming you're running some sort of Unix on the boxes, that is.

If not, dfGUI has a nifty little Upload button that does the same thing -- stops the client, runs it with the -ut switch (upload then exit), and restarts it with the normal switches. I'm pretty sure that this can't be automated, though.

Under windows, you have the option of running the client in Quiet mode. (an active black screen box appears). It can be run hidden. (supposedly the black box disappears). And for WinNT (4.0, 2k, XP) it can be run as a service, and it doesn't show up on the desktop.

And for Unix, you can run it from a text console redirected to /dev/null if you want. Or run it on a text console in quiet mode. Or do both. Or run it in quiet mode in the background in a terminal. Or whatever.

The Linux dfGUI port (if I ever get that done...) has an option to run the client on virtual console 0, which is basically /dev/null. The client ends up being completely hidden, you'll never notice it's running unless you look at ps or top.

[DGROMS.com]

Originally posted by Calavaro
How easy is it to roll out over, say 100 boxen?
How big are the WU uploads (in KB per WU)?
Is there a scheduled upload feature? (ie. upload WU at 3am every 3 days)
Anyway of monitoring the boxen remotely (ie over WAN IP)?
Can the client be made completely hidden (ie no tray icon nor any other "visible" clues it is running) without the use of an external addon program?

Thanks.

Calavaro, with you being a [H] member and me being a OCAU member I really shouldn't give you any help but anyway.

To roll out DF to 100 machines is very easy. If you are running Microsoft NT/2000/XP then I have a script that will copy the client install the service and get you running on as many machines as you can find within a few minutes, the only requirement is that you have admin priv on all the machines as the script will be working with the registry on these machines. Drop me a PM if you want the scripts I can bundle then up and your away.

As far a offline usage, you can run the client with the nonet option then run a script to copy a different service.cfg to allow net access and then restart the client, upload the results, stop the client copy back the nonet service.cfg and continue folding

[Kaliban]

go on DGROMS, email him the script (you know, the one with the you know what user key in it )

[RipItUp]

Hey Calavaro,

Hope you like DF if you give it a bash , we think it is an excellent DC project, though some people might think it the devils brew



Pop over to the OCAU DF perpetual thread and say hellow sometime There is even a nekkid picture of me on there

Regards

zakelwe

[Calavaro]

Originally posted by DGROMS.com
Calavaro, with you being a [H] member and me being a OCAU member I really shouldn't give you any help but anyway.

Do you also have rollout scrips for folding (as reputed)? I'll take all of them if you are willing. Thanks. Email me at "calavero at levele dot com"

@Andy
Your old writeup for Folding2 tunneling through a proxy is a hoot to read
I'll stop by in that monster of a thread sometime, I think.

@Kaliban
Yeah, I'm ignorant enough to use it too...

@all
I need a scripted upload, since all boxen per location will be sharing 1 single 56k modem (and will be a mix of Win9x and WinXP). This will probably (if things go as planned) be rolled out in about 15-20 locations with between 10 and 50 boxen at each location.
Is there such a script or do I have to go about the [H]ard way to do it (aka be productive for once)?
If I can get something viable and easy enough to maintain I might roll them Ghz out. Right now it's a tossup between FAD and DF with some folding and UD boxen thrown in for good measure, however, as it is right now it would be too much of a hassle to maintain the boxen.

[DGROMS.com]

Originally posted by Calavaro

Do you also have rollout scrips for folding (as reputed)? I'll take all of them if you are willing. Thanks. Email me at "calavero at levele dot com"

Calavaro, I am out of my home state at the moment on business for the next week, when I get back I will email both the DF and F@H rollout scripts to you

Regards
DG