questions

[budec]

I am currently running the seti project, but thinking about switch over to folding, cause 1) seti has a lot of cheaters and 2) I think medical research is better use of my cpu cycles than a sci-fi fantasy.

Anyways, I have a couple basic questions.

1) What exactly is "folding" in lame-man terms? I read the FAQ, but don't understand exactly what you guys are trying to find.

2) The windows text based client has CRASHED on me... I put one workstation over from seti to this project for testing purposes (kicked out 250,000 structures in 2 days!), but it crashed with some error and lost 10,000 structures! (dual proc system, running 2 clients each in differant directories).

It is working now, but I am wondering when the stable clients are going to be released?

What information do you guys need for debuging purposes? I will send you any info you request if it crashes again, but need to know what you need to know to fix this

3) Anyone know where documenation is for maintaining a large number of clients (ie. 30+ clients over 4 arches) ? I would like to automate everything like seti, so once it is setup, it just crunches out stats.

Regards,
Jack

[Aegion]

Originally posted by budec
I am currently running the seti project, but thinking about switch over to folding, cause 1) seti has a lot of cheaters and 2) I think medical research is better use of my cpu cycles than a sci-fi fantasy.

Anyways, I have a couple basic questions.

1) What exactly is "folding" in lame-man terms? I read the FAQ, but don't understand exactly what you guys are trying to find.

2) The windows text based client has CRASHED on me... I put one workstation over from seti to this project for testing purposes (kicked out 250,000 structures in 2 days!), but it crashed with some error and lost 10,000 structures! (dual proc system, running 2 clients each in differant directories).

It is working now, but I am wondering when the stable clients are going to be released?

What information do you guys need for debuging purposes? I will send you any info you request if it crashes again, but need to know what you need to know to fix this

3) Anyone know where documenation is for maintaining a large number of clients (ie. 30+ clients over 4 arches) ? I would like to automate everything like seti, so once it is setup, it just crunches out stats.

Regards,
Jack

I would suggest that you go to following web address for a layman's summary of the science behind protein folding. http://tsf.dbestern.net/background.php

The site is run by Arstechnica Team Stir Fry, and we have a variety of other general information including some on running large farms.

On your crashes, the windows client has been used by a very large number of people and shown to be stable, even when used in large farm situations. The client is extremely sensative to even slightly bad ram, and its distinctly possible that the ram was good enough to run Seti, but isn't good enough to avoid crashes with this client. If the machine is overclocked, the crashes could be a result of overclocking slightly too agressively.

[budec]

thanks. I am starting to like this project :P

[Tyrfang]

Originally posted by budec
thanks. I am starting to like this project :P

Of all the projects I've been involved in this is the simplest and the most fun for me. Now if I could get the team I am on a little energy I would be very happy.

[vsemaska]

If the client aborts again, provide the following:

1) Which Windows OS you're running (98, NT, etc).
2) Any message that appeared in the DOS window.
3) Look for a file called error.log in the distributed folding folder and provide any messages you find in there.

This will help to determine if bad memory is possibly the cause.

Vic