TPU's WCG/BOINC Team

[silkstone]

Good answer CP

oops, i just noticed what was on screen....thankfully the thumbnail for the router settings are too small to make out. i forgot to check before

 

[twilyth]

oops, i just noticed what was on screen....thankfully the thumbnail for the router settings are too small to make out. i forgot to check before

zoom and enhance!

 

[Chicken Patty]

Good answer CP

Thank you sir, it was a wild guess

 

[silkstone]

I wish i hadn't taken a year off crunching. i used to be in the top 50 or so when TPU started now i'm 129th

I can't wait till i get back to work and i get some of those computers up and running. I'm thinking about trying to get the network admin to put it on the 100 or so computers we have at the school i work. All the computers are clients that connect directly to a single server which load up programs for them all tho i believe the clients do all the CPU work.
Does anyone have any advice on installing WCG/bionic on networks?
Having 50-100 computers running 6hrs a day seems like such a waste of cpu power.

Oh, antoher quick question regarding my laptop. having it run at 100% load 24/7 should be ok, right? or should i expect stuff to start failing after a few months? Would it be safer to turn it down to 80 or 90% load?

 

[Chicken Patty]

I wish i hadn't taken a year off crunching. i used to be in the top 50 or so when TPU started now i'm 129th

I can't wait till i get back to work and i get some of those computers up and running. I'm thinking about trying to get the network admin to put it on the 100 or so computers we have at the school i work. All the computers are clients that connect directly to a single server which load up programs for them all tho i believe the clients do all the CPU work.
Does anyone have any advice on installing WCG/bionic on networks?
Having 50-100 computers running 6hrs a day seems like such a waste of cpu power.

Oh, antoher quick question regarding my laptop. having it run at 100% load 24/7 should be ok, right? or should i expect stuff to start failing after a few months? Would it be safer to turn it down to 80 or 90% load?

[ION] installed BOINC on some at his school, maybe he can guide you on this?

As far as your laptop, I have never crunched on one so I'll leave that up to those who do/have and can give you some better advise.

 

[twilyth]

Here are the current scores for my host machines - the q9450 and second 1090T are in use during the day and I have WCG set to suspend - which is why the daily numbers are so low.

Since I need DDR3 memory and have to shut down one of the machines in place of the i2600k (will have parts by Wed.), I guess the clear choice is the first 1090T. Both #'s 1 and 2 crunch 24/7, so the numbers should be a fair comparison. Also, the i7 is at 3.6ghz and the X6 is at 3.9 I think. Since the 2600k should be even better than the 950, it's a no-brainer.

edit - plus, the X6 has a Hydro 70 cooler - another reason to use that case, memory and PSU.

 

[[Ion]]

[ION] installed BOINC on some at his school, maybe he can guide you on this?

As far as your laptop, I have never crunched on one so I'll leave that up to those who do/have and can give you some better advise.

Honestly, it was a bit of a pain. I dedicated 2 lunch periods to installing and configuring BOINC independently on 25 different machines. Worth it though.

On another note, as I'm guessing you have noticed, the farm is back up from winter break.

I also hope to be much more active on the forums now

And I've had a slight change to my setup. The T400 has been retired and permanently replaced with the following:

A Lenovo Thinkpad W500 with a 2.8ghz C2D and 6GB of RAM.

I've also added another system for now, a 1.7ghz Pentium M that is currently residing at school. I've been granted permission by the IT guy to leave it there as a private FTP server and take advantage of their 1mb/sec upload speed

How have you guys been for the past ~3 weeks? Had a good time? Added any new machines?

 

[silkstone]

i Believe that everything at the school i work is installed over network. The only way to actually install anything on the machines is to log in as administrator rather than over the network. But, all students using the computers log in over the network, so installing it on individual machines would be worthless. I'm sure i'll figure something out tho.

 

[[Ion]]

The way we do things is every computer is a member of the domain. So you log in to the individual computers, and all programs are installed and run from the local computer. And all actions take place on the local CPU. It's just the files that are kept on the central server

 

[f22a4bandit]

Glad to see everything is back up and running, Ion. It's a very generous PPD boost for the team

My parent's computer is SPANKING mine, almost doubling the amount of work in about half the available crunch time. My main rig averages about 5k PPD running 24/7, while the parental computer runs for 14 hours and averages 6k PPD.

I now know that my rig is only second best in the house It's fine though, my parents deserve an awesome machine. I have to give them credit, they're awesome for allowing me to use their computer for some part time crunching.

Keep up the good work, everyone!

Edit:

I wish i hadn't taken a year off crunching. i used to be in the top 50 or so when TPU started now i'm 129th

I can't wait till i get back to work and i get some of those computers up and running. I'm thinking about trying to get the network admin to put it on the 100 or so computers we have at the school i work. All the computers are clients that connect directly to a single server which load up programs for them all tho i believe the clients do all the CPU work.
Does anyone have any advice on installing WCG/bionic on networks?
Having 50-100 computers running 6hrs a day seems like such a waste of cpu power.

Oh, antoher quick question regarding my laptop. having it run at 100% load 24/7 should be ok, right? or should i expect stuff to start failing after a few months? Would it be safer to turn it down to 80 or 90% load?

As far as your laptop goes, you'll be fine running it full load 24/7. The only reason I retired mine is because of a horrible power connection. I'm not willing to spend money to fix something that'd cost more than it's really worth, especially when it only averaged 600 points a day and 2 - 3 results a day as well.

 

[[Ion]]

Gotta love quad cores eh?

I'm rather glad to have the farm going again as well. Even the new laptop wasn't enough to keep me in my place, I kept getting overtaken :/

Now I'm closing in on being top-2000 in all three categories (runtime, results, and points)

 

[silkstone]

The way we do things is every computer is a member of the domain. So you log in to the individual computers, and all programs are installed and run from the local computer. And all actions take place on the local CPU. It's just the files that are kept on the central server

That sounds kinda like our setup but i haven't used them much too know. Each user can log onto the domain which will then load all the programs and whatnot. There is no way to modify installed programs while logged on to the domain and it must be done at the server as far as i can tell. however all programs are run using the client's cpu. I have no idea whether the loaded programs (office, AV, etc) are stored server side or locally.

 

[[Ion]]

I'd ask the IT guy if there is one. Normally, it would be a bit hard to get this setup I think, but I'm friends with the IT guy where I go. It's very clear that he has more work than he can reasonably do, so I help with some. And in exchange I get special privileges

 

[silkstone]

There is but he's a moron, he initially tried to make a 100 computer network all wifi. Using a single g-type router.

On the plus side, i got our two dual-core 2.5ghz running wcg that are in the teachers room. they should be up 5-6hrs a day and be able to contribute some.

 

[[Ion]]

The guy we have here is very competent, but he's also enrolled in college, so doesn't have a lot of time.

Glad to hear that you have those going

EDIT: Just saw this:

 

[KieX]

Well.. here's 2/3 parts of my X6 replacement since i7 2600K aren't in stock in local shops atm

My numbers will take a dip since I'm replacing a i7 920 too. Once I get it running I'll post what electricity it consumes and what kind of PPD it produces. I'm hoping this will cut my electricity costs.

 

[[Ion]]

Pardon my ignorance, what has been happening recently with your setup(s)?

 

[(FIH) The Don]

Pardon my ignorance, what has been happening recently with your setup(s)?

In a galaxy far far away ......

 

[[Ion]]

In a galaxy far far away ......

Dude, I've been gone for a while....

 

[KieX]

Pardon my ignorance, what has been happening recently with your setup(s)?

I started a farm-on-shelves setup inspired by BuckNasty. 3 i7's, 1 AMD X6, 1 i5 760 and the relentless E6300. The problem as always is that i7's put out a lot of heat into tiny room and electricity costs too much. So now that SandyBridge promises to cut the power whilst keeping the PPD starting to sell my farm to upgrade to new platform. Just so that electicity is more affordable and heat doesn't kill me in summer. Thankfully i7 hold their value so upgrading is not too expensive, and I'd get that money back in running costs anyway.

 

[[Ion]]

I started a farm-on-shelves setup inspired by BuckNasty. 3 i7's, 1 AMD X6, 1 i5 760 and the relentless E6300. The problem as always is that i7's put out a lot of heat into tiny room and electricity costs too much. So now that SandyBridge promises to cut the power whilst keeping the PPD starting to sell my farm to upgrade to new platform. Just so that electicity is more affordable and heat doesn't kill me in summer. Thankfully i7 hold their value so upgrading is not too expensive, and I'd get that money back in running costs anyway.

Ahh, thanks for catching me up.

I think you certainly would. The power usage of the new SB chips is remarkable, even at absurd clock speeds

I think I could probably start crunching again on my desktop if I sold it for a SB setup. Parents don't like the high power consumption, that should solve it. Or maybe I could see if a friend wants to "borrow" it

 

[theonedub]

Has anyone else seen any strange system utilization when running Beta units for WCG?

I happened to be on my desktop when it picked up a high priority Beta WU and it was really making my computer act strange. CPU usage started to drop to 82% and peak at 94%, RAM usage started spiking back and forth from 3gb-3.2gb used, and the instance of FF I was running turned into an intermittent slide show.

After watching it for about 15mins I decided to abort the WU and opt out of Beta testing. Once I dropped the WU, the computer was back to normal- 100% usage, 3gb flat RAM used, and FF operating normal. I know Beta units can be temper-mental, but I didn't think it would be that bad.

 

[[Ion]]

I've never had any issues out of 57 beta WUs processed on a variety of different systems/platforms. That is very strange I must say.

When I only had 2GB of RAM in my laptop, I would have issues where it would approach 2GB of usage, CPU usage would plummet, the computer would go unresponsive, memory usage would drop ~600MB, and then things would go back to normal

 

[theonedub]

I don't think my particular case is memory related as I have 7GB of RAM in this computer. I didnt want 4GB of RAM to limit this system since it runs so much DC.

Its just odd, but I have only had 5 beta WUs and this is the only one I have seen running. Maybe someone else has seen something similar.

 

[[Ion]]

Yeah, I doubt it's memory-related. Since I upgraded to 6GB, everything has been perfect