Points per day dropping

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Wrish
Posts: 74
Joined: Thu Jan 28, 2010 5:09 am

Re: Points per day dropping

Post by Wrish »

I was mistaken about seeing a GPU client, but other than that I don't see a trend with your PPD over the last weeks... at least nothing like a 1700-1000 drop. Historical stats page for reference:
http://folding.extremeoverclocking.com/ ... =&u=201042

Note that current month and current week fill up as the month/week progress. You've been averaging about 1300 PPD since the ramp-up last summer.

Now if only you ran 64-bit Linux on the duals... that could be 3-4000 PPD!
djohnston
Posts: 45
Joined: Sat Feb 06, 2010 8:33 pm

Re: Points per day dropping

Post by djohnston »

Wrish wrote: Now if only you ran 64-bit Linux on the duals... that could be 3-4000 PPD!
Are you sure about that? I will swap distros in a heartbeat to achieve that. Last time I tried fah on a 64-bit Debian, SMP wasn't working. I didn't really make any point comparisons at the time, I just put a limit of 1 on the unit I had downloaded, and finished that one unit.
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Wrish
Posts: 74
Joined: Thu Jan 28, 2010 5:09 am

Re: Points per day dropping

Post by Wrish »

Yes, even A1's would make more points than you currently do with uniprocessor clients.

The work units to target for 3-4000 PPD for your two dual cores are based on the A2 core. After you're all done installing the Linux client (with the instructions on this site) you'd run it with "-smp" only, disabling advanced methods.

As for distros, the main thing is don't install FAH on an -ext4 file system. I use Ubuntu 8.04 and FAH seems to set up easily.
pluto7777
Posts: 19
Joined: Thu Sep 04, 2008 11:20 am

Re: Points per day dropping

Post by pluto7777 »

Don't know if you're folding GRO-A3 work units. They don't give anywhere near as many points as GROCVS lol.
codysluder
Posts: 1024
Joined: Sun Dec 02, 2007 12:43 pm

Re: Points per day dropping

Post by codysluder »

pluto7777 wrote:Don't know if you're folding GRO-A3 work units. They don't give anywhere near as many points as GROCVS lol.
They will, once your passkey is qualified and you start getting bonuses on GRO-A3.
djohnston
Posts: 45
Joined: Sat Feb 06, 2010 8:33 pm

Re: Points per day dropping

Post by djohnston »

Wrish wrote:Yes, even A1's would make more points than you currently do with uniprocessor clients.

The work units to target for 3-4000 PPD for your two dual cores are based on the A2 core. After you're all done installing the Linux client (with the instructions on this site) you'd run it with "-smp" only, disabling advanced methods.

As for distros, the main thing is don't install FAH on an -ext4 file system. I use Ubuntu 8.04 and FAH seems to set up easily.
Ubuntu 8.04 for the LTS?

Anyhoo, I'll swap one machine when I get home. Just to be sure, the 64-bit will be SMP, right? That means I run only one client per dual core? I guess you can tell I haven't yet read the instructions.
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Wrish
Posts: 74
Joined: Thu Jan 28, 2010 5:09 am

Re: Points per day dropping

Post by Wrish »

I didn't pick Ubuntu 8.04 for the support; I just knew from others' experiences that it was stable out-of-the-box for folding, unlike Ubuntu 9.1 and some other distros.

For the folding client, be sure it's version 6.29 Linux - there is only a 64-bit version of that. And correct, you don't run multiple instances of SMP. The client will scale up to however many processors it finds.
djohnston
Posts: 45
Joined: Sat Feb 06, 2010 8:33 pm

Re: Points per day dropping

Post by djohnston »

Wrish,

Thanks a lot for the help. You've been very informative.

I've been using Reiser3 for years, since before the kernel supported booting from that filesystem. Then when SGI donated the XFS filesystem, I tried it. I've found it to be very solid. So, I use a mix of ext3, Reiser3, and XFS.

I'm pretty sure I'll use Mandy on the machine for the females in the family. On mine, I am going to finally install the 64Studio distro, after having tried it out in VirtualBox. It's Debian, but it's already set up with apps for home recording, 3D animation, etc. Dual use and all that.

Well, I guess by next week I'll be watching to see what an impact the changes will make.
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djohnston
Posts: 45
Joined: Sat Feb 06, 2010 8:33 pm

Re: Points per day dropping

Post by djohnston »

I have a theory on why my points per day fluctuate so much. The theory only partially explains the variances I see from day to day. Checking one of the clients today, I saw it was hung, waiting on the server to respond:

[18:44:09] Done: 750271 -> 651467 (compressed to 86.8 percent)
[18:44:09] ... Done.
[18:44:24] - Shutting down core
[18:44:24]
[18:44:24] Folding@home Core Shutdown: FINISHED_UNIT
[18:44:58] CoreStatus = 64 (100)
[18:44:58] Sending work to server
[18:44:58] - Read packet limit of 540015616... Set to 524286976.


[18:44:58] + Attempting to send results
[18:45:03] + Results successfully sent
[18:45:03] Thank you for your contribution to Folding@Home.
[18:45:03] + Number of Units Completed: 225

[18:45:08] - Preparing to get new work unit...
[18:45:08] + Attempting to get work packet
[18:45:08] - Connecting to assignment server
[18:45:09] - Successful: assigned to (171.64.65.62).
[18:45:09] + News From Folding@Home: Welcome to Folding@Home
[18:45:09] Loaded queue successfully.
^C
Folding@Home Client Shutdown.
[malone@localhost fold5]$ ./fah6

Note: Please read the license agreement (fah6 -license). Further
use of this software requires that you have read and accepted this agreement.



--- Opening Log file [August 18 18:43:18]


# Linux Console Edition #######################################################
###############################################################################

Folding@Home Client Version 6.02

http://folding.stanford.edu

###############################################################################
###############################################################################

Launch directory: /home/malone/fold5
Executable: ./fah6


[18:43:18] - Ask before connecting: No
[18:43:18] - User name: djohnston (Team 50619)
[18:43:18] - User ID: 3438B9D436B2F21D
[18:43:18] - Machine ID: 5
[18:43:18]
[18:43:18] Loaded queue successfully.
[18:43:18] - Preparing to get new work unit...
[18:43:18] + Attempting to get work packet
[18:43:18] - Connecting to assignment server
[18:43:18] - Successful: assigned to (171.64.65.62).
[18:43:18] + News From Folding@Home: Welcome to Folding@Home
[18:43:19] Loaded queue successfully.
[18:43:22] + Closed connections
[18:43:22]
[18:43:22] + Processing work unit
[18:43:22] Core required: FahCore_78.exe
[18:43:22] Core found.
[18:43:22] Working on Unit 04 [August 18 18:43:22]
[18:43:22] + Working ...
[18:43:22]
[18:43:22] *------------------------------*
[18:43:22] Folding@Home Gromacs Core
[18:43:22] Version 1.90 (March 8, 2006)
[18:43:22]
[18:43:22] Preparing to commence simulation
[18:43:22] - Looking at optimizations...
[18:43:22] - Created dyn
[18:43:22] - Files status OK
[18:43:23] - Expanded 717662 -> 3538705 (decompressed 493.0 percent)
[18:43:23] - Starting from initial work packet
[18:43:23]
[18:43:23] Project: 6504 (Run 11, Clone 204, Gen 4)
[18:43:23]
[18:43:23] Assembly optimizations on if available.
[18:43:23] Entering M.D.

Gromacs is Copyright (c) 1991-2003, University of Groningen, The Netherlands
This inclusion of Gromacs code in the Folding@Home Core is under
a special license (see http://folding.stanford.edu/gromacs.html)
specially granted to Stanford by the copyright holders. If you
are interested in using Gromacs, visit http://www.gromacs.org where
you can download a free version of Gromacs under
the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL) as published
by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License,
or (at your option) any later version.

[18:43:29] Protein: TR568_12 in water
[18:43:29]
[18:43:29] Writing local files
[18:43:29] Extra SSE boost OK.
[18:43:29] Writing local files
[18:43:29] Completed 0 out of 250000 steps (0%)

I can't scroll far enough back in the terminal history to see the date stamp on the completed unit. From what I can see, (the time stamps), it appears the client was waiting 24 hours for a response from the server. This is not the first time I've seen this happen.
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