How to control the type of WU's a client downloads

[nogginthenog]

I have several machines, all running XP SP3 and the 6.23 systray F@H client. One particular laptop seems to always be likely to not finish the work by the due date. I'd leave it on 24/7 but it has a noisy fan and would keep me awake. It consistently gets Gromacs 4GB projects(according to Fahmon), but I'd prefer it to do more, smaller projects.

How can I control this ? Will deleting FahCore_a4.exe do it, or will that just get downloaded again ?

[bruce]

Welcome to foldingforum.org, nogginthenog.

If your current project requires FahCore_a4, it will just download it again.

It's not uncommon for laptops to have trouble completing WUs from certain projects. The processor in a laptop is designed to save battery power, not to maximize processing. Add to that frequent periods when FAH is not processing the WU and it's easy to miss deadlines.

Remove the -smp flag. You will be assigned projects that are designed for a uniprocessor. You may still be assigned projects that use the a4 core, but they should have longer deadlines.

[GreyWhiskers]

One other quick note. I have two older machines also running Windows XP. They are both unicore machines, although the desktop is a pentium 4/HT, which FAH detects as two cores, the other is a laptop. I have 2 GB of memory on each of them, and both run Win 7.1.38, uniprocessor slots. The desktop also has an ATI HD4670 AGP GPU which folds core 11 WUs.

Now, the memory on the laptop is detected as 1.99 GiB, while on the desktop as 2.00 Gib.

The two uniprocessor slots get two completely different classes of WUs - I think because of the difference between 2.00 and 1.99 GiB (??!!)

The desktop has been getting core A4 work units. Projs 7706, 7904, 7905 were the last three completed, and its currently working on a 10721. These WUs are HUGE for the available processing power - TPFs of between 2 hours and 3 hours 11 minutes for the last three completed WUs. The last one (7706) took 13 days to complete, earning a small Quick Return bonus and 88 ppd.

The laptop is getting nothing but 67, 69, and 136 point core 78 WUs. At about 127 ppd.

I've tried to use the memory option on the laptop to say it has 2.048 MiB, or 2.00 MiB, but it doesn't seem to change. I haven't tried to set memory to 1.99 in the desktop,but that might trigger getting shorter core78s rather than the huge a4s.

The v7 client user guide says:

Here are some other options you can either configure globally or per slot:
memory
The preferred amount of memory to use in MiB. This defaults to 1024MiB.

[nogginthenog]

Thanks. The particular laptop is only used for F@H, but as it has a noisy fan, I hibernate it at night. Its a Compaq Presario V2000 with a mobile Sempron CPU 1.8GHz running at 100% CPU usage for F@H.

I also run a Dell Inspiron 1501 which seems to get the same core, but I had to run 2 instances as it would only ever hit 50% CPU.

I am not explicitly using the -smp flag on these machines, I had to on a couple of Vista 2-core laptops, belonging to others, but they weren't on enough to complete work


The other machines I run F@H on all seem to use FahCore_78.exe

[GreyWhiskers]

How much memory do you have on the Presario? I see the standard was 512 MB, max 2 GB (like both of my Win XP old computers).

If you do have 2GB of memory, I don't know how to flag that to V6 client. The note above was if you are running v7 - setting the memory parameter either for the whole computer or only for the one slot. I know the core 78 WUs seem to be much smaller, and more amenable to your situation where you want to have the computer off at night.

[nogginthenog]

The Presario is 1GB, running XP Home SP3. Its not mine, but I am minding it for a while

[edit] its prob 512MB, System properties says 384MB so I'm guessing some is used for the graphics

[nogginthenog]

RE deleting the file FahCore_a4.exe, I meant is it downloading that type of project because it already has the core? If I deleted the core and the work folder and made it start again would it still get that type of project? I copied the core files from another PC to save downloading. I also have FahCore_78.exe

[GreyWhiskers]

I don't have any examples in my logs of downloading a new core executable, but after you download a WU, the Client checks on the Core executable. If, say, a4 is present, you see the line in the quote where the client calls the particular core executable. If the right core isn't there, the client will download and verify the core first, then call the executable.

There are some instances of a new series of work units needing a new version of a core. I think I remember that when the project 7620, 7621 projects came out a few months ago for the Fermi GPUs, a new version of Core 15 was needed, and was automatically downloaded the first time I received a p7620 that was coded to need the new verison of the core, even though Core 15 was present on the computer, and had been in use for months.

15:31:37:Running core: "C:/Users/Owner/AppData/Roaming/FAHClient/cores/www.stanford.edu/~pande/Win32/AMD64/Core_a4.fah/FahCore_a4.exe" -dir 00 -suffix 01 -lifeline 5840 -version 701 -checkpoint 15 -np 8
15:31:37:Started core on PID 16904
15:31:37:FahCore 0xa4 started

[codysluder]

RE deleting the file FahCore_a4.exe, I meant is it downloading that type of project because it already has the core? If I deleted the core and the work folder and made it start again would it still get that type of project? I copied the core files from another PC to save downloading. I also have FahCore_78.exe

Deleting the core won't change anything. The Assignment Server doesn't know or care what core you have. It assigns you a WU from a specific project, The client runs that WU and if the core is not present, it will download a fresh copy.

[Jonazz]

Download an older version of FAH, I believe it's 5.3. That one doesn't support fahcore_a4 and its bigger WU's.

[nogginthenog]

Thanks JonazzDJ I'll give that a try when the laptop in question finishes its current WU. I have just downloaded the 5.04 Console/Service version