Folding Forum

I have been observing my client count for a while now and it is just whacked for me.

First of all, do SMP clients show up as one or as the number of CPUs that are being used?

I have been using a constant set of 15 clients for at least 90 days, and probably closer to 120 days, yet there is still a 2-4 difference between the within 50 and within 7 day counts and the within 7 day count is > 15. As far as I can tell, all of the clients have proper configurations with unique machine id's and I am not installing and/or deleting any clients routinely. In fact, most of them just keep running, sometimes for more than the 50 day cycle. I have two GPU clients which do get stopped more often in order to clear or avoid EUE due to driver resets, but again, the user id/machine id doesn't change, nor does the installation. In addition, the within 7 day client count very rarely matches the actual count of clients. Until a laptop received a 2137 pt Gromacs 3.3 WU this week, all my clients finish up WUs in under 7 days. Of course, sometimes the servers don't accept the finished WUs for a time, but still, the count should be less than or equal to the client count I have and not greater than!

Is there any way I can get a list of either the IP addresses and the User ID/Machine ID pairs for the returned WUs so I can try to track down where these phantom clients are coming from and perhaps where they are going?

My user name is DrSpalding and I have 15 known clients (one SMP client w/ 4CPUs, see first question above) but the stats page is currently showing 18 clients within 7 days and 21 within 50 days.

The statistics gathered by the servers count Clients, WUs, and Points. (It doesn't matter if it's a SMP client or a classic client.)

If you uninstall and reinstall, the servers generally count that as a new client. Similarly, if you change UserID or MachineID, it counts as a new client. Clients which are no longer producing WUs eventually drop off the list.

Here are the clients with your name/team which have turned in a WU within the last 90 days along with the date of the last WU. The first column contains the sum of the UserID and the MachineID, so the MachineID his "hidden" in the last two hex digits.

Bruce,
Thanks for the reply and the client listing with the user id + machine id. That is very helpful.

As I suspected, there are 5 clients that I currently have no idea nor recollection of setting up. I am certainly not monitoring them. The only suspect one is the Linux one, which has trouble staying running after it completes WUs and I am not surprised it appears twice in the list. The PPC MacOS one was an attempt to get my brother in-law's computer up but it evidently would not stay running. I am surprised it got one WU done (or uploaded anyway).

Is there any way to track down if these clients are actually using my passkey, which would be an indication of my having set them up and forgotten them, or if they are simply using a user name and/or email address that starts with "DrSpalding"? I thought that the passkey use was supposed to separate users with the same username into different buckets, but perhaps I misunderstood its use and utility. An IP address (or even just the subnet) of the clients would be helpful if it is available.

The ones I do not know about are the ones that begin with:

• 11d5*
  12d5*
  1bac*
  22cf*
  23cf*

There does seem to be a pattern to them as well, which is somewhat odd. Does that indicate a new install on the same machine when the high-order byte of the user id is the only change?

It's not that I mind having the extra points but I would rather know where they are coming from.

I don't have access to any passkey information.

This list is specifically for DrSpalding, not DrSpalding*.

I've never seen a 1-bit difference in pairs of UserIDs like that before.

So, is there nothing I can do to track these down via IP address or confirm/deny that they are using my passkey? Will a future client enforce having a passkey eventually so that clients using the same username are truly separated into different buckets?

Thanks

There are plans to provide additional support for passkeys in the future but there are few details so I'm sure how it's going to work. They have said that the stats will not have to be reset, so they won't be able to prohibit two people from using the same username. My guess is that you'll be able to get separate listings, though. In your case, that might mean that the points listed under the DrSpalding might be divided into 3 categories -- ones with your passkey, ones with somebody else's passkey, and ones uploaded without a passkey.