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Topic: Folding@Home (Read 28693 times) previous topic - next topic
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Folding@Home

Reply #50 –
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Here's a very nice and simple service installer, which makes the console client run as a service.
http://www.shroomery.org/files/fahsi/

Have to tried firedaemon?  If yes, which do you prefer?

I haven't tried firedaemon with folding console client. The Folding@Home Service Installer version 0.2 is very very easy to use, and does the same thing.

However, seems that the console as service is bringing down the performance of my hyperthreading system. Although the process priority is set to idle, it takes practically the other virtual processor to itself (50% all the time), and wont give it up even if I do something else. This decreases performance considerably (my video encoding performance dropped 10 frames/sec). If you are running a dual processor or HT system, I recommend using the screen saver client instead.

Hmm, that interesting.  Maybe its not optimized for HT processing???

Folding@Home

Reply #52 –
Here's a little step by step guide to help people set up the text only client version of Folding@Home...

http://www.planetspectre.com/fah_console.htm

again... I think all these links should be included in that validated news thread.

also you should include the link to here just to let anyone who is interested know that there is no major performance drop while using this service.

Folding@Home

Reply #53 –
I have been using my machine's slack time as apart of this project for some months now and have completed 37 work units as an individual.  I have changed my parameters to join the HA team effort.  This is a great opportunity for all contribute towards something for  the common good.  It costs so little and can yield so much.

"Better to light a candle than to curse the darkness."   
Nov schmoz kapop.

Folding@Home

Reply #54 –
This a good project to work on imho.

I have the command line client set up as an NT service with some registry editing and resource kit apps, well, 2 NT services in fact. One for each CPU. I might as well put these dual Athlon MP 1.2's to use, since theres not much else that will take advantage of both of them.

Having them as service means they run totally silently without interrupting me. If anything goes wrong, i can filter it from the NT Event Logger and restart them.

Electron Microscope is very functional, but needs UI polish. It reminds me of Windows 95. I am aware it is skinnable, but its not flexible enough to allow many different skins. Can anyone recommend a different program for monitoring? I spend most of time working with graphic design, so it *has* to be good ^_^

Folding@Home

Reply #55 –
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JohnV.  I think you should add some links to front ends for the folding@home client.

The one I am using, which works very well, EMIII (Electron Microscope III).

Main EMIII page - Help with installing and setting up EMIII

i spoke to soon.... it was working well, now it's not working at all! :mad:

screw this program...  i'm just gonna use the "no hassles" command line version all by itself

anyways... i'm joinin the team.  i guess it will add me once i get a work unit done.

and I'm giving up SETI@Home for this, by the way.  I was up to 300+ WU's too.  But this seems like a more worthy cause.

Folding@Home

Reply #56 –
I found a program similar to Electron Microscope, but it looks nicer, and allows much better handling of monitoring multiple clients. Its called KDfold, and runs under linux too (it uses the Kylix UI library)

It has a tonne of other stuff too, will email, FTP your stats, monitor linux clients, do pretty much everything. It does take a *lot* of setting up and configuring, and learning, but once you have it sorted, its great.

http://www.kdfold.com/



Also see here:

Stats  HTML Output  Setup  Visual Config

Folding@Home

Reply #57 –
Yeah, I had seen that program too.  Was gonna try it out but didn't have the time earlier.  I'll see if I can get it to work for me. I really hate running just the command line version without a front end.

Folding@Home

Reply #58 –
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There're many such projects : Distributed Folding, folding@home, genome@home, Sengent D2OL...

Right.

I've been running the United Devices client for about two years now, on and off. I tried a few of them (such as D2OL, THINK etc), basing my choice on the most appropriate use of my PC's power. The two I mentioned are both targetting a cure for SARS, amongst other projects. D2OL runs under Java on my PC which is pretty much unacceptable, memory wise. But THINK looks nice and optimized, and targets SARS, cancer, AIDS and various bioterrorism diseases.

Right now UD are looking for a cure for cancer and also smallpox. I'm signed on with them. The client is small and very stable, and you can set up teams etc. Oh, and plus, it looks nice. So maybe we can organise some separate HA groups - Folding, UD, Seti (muffled chuckle), Grub, crack DES3 etc. Although protein folding looks interesting, it's a little too off-centre for my taste. I personally believe immediate molecular research into cures for the big stuff - cancer, SARS etc - is more worth my CPU cycles. If HA wanted to set up a THINK team I'd run it more permanently and join in - I kinda run both at the moment.

Folding@Home

Reply #59 –
DarkAngel, how did you get your progress bars to go from left to right. oddly enough, mine are going from bottom to top, which makes no sence.

[edit] n/m... figured it out myself.  duh    Client Settings/Progress Bar Visuals

Folding@Home

Reply #60 –
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Right now UD are looking for a cure for cancer and also smallpox. I'm signed on with them. The client is small and very stable, and you can set up teams etc. Oh, and plus, it looks nice. So maybe we can organise some separate HA groups - Folding, UD, Seti (muffled chuckle), Grub, crack DES3 etc. Although protein folding looks interesting, it's a little too off-centre for my taste. I personally believe immediate molecular research into cures for the big stuff - cancer, SARS etc - is more worth my CPU cycles. If HA wanted to set up a THINK team I'd run it more permanently and join in - I kinda run both at the moment.

You might want to read this:
http://forum.folding-community.org/viewtop...opic.php?t=1423

Imo folding is one of the most realistic projects out there, and also one of the most important..
Of course it's easy to advertize with words like cancer,sars and aids, but the reality may be a bit different.
Juha Laaksonheimo

Folding@Home

Reply #61 –
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Yeah, some companies will make money on my cost (power! I wll cool my cpu instead of starting seti o folding - less power usage and longer CPU live). This companies will not share their e.g. cure for cancer as we share our cpus poer - they will sell that, and i`m pretty sure, that price for this cure will be high enough (too high) to pump some companies with cash.

There's some time passed from your post but I would like to make sure that no one has any misconceptions about the project.

Quoting Folding@Home FAQ:
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Unlike other distributed computing projects, Folding@home is run by an academic institution (specifically the Pande Group, at Stanford University's Chemistry Department), which is a nonprofit institution dedicated to science research and education. We will not sell the data or make any money off of it.

Moreover, we will make the data available for others to use. In particular, the results from Folding@home will be made available on several levels. Most importantly, analysis of the simulations will be submitted to scientific journals for publication, and these journal articles will be posted on the web page after publication. Next, after publication of these scientific articles which analyze the data, the raw data of the folding runs will be available for everyone, including other researchers, here on this web site.


Well, naturally they could be lying but I don't think so. I'm not that pessimistic. Folding@Home isn't run by a corporation (unlike United Devices), doesn't use patented algorithms (unlike distributedfolding) and has actually published some results (unlike everyone else). Not to mention that Folding@Home has a realistic set of goals without Aliens, AIDS and SARS hype.

In short, F@H is just about the finest distributed computing project one can participate in.

Folding@Home

Reply #62 –
okay im there...

24/7 on my pc (barely does anything besides fold... listen to music, and serve ftp/http) and whenever on the other pc (used maybe 5 hrs daily).  They are 1.5 GHz Athlon XP+ and 1GHz thunderbird, respectively.

expect some good numbers from me soon.

Folding@Home

Reply #63 –
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Imo folding is one of the most realistic projects out there, and also one of the most important..
Of course it's easy to advertize with words like cancer,sars and aids, but the reality may be a bit different.

You could read that the opposite way too - it's equally as easy to say that foundation research into why proteins misfold could at some stage benefit mankind by providing the path to cures by prevention, and to discard the idea of getting straight into targetting drug molecules to combat cancer as pointless because cancer isn't really cancer, but multiple cancers all combined "under a single umbrella". I guess it all boils down to personal opinion and preference - stacks of people here know a great deal about music compression technology but I'm sure not as many (including myself) are biological research scientists with more than a passing clue about the truth behind all this distributed research. We're slaves to hype - and let's face it, when there are projects out there such as Distributed.net's OGR, the idea of jumping in the number crunch pool with your mates to see who can grind the most cycles per week has got to be far more fun and rewarding than the actual research itself. Golomb's rulers, for pete's sake? And Grub is addition proof. Why on earth would you use your bandwidth AND CPU cycles - gratis - to crawl the web on behalf of a company which intends to cash in on your results?

Having said all that, I figure I might as well join in the HA F@H project. The graphics look like a Macromedia Flash project done up by Helen Keller, but I've convinced myself that it's probably just as worthwhile as running the UD agent - plus, there's that team appeal..

Folding@Home

Reply #64 –
Joined !!!

(User name: Olaznog)
Just a thought...

Folding@Home

Reply #65 –
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Imo folding is one of the most realistic projects out there, and also one of the most important..
Of course it's easy to advertize with words like cancer,sars and aids, but the reality may be a bit different.

You could read that the opposite way too - it's equally as easy to say that foundation research into why proteins misfold could at some stage benefit mankind by providing the path to cures by prevention, and to discard the idea of getting straight into targetting drug molecules to combat cancer as pointless because cancer isn't really cancer, but multiple cancers all combined "under a single umbrella". I guess it all boils down to personal opinion and preference - stacks of people here know a great deal about music compression technology but I'm sure not as many (including myself) are biological research scientists with more than a passing clue about the truth behind all this distributed research. We're slaves to hype - and let's face it, when there are projects out there such as Distributed.net's OGR, the idea of jumping in the number crunch pool with your mates to see who can grind the most cycles per week has got to be far more fun and rewarding than the actual research itself. Golomb's rulers, for pete's sake? And Grub is addition proof. Why on earth would you use your bandwidth AND CPU cycles - gratis - to crawl the web on behalf of a company which intends to cash in on your results?

Having said all that, I figure I might as well join in the HA F@H project. The graphics look like a Macromedia Flash project done up by Helen Keller, but I've convinced myself that it's probably just as worthwhile as running the UD agent - plus, there's that team appeal..

I finally finished a WU  I'm so used to 3 hour WU's with SETI@Home that this 3+ day WU was really wierd for me  I'll get used to it.  And yes I know the sizes of WU's vary largely with Folding@Home.... thus you are ranked by a score instead of WU's.  Only did 1 WU but was given 70.9 points  Course it took a long time.

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Having said all that, I figure I might as well join in the HA F@H project. The graphics look like a Macromedia Flash project done up by Helen Keller, but I've convinced myself that it's probably just as worthwhile as running the UD agent - plus, there's that team appeal..
lol.  indeed it does.  they really need to redo it if they want to get more people to use it.

me, I just use the command line version, so whatever.
 

Folding@Home

Reply #66 –
Almost done my second 400 frame WU.

Incase anyone cares, which I doubt anyone does, I am running the command line version of Folding@Home with no front end.  I simply have it shrunk down to the system tray so as to be out of the way.  To do this, I use this awsome little program called "Tray It!" which does an outstanding job of controling, based on my settings, the minimize and close actions of any windows I choose.  I have everything set up so I just have to double click a link I made to the Folding@Home EXE and the program is automatically minimized to the system tray as it begins crunchin away at wherever in a WU it left off.

No front end, no hassle

Folding@Home

Reply #67 –
And now we're officially in the top 1000 Foding teams...

Folding@Home

Reply #68 –
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I finally finished a WU   I'm so used to 3 hour WU's with SETI@Home that this 3+ day WU was really wierd for me   I'll get used to it.  And yes I know the sizes of WU's vary largely with Folding@Home.... thus you are ranked by a score instead of WU's.  Only did 1 WU but was given 70.9 points   Course it took a long time.
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lol.  indeed it does.  they really need to redo it if they want to get more people to use it.

Aha. But remember, the important thing is that running this software is supposed to help scientists conduct breakthrough research into cures for Altzheimer's, multi-cancer etc. It's not really about teams, hi-scores or fantastic looking graphical frontends...............

... or is it? 

BTW, not sure why you don't just use the frontend? Mine starts up automatically, minimizes to the systray and goes to work - and it doesn't need Tray It.
It needs 20Mb of RAM though. 

Folding@Home

Reply #69 –
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And now we're officially in the top 1000 Foding teams...

http://folding.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/teampage?q=32639

Team ranking is 789 now.  It's a long way up though, but seems that in the beginning we are climbing pretty fast.

Seems that Peter has some power machines folding all the time since he is leading the team quite nicely.
Juha Laaksonheimo

Folding@Home

Reply #70 –
I'm already involved with a Distributed.net team but I'll direct some idle cycles to this HA F@H project as well. Go Team!    *ahem* 

<edit> *complaint about non-working signature removed* </edit>

Folding@Home

Reply #71 –
OK,

I've been running UD Agent from GRID.ORG over 2 years in somewhat 10-15 computers, and all of them are already in one team.

I wish I could get HA's team, but Imagine I have to change them all. Some computers are 500 miles away from me! 

Since most of them work in old Win98SE, I wonder:

1. Is Folding@Home really stable to run 2-3 days in Win98SE?
2. How much memory it eats?
3. Does it somehow bother you, or it is very quiet?

Also, anyone should add more details about what Folding@Home does,
'cause I won't give my precious cycles to SETI ETs, ANTHRAX, SMALLPOX and other BUSHit worries.

Best Regards

Folding@Home

Reply #72 –
I can't comment on its stability under Win98SE as I'm using WinXP, but the task manager says that the console client and the core combine for a peak memory usage of about 7.5MB, with a normal memory usage under 4MB. I haven't had any problems with it in the few days I've been using it. I use TrayIt to minimize the client to the system tray to keep the taskbar free, so it's quite unobtrusive to me.

Folding@Home

Reply #73 –
Anyone understand how the ranking system works? Ive noticed that i seem to get a higher ration of points to every work unit completed then most people on the time.  Check
here and look up my nick and youll see what i mean. i only have six completed work units but im up in the list with people who have completed 10 while other people who have also completed six are much lower in the rankings. Does this have to do with which client you use or perhaps the speed with which the work unit is completed. I can usually complete a work unit in about 1 day and a half using the standard client that sits in the system tray. Im just curious because id figure id be a ways down in the rankings rather than 13th place.

Folding@Home

Reply #74 –
Work units vary quite a bit in size (and thus the amount of time they take to complete) and so WU's that take longer to crunch are worth more points. As far as I know, it's a random process as to who gets what WU. You may find later that you're getting smaller point-value WU's and someone else gets the bigger one. I just finished my first so I'm waiting to see how many points it was worth.