1) Message boards : Number crunching : Best app for a Xeon X5650 cpu in Linux (Message 1914604) Posted 22 Jan 2018 by Jim-R. Post: Ok, that seems to clear that up. I just came in for dinner and have to go back out on another call in a few minutes but that app will be gone tonight when I change over to the SSE4.2 optimized app, so hopefully, after tonight there will be no more weird entries! hehe.

2) Message boards : Number crunching : Best app for a Xeon X5650 cpu in Linux (Message 1914571) Posted 22 Jan 2018 by Jim-R. Post: I happened to recall installing that app from the repository so I went and looked it up. It's name in the repository is 'boinc-app-seti-graphics' and version 8.00~svn3701-1. And thanks for the tip on the process app. I've used 'task manager' to try to track it down but the only thing I've been able to find out with that is that each wu I'm crunching takes a total of 4% of the cpu. I could not get it to glitch while monitoring with task manager in the foreground, but as soon as I pulled Firefox back up to type here it glitched again! This might seem to lead to Firefox itself, but I run the exact same version of Firefox with the exact same addons on every computer I have and this does not happen on the others. And it seems to happen any time I have a program open and actively waiting for keyboard input. (Just used Thunderbird to reply to an email and it froze.) I'm going to let things run as they are until tonight then shut it down and change over to the optimized app. then we can see if the stderr.txt returns to normal (it should) and I'll check while it's down to see if my freezes are due to BOINC itself. (As I mentioned, I have paused all SETI crunching and it didn't go away so it's not SETI itself.)

3) Message boards : Number crunching : Best app for a Xeon X5650 cpu in Linux (Message 1914403) Posted 21 Jan 2018 by Jim-R. Post: This does seem to be a puzzle, why it's there in the first place. If it were all projects I would say it's definitely something about the OS, but since it's main SETI only, and not Beta it's beginning to look like it might be a combination of my specialized OS and the SETI app. I'm going to switch to the SSE4.2 app tomorrow (Monday) so I will check to see if it's still there after the switch. And also, I've not figured out about the mouse and keyboard freezing either, but it doesn't appear to be related to the crunching. After I tried switching to the lower number of cpus at 100% and my temps climbed I suspended all crunching for a while to let them cool back down, but the freezing was still there. It's going to be hard to pinpoint. As I said, this is a new system and I have been installing some specialized programs, which many of them run as daemons (a remote server admin program, etc.) at the same time that I started crunching, so it looks like I've got to start disabling stuff one at a time until I find the culprit!

4) Message boards : Number crunching : Best app for a Xeon X5650 cpu in Linux (Message 1914341) Posted 21 Jan 2018 by Jim-R. Post: I've spent the last few minutes looking through every file I could see in the SETI directory and have not found anything so far that would put that info into every file! I'll go through a few of them that could possibly do it a little closer when I have more time, but you're right, that is a puzzle. I ran a few wu's when I started with this comp at Beta. I'll go check those to see if it's in those also. EDIT" None of the Beta files I checked have this in them. So it must be something strictly involving regular SETI. I don't know what, though.

5) Message boards : Number crunching : Best app for a Xeon X5650 cpu in Linux (Message 1914334) Posted 21 Jan 2018 by Jim-R. Post: Well, this is not the standard Ubuntu. It's Ubuntu Studio, so that may make the difference. That's why it auto installs the low latency kernel. And than You Keith for your work with the pre-enhanced Seti.. I notice you'd been at it for five years before I joined!

6) Message boards : Number crunching : Best app for a Xeon X5650 cpu in Linux (Message 1914327) Posted 21 Jan 2018 by Jim-R. Post: This was configured exactly as it was installed by the Ubuntu package manager. I haven't even looked at the configs, as it was set to run at boot time and all I did was connect to the projects and it started crunching away. I started noticing high core temps so I changed the settings for the cpu. I first set them to run at 50% because I was going to be gone for the weekend then I tried setting it to use only 75% of the cpus at 100% of the time but my core temps went up high again. I cut it down to 75/75 which should keep them at a moderate temperature. I haven't checked any of the wu's outside of checking to see if any errored out, so I didnt know about the stderr.txt files but I'll check into it, and thanks for the link on app configs. I used to know all this stuff years ago but I've forgotten over 90% of it! (I actually wrote and maintained the 'New Enhanced FAQ' when we made the transition to the 'enhanced' apps but again, that was a LONG time ago! hehe.)

7) Message boards : Number crunching : Best app for a Xeon X5650 cpu in Linux (Message 1914128) Posted 20 Jan 2018 by Jim-R. Post: Actually I was NOT aware of the problem with low latency until you mentioned it, and actually this machine is overkill for the purposes I am using it for (first, a general purpose computer, second, working with the multi-track recording projects, and third, as a low volume web server.) but when I was looking for a replacement for my aging desktop computer I found this at a super good deal, and that is the reason I decided to get back into helping you guys here at SETI. I know I'll never have six digit RAC's like 'a lot of you', and I'm proud to have cracked into the 4k level but I'm now retired and don't have (and really never had) the resources to pursue it like others that I know here! (not gonna mention names, hehe), but I've studied the "Drake" equasions and believe that there is a very good probability of other life somewhere out there and just feel good about doing my part (however infinitesimal) of finding it! Now I'm running into another problem. I might need to post this in another thread, but my settings are to use 80% of the cpu's (24) 75% of the time. I'm noticing a two or three second lag between my keyboard or mouse input about every ten seconds. (every ten seconds or so my keyboard and mouse 'freezes' for a couple seconds.) When I was running full blast I didn't notice this. Could this be because of my settings? If so how should I set them to eliminate it? I know when pausing and restarting the computations, unloading and loading them back into memory can cause something like this, but afaik I've set it to keep the wu's in memory (I've got 32g so that's not a problem). Oh, and I'm gonna keep running the stock app until around the first of the week. I've noticed my RAC really beginning to level out now, so that will be about five days 'flat out', a weekend at 50% then a week at the current settings. By Monday it should give me a pretty good baseline to judge the new SSE4.2 app by.

8) Questions and Answers : Unix/Linux : Setting the Seti@Home screensaver on Ubuntu (Message 1914017) Posted 19 Jan 2018 by Jim-R. Post: As an addition to my earlier post, you might look under /usr/share/xscreensaver for example files or search in the /etc directory for 'xscreensaver.rc' which is the system-wide settings file. It could be located either /etc, /etc/xscreensaver, or /etc/preferences. (If under /etc/preferences it will already be named '.xscreensaver'.) If you find it simply open it in a text editor,, add the line you mentioned in the right place and save it in your home directory as '.xscreensaver'. The version in the /etc directory may be preferable as any modifications for your particular setup should already be included in that version, while the ones in /usr/share will be generic files. This is to make the SETI screensaver only show for your user. If you want to make it visible for any user on your computer, simply add the line to the 'xscreensaver.rc' file in the /etc directory overwriting the original. Don't change it's name in this situation. (You must be logged in as 'root' to make changes to this file.)

9) Questions and Answers : Unix/Linux : Setting the Seti@Home screensaver on Ubuntu (Message 1913998) Posted 19 Jan 2018 by Jim-R. Post: I see this is a fairly old post but it went unanswered. You may have already found this out but.... 'xscreensaver' is the actual program file which is in /usr/bin/ but the '.xscreensaver' (note the leading period) is it's preferencces file located in your home directory. The leading period indicates that it is a hidden file so you have to tell your file manager to view hidden files before you will be able to see it. If it does not exist in your home directory just create it by using a text editor and putting the line you indicate inside it and saving it in the top level (root) of your home directory, and be sure not to forget the leading period in the filename. I do not have xscreensaver installed at the present time as this is a new installation, but pull up a terminal and type 'man .xscreensaver' to get the layout of the file to find the proper way to indicate the 'programs' section. It may be as simple as putting the word 'programs' on a line with your line underneath, but they might be other ways of indicating the sections. It's been a long time since I've used xscreensaver so I'm not sure of the layout of it's preferences file. Hope this helps.

10) Message boards : Number crunching : Best app for a Xeon X5650 cpu in Linux (Message 1913945) Posted 19 Jan 2018 by Jim-R. Post: Thanks for the info and I'll try the sse4.2 version and see how that works out. As for the low latency kernel, I have to run it because I'm also using this machine to work with multi-track audio recording, and need the low latency. Actually I think I was wrong about the os. I am using the newest Ubuntu Studio release which I think is built on Ubuntu 17.04. I feed the audio straight from an 18 channel mixer into Ardour for recording and playback. It wouldn't matter about the latency for straight recording, or straight playback, but when it's used in a studio setting any lag of over a few milliseconds can become a problem. Later, after I get this thing set up and operating like I need it to I may look into installing a normal kernel for use when I don't need the low latency, but for now I'm stuck with it. (An older version of Ubuntu Studio that I have used came with both kernels and gave you a choice which to use at boot time. This one didn't.)

11) Message boards : Number crunching : Best app for a Xeon X5650 cpu in Linux (Message 1913860) Posted 19 Jan 2018 by Jim-R. Post: I see several apps in the download area but I would like to know which one is fastest. This cpu has sse, sse2. sse4.1, sse4.2 and ssse3. I know sse2 is faster than sse so it's down to sse4.2 or ssse3, unless extra tweaks are done to make one of the others faster. I'm running the latest Ubuntu 17.10 so I don't think os support will be a problem. Any suggestions? (I used to know but that was a LONG time ago!)

12) Message boards : Number crunching : User achievements thread......... (Message 1913849) Posted 19 Jan 2018 by Jim-R. Post: I never thought I would ever have a RAC into four digits, or ever see that 'top 25%' flag beside my name. I've been crunching, off and on, since 2006, but I've always had just a standard home computer to do the crunching. Then I got tired of waiting thirty seconds or more to pull up a web page (while sitting at a former crunching machine that I converted to a web server.) I started shopping around for a faster computer and found this refurbished workhorse of a server for about what I was going to pay for a standard desktop model. My 'webserver' needs are minimal, (just a web presence for a small local audio service). Now, within less than two weeks of having it online I've already hit over 4000 RAC and made it into the top 25%! I might have made it faster but I planned on visiting some friends over the weekend and backed it down to crunching only 50% to keep the cores cool while I was away. This thing had core temps ranging from 155 to occasionally as high as 180 when running all out so when I got back I started tweaking on it and at the last check they ranged from 131 to 154. (Dual six core Xeon processors capable of running 24 wu at a time when running full out.) I'm running it at 'use 80% of the cpu's, and run 75% of the time to hold the temps down and it's still crunching 19 wu at a time. I doubt that my RAC will hit the 5000 mark because it's leveling out at just above 4000, but then it's only been crunching at it's present rate since late Monday night so it may be due to the lag in getting the credits. This is all on the standard SETI app. Edit: That reminds me, I think the 'server' that I replaced is the same server that I used way back when I was using it to host the "New Enhanced Faq" that I noticed was still in my sig! I got to change that! hehe

13) Message boards : Number crunching : Just got back here and the servers are down! (Message 1912578) Posted 12 Jan 2018 by Jim-R. Post: Cut my processing in half to get the temps down and it's now running with core temps of 110 to 120 with an occasional peak of 130. I also reserved a few cores so I'm only running 19 wus at a time now instead of 24. I'm going to be away this weekend but I'll have my laptop with me so that I can remote into it and keep an eye on it. (I've got to go help a friend with a busted water pipe and while I'm there I've got to get up to date pics for ID cards, finalize their design, work on a design for business cards, etc. I had already printed up a few sample cards, and it made one of them happy because I had used her choice of graphics but it pissed the other two off! hehe. I'm hoping to soothe their anger by coming up with a design they all agree on!) I had never had any problems running full blast except for the temps and only a very slight delay while starting programs as BOINC backed off to allow the other programs to take over. I've got my settings to suspend all work if my cpu gets to 25% but this never happened no matter what I was doing. (This is set up as a full blown audio/video production system capable of playing and recording eighteen channels of audio simultaneously along with the video recording. While I've not recorded that many tracks on it yet, I've watched movies in full HD with 7.1 channel full surround sound while SETI was crunching 24 wus full blast!)

14) Message boards : Number crunching : Just got back here and the servers are down! (Message 1912314) Posted 11 Jan 2018 by Jim-R. Post: Hmm, don't know what happened. I replied but it didn't post. Well, here it goes again! Thanks for the suggestions, but the only option I have available is to back down on my crunching to get my temps down. This is a heavy duty rack mounted server with built in warning and shutdown systems in case it sees any specs outside of it's limits. It has six fans that span the entire area between the eight 15000rpm SAS hard drives in front and the cpu/memory section. Four of these fans are the primary fans, and they are running just above idle, and the other two are redundant backups in case of a failure with any of the main fans. I might be able to go into the cmos and tell it to increase the fan speeds to cool the cpus to a lower temp, but I'm reluctant to do this as it's sitting right beside me! Some increase in fan speed might be acceptable, but when they are running full blast they are noisy! The way it's designed, removing the cover would only cause it to run hotter because of disrupting the air flow. Also, the extreme 180 and above temps were only seen for an hour or two after starting crunching. The top temp I'm seeing now is 172 on the hottest core and down to 153 on the coolest, and averaging about 155-156 degrees. As I mentioned before, this thing has a front panel with warning indicators for every kind of fault that could happen and I've never even seen a flicker from any of the overtemp warnings. This thing was refurbished when I purchased it, with a new updated bios, cmos, and firmware for all systems, so what I saw was probably it just getting used to running full out for the first time and it took a while to settle down. Now that it has the system appears to have settled down into a more or less stable state. I don't like even the 155-160 degree average that it's doing so I'm going to back it down some now that I see that my RAC is beginning to level off. I've seen what it can do, so now get it back to what I got it for, which is a web server. I'll still crunch for SETI, but just not using it's full capabilities, to be able to make it last longer. Thanks again for the info and suggestions, even though what you suggest is just not possible in my situation.

15) Message boards : Number crunching : Just got back here and the servers are down! (Message 1912108) Posted 10 Jan 2018 by Jim-R. Post: Thanks to all for the welcome back! It's good to hear from old friends and to know that they still remember me from what seems like ages ago! To sum up my situation, I've been 'on the road' until recently, providing audio/video/teleprompter and general 'tech support' for a nationally touring band, and just haven't had the time to devote to some of my former hobbies, like SETI. I left the band this past summer and I'm now in the process of starting a local service providing much the same services I did with the band, but geared more toward affordable musical support for cookouts, birthday partys and such. I was stuck with an 'antique' computer to run my website from, but that quickly became irritating. Waiting over a minute for a page to update from the server was the last straw! I broke down and invested in a 'real' server. It's an older model but still performs beautifully. (HP Proliant DL380 if you want to look it up.) I noticed the speed of this thing seemed incredible (being used to at most a 2.2ghz quad core) that I decided to get back on here to see just how it performed at crunching. This thing was supposed to top out at a max clock speed of 2.67ghz, but I've seen it actually running at over 3.1ghz! I don't know what they did to this thing, but it's a screamer compared to what I've been used to! It's equipped with dual Intel Xenon processors with six cores each, and multithreading. The processing times for each wu seem to be a lot faster than I remember, but the real kicker is it is running 24 of them at the same time! I had never seen my RAC over 100 previously, and just now saw that it's already over 1000! I'm going to leave it running wide open like it is for another few days just to see what kind of RAC it is capable of, but I'm concerned about the long term running, as I'm running core temps of between 150 to 180 degrees. I personally don't like those numbers, as I like to run processors cooler which makes them last longer. (I've seen that replacement parts for this machine are quite expensive!) So after I see my RAC level off I'm going to back it down a little because like I mentioned, this is now my main web server and that has to take priority, but I'll take my chances for a while just for kicks! Thanks again for the warm 'welcome back' which makes me feel like I'm '@home' again!

16) Message boards : Number crunching : Just got back here and the servers are down! (Message 1911747) Posted 8 Jan 2018 by Jim-R. Post: thanks again for the info. Now I've got 24 wu's crunching away! That ought to give this beast a run for it's money! The highest I'd ever seen the cpu run was one core at a time would peak for a second, the rest of them idling. and a total of 12% for a split second.

17) Message boards : Number crunching : Just got back here and the servers are down! (Message 1911745) Posted 8 Jan 2018 by Jim-R. Post: Yep I just got back from beta and saw they're down too! I think I'll dig into my hosts file right now! hehe Good talking to you too. been a Long time!

18) Message boards : Number crunching : Just got back here and the servers are down! (Message 1911734) Posted 8 Jan 2018 by Jim-R. Post: Thanks for the info. I had that info years ago but lost it. I can wait though, I've still got to get connected with the beta site. If theirs are up I'll crunch for them. I just want to see what a dual proc twelve core comp can do!

19) Message boards : Number crunching : Just got back here and the servers are down! (Message 1911730) Posted 8 Jan 2018 by Jim-R. Post: I've been struggling along for so long with a laptop and a tired old desktop comp that I've used as a server. Every time I would try to do anything on my server the cpu would peak and stay there for the duration! I finally broke down and bought another one and wanted to try it out but just as soon as I fired up Boinc I saw zero downloads. Came here and found the servers are down! Man I wanted to see what this thing could do here!

20) Message boards : Number crunching : Anyone ever have to replace capacitors? (Message 1119969) Posted 22 Jun 2011 by Jim-R. Post: A lot of times a manufacturer will design one circuit board for use in a lot of different models. There will be unused spots for the parts that are not used/required in your particular model. It's cheaper to manufacture one "generic" board which can be used in many variants than it is to manufacture a special board for each model. A good example is in the wiring harnesses for cars. If you ever look behind/under your dash you will find many connectors just hanging loose. This is because they are in the harness for other models, but not your particular one. One amusing example was with a fellow that had a station wagon with integrated side marker lights and taillights. He had his right taillight burned out. He took the panels off to try to find the problem and found an extra connector which is supposed to be used for a separate side marker light on other models. He rigged a special jumper to plug into it to jump one to the other thinking that this would fix his taillight problem. It shorted his entire park light system! I had a h*&* of a time finding the problem, but when I removed his jumper all of his problems except for one blown bulb were fixed! So replace any defective parts ONLY as they are on your specific board. If you have other spaces/parts defined, ignore them! They are not used in your particular model and may cause problems if you try to add them. If you are *absolutely* sure that your extra spaces are in parallel, then you might substitute, say two 220mf caps for a 440mf one, but you would have to make sure that it uses only a single layer for the interconnections. A dual or multilayer board would require you to actually determine the circuit traces for each layer to make sure they aren't used by separate sections of the circuit and are in fact in parallel (such as a dl trace jumping from one side of the board to the other).

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