Posts by Toby

41) Message boards : Number crunching : IE8 beta? (Message 723968)
Posted 9 Mar 2008 by Profile Toby
Post:
Watch out... next thing you know you might be using Linux!

I'm an Opera user myself. I'm proud to say that Opera 9.5 (still beta) passes acid2 with 100% and has the highest score on acid3! (60) But even the stable one (9.26) does far better than IE.
42) Message boards : Number crunching : Network only computer (Message 723076)
Posted 7 Mar 2008 by Profile Toby
Post:
It is possible that BOINC isn't using the best method for detecting user activity. I know on linux it just checks the atime of /dev/input/mice and /dev/kbd and I don't think VNC and other such programs generate activity on those devices. Obviously it is a little different in OSX but it may be doing something similar. I'm not sure if there is a better way or not.
43) Message boards : Number crunching : Why Are Benchmark Results Lower Under Linux ?? (Message 722397)
Posted 5 Mar 2008 by Profile Toby
Post:
Its all about compiler optimizations. By dfault the linux client is less optimized than the windows one. But if you are using Gentoo like I am on some of my systems then the boinc client is compiled from source with whatever optimizations you have set for the whole system. I recently changed one of my 4400+s from windows to linux. The old windows benchmark was 2246.68 floating point and 4151.96 integer. The same hardware, now running linux scored 2173.97 floating point and 5954.82 integer. As you can see the floating point is slightly lower (under 10%) and the integer benchmark is actually higher in linux. But this is just because it was compiled with different optimizations turned on. If I used the stock BOINC client it would be lower.

I may delete the windows host soon but until then you can compare them side by side
44) Questions and Answers : Getting started : Web stats (Message 720708)
Posted 2 Mar 2008 by Profile Toby
Post:
The XML files located in /stats/ include ALL users, teams and hosts. They are quite large (over 1 GB uncompressed) and can be difficult to work with. Hosts are the biggest part so if you don't need those it may be managable. Depending on how much detail you want, the web RPCs may be easier to use. You can request information about only your team through this method. Documentation is located here.
45) Questions and Answers : Getting started : Where is all my credit???? (Message 720703)
Posted 2 Mar 2008 by Profile Toby
Post:
I'm guessing you are refering to credit you earned before seti switched to using BOINC. If this is the case then you need to follow the instructions here to "attach" your classic account to your BOINC account. It won't translate as direct BOINC credits but will list how many seti classic work you did. Click on my username to see how this looks.
46) Questions and Answers : Preferences : remove a PC from my account (Message 720698)
Posted 2 Mar 2008 by Profile Toby
Post:
Well they drop off of the "active" list but they are still attached to your account and get exported to stats sites. If you wish to completely remove them, click on the host details and look at the very bottom of the page. There should be a "Delete this computer" link.As Labbie mentioned, this can only be done after all tasks that were assigned to that host have been purged by the project.
47) Message boards : Number crunching : AMD Phenom (Message 720202)
Posted 1 Mar 2008 by Profile Toby
Post:
Here is my phenom thats been running with the KWSN client for a while now. Every time I get within striking distance of 2,000 RAC either the servers take a short break or something else happens and my plans for world domination are foiled... maybe this time!

Unfortunately I can't give a glowing review of the Phenom... I've had a lot of trouble with mine. If I run the memory controller at full speed it spontaneously reboots after under a minute of seti. The only way I can run it stable is to drop the memory controller frequency to 1.4 GHz. Even then, the chipset has some problems too...
48) Message boards : Science (non-SETI) : Cosmos with Carl Sagan (Message 720175)
Posted 1 Mar 2008 by Profile Toby
Post:
I caught some of these on the science channel. They are quite well done. No fancy computer animations but I find that the real world illustrations he gives actually do more to enhance understanding than a CGI model.
49) Message boards : Number crunching : No access to lunatics.at ? (Message 719724)
Posted 29 Feb 2008 by Profile Toby
Post:
The server is back up! We are just waiting for DNS to be updated. This should be done within the next few hours. If you know how, you can add 206.132.254.42 to your hosts file and access it right now. However lunatics.at will no longer be accessible. It is now lunatics.kwsn.net -this change actually happened a while ago because we were unable to contact simon about an IP change but the server was still responding to lunatics.at until now.

There is a post by jonnyv on the lunatics front page explaining this but apparently the ISP where the server is hosted decided to do some IP rearrangement and forgot to mention it to our contact. Unfortunately we don't have direct contact with the ISP so this adds some delay to any technical glitches that come up.

As I mentioned before, we are investigating other options that may improve the situation.

Sorry for the outage and thank you for bearing with us!
50) Questions and Answers : Unix/Linux : interrupted tasks still open (Message 718638)
Posted 26 Feb 2008 by Profile Toby
Post:
Once they expire, the server will automatically send them back out to someone else. There is no need to worry about them :)
51) Message boards : Number crunching : No access to lunatics.at ? (Message 718531)
Posted 26 Feb 2008 by Profile Toby
Post:
I just had a conversation with our guy in Atlanta today and am hopeful that we will be back some time tomorrow. (Tuesday)

*crosses fingers*

Can't complain too much about free colocation but with these kinds of outages (we had a similar one just over a year ago) we are considering other options. Will keep you posted.
52) Message boards : Number crunching : Over-heat (Message 717454)
Posted 23 Feb 2008 by Profile Toby
Post:
I recently bought a "Lapinator" (http://www.lapinator.com) that helps greatly when running the laptop on my lap or on soft surfaces like a bed or carpet.

As far as crunching on my laptop, I often leave the CPU locked down to its slowest (1.0 GHz) or an intermediate speed (1.6 GHz) to avoid excessive heat buildtup. Work units take longer but at least I don't have to worry about my laptop lighting on fire :)

I'm running linux so I can just issue a cpufreq-selector command to choose my speed. I'm pretty sure there are utils for windows that will let you do something similar.
53) Message boards : Number crunching : No access to lunatics.at ? (Message 717449)
Posted 23 Feb 2008 by Profile Toby
Post:
Yeah we lost network access to the server yesterday. We are talking to our hosting provider. He says it looks like the whole network segment we are on went down so at least its not just us :)
54) Message boards : Number crunching : Cores, threads, sockets supported (XP or Linux) (Message 711205)
Posted 11 Feb 2008 by Profile Toby
Post:
ML1 will pop up in a moment to tell you that there are no CPU restrictions in the Linux world, at least up to 256 cores.


Well I'm not ML1 but here is a copy/paste straight from the kernel configuration script:
This allows you to specify the maximum number of CPUs which this 
kernel will support. Current maximum is 255 CPUs due to APIC 
addressing limits. Less depending on the hardware.

This is purely to save memory - each supported CPU requires 
memory in the static kernel configuration.


What this value is set to may vary depending on the distro you choose. Looking on my laptop it seems that the default value for an Ubuntu desktop installation is 8. I'm guessing the server install might give you 32 or 64 by default. Of course you can always compile your own :)
55) Message boards : Number crunching : Can you suggest a good linux tutorial? (Message 710566)
Posted 10 Feb 2008 by Profile Toby
Post:
Ah I guess it is in the "universe" repository which isn't enabled by default. In the Synaptic manager go to Settings -> Repositories and check the "Community-maintained Open Source software (universe)" option. Then click the "Reload" button in the toolbar. Now you should see a total of 4 boinc related packages.
56) Message boards : Number crunching : Can you suggest a good linux tutorial? (Message 710368)
Posted 9 Feb 2008 by Profile Toby
Post:
For Ubuntu users I would strongly recommend just using the version that is in the repos. Use the Synaptic Package Manager (System -> Administration) and find the "boinc-client" and "boinc-manager" packages and install them. Or you can do it from the command line with "apt-get install boinc-client boinc-manager"

After it is done installing there will be a BOINC icon in Applications -> Accessories that will start the manager. Installing it this way also makes it start crunching automatically on boot and will automatically upgrade through the Ubuntu update manager as new versions are released.
57) Questions and Answers : Unix/Linux : Question about setiathome on SMP (Message 710361)
Posted 9 Feb 2008 by Profile Toby
Post:
The "1" thing is only a feature of GNU top not BSD's top. If they are both displaying near 100% cpu usage then they would have to be running on different cores. Do both of them always stay on core 1 according to top? Maybe you are just catching them during a context switch.
58) Message boards : Number crunching : mobile crunching (Message 703447)
Posted 24 Jan 2008 by Profile Toby
Post:
Last time I checked (and it has been a while) the problem with mobile devices was that they don't have a dedicated general use floating point unit. Seti@home spends a lot of its time doing floating point calculations and doing those without a dedicated FPU just isn't feasible. Even though the MHz are the same as older computers and they are great for organizing and even displaying media, the ability to do complex math still lags far behind.
59) Questions and Answers : Getting started : SETI stack (Message 703203)
Posted 23 Jan 2008 by Profile Toby
Post:
I would suggest running completely diskless systems. This will save you money on hard drives and electricity. If you get motherboards with integrated network and video then all you need for a system is power supply, motherboard, memory and CPU. Maybe a fan or two. Depending on power requirements, power supplies can even be shared although this gets interesting with the ATX power on signal but it CAN be done...

Have one server with a disk and have all the others do a network boot to Linux from it. If it is set up correctly then each node can mount its own settings from the central server. But this is certainly no simple task and you will have to become extremely familiar with Linux which will be a significant time investment. But it sounds kind of fun... I might have to try this with a couple of my old and semi-retired systems.
60) Questions and Answers : Unix/Linux : BOINC or other program for smaller pc (Message 703193)
Posted 23 Jan 2008 by Profile Toby
Post:
The mainstream distros will probably not be too far behind windows in terms of system requirements. But the beauty of linux is that it can be customized. There are minimal distros out there that will run on just about anything. I think xubuntu has a smaller footprint (since it doesn't run gnome) and can probably run fairly well on an older rig.

Of course it may not be worth the electricity cost to run such old rigs... but last time I ran Predictor@home they had relatively short work units that were well suited for my older machines. I think that has been over a year though so who knows what has changed.

EDIT: Doh! forgot. They are down until at least February.


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