[Todd Madson]

I was running my OSX system and found out about a command that allows one to keep
uptime across reboots after reading another thread in the macnn boards.

What it really does is shut the entire OSX gui down but you get a shell window.

if you type sudo shutdown now at a terminal window it brings you to a shell window.

Once there cd to your rc5 (or seti or whatever) directory and run the app.

Theory: in not running the GUI all of the CPU is dedicated to the task at hand and
updating the screen - getting somewhat better results than one would get otherwise.

I'd been getting the following prior to doing this, at the bottom is the number of kkeys after:

RC5 on G4/400 with L2 @ 265.5 mhz • 1.6 gigs ram

MacOS9 [random sampling from file with record of keys crunched]
[3,508,387.23 kkeys/sec]
[3,508,387.25 kkeys/sec]
[3,512,173.70 kkeys/sec]
[3,512,623.49 kkeys/sec]

MacOSX [with gui - 10.14]
[3,575,173.78 kkeys/sec]
[3,575,380.29 kkeys/sec]
[3,575,180.38 kkeys/sec]
[3,576,623.70 kkeys/sec]

After doing "sudo shutdown now", running sans gui 10.14:
[3,582,460.21 kkeys/sec]
[3,583,997.20 kkeys/sec]
[3,584,932.90 kkeys/sec]
[3,585,902.24 kkeys/sec]

Try it - it can't hurt and some of you might get big performance gains.

Say what you will about CPU speed, but the facts remain - you can maximize your CPU speed/OS by
doing this.

[Todd Madson]

Oh - when done and want to go back into the gui, simply control-c the app and type exit.
It will restart the gui for you and you'll be back in OSX.

[Grozni Majmun]

shutdown now brings you to single user mode. There are very few processes running. I don't think network functions are running for example, so you'd need to start the gui back up to send and receive units (I think, can you confirm that, Todd?)

A similar, perhaps easier, method is to use console mode. At the login window type '>console' (without quotes), hit return, and at the prompt type your normal login and password. This gets you pure darwin with no gui, but other processes will be running too. Lots of people run it this way.

I doubt any additional benefit from the 'shutdown now' method would be worth the lost crunch time from booting back up in aqua to send/receive units.

[EDIT: My spolling socks]

[ 05-21-2002: Message edited by: Grozni Majmun ]

[SkiBikeSki]

After doing >console, just look a the processes listed in top. They're all running at 0.0% CPU power. That makes it the ideal place to run any DC app. You don't have the overhead of the GUI, but you still have network access. You might want to do sudo shutdown it you were going to run dfold* without any sending units.

You can also hold down control-s at startup and get to the same place as sudo shutdown.

* dfold is the only client that only uploads. It only downloads updated cores every few months. That means you can run it indefinitly without internet access, and then dump all your work all at once.

[ 05-21-2002: Message edited by: SkiBikeSki ]

[sideus]

Seems like too much trouble for so little benefit.

[Todd Madson]

Nope, network functions are happening. It may seem like little benefit but over time the numbers
add up.

Here's a digital picture of my screen when running in this mode showing network functions are
indeed happening.

The amount of time it takes to exit into single user mode and relaunch the gui is negligible. If I'm
leaving for more than an hour or going to sleep I'll run in this mode. I'll test it for a bit to see how
well it works.



[ 05-21-2002: Message edited by: Todd Madson ]

[cdhostage]

The computer is completely useless if you do this.

[SkiBikeSki]

Whenever I do sudo shutdown or startup hondilng control-s, the command line says localhost. That's a dead give away that network access is off. Normally I am assigned a domain name by the DHCP and DNS servers on the OSU network, and that appears on the command line.

[SkiBikeSki]

Ok that's odd! Just now when I did sudo shutdown, I didn't get localhost. I had network access. So it is possible to run any DC app that way.

I still get local host when I hold down control-s as startup. I still like the idea of running dfold without net access. I'll do that when I'm on vacation, and I'll come back and dump millions of units in a single day

[ 05-21-2002: Message edited by: SkiBikeSki ]

[Todd Madson]

It was stated above:
"the computer is completely useless if you do this..."

That's the idea. If you're GONE for hours at work, sleeping or other
things you won't miss the loss of functionality.

If you're running a webserver I wouldn't recommend it but give it
a try.

I'm particularly curious to see what it does to higher-speed G4
processors in RC5.

[Grozni Majmun]

My bad :o . It turns out that you do have network access in single user mode. I didn't think that was the case. Anyway, another problem with it is that you are root, and that implies an extra risk of accidentally hosing your system, which you don't have if you log in as >console.

[SkiBikeSki]

Although I saw a slight increase in speed, it was less then 1%. Which goes along with your numbers. It seemed to run continuously at 7.71MKeys/s when before it would only rarely run that fast.

Gronzi, yes there is a problem with being logged in as root. But if all you're doing in DC, or nothing you're not supposed to, you should be OK. True, it is better to be properly logged in as something other than root.

[mikkyo]

shutdown should drop you into console mode I believe.
Same as logging into console mode at the login window.
When you exit from console mode it takes you back to the login window.

[chris v]

I just gave it a shot to see how it works. Did a sudo shutdown now, then ran RC5 for a few minutes.

My averages on my dual gig in GUI mode run approx 10,200,000 +/-. That went up to a little over 10,400,000 +/- in single user mode. That's worth it if you're going away for a day or two, or for this machine, over the weekend, since I'm not at work, and it is. I'm going to set it to run in single user this weekend and see how many units overall that translated to over a couple days. If it's more than a couple hundred, it's worth it.

I did a -flush and it connected and sent packets, so networking is good in single user mode.

CV

[Todd Madson]

Impressive indeed. I was thinking that if you were leaving for a week's
vacation - the extra blocks per day could be significant.

But how does the figures above translate to work units? Even if it was 100-200 WUs a day extra it would be significant in the long run, especially if extra machines were tossed at the problem.

I simply have to get more G4s on this project. All these pentiums are virtually useless for this - they're just so slow.

[ 05-22-2002: Message edited by: Todd Madson ]

[SkiBikeSki]

Originally posted by mikkyo:
<STRONG>shutdown should drop you into console mode I believe.
Same as logging into console mode at the login window.
When you exit from console mode it takes you back to the login window.</STRONG>

When you back out of OS X using >console, that puts you into a console mode that still has a lot of processes running; Apache, ftp, appletalk, ssh, .... But when you use sudo shutdown now, all processes are killed. The only processes left running on the machine are the kernel and a shell. Also when you exit this particular console mode it doesn't go straight to the login screen. It first has to load OS X from scratch, then it gets to the login screen.