[tadd]

I'm crunching rc5
distributed.net client for Mac OS X Copyright 1997-2000, distributed.net
RC5 PowerPC and AltiVec assembly by Dan Oetting
Enhancements for 604e CPUs by Roberto Ragusa
Please visit http://www.distributed.net/ for up-to-date contest information.


How do I see my stats, get a password or user name, or select team affiliation? I've been at it now for about 36 hours. I was expecting to be able to search my e-mail name under Participant Stats.


When i do it shows me:

Rank Participant First Block Last Block Days Overall Rate Blocks
Total
Confused? Look here

[DocWest]

Originally posted by GetSome681 (in another thread):

<STRONG>Well, I'm sure that you have an email address. Go ahead and download the client, and install it on your computer(s). Once you install the client, you'll need to input some information into it. In the options menu that comes up the first time you open thr program, here is what you'll want to change.

choose option 1, and then 1 on the next menu - this is where you add your email address.

go back to the main menu, and choose option 2, and then option 9 - use this to set all others to 0, to only calculate RC5 (ir - CSC=0,OGR=0,RC5).

There may be some other options you might wish to make, concerning how many packets you receive at a time, which should be based on your connection to the internet on your comps. If you have a slow connection, or they are never really connected, you may want to have the client download many packets, instead of the normal few.

Anyways, just go ahead and start crunching. Then, on the next day (usually like 10am-12pm) after midnight, go to http://stats.distributed.net/rc5-64/ and there you can input your email address, and the hit search. It will bring you to your information, and at the bottom of the page you will find a link for your password to be emailed to you. Click it.

Then, you will go to http://stats.distributed.net/rc5-64/...team=865184860 and right below the table of numbers and team, you will find a link that says that you want to join this team. Click that link, and then fill in your info and password. You only need to do this once, not on all your computers (the password stuff that is, you need to do the other stuff with all the client downloads). Once you make your email address a part of our team, then all of your computers will be sending their information in under Team MacNN which will ROCK!!

I CAN'T WAIT TO HAVE ANOTHER RC5 CRUNCHER!!!</STRONG>

hope that helps
and welcome

[tadd]

Originally posted by DocWest:
<STRONG>

go back to the main menu, and choose option 2, and then option 9 - use this to set all others to 0, to only calculate RC5 (ir - CSC=0,OGR=0,RC5).
</STRONG>

DocWest, thanks for the welcome.

Can you give me the syntax to set this? I.E. type something that I can cut and paste into my terminal window? Or copy and paste the result so I know what it looks like. It seems to take all sorts of input and just echo it back to me, i.e.

8) Remote buffer directory ==&gt;
9) Load-work precedence ==&gt; dog is a donut
10) Additional buffer-level checking ==&gt; 0 (none)

[tadd]

I think the problem is that having not set that option when I first started doing this, I'm processing about 3 days worth of OGR information. It isn't even close to done: 7 out of 25 somethings.

Anybody know how to run this program at boot time, rather than having to manually start it? If I could run it without logging in, I could add two more G4 machines.

[tadd]

OK. I figured it out. Line 9 needs to be erased by selecting it and then using the DELETE key to totally erase the line. Next, type this string

RC5,DES=0,CSC=0,OGR=0

[chris v]

Originally posted by tadd:
<STRONG>

Anybody know how to run this program at boot time, rather than having to manually start it? If I could run it without logging in, I could add two more G4 machines.</STRONG>

3 options:

1. In the folder you D/L'ed from Dnet, you'll find a script called "start and hide." Drop that into the startup items folder in your system (make sure it's checked in extensions mgr.)

2. Howerver, the script loads a little slow, and if you're not trying to sneak it on, just put an alias of the client in the startup items folder.

3. If you are trying to be sneaky (insert legal disclaimer here) there's the faceless client. You have to configure the machine with the regular client first, but once you've done that, put an alias of the faceless client in the startup items folder, and you won't see it at all. The faceless client uses the same prefs file as the regular client, so they've got to be in the same folder. The only way I know of to turn it off, however, is through a process mgmt. utility like Peek-a-Boo.

Oh, and don't forget to join Team MacNN!

CV

[DocWest]

I use the faceless client on my macines.

way easier to use, cuz you dont even see it going.
to control it, there are some small scripts in the add-ons folder (in the faceless control folder)
(but peek a boo is a better way of finding out if it is running)

and if it ever slows down other processes to much, you can set it up to pause when running certain apps.
i had to do that today, because it would slow Bill the Demon (cool game) down too much, make it all jerky.

I have also been playing quite a lot with my own little applescripts, that tell me how many work units i've done and also automated backing up (off the ram disk).
just finished those this arvo.
pretty cool stuff.

[Scotttheking]

I'm guessing from above comments that you are running OSX.
Yes, there is a script to run the client at boot before the login screen comes up. It does require root access, however. If you have root access, then post it here and by then I'll have written instructions on how to use it.

[ 08-12-2001: Message edited by: Scotttheking ]

[tadd]

Ah. Sorry for being ambiguous. I am running OS X server on the G4/400 and OS X on two cubes. Also OS9 via Netboot on two iMacs. On one of the cubes I am the only user and i'm running dnetc in a terminal shell now. On the 2nd cube my wife never logs off but she periodically reboots and isn't too fond of unexpected windows popping up and running arcane scripts. If I could do it at boot time in the background that would be fine. The 3rd machine is the server. I created a login with a new user name just for running the program.

Having any and all OS X machines just run the client at boot and in the background would be great. A feature of the program might be to generate a CPU usage graph that identifies how much time the program is NOT getting, since the CPU Monitor program is useless when running dnetc, except to tell me that the dnetc program is not running.

So... now I am waiting to show up on distributed.net's list. I am guessing that I'll be there tomorrow morning?

[ 08-12-2001: Message edited by: tadd ]

[Scotttheking]

Follow the above posts for how to setup RC5 on the OS9 comps.
I recommend doing it using the faceless client.

For OSX, here are the instructions.
1. Connect to the public folder of my iDisk. Username sjaffa.
2. Get the folder DistributedDotNet and put it on your machine.
3. Edit the folder that your have RC5 in so that it is named dnetc.
4. Open the file DistributedDotNET, which is in the DistributedDotNet folder, and edit the last line to point to the location of your client. (Ex. If client is in applications folder, the line would be /applications/dnetc/dnetc -quiet &
5. Log into the gui as root, and put the DistributedDotNet folder in the startup items folder in the System.

Don't forget to configure the clients.
Anymore questions, just ask.

FYI, the reason you haven't shown up yet is because the stats are running behind today.
Give it another day. It takes around 2 days from the time you dump your first RC5 block.

Hope this helps, and welcome to our team.

[tadd]

Hey Scottheking, thanks very much for the help.

It starts now, at boot time though there is a warning or error message associated with it starting. I turned on Verbose mode booting and am watching it go by.

What I did was put your code into the
/System/Library/StartupItems like you said.

I created /dnetc on the root and put the dnetc program and it's data files into that folder. That made it pretty simple.

Now I have to do it to the other two computers and we'll be sitting pretty.

They still haven't updated the stats.

It is interesting to note how much faster the G4 is than many of the other CPUs. Another weird thing is that the G4's performance on RC5 is proportional to clock speed where the Pentium III and IV is NOT proportional to clock speed. Weird.

[ 08-13-2001: Message edited by: tadd ]

[Scotttheking]

Where exactly is this error message?
Can you tell me what it is?

Just curious, but are you going to put all 5 comps crunching?
FYI, the client is optimized for Altivec. This makes it very fast.

[tadd]

The message flies by during bootup of the computer. I enabled verbose display at bootup in the nvram (I don't remember the command but I found it by searching for "verbose shortcut" in General MacOSX discussions). The message was over a hundred characters long and included the path to the StartupItems/DistributedDotNet folder. It looked like the end of hte path was appended with some comment or some other text. It just went by too fast.

The upshot is that the program IS running. I'm now running it in this mode on both Cubes. The OSX server computer is running it with a special log-in I created and the screen is locked with a password protected screen saver.
I'll replace that with the startupitems fix when I get time.

I'm still not showing up in the Participant Stats. The first RC5 results I sent was at about 6pm on August 12 UTC.

[ 08-13-2001: Message edited by: tadd ]

[chris v]

Originally posted by tadd:
<STRONG>

I'm still not showing up in the Participant Stats. The first RC5 results I sent was at about 6pm on August 12 UTC.

</STRONG>

They're running a day behind right now. It looks like they spent the weekend moving their stat engine to a new server, and didn't run Fri.'s stats till late last night, and now they're running Sat-Sun. It'll probably be caught up by tomorrow morning. They tend to get behind every so often, like once or twice a month.

CV

[Scotttheking]

Ok, I think I found the problem.

On the line that has /dnetc/dnetc -quiet &
remove the &

That may fix it.

You going to get those iMacs crunching now?
Welcome, and PLEASE don't pass me
I'm trying to stay in the top 10.

--Scott

[Scotttheking]

You now show up in the listings.

Come on and join.
I can't wait to see what you can give us. 3 G4s and 2 G3s (right?) is pretty good, especially if they are 24/7 machines.

[tadd]

Ok. my Participant Configuration page says that my team is 865184860: Team MacNN. I don't show up on the Team MacNN Summary yet. My overall rate according to Tadd's stats is 6,425 KKeys/sec. We'll see if I can add another computer to the mix in a couple of days.

I have another challenge for the adepts that read this.
I have iMacs that do Netboot off of OSX server. The iMac client for RC5 crashes. Is this related?

Thanks again for the help.