[mikkyo]

Well TeamMacNN was about to pass ChinaSARS and they powered up.
They are now beating us in production by just a little bit.
We were looking good for a while but it looks like the teams between us and 6th place don't want to see us leave 9th place.

[Shaktai]

Originally posted by mikkyo:
Well TeamMacNN was about to pass ChinaSARS and they powered up.
They are now beating us in production by just a little bit.
We were looking good for a while but it looks like the teams between us and 6th place don't want to see us leave 9th place.

I'm still out traveling, but on my way home for a few weeks. I'll see if I can't bring a little more power to bear.

[sideus]

Passed ChinaSARS. w00t! Team USA is next!

[sideus]

China SARS has powered up and is outcrunching us.

[sideus]

China SARS destroyed us today. Back in 9th for us. Crunch people, crunch!

[mikkyo]

We finally made it to 8th by a decent amount.
Now on to 7th.

[druber]

sweet. amazingly few people crunching D2OL right now. (i'm fishpatrol, btw) just a couple weeks of crunching and i'm on my way to the top 10 in the team. that's fun and all, but it shouldn't be so easy. for the stats-hungry, come on in, this levy's ready to go.

[sideus]

I was crunching D2OL, but I switched over to F@H for the time being.

[[FDC]Fozzie]

Free DC might be popping a few GHZ the way of this project.

Who knows what could happen to the stats then.

[druber]

Good, do it. In theory, these projects are also about some research somethingother. Secondary to the stats, of course, but still existant.

[kiwibabe]

Well for those who want to know Team Storagereview.com are catching up fast, they are going twice as fast as us today, its only a matter of time until they pass us and we are dropped back to #9. Does anyone have any spare computers to make into more nodes? I have a iMac 333 but I doubt that would help much.

[druber]

Shaktai, where for art thou silent? We've only got a whomping, what, 7 people actively crunching right now? I don't know if they all jumped to other projects or just fell asleep. Or maybe they tired of continually relaunching the app or turning it on and off. Not quite as thought-free as SETI, in that sense.

Anyway, hello New Zealand. Enjoy the leaping and dashing up the stats page. If your iMac has 10.2 on it, you could still give it a go. Might just give you a couple hundred conformers a day, but every bit of horsepower...

Welcome to the team

[DrBoar]

I had about 4 GHz running D2OL for a while (still rank 4 ) but the snags with the new client and other stuff made me migrate first to Ubero and then distributedfolding. D2OL need to get smoother for me to go back...

[druber]

Please elaborate, DrBoar, if you would. This is the first version of D2OL I've worked with, so the changes are news to me. What about the client was bothersome? And aren't you sure you want to move just one machine back?

[kiwibabe]

Hello Druber,

its a pleasure to be here. I would have joined a team sooner but I only had my iMac 333. Now that I have my G5 1.8 its now worth it.

From my calculations we will be overtaken by Team storagereview.com maybe today, but I could be wrong tho.

[DrBoar]

Hi Druber
The previous version of D2OL worked in 10.1.5 the new one require a later java engine so here I lost on 7300/200 (that only work in 10.1.5) and a G3 upgraded 7500 that for some reason refuses to work in 10.2

The previous version coud run on dual machines by basically installing two clients at two different folders. The new version does not allow that. It has to be drectly into Applications and it has to be named this and that. Eventually there was a way around this by editing a plist but before that I had tried several permutations of the old intallation mode. In the process I created new nodes so now I have 11 nodes but only 3 CPUs.

The fancy graphics took 70% of the CPU time on the low end compters and the java engine they use seem to be sensitive to all kind of changes in OS and java version. I would prefer if they could have two different clients one fancy one and one as very basic CLI cleint that run with far less overhead and on a wider range of OS and hardware.

Perhaps I can suggest the sceeensaver version to PC friends, at least it looks quite scientific

[Shaktai]

Originally posted by druber:
Shaktai, where for art thou silent? We've only got a whomping, what, 7 people actively crunching right now?

I'm baaaaccckkk!!!

We've got enough power to take the #6 spot easily enough, but we need to double our power to move beyond #6. Barring another major contender though, #6 will eventually be ours.

[kiwibabe]

Yay Shaktai!

So when will your computers be active again?

[Shaktai]

Originally posted by kiwibabe:
Yay Shaktai!

So when will your computers be active again?

Their on line now and crunching. The team should see the effect within 24 hours.

Congratulations to drengy who just knocked me out of the #2 slot. Hopefully I'll recover from the concussion in a few months.

Mikkyo, you best keep an eye in your rearview mirror. Don't know what that is coming up on you but it is big and fast. It blew by me like I was standing still. Oh wait, I was standing still.

[Shaktai]

Okay, I have restarted a "Team thread" in the D20L forums lounge, where such threads are allowed. Let's get some folks over there to post once in a while so we keep the team visible. That is a good way to get new members.

NOTE: Do Not solicit members in other threads on the D2OL forum. Just keep the team thread visible by posting once in a while. Friendly competitive banter with other teams is encouraged, as long as it is in good taste.

http://www.d2ol.com/cgi-bin/ultimate...c&f=3&t=000571

[kiwibabe]

Im hoping that everyone in D2OL isn't jumping ship to join the Folding race. Otherwise I will just pass you all, I've gone from 68th to 24th place in 6 days

[druber]

Looks like I represent about 20% of "everyone" I've been invited to join the race, but I expect I'll keep walking along with D2OL. About the rankings, don't worry, the hill gets steeper a little further along (though I must say you're cranking along handily).

[Shaktai]

Originally posted by kiwibabe:
Im hoping that everyone in D2OL isn't jumping ship to join the Folding race. Otherwise I will just pass you all, I've gone from 68th to 24th place in 6 days

Actually I think we picked up one more. We're still holding our own.

[[FDC]Fozzie]

As I said Free DC have popped some GHZ to this project we are aiming for China SARS then you guys.

Crunch on.

[druber]

We're keeping pretty even at holding 8th place, but by the time we're passing anyone in front of us, we'll be getting aced from behind. We are getting a few new crunchers, which is great. But our top two crunchers are still putting in the vast majority of our numbers. It's great to have farm crunchers, but adding a dozen G4 users would make a real difference as well.

I wonder what's happened to Kiwi. She was really racing along for a while...

[[FDC]Fozzie]

China SARS will fall in the next couple of days.

MacNN should be done by the end of May.

Run Forrest Run

[druber]

My iBook died today. 4 months old, off for a new logic board. Even worse than my old 500mhz iBook which had to be replaced last year after 6 months of beating about the bush, same problems. It at least was over a year old. Needless to say, I'm not amused.

Time to go learn Unix. Anyone recommend a sturdy, light PC laptop? Sad to say, I'm not kidding.

[Scotttheking]

Originally posted by druber:
My iBook died today. 4 months old, off for a new logic board. Even worse than my old 500mhz iBook which had to be replaced last year after 6 months of beating about the bush, same problems. It at least was over a year old. Needless to say, I'm not amused.

Time to go learn Unix. Anyone recommend a sturdy, light PC laptop? Sad to say, I'm not kidding.

IBM T40/T41 laptop. You can get a warranty of up to 5 years on them, too (3 years standard). Expensive, but very high quality.

[OneMacGuy]

Originally posted by druber:
My iBook died today. 4 months old, off for a new logic board. Even worse than my old 500mhz iBook which had to be replaced last year after 6 months of beating about the bush, same problems. It at least was over a year old. Needless to say, I'm not amused.

Time to go learn Unix. Anyone recommend a sturdy, light PC laptop? Sad to say, I'm not kidding.

That is some really bad luck! My group at work has about 2 dozen Mac laptops of various vintages still in use, all the way back to a Powerboook 3400. They have been much more reliable than the PC laptops that we have. The only repairs that we have had to do on any of them is normal stuff like drives wearing out, broken AC adapters, replacing screens after laptop being dropped (very expensive repair). The TiBooks have been my favorites, almost completely trouble free. These are almost all in a pool for department wide checkout, they are not treated pristinely, but are used and abused as working laptops.

[kiwibabe]

Im here, I got distracted for a couple of weeks. We are renovating our house at the moment, I have to keep turning off my beloved G5 to protect it from paint and electricians. I promise I'll get back onto it

Originally posted by druber:
We're keeping pretty even at holding 8th place, but by the time we're passing anyone in front of us, we'll be getting aced from behind. We are getting a few new crunchers, which is great. But our top two crunchers are still putting in the vast majority of our numbers. It's great to have farm crunchers, but adding a dozen G4 users would make a real difference as well.

I wonder what's happened to Kiwi. She was really racing along for a while...

[mikkyo]

Well it is too bad we can't get everyone over here.
D2OL is Team MacNN's highest rank in an active project.
I just passed 3M, yay me.
Now if Scott moved all his power over here, and Cobramac, we would move up pretty quick.

[OneMacGuy]

Originally posted by mikkyo:
Well it is too bad we can't get everyone over here.
D2OL is Team MacNN's highest rank in an active project.
I just passed 3M, yay me.
Now if Scott moved all his power over here, and Cobramac, we would move up pretty quick.

As soon as I pass Raven, maybe I will consider moving some CPUs over, my production on F@H is going down no matter what I do anyway!

[Shaktai]

Well, I just brought my Mac and Linux boxes back over to D2OL. That ought to help a little. The BOINC clients for both of those are pretty stable, so until there is something new to test, no sense in letting them just rack up cobblestones that won't carry over. The Win boxes are still on BOINC, but that is where all the problems have been, along with the stats backend.

Might help us to at least hold position for a while.

[Scotttheking]

Some issues / questions.

1) Mikkyo, fix your sig

2) What dependencies does d2ol have?

3) How do I stealth it on *nix and win2k (win2k MUST be able to run as a service for me to consider it)

4) How stable is it? Do I need to give it any attention, or can I fire and forget?

5) What CPU / hardware config is best?

6) Along the lines of 5, any hardware or software tweaks to gain speed?

7) I have a username setup and joined to team macnn. Tell me the rest.

8) How many days until we are passed, what's the point difference per day, and what does that translate to in athlon xp GHz?

9) See that support the team stats link at the top of the forum? If the links were to be remembered and used, and if said links were able to earn $300+ by the end of March, I could build a new dedicated crunch box and put it on D2ol.

I don't want to pull away from fah, but that doesn't meant I can't move a few machines over within the next month.

[mikkyo]

1) I anxiously await d2ol support of the custom sig-rank dealie-bob.
2) Java and itself
3) Got me I don't do windows. You can run graphical, console, or via a file control method. So I imagine something will work for you.
4) Fire and Run. Never had a problem.
5) Athlon/Barton/etc of course, like pretty much everything else.
6) If you have lots of ram you can tweak the Java VM settings, but no one has experimented to see if you get any real gains.
7) Each node you setup gets a unique node id tied to your account. You have to go to your user page and add all the nodes you have set up. Why the separate step? Got me.
8) Got me, I haven't looked back
9) Money? What money?

Fah bah. TeamMacNN is in the top ten in D2OL, much more exposure. Good for the team.

[Scotttheking]

Originally posted by mikkyo:

3) Got me I don't do windows. You can run graphical, console, or via a file control method. So I imagine something will work for you.

Elaborate please.

Fah bah. TeamMacNN is in the top ten in D2OL, much more exposure. Good for the team.

Hey! FAH is a much bigger project.

[Shaktai]

Originally posted by Scotttheking:
[B]Elaborate please.

Here is the info on "file mode" from the readme text. I don't know much about it either, but maybe it will make sense to you or other advanced Windows users. If you need more info, you will probably need to visit the D2OL forum to talk to the experts (or pseudo experts) there.

Mikkyo answered most of the other questions. I will also state though that the latest client has been rock solid on all platforms and most of the backend server glitches have been fixed. You can cache up to 2000 work units which is enough to keep even the fastest boxes crunching for a few days if the servers should go down.

Biggest knock is that you still have to cludge a work around to run more then one instance of D2OL on a dual processor Mac. In that case though, just run one D2OL and one FAH if you don't want to bother with the work around. Once running though, the work around again is rock solid.

File Based Controller
---------------------

This is a controller for users that wish to run the Agent Node as a
complete background process.

When running in this mode, the User can control the Agent Node from a
controller property file. This file is called 'control.prp' and a default
one with comments/instructions should be installed. Before running in this
mode, it is recommended that the user read and understand the information
provided in control file.

Using the control file, Users can: Toggle the Task Engine, Display the GUI,
and Shut the Node down.

Note: Users must be careful to use shut the node down gracefully.
If they simply kill the Node's java process, the docking engine
may continue to run and there is a possibility of corrupting the
property files that control the Node's operation.


In order to set other properties, the User must manually set them in the
proper property file. They are located in the 'res' directory and are
called: general.prp and network.prp. The General file controls
general settings and the Network file control network setting such as proxy
information.

Note: Changes made directly to these files might not take affect immediately.

Note: All properties are case sensitive.


**Important Note: Do NOT modify any other property file other than the
two listed above. Changes to other property files
could lead to a corrupt install, forcing users to
reinstall the software.


General Properties:

Online - possible values: true or false
If set to 'true', the Agent will assume that there is a
network connection and try to communicate with the server
as necessary.
If set to 'false', the Agent will assume that no network
connection is present and it will not attempt to communicate
with the server until this value is set back to 'true'.

LaunchMain - possible values: true or false
If set to 'true', the Agent GUI will launch at startup.

AnimOn - possible values: true or false
This is a Agent GUI specific setting that only matters if
the Agent GUI is displayed.
If set to 'true', the Agent GUI will use graphical animation
to show that tasks are running.

QueueSize - possible values: 0-2000
This defines the number of tasks that will be queued from
the server.


Network Properties:

ConnectMode - possible values: Direct, HTTP or SOCKS
If set to 'Direct', the Node will access the internet directly.
If set to 'HTTP', the Node will access the internet through the
defined HTTP Proxy Server. Note: In this mode, you MUST also
specify an HTTP Proxy Host and an HTTP Proxy Port.
If set to 'SOCKS', the Node will access the internet through the
defined SOCKS Proxy Server. Note: In this mode, you MUST also
specify an SOCKS Proxy Host and an SOCKS Proxy Port.

HTTPHost - possible values: <any string>
If the ConnectMode is set to 'HTTP', this values MUST specify
the HTTP Proxy Host name or IP.

HTTPPort - possible values: <any valid port number>
If the ConnectMode is set to 'HTTP', this values MUST specify
the HTTP Proxy Port.

SOCKSHost - possible values: <any string>
If the ConnectMode is set to 'SOCKS', this values MUST specify
the SOCKS Proxy Host name or IP.

SOCKSPort - possible values: <any valid port number>
If the ConnectMode is set to 'SOCKS', this values MUST specify
the SOCKS Proxy Port.

[Scotttheking]

Originally posted by Shaktai:
Here is the info on "file mode" from the readme text. I don't know much about it either, but maybe it will make sense to you or other advanced Windows users. If you need more info, you will probably need to visit the D2OL forum to talk to the experts (or pseudo experts) there.

If you could find out usage of this for linux, windows 2000, and osx, I'd really appreciate it. I'm happy to help out, but I just don't have time for research (other then school research).

In addition, can someone get me the numbers on the points per day gap, about how many AMD GHz that is, and about how many days are remaining, I'd appreciate it.

--Scott

[Shaktai]

Originally posted by Scotttheking:
If you could find out usage of this for linux, windows 2000, and osx, I'd really appreciate it. I'm happy to help out, but I just don't have time for research (other then school research).

Check your E-mail for the entire readme with info on all platforms, OS and all modes and controllers.

Pulling one more box off of BOINC beta for the time being, until they come up with something more that really needs testing.

[Shaktai]

Okay, I am not the numbers guru that Reader50 is, but my best estimate based upon the past week average is that Free DC will pass us in about 60-70 days. However those numbers do not reflect the power I have added in the past 24 hours.

They have been outcrunching us with about 900-1100 candidates per day on average but did 1400 more today and appear to still be adding power. We need at least 10 more fast athlons or several G5's to hold these guys off. Any power is appreciated though. Even some slow older Macs or PC's can be a significant help.

That is my best estimate anyway. Someone with more time and better number skills may be able to come up with more accurate numbers.

To compare with our "team stats" which counts conformers instead of candidates, 1 candidate equals 20 conformers. Each molecule (work unit) is analyzed 20 times (a conformer) the best of the 20 then becomes a "candidate".

The best candidates then go into a database that can be utilized by ALL researchers to identify likely drug combinations that can be utilized for traditional research into cures or treatments for a variety of deadly diseases. What we are doing is "narrowing" the field from millions of possibilities, down to a few hundred more likely probabilities, hopefully reducing the time frame needed to find effective cures. For instance, my best candidate to date is currently ranked #29 in the list of possible Anthrax Lethal Factor cures. Maybe someday it might help save someone's life.

[Scotttheking]

Originally posted by Shaktai:
They have been outcrunching us with about 900-1100 candidates per day on average but did 1400 more today and appear to still be adding power. We need at least 10 more fast athlons or several G5's to hold these guys off. Any power is appreciated though. Even some slow older Macs or PC's can be a significant help.

Define fast athlon.

[Scotttheking]

Originally posted by OneMacGuy:
As soon as I pass Raven, maybe I will consider moving some CPUs over, my production on F@H is going down no matter what I do anyway!

Looks like it's heading back up.

[reader50]

Originally posted by Shaktai:
...
To compare with our "team stats" which counts conformers instead of candidates, 1 candidate equals 20 conformers. Each molecule (work unit) is analyzed 20 times (a conformer) the best of the 20 then becomes a "candidate".
...

I went with the conformers as our stats units because the current 20:1 ratio is not guaranteed. They may do more or fewer analysis runs on a molecule in the future, so a conformer is more likely to remain stable as a production measurement.

Assume several molecules are being looked at in the future, with different ratios. A candidate then has an undefined stats value - a team might produce twice the candidates on the easiest (lowest ratio) molecule.

Add in the variable that they may start going with two candidates (first and second-best) from each batch of conformers, and things get too interesting. Conformers are closer to the hardware. Candidates are listed in our stats as "units" for anyone interested, and most stats are available in unit-terms as well as stats-terms.

[Shaktai]

Originally posted by reader50:
I went with the conformers as our stats units because the current 20:1 ratio is not guaranteed. They may do more or fewer analysis runs on a molecule in the future, so a conformer is more likely to remain stable as a production measurement.

Assume several molecules are being looked at in the future, with different ratios. A candidate then has an undefined stats value - a team might produce twice the candidates on the easiest (lowest ratio) molecule.

Add in the variable that they may start going with two candidates (first and second-best) from each batch of conformers, and things get too interesting. Conformers are closer to the hardware. Candidates are listed in our stats as "units" for anyone interested, and most stats are available in unit-terms as well as stats-terms.

Makes sense to me.

[OneMacGuy]

Originally posted by Scotttheking:
Looks like it's heading back up.

You spoke too soon and jinxed me, a steady downward spiral.....

[mikkyo]

Here are some File Controller Details from my Mac setup..

Crontab file

Code:
@reboot /Users/mikkyo/d2olLauncher

Launcher

Code:
#!/bin/sh
cd /Applications/SengentD2OL.app/Contents/MacOS
/usr/bin/nohup /usr/bin/nice -n -20 ./SengentD2OL controller:file &

For convenience in turning on and off the client via the File Controller method, I have 2 files in /Applications/SengentD2OL.app/Contents/MacOS, one for running with the File Controller and one for stopping it. The key file is Control.prp. I made and onControl.prp and an offControl.prp so I didn't need to bother with editing a line in the active file.
If I am running via the file controller, to properly shut down, one is supposed to set Shutdown to true, so I just copy the offControl.prp to Control.prp and D2OL shuts down a few seconds later. Then I copy the onControl.prp to Control.prp and it is ready to run next time. I'm sure someone could make a perl script to edit the live Control.prp file off or on based on an argument, but I did it this way to play with settings.

onControl.prp looks like

Code:
Shutdown=false
EngineOn=true
DisplayAgentGUI=false

and offControl.prp looks like

Code:
Shutdown=true
EngineOn=true
DisplayAgentGUI=false

Of note is that on a mac, the icon still pops up in the Dock if you don't play with the app's .plist to make it all hidden n stuff.
On linux or windows, I'm pretty sure only the process table will give you any clue it is running.

If you have a mac with a second processor, you need to make the changes to the app's plist for the install location for the app and add a line duplicating the current to the d2olLauncher that changes directory down into your other D2OL location and executes the binary with the same arguments as the first instance.

It would be pretty easy to set up a default, unregistered install of 2 instances ready to go with the supporting files to run via the FileController method and give that out to folks that don't want to deal with the setup.
For users populating a farm, you can even set up your clients, with your user name (email), and stop them, and remove the node.prp so the next time they run they have the user name, but need to generate a new node id. This would enable you to have a ready to go pair of registered but non-id'd set of clients to dump on all your machines, letting you fire them off via the FileController method and have them create new node ids without user interaction.

[Shaktai]

Well D2OL stats (on the project end) have been down since very early Saturday morning (as in before sunrise). We probably won't see a fix before 8 AM eastern time. Good news is that work units are uploading and downloading with no problems. Just the stats display server is off-line. Once it is back, our team stats should update as well.

Won't find out until later, but Saturday should have been a great day for my stats. My Athlon 2400 completed 228 candidates by itself, in a 24 hour period. Apparently it just got luck and scored a lot of easy work units. I'm guessing that I completed well over 400 candidates for the day, about a 30% higher then normal average. Today seems to be doing the opposite, getting lots of large, slow work units.

[mikkyo]

With a hearty dump we seem to be doing ok in 7th today.
Would be good to keep it up, as we are way down in the daily team production rank.

[Shaktai]

Originally posted by mikkyo:
With a hearty dump we seem to be doing ok in 7th today.
Would be good to keep it up, as we are way down in the daily team production rank.

Well, as of right now, we seem to be #9 so far on the day, and #9 for the weekly average. Even with the boxes I have brought back on-line, that is not enough. We need more to hold the #7 spot where we are. We have slowed Free DC's advance by quite a bit, but at the current rate, they will catch us eventually, and behind them is Riva Station.

We still need more power.

EDIT: Looks like I might be able to add a 3.0 ghz P4 to my little farm. If that works out, that will help a some. P4's seem to do okay on D2OL.

[Scotttheking]

Finally got it working in linux CLI.
Never mind.
I'll play with it for a little while, see how stable it is.