Folding@Home Weekly Team News - 10th February 2006

Wahey, 7th in the top dumpers list and a spiffy 120k tiffy pour moi

Not a bad week for me, could have been better though due to traveling and laptop being not on for long periods.

Got off to a good start for ths week as shown below (stats from EOC)


1 WU for 852 points Wish I had access to my machines to see the PPD on these big WUs.

Thanks once again for the news Rich, a job well done - is anyone doing anything regarding the benchmark project or is it on the back burner at the moment?

BTI:
Are you intending to include how-tos for FAHMon and EMIII etc. in your delicious looking guide?

Stan

PS: Welcome to the fold new guys - have fun.

Welcome back to the list dio


Billy: Just had a read of the tweaks section, the only thing I can see is that it might be a good idea to add where to find the option to turn off fast user switching
apart from that it all looks great

@BTI

I've made a jpg of the logo so that the background matches properly in IE, so if ya change the extension to jpg, it'll bring up the newer logo.

A few suggestions for the new faq:

-I think that making a shortcut for f@h config is unecessary for most users, perhaps move this to a different section, to make the 'setup' section as short as possible.
-I also think the reg editing is unecessary for most users, this should be underneath the 'running f@h' section.
-For the majority of users to get f@h running, they should only have to read 'getting started' section, the 'setup' section for single or dual, and then the 'running f@h' section. The rest should be below these sections.
-I think the faq should be clearly divided into a basic section for casual users and an advanced section for the rest, so we can link to it when persuading userd to run f@h, and they won't be overwhelmed.

Just a few thoughts...
Other than that, its coming along very nicely indeed.

The Quick and Easy Folding at Home guide

Heres a little guide i wrote as a really simple and short f@h guide. I hope i'm not undermining BTI's effort with the advanced faq, but i think some users will feel put off by the advanced nature of it. Users who need the advanced stuff can spend then some time reading the proper faq. I'd like to have something like this at the top of the new faq, followed by BTI's complete advanced faq.


Version 11. Incremented with each edit.

:Logo Here:

*The Quick and Easy Folding@Home guide*
+The Complete Advanced Folding@Home guide+

Link opens entire thread and moves to correct post, rather than just opening post




New post:


The Quick and Easy Folding@Home guide:

-What is Folding@Home?
Folding@home is a scientific study using idle cpu time on thousands of pc's to investigate proteins when they misfold, one of the causes of many diseases.


-What do I do to help?
You can help medical reaserch and help your forum’s folding@home team by running folding@home on your pc.
If you are a casual user who wants a quick and easy setup, continue with this guide.
If you have a little more time and patience, please follow the advanced faq instead.


-Downloading Folding@Home:
Click here to download the folding@home CLI client (v5.04) for windows.
For other clients/info, see the advanced FAQ


-Setting up Folding@Home:
Put the downloaded client into a folding@home folder, and then click on it to open the command line config window. Now do the following:
* User name: enter a username, pick one that no other OcUK folder has chosen
* Team number: 10
* Launch automatically at machine startup, installing this as a service: yes
* Ask before fetching/sending: no
* Use Internet Explorer settings: yes/no. yes if you have a proxy, else no
* Use Proxy: yes/no as above
* Allow receipt of work assignments and return of work results greater than 5MB in size (such work units may have large memory demands): If you use the machine for things other than F@H and have less than 256MB RAM no, else yes because these units get far better points
* Change advanced options: no


-Running Folding@Home:
Folding@home will now run invisibly at machine startup.
If you need to stop it running, press ctrl-alt-del and end the ‘F@H_core…’ process.
You can monitor progress by downloading FahMon


-Folding at Home Stats & Team Competiton:
Folding at home stats page
EOC stats page here (better)
Ocuk Team 10 EOC Stats
Ocuk Team 10 EOC Stats Users List


-‘The worlds finest team™’ Ocuk Folding@Home Team 10 Thanks you for your contribution, and for giving something back to the forums. Please enjoy your stay, and if theres anything we can help you with, please post here.


-The Ocuk Folding@Home complete advanced guide

-Official Folding@Home website

that's a very nice little compact guide - like you say too much information can scare a lot of people off

having written the previous HowTo I know how hard it can be to cater for everyone, in my case I chose to go the "complete idiot" route as that's my personal preference for instructions. I like the way you've done it though - it should work well with what Billy has already done

I like that, Joe.

This is quite an unusual forum because half its users tend to stay in the technical/hardware forums, and the other half aren't as interested in PCs but come for the community in GD or Motors etc. With Joe's and Rich's idiot-proof guides and Billy's complicated one we can appeal to both groups... nice work

Thanks for the compliments.
When BTI's faq is finished, we will put his and mine together in a new thread to become the new f@h sticky, and tidy it all up.
In the meantime i might edit the quick and easy faq a bit and see if i can improve it.

I like brevity of your work Joe. The only thing I'd change is to turn on -advmethods in the advanced settings. I would definitely like to integrate it in the sticky thread. How do you think I should proceed? It occurs to me that it should the the first guide posted. However, I'd like to encourage people to read and understand the in-depth guide because better understanding of the process tends to generate more enthusiasm for the project. The whole purpose of the re-write was to take some of the mystery and uncertainty out of the procedure, especially the registry edits necessary for optimization of the Windows client.

*shrugs*

I guess it could go at the end as well. I could put a link to it in size 7 type saying something like "Short on time? Read Joe42's quick'n'easy setup guide"

The current plan for the guide is for me to finish it then start a new thread and repost the guides in the intended order.

Sounds good to me. As you say, readers shpuld be encouraged to read your proper faq, however there will be some people who will take one look and say 'nahh can't be bothered with all that', and my faq is for those people who probably wouldn't otherwise fold.

However, i must ammend my faq to ensure it integrates well with yours.

I think rich should start the new thread, as he's the team leader, and pust a lot of effort into the team, so his name should go first. He can post the logo and links to the two guides as i've described above in my faq.
Then i will post my faq, then Billy can post his advanced faq.

Edit: Woot! Just got a 723 pointer on the opty!

Well we should just see what Rich wants to do. I'm sure he'll discover this thread at some point.

Oh, almost forgot, I'm nearly done with it. Give me an hour or two to finish what this machine's doing then I'll reboot into Linux and take the screenies for that guide. Cheers.

BillytheImpaler said:

Well we should just see what Rich wants to do. I'm sure he'll discover this thread at some point.

Click to expand...

You don't get out of it that easily
It's your guide so you decide how you want to do it - either that or we can put it to some sort of poll

Personally I can see the real benefit of having a nice quick guide to start the thread off with - then once people have got going and are hooked on the project they can read further on.

There's also a good argument for keeping the two guides seperate and linking the two with a link for the short guide at the top of the long guide to catch those with really short attention spans and links to the long guide where needed in the short guide (as Joe has already done) - however as we're limited to one sticky for the folding team the only way that would really work is if Joe's guide is put at the end of the advanced guide

So errr..... you'll have to work it out
Either way they will complement each other excellently so I don't think it matters too much which way it's done just as long as people are made aware that both exist

Fell short of a few points this week due to some tweaking around I was doing? I seem to be avaraging arouf 1500 points a week on my dual core. Is this about right? I'm puzzled still as to how some of you are crunching more?


Whislt in writing, please clarify what the "number of processors" on the stats screen means, as some of you have about 4 upwards. Does this mean some of you are running "a farm" of machines?

Mr Huddy said:

Whislt in writing, please clarify what the "number of processors" on the stats screen means, as some of you have about 4 upwards. Does this mean some of you are running "a farm" of machines?

Click to expand...

Yes.
Most of us i think just put it on friends or family pc's and accumilate a number of pc's that way.

If BTI could put a link to my guide in his first post, i'll post it at the bottom of the thread. Also, you should edit your posts and untick the 'show signature' option, its neater that way.

Edit: I'm stomping
And i'm cruching 1240 points.

stupid question, can you run folding on a standalone pc? i.e. download projects to a pc with internet connection, save them to a disk and run them on another pc, then save the results or something.

Yes indeed it is possible, Mr. Huddy

http://fahwiki.net/index.php/Sneakernetting