Scheduled Folding.

BoomAM

BoomAM

BoomAM

Soldato
Joined
5 Jul 2003
Posts
16,206
Location
Atlanta, USA
Hi.

Im pondering the idea of setting up FAH up at work in the early hours of the morning, but i was wondering how easy it would be schedule it so it stopped/started processing at certain times.

Ideally i'd like:
- Centralised management of all the clients.
- Create my own 'team'
- Also have mine and other PS3s in on the same team.

Thoughts, suggestions & ideas?
 
This is only for PS3 folding?

All you can do AFAIK is set it to shutdown after the work unit is finished or after a certain amount of time. http://folding.stanford.edu/English/FAQ-PS3#ntoc20

You can create your own team here: http://fah-web.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/createteam.pl
Although why you would not want to be part of team 10 and help us rise up the charts of history is beyond me :D

You can't have sub-teams using the default points system, although there may be other external stats sites that have the ability to create those.
 
Biffa said:
This is only for PS3 folding?

All you can do AFAIK is set it to shutdown after the work unit is finished or after a certain amount of time. http://folding.stanford.edu/English/FAQ-PS3#ntoc20

You can create your own team here: http://fah-web.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/createteam.pl
Although why you would not want to be part of team 10 and help us rise up the charts of history is beyond me :D

You can't have sub-teams using the default points system, although there may be other external stats sites that have the ability to create those.
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Its not the PS3 i want to schedule.
Its the 44 processors at work that currently spend the early hours of the morning doing sweet FA. :p.
Thats what i want to schedule, those systems running at say 1am-6am after the backup jobs are done. With me being able to 'manage' them all remotely through a common interface.
If it can be scheduled, and can be easyily managed from a central source, i'd then be looking at expanding this to the 300 odd workstations as well....
Making about 350-400ish processors crunching numbers. :D.
 
The uniprocessor client will run as a service - not too sure about the SMP client (it will run i think, but its not supported officially as a service. This may have changed!). I dont know if that makes it easier to manage - i dont think there is a centralised management system, but if all you had to do was start and stop the process on each machine, i imagine you could find a program (or have a program) that could do this? It would require installation on each machine and then a run through the config to set up the client as a service (you could do the config for one then copy+paste to all machines though). No idea how difficult this would be to achieve.

And Biffa's right - Team 10 is the only way...!

EDIT: I guess you could use the windows task sheculer to start and stop the service at certain times of the day, which would make the hardest part of the process the installation of all the clients!
 
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If i can roll up the uni-processor client, with settings, into a MSI file, i can deploy it to the entire network in under an hour.
Then, thinking about it, asuming it doesnt mess up where its upto in the work units, i could use GPOs to schedule a service start and stop at specific times of the day.
Then a another custom MSI for the SMP capable machines.

Hmm.
I'll try setting up a uni processor client in a VM tomorrow, get it all configured, then create a MSI from it, see how it handles being deployed like that.
Then i can configure the scheduled stuff when that bits done.

I take it if i configure a client on its own, then effectivly copy the configuration, that there wont be problems? Or does each client need its own computer ID? Can it be set to just take the host systems netbios/dns name?
 
Happy said:
Give this man some assistance people :D
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If i can get working properly and without adverse affects on the network during normal network usage times/maintenance times, then i can create a proof of concept report, and possibly, just possibly, put this proposal to other NMs on 2-3 other sites of equal or greater size.
Best case we'd be looking at, asuming the other NMs are interested, about 1500-2000 processors processing FAH work units through the night! :eek::D:p
 
sounds good!

the only thing i would say

install the files
run using the -configonly flag
enter all your settings
then role it up to msi

runnign it under the -configonly flag this once will mean the correct config files are formed, but the client wont download a WU. which means when you copy the files to each pc, they'll each fetch their own WU rather than all initially doing the one that was downloaded by the first client.

Also given the up-time, want of a service, and relative slow-ness of most of the workstations cpus, it would be best to run the uniprocessor client as the WUs have deadlines of over 20days iirc
 
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A few things to think about.

1. Agree on the uniprocessor client, easier to manage, and less stress on the machines.
2. Not sure how you would configure the msi to install as a service, when I used push out Seti to large numbers I rolled my own from a modified source.
3. You don't need to schedule every machine to stop the service you can schedule one machine (one that you know will be on all the time) to stop all the services on all the other machines.
4. I know this might be teaching your mother to suck eggs, and I know some ppl are happy to boldly go where others fear for their jobs. But.. please, please check with whoever owns the equipment you plan to use. Its all good fun and has scientific merit but its not worth losing your job over.
 
Biffa said:
A few things to think about.

1. Agree on the uniprocessor client, easier to manage, and less stress on the machines.
2. Not sure how you would configure the msi to install as a service, when I used push out Seti to large numbers I rolled my own from a modified source.
3. You don't need to schedule every machine to stop the service you can schedule one machine (one that you know will be on all the time) to stop all the services on all the other machines.
Click to expand...
MSI for the program.
Startup script to do the service install.
GPOs to schedule.

4. I know this might be teaching your mother to suck eggs, and I know some ppl are happy to boldly go where others fear for their jobs. But.. please, please check with whoever owns the equipment you plan to use. Its all good fun and has scientific merit but its not worth losing your job over.
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Valid point, however its not a problem.:)
 
BoomAM, just to point out that although your intentions are good are you cool with dealing with a few of these work machines going down due to actually doing some proper work! :p

I sneaked a few folding clients into work machines using the service install option but sadly two of the four went pop after about a month! and one of them was the MD's playboy office quad that does **** all except surfing and MS excel, couldn't resist heh! :o
 
Big.Wayne said:
BoomAM, just to point out that although your intentions are good are you cool with dealing with a few of these work machines going down due to actually doing some proper work! :p

I sneaked a few folding clients into work machines using the service install option but sadly two of the four went pop after about a month! and one of them was the MD's playboy office quad that does **** all except surfing and MS excel, couldn't resist heh! :o
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Lol.
A good 75% of our machines are still within their warrenties by a good way, any HW failures wont be a problem. ;)
Gotta love 3 year NBD. :p.
 
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