Lost WU..

edited April 2004 in Folding@Home
Hello,

After completing 25% of my first WU I decided I will try and set the FahCore_65.exe at a higher priority...and before that I deleted the items in these 2 folders:

C:\Documents and Settings\myname\Local Settings\Temp
C:\Documents and Settings\myname\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files

and set the process priority to realtime.

My PC crashed...hard reboot

but now I am back at the beginning of my first WU it shows 0/400 snif snif?

Help?

The unfolder

Comments

  • NecropolisNecropolis Hawarden, Wales Icrontian
    edited April 2004
    Leave the priority of the WU to idle or low, otherwise it will take all resources away from your machine not just remaining CPU power. As for the lost WU, there is nothing you can do about that, just let is carry on.
  • edited April 2004
    Hehe ok...next time I will wait til completing the full WU before posting in the Notable Milestone forum...

    He Watches Everything!!

    Peace,

    requin
  • mmonninmmonnin Centreville, VA
    edited April 2004
    Yeah put something that uses all your spare CPU cycles to REALTIME meaning nothing else will be allowed to get to the CPU. Low or idle is enough.;)
  • Straight_ManStraight_Man Geeky, in my own way Naples, FL Icrontian
    edited April 2004
    requin wrote:
    Hello,

    After completing 25% of my first WU I decided I will try and set the FahCore_65.exe at a higher priority...and before that I deleted the items in these 2 folders:

    C:\Documents and Settings\myname\Local Settings\Temp
    C:\Documents and Settings\myname\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files

    and set the process priority to realtime.

    My PC crashed...hard reboot

    but now I am back at the beginning of my first WU it shows 0/400 snif snif?

    Help?

    The unfolder


    Let me tell you a short story-- real one.

    I use Linux and Windows to fold. On seperate boxes. Linux box is a P4 Northwood box running at about 3.5 GHz. XP box is a Barton running at 2096-2097 MHz. Both run stably at default priority.

    I had, at one time, the P4 box running XP, with a Willamette P4 in it, a 1.8 GHz P4. Different motherboard. I decided to do what you did, but in this case I managed not to get a hard reboot, rather I found myself with a dedicated folding only box. IE took 15 minutes to paint its Window border and then open a blank page. It took 5 minutes real time to get the command console to paint. Folding was blazing.

    What did I do??? I forced the client priority to a figure that left it as a primary service for XP. Just to see what would happen. This was an older client, and the code let me do this. Folding took over the box, almost totally. I could not get msconfig to spawn. I could not get Task manager to spawn. I could not get the client shut down.

    I reported this to folding. I explained precisely how I had to kill the client to save a bunch of work that I HAD to have on the box. Reloading XP was NOT an option.

    Folding came out with Client 4 after some recoding and some intermediate releases. Client 4 will not let itself be run in a mode that takes over XP's basic priorities. It will abend first. That is what happened to you and me, but in my case I had a runaway process. That, and things like that, is why the client is now safetied. Oh, the client also could not turn in anything-- it completed the WU, but could not get more WUs as it had a higher priority than the modem drivers and networking services had. It ate all of XP's CPU time slices share that XP needs to run its basic services and its kernel.

    Also, changes were made in XP with SP1a and parts of SP2 being released. The XP kernel now can kill and detect runaway processes. fi you starve XP, it can kill things like a folding client that is keeping it from doing its basic services things. That is what happened to your WU. Or, depedning on service pack level of XP, the client suicided when XP malfed. I suspect the second because of the hard reboot.

    At default priority, 97% of idle time slices, the P4 Northwood box gens about 120 points a day on average unless it gets Tinkers-- then the pointage drops to about 70 points a day. The Barton box is cranking
    out about 70 points a day unless it gets Tinker, than the daily dips to about 42-45 points a day.

    When I cranked the priority up with the older 3.24 folding graphical client, it took over 3.5 hands-on hours to stop the thing and I lost about 10 hours of work because when I finally deprioritized the client and killed it it had not saved a .cp file to tell itself what had been accomplished. The part that calced had grabbed so high a priority that the part that saved .cp files from time to time could not save. And, since I had to force it to die, it did not save a .cp file when it exited, either.

    Lesson is, never hyper-prioritize your client, ESPECIALLY the graphical one. The new client will not become a runaway process, but it will not allow itself to accept a priority that is too high either. NOR will current XP with security packs. AND, in Linux, the client simply refuses to accept more a than a certain amount of resources. Linux wants to give client and core more resources than the client or cores will accept.

    The console client will not take more than a certain percentage of overall resources, EITHER. This is one of the aspects I have been playing with here, to see what extreme things do to the client. And Vijay has been told about some of the things I have found, with requests to pass them on wihtin the admin team at Stanford and client dev as needed. THEY figured out how to get this kind of thing prevented, so folks could fold and use boxes. most folks do not have dedicated farms of just folders that never also get used for other things-- Folding was designed to live on spare time in boxes.

    How fast is your box??? If it is about 3 GHz CPU true speed and folds fine with normal priority, try two clients at normal priority, one a service (console client) and one a graphical, or two consoles(this last involves lots of fine details ALL being rightly configured at once, would learn how to run one graphical and one console FIRST). At that CPU speed, they will outproduce one client enough to make the try worth doing.

    John D.
  • edited April 2004
    I would definitely recommend letting it sit at idle. The only reason you'd want to bump it up to low is if you're running another distributed computing project like united devices or seti that had theirs set on low rather than on idle. You do not want to set it normal or above because you're regular apps like Word or Internet Explorer would be very slow. None of your regular everydays apps need the cpu priority to be set to realtime. If you set regular apps to realtime you're only asking for headaches. But, on the other hand, this is how you learn the in's and out's of computers and F@H. In the learning process you're going to break some things, delete some files on accident, do things to cause your computer to crash. We've all been there and have learned from experiences like this. Now don't do it again :wink:

    KingFish
  • edited April 2004
    OK...lesson learned...I fold on my office laptop which I let run 24h/7 execpt a few reboots here and there.
    Its a small pentIII 850mghz cpu with 256mg of ram.
    I will not do it on my home PC which pretty much up to date cause I dedicated it to Flight simulator and don't want anything to run on it until I buy a new rig sometime in the fall.

    With my laptop to fold faster should I run a the graphical client and the consol client? or should I stick with only the graphical one?

    requin
  • edcentricedcentric near Milwaukee, Wisconsin Icrontian
    edited April 2004
    When my box running Win98 crashes I loose work. When my W2k boxes crash I don't. Now my 98 box is also running an old client version, but this pattern has existed for quite a while.
    If do any work on my 98 box I shut F@H down first.
  • mmonninmmonnin Centreville, VA
    edited April 2004
    On ME I would lose work if I wouldnt shut it down correctly but 2k and XP are fine.
Sign In or Register to comment.