Newbie question

TeksTeks Metro Manila, Philippines
edited January 2010 in Folding@Home
Hello everyone! Please pardon my ignorance, how do I sign up for this folding thingy? :confused:

Thanks a lot!

Comments

  • BlackHawkBlackHawk Bible music connoisseur There's no place like 127.0.0.1 Icrontian
    edited January 2010
    Here's a guide.
  • TeksTeks Metro Manila, Philippines
    edited January 2010
    Okidoki... Done and done... :D

    Uhmmm... I'm sure there was a link to that guide in the Prospective Team Member Guide... :D I realized that after I sent my question out and now, I feel so noobie-like... Next time, I'll search first...

    Thanks a lot for the help!
  • LeonardoLeonardo Wake up and smell the glaciers Eagle River, Alaska Icrontian
    edited January 2010
    Welcome to the team, Teks! :)
  • TeksTeks Metro Manila, Philippines
    edited January 2010
    Leonardo wrote:
    Welcome to the team, Teks! :)


    Thank you! I'll try to "fold" as much as I can since I leave my PC running 24/7 anyway... :D
  • LeonardoLeonardo Wake up and smell the glaciers Eagle River, Alaska Icrontian
    edited January 2010
    Don't be so quiet, Teks.

    Any progress? Let us know. :)
  • TeksTeks Metro Manila, Philippines
    edited January 2010
    Leonardo wrote:
    Don't be so quiet, Teks.

    Any progress? Let us know. :)

    Uhmmmm... Actually, I have no idea what I'm doing but whatever it is, I think it's doing what it's supposed to do...

    I'm at around 40% completion of the job (whatever it is). My user stats score is still zero though. What's the best indication that I'm doing fine? And what's the mass of something that looks like molecules or something that comes up when I click on "Display"?

    Sorry for the numerous questions. I'm really kinda in the dark about a lot of things here... :)

    Thanks!
  • _k_k P-Town, Texas Icrontian
    edited January 2010
    Usually the best indication besides Stanford or another reporting service saying you have points is your CPU or GPU being at 100% usage or close to it. Or if you have are monitoring temperatures in your computer they should show an increased temperature.

    The Display shows a rendering of "the" protein you are modeling with your work unit, if the model is spinning and there are numbers changing on the screen thats another indication things are working correctly.

    There is also a program called HFM.NET that will tell you progress of your current work, this is our thread about it with links to download. To set the program up to monitor your folding client you just need to add a client, give it a name(doesn't matter what you call it), and give it the directory of the work folder for the program. I think you will find it in the folder for f@h in your programs directory.

    If you have any more questions or problems let us know, and we are happy to answer your questions or if nothing else point you where to find them.
  • TeksTeks Metro Manila, Philippines
    edited January 2010
    The model is spinning, so I guess it's running fine. I can't really give the program a whole lot of CPU power since the PC is also doing other CPU intensive stuff most of the time, but I give it as much CPU resources as I can (around 50%).

    Anyway, I guess I'll just wait until the job at hand gets done. It's around halfway now...

    Thanks!
  • SnarkasmSnarkasm Madison, WI Icrontian
    edited January 2010
    If you set it to 100%, the program is designed to only take spare CPU cycles - i.e. it would let your other processes use whatever they needed, and only takes what is available. Trust me - Folding@Home's CPU client will never make your computer less responsive doing the other things you want to do.
  • TeksTeks Metro Manila, Philippines
    edited January 2010
    Oh, ok. I'll try that...

    Thanks!
  • _k_k P-Town, Texas Icrontian
    edited January 2010
    AAACCCCCTTTTTUUUUUUAAAAAALLLLLLYYYYYY it becomes an issue if you try and run a SMP client on 2 gigs and software you are running is eating more than a gig you can pick up some stutter. The only time I have seen this is when playing Left4Dead and Need for Speed: Pro Street, the load times for programs like Dreamweaver and Fireworks gets longer as well.

    If you have 4gigs of memory there shouldn't be any problems with anything....excluding some special circumstances...ya.
  • TeksTeks Metro Manila, Philippines
    edited January 2010
    Hmmm... I'll just tweak it a bit until I got the best balance... BTW, how come it seems to be using only one of my CPU's cores? Or at least that's what Task Manager shows me...

    I installed the systray version...
  • SnarkasmSnarkasm Madison, WI Icrontian
    edited January 2010
    You may need to add the -smp flag to the arguments. If you run it with -configonly again, towards the end of the prompts it asks you if you want to add any arguments; you can add -smp there and it will run it in Symmetric Multi-Processor mode (using multiple threads/cores).

    Or if you have a shortcut pointing to the program that you run to start it, you can add -smp to the shortcut target as well, I believe.
  • _k_k P-Town, Texas Icrontian
    edited January 2010
    So then you installed a folding client from this page?
  • TeksTeks Metro Manila, Philippines
    edited January 2010
    _k_ wrote:
    So then you installed a folding client from this page?


    Yup, that's where I got it... Should I have gotten the console client instead of the systray version?
  • TeksTeks Metro Manila, Philippines
    edited January 2010
    Snarkasm wrote:
    You may need to add the -smp flag to the arguments. If you run it with -configonly again, towards the end of the prompts it asks you if you want to add any arguments; you can add -smp there and it will run it in Symmetric Multi-Processor mode (using multiple threads/cores).

    Or if you have a shortcut pointing to the program that you run to start it, you can add -smp to the shortcut target as well, I believe.

    I can't modify the "Target" field in the shortcut's properties. The field's greyed out...

    If it makes any difference, I'm running on Windows 7 RC...
  • SnarkasmSnarkasm Madison, WI Icrontian
    edited January 2010
    That would only have applied if you'd downloaded the SMP version, actually (under the High Performance Clients page). I'll let k walk you through the rest - he's got it under control. :)
  • TeksTeks Metro Manila, Philippines
    edited January 2010
    OK. Sorry for being such a nuisance with all these questions and stuff...
  • _k_k P-Town, Texas Icrontian
    edited January 2010
    Well I am the boss:cool2:. Alright, if you have more than one core you need to use this page. These are considered the high performance clients and they hide them, to find them from the main download page you have to scroll all the way down.

    The first pink background section download the very last client 6.29 beta for MPICH(32-bit and 64-bit), this is a console client and if you don't want it sitting around on your desktop you can use TrayIt to place it in the system tray. Go ahead and download the Drop-in-binary for the windows client SMP as well, I do not think you need this any more.

    Uninstall the old folding client and make sure the directory that it was installed in was deleted. Now install the SMP client from the file you just downloaded, the first thing. Follow all the prompts and instructions from herebut set it up with your username and team number 93, thats us. Launch the program after you finish the install and you should get a console window that starts printing junk out and stuff, it will tell you if it can not download cores or work units.

    This is not extremely detailed and I have not installed a SMP client in about 6 months but I think they updated the .msi installer with the current binary .exe, which was the second thing you installed. If you launch the program after install and all it does it blip on the screen and then disappear you need to find the directory in Programs for folding and replace the binary in that folder with the one you downloaded.

    Also if you try and monitor the SMP client with a program like FahMon or HFM.NET the work folder for SMP will be in USER\*username*\roaming\Folding-whatever; I think but I will double check this when I get home.

    This all might seem a little complicated or contrived but if you read the instructions at least once before starting when you finish going through the install process you should realize its relatively simple to do.
  • TeksTeks Metro Manila, Philippines
    edited January 2010
    Should I change anything in the Advanced Options section or should I just keep the defaults?

    I'm in the " -configonly -smp" thingy already...
  • _k_k P-Town, Texas Icrontian
    edited January 2010
    you can tell it to install as a service in there so it turns on at boot-up but you can always change those settings later or do the same thing using flags on the desktop icon.
  • TeksTeks Metro Manila, Philippines
    edited January 2010
    Ok, I think it's going now. It said 2 cores detected, s I guess it's running fine. I'll just leave it overnight (it's a bit past midnight here in the Philippines right now) and check on its progress in the morning. I'll let you know what happened right away...

    Thank you for your help.
  • _k_k P-Town, Texas Icrontian
    edited January 2010
    C:\Users\kk\AppData\Roaming\Folding@home-gpu
    That is the directory of my GPU and my SMP clients, they are all in the roaming folder for win7.

    Teks since seem to be settled in with your profile why not say hello to the folding team and to the whole forums. Tell us a little about yourself, why you are here, or whatever you want. Its not a requirement to say hello but we appreciate it here at Icrontic so you get to be more than an avatar on the forum boards. We play video games as a group too if you have anything that interest you plus the fact you are a bar owner gets you major cred with this group...they like to drink
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