DU Folding@Home - Thread #11 - Put your PC to work to fight disease!

[alfredo]

This is the next DU Folding@Home Thread in support of citizen action in support of finding the cure for a wide range of diseases. Please join us as we contribute the power of our computers in the advancement of science and the betterment of all. You can get info from the Folding@Home Homepage, then download the client from the Download Page for Folding@Home.
http://folding.stanford.edu/

To make things easier, you may want to run the client as a service, or on the Mac you can put the client into the login items page. You can learn a lot by referencing the last thread: Thread #10 (see below). You will see that the linked DU page will reference older threads.

One other request: please join the DU Folding@Home team:
DU Folding@Home team #48157

Thank you, and please consider joining us.

The volunteers on the DU Folding@Home team (#48157)


Thread #10
http://journals.democraticunderground.com/alfredo/1


BTW, if you lose track of this thread, look at my signature line below and it will give you links to F@H

Thank you

[Roland99]

1. I was thinking of this of late. Glad to see a new thread on this!

For those of you still wondering what this is all about, Folding@Home is one of many active Distributed Computing projects. DC projects utilize your PC's idle time to process work units for the project. The most famous DC project is probably the SETI@Home project (mentioned in the movie Contact). Folding@Home's purpose is to help scientists determine how proteins fold under various conditions in an effort to help cure diseases (cancer, alzheimer's, etc.) This is a very worthwhile project and one certainly worthy of leaving your PC on 24/7.

Some may be concerned about leaving a PC on 24/7 and the costs involved. A newer PC running a full load will use about the same amount of electricity as two lamps left on 24/7. That is to say, not a lot. Personally, I have a Dell Inspiron 8100 laptop that has been running SETI@Home (and now Folding@Home) 24/7 for over 4 years. I have an HTPC (Home Theater PC) running 24/7 and another (dual-CPU) I keep in my bedroom.

Security-wise, running a DC app (even a non-BOINC app) is very safe. I've not heard of any hacker gaining access to any PC via a corrupted DC app or work unit. Just be sure to download the apps from the site's main page and you should have nothing to worry about.

As for Team DU, we are falling further and further behind the Freepers (who have about 3 times the # of active CPUs running). While this project has much greater benefits of helping humankind, it would also be great to catch up to and pass the Freepers!

There are various clients available at the Folding@Home download page including CLI (Command Line Interface - DOS) and GUI (Graphical User Interface - pretty pictures) for Windows-based PCs, Linux console, and Mac OS X GUI, CLI, and Screensaver clients. Personally, I run the Windows-based CLI as it allows for faster crunching of work units (no graphics displays to slow it down).

All of the apps will only use a PC's idle processing time. I've been doing a boatload of video conversion of 16GB HDTV recordings down to 2GB AVI files (for copies of sports events for some friends) and have not seen any issues with performance with the F@H client running or not.

Below is a screenshot of what the CLI setup process looks like. It only requires input from you to specify your:





User name Enter whatever you want your name to be. This could be your DU screenname, for example. Mine is Conjur, for the name of a company I used to have (and my blog is named after)

Team Number <0> <---- VERY IMPORTANT Enter 48157. That is the DU F@H team number. Any work unit processed will be associated with Team DU. If you leave this blank, any work units will be assigned to a generic non-team.

You can press <Enter> to accept the defaults for the rest of the options but I make a couple of small changes:

Launch automatically at machine startup, installing this as a service (yes/no) <---- Type y and press <Enter>. NOTE: - ONLY select this if you are running Windows 2000, XP, or 2003. Windows 95/98/ME will not install an application as a service. You'll want to put a shortcut to the F@H client in your Startup folder manually.

Change advanced options (yes/no) <---- Type y and press <Enter>

Interval, in minutes, between checkpoints (3-30) <15> <---- Type 5 and press <Enter>
I just use 5 min. so it writes out checkpoints more often in case the PC locks up for some reason it won't have to redo so much work upon restart.

Machine ID (1-8) <---- Type 1 for the 1st instance of F@H on your PC. If you have a PC with multiple CPUs, install a copy of F@H into another folder (such as F@H2, F@H3, etc.) for each additional CPU in your PC. When prompted on those other installations of the F@H client, enter the appropriate Machine ID here.

So, that's it in a nutshell.

But the Freepers are WAY ahead of us

Join the fight against disease and have some (statistical) fun along the way!

Thread #7
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=364&topic_id=299849

Thread #8
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=364&topic_id=396309

Thread #9
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x514640

[alfredo]

5. thank Corporate Mike. He's the one that put the

fire under my ass. We needed one. We also need more CPU's.

I wanted a bit of a delay between the thread 10 and 11, just to give us a chance to kick back. I didn't want anyone burned out on this issue.

thanks for the K&R's

[corporate_mike]

8. You're welcome. I'd really like to see the team continue to grow

and hopefully overtake FREEPers in a few months/years

[alfredo]

9. I hope some new faces here at DU will see this thread.

We were plowing the same furrow over and over again. The pause might expose us to new DU'ers.

[Roland99]

10. I lost another CPU the other day

:(


Down to just two now.

[alfredo]

24. I am hoping for to save up enough dough for a new

machine. I'm looking at a duo core Mac Mini. Going to jack it up to 1gig of RAM. That sucker will crunch like crazy. (compared to what I am using now)

[Caoimhe]

2. K & R!

[ny_liberal]

91. K & R !

[Mabus]

3. Thanks for starting thread #11 alfredo - We're #275

Date of last work unit 2006-05-03 11:14:43
Active CPUs within 50 days 272
Team Id 48157
Grand Score 1532176 (certificate)
Work Unit Count 8743 (certificate)
Team Ranking (incl. aggregate) 275 of 43915

Keep on folding! :woohoo:

[wicket]

4. I just completed my 17th WU, woo hoo!

:D

:kick:

[corporate_mike]

6. Thanks for the new thread.

[Mabus]

7. Thank you corporate_mike!

:loveya:

[ny_liberal]

35. Thanks for the new thread & thanks for keeping the team alive

. . . and growing.

[longship]

11. PSU died on one of my machines.

So now I'm down to four threads running. The one that died was the slowest of the five.

Keep plugging along everybody. This is a very good cause to support.

:woohoo:
I'm up to 224 units and 33,998 points!!!
:woohoo:

[alfredo]

19. You're just a foling machine!!!

[kcass1954]

12. Hey folks, anyone can help with this. I'm running this on my lonely

little 6-year-old Dell. I've got 18 hours of the day when either no one is home, or we're all asleep. My computer's slow, but just keeps plugging right along. I just completed my 8th work unit last night, and moved up in the team standings. (Okay, okay, I'm still firmly entrenched in the 130's, but I'm making progress.)

BTW, should I leave this running while I'm on vacation? I'll be in Europe for 9 days. Mr. kcass will be home with our 10yr-old, but neither of them knows anything about computers.

[corporate_mike]

13. My computer is on 24/7/365

[alfredo]

14. No.

I would unplug too. You can never tell what can happen while you are gone. A lightning strike or spike could take you computer out. It's one thing less to worry about.

[CabalPowered]

15. I think Team DU was in 600th place when I started

Getting below 300 is a fantastic milestone!

[alfredo]

17. We're gunning for under 200.

Spread the word: recruit.

[DFLer4edu]

48. We should also shoot to break 10,000 WUs!

[corporate_mike]

20. We're #273 (with 274 active CPUs)

http://fah-web.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/main.py?qtype=teampage&teamnum=48157

[mia]

16. Great to see a new thread.

My computer is working on it's 4th protein under mia2.

"Slow and steady (helps) win the race" to fight disease.
~The Tortoise and the Hare

[Mabus]

18. I added you to my DU Journal blogroll

so I could keep track of the last folding thread you started. Since you journaled the thread it made it super easy to find. Thanks for starting and journaling this one too.

Don't you love technology?

[alfredo]

52. Thanks

[corporate_mike]

21. DU #273 (with 274 CPUs) - FREEP #115 (1,015 CPUs) -Kos #686 (77 CPUs)

[alfredo]

22. We need to get up above 300 CPU's

[DFLer4edu]

26. Try 1000! The DU has so many members!

The DU is so big, you could get a lot more people going. Even if people choose not to run their computer 24/7 there are still a lot of DU computers that could be doing a lot of good.

[alfredo]

27. I agree. If you want, open a thread in the lounge, then let us know.

we will keep it kicked as best we can. The lounge move very fast.

[DFLer4edu]

28. Just did so, hope you guys can keep it kicked!

[alfredo]

31. Here's a link to the lounge F@H thread

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=105&topic_id=5114549&mesg_id=5114549

Please stop by and help our lounge lizards learn the benefits of helping their fellow man/woman.

[corporate_mike]

32. K&R

[Mabus]

23. Now at 272

Date of last work unit 2006-05-04 15:13:23
Active CPUs within 50 days 274
Team Id 48157
Grand Score 1547082 (certificate)
Work Unit Count 8811 (certificate)
Team Ranking (incl. aggregate) 272 of 43928

edited to add computer code so my sig line didn't scream at people.

[DFLer4edu]

25. I am on board, with a few technical questions

This is extremely cool! We should get more people at the DU to do this! But I do have a few computer questions. How often does the program need access to its server? Simply at the start and end of WU (work unit?) or does it need access after every frame. If I turn off my computer will the thing lose all its data, or does that work to. What should I do to make sure that the program runs as fast as possible?

[CabalPowered]

29. Not much to worry about

The program will make contact with the server when a WU is completed and a new one is requested. If you turn off your computer, the program will pick up on the last frame it was working on, so don't worry about losing data. As far as running fast, that depends on your setup. If you're running a dual core or hyperthreading, there's some tweaks out there but frankly, I wouldn't worry about them. The variable you want to look at when determining the speed of folding is the % of the processor you configured the program to use. Some may not agree but I don't think it's a good idea to run 100% on newer computers or computers that you're also working on. Processors these days run very hot, so if you have a P4 or AMD X2 or something like that, make sure you watch your temps. Happy folding :)

[DFLer4edu]

34. Thanks for the advice (and one more question)

What is a normal temperature for the motherboard? I have software on my computer that measures its temperature, but I can't seem to find what a normal heat is online. All they have is the heat at which the thing will burn out, which is no where near where I wan to be.

[Wrinkle_In_Time]

43. "normal temperature for the motherboard"...

... like everything to do with technology, "it depends". Without knowing what kind of processor and motherboard you have it's hard to be more specific. Could you at least tell us what kind of temperatures you are seeing reported by the software you mentioned?

You shouldn't worry too much about cooking your computer unless you are purposefully overclocking it or providing inadequate cooling. Most recent/decent motherboards have some form of temperature/voltage monitoring on-board which will beep loudly at a certain threshold or shut down if you go too far beyond it.

[DFLer4edu]

45. dell inspiron 6000

I don't think the temperature is really that big of an issue because it is at about 40C if I leave it on all night, but if I just use it without running the folding software it can go up to 46C.

[Roland99]

57. I've had my Dell Inspiron 8100 running a DC app 24/7 for about 5 years now

First I was running SETI@Home and now F@H.

should be ok with those temps.

[corporate_mike]

30. Answers

1.) The program needs to contact Stanford's servers to submit results and get new work units. Other than that you don't need internet access.

2.) Right click on the red cog and select "Configure". You can tweak your setting.

3.) Leave your computer on 24/7

4.) Ask your family/friends to join our team.

[alfredo]

37. If they don't keep their computers on 24/7 show them how to

make it launch at login. That way they don't have to remember to launch the client.

On the Mac, add it to the login items in Stystem preferences/accounts/login items

I guess on Windows you make it a service. Don't know that platform enough to instruct anyone.

[steely]

88. How do you get stats on active CPUs?

And KICK, by the way

[ny_liberal]

33. I'm back and I'm thrilled to see the progress our team made

I was on an assignment overseas for a few months and I'm glad to be home again.

I never would have imagined that we can be a Top 300 team when I started this team.

Excellent work, DU!

[Wrinkle_In_Time]

44. Welcome back and kudos to you too! n/t

[Mabus]

51. Glad to see you back

:hi: We've done our best in your absence. Thank you for starting this.

[DFLer4edu]

36. We now have 276 CPU's!

[Asgaya Dihi]

38. Compared to UD?

How does the Folding program compare to the program run by United Devices? I've got nearly two years of computer time already devoted to the cancer research program there so would hesitate to leave if they are comparable, but if one is better than the other then that's all good.

Any ideas?

[alfredo]

39. I have no idea. I have been involved in several distributed

computing projects. This one seems pretty good from the users standpoint. I don't know anything about the project you are working on so I can't comment on who is better and who is not.

[DFLer4edu]

40. I don't know much about it myself, but

I do know that they are doing research on a number of diseases:
* Alzheimer's Disease
* Cancer
* Huntington's Disease
* Osteogenesis Imperfecta
* Parkinson's Disease
* Ribosome & antibiotics
If you want to more about you should check out their website
http://folding.stanford.edu/
The thing that has attracted me to it is that it is a good cause and that all of their research is made available to any researcher around the world who wishes to see it.

[ny_liberal]

41. This site may help (IBM Deep Blue is folding @ F@H)

http://www.hyper.net/dc-howto.html

[Asgaya Dihi]

42. Thanks

I appreciate it from all that answered, I'll look it over and see how they compare. Mostly I'm concerned with cancer research, so as long as there's a way to concentrate your computer time on a particular project and it looks good I'm happy with it. Runs in my family so it's a personal issue of sorts.

[Mabus]

79. I've lost family & friends to cancer so I understand

I know (and have known) others with less malignant forms of cancer who have had it removed, had treatment and are doing well. I also have two friends who suffer from Parkinson's Disease. A few of my friends have relatives with Alzheimer's Disease. I like knowing that I'm helping out as many people as I can with a variety of diseases. I fully understand your wanting to dedicate your CPU to a cause that you believe in. I wanted to also run the climate prediction program but couldn't get it to run on my computer. I don't what your set up is but if you have dual processor machine you might consider using one processor for your current program and another for folding.

[alfredo]

46. 275 CPU's ranked 271

[DFLer4edu]

47. 277 CPUs ranked 271

[alfredo]

56. 278 CPU's with 270 ranking

[ny_liberal]

49. FREEPland is excessively confident

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1621107/posts?q=1&&page=158#154

Let's rally the troops to show them what we're capable of.

[DFLer4edu]

50. This should get some DUers to join!

Although, I have to say it is sort of a stupid reason to do it.

[corporate_mike]

54. Competition can be good

I have a hard time accepting that we've trown in the towel against the FREEPers

[DFLer4edu]

59. Someone should post: Freepers say DUers are weak on cancer

or something like that. That would sure get people to join up in a hurry.

[Kire]

53. 278

:kick:

[Mabus]

55. That's 278 CPUs - we're now ranked 270

:woohoo:

Date of last work unit 2006-05-09 08:14:01
Active CPUs within 50 days 278
Team Id 48157
Grand Score 1604446 (certificate)
Work Unit Count 9054(certificate)
Team Ranking (incl. aggregate) 270 of 43980

[DFLer4edu]

58. Team ranked 270th with 280 CPU's and I finished my first WU!

[Mabus]

60. Jumped three spots to 267 (283 CPUs)

Date of last work unit 2006-05-10 18:08:58
Active CPUs within 50 days 283
Team Id 48157
Grand Score 1623771 (certificate)
Work Unit Count 9134 (certificate)
Team Ranking (incl. aggregate) 267 of 43993

:applause: :woohoo: :woohoo: :applause:

[DFLer4edu]

61. We just keep moving up!

[alfredo]

62. Kick for the overnighters

[corporate_mike]

63. Thursday morning kick

[corporate_mike]

64. DU #265 (with 281 CPUs) - FREEPers #111 (998 CPUs) - dKos #656 (77 CPUs)

DU stats:
http://fah-web.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/main.py?qtype=teampage&teamnum=48157

FREEPer stats:
http://vspx27.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/main.py?qtype=teampage&teamnum=36120

DailyKos stats:
http://vspx27.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/main.py?qtype=teampage&teamnum=48083

RedState stats:
http://vspx27.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/main.py?qtype=teampage&teamnum=48064

[DFLer4edu]

65. We are still way behind, let's get more people on board!

[ny_liberal]

66. Freaks are losing members, we're gaining (see post #21)

For previous stats

[DFLer4edu]

67. delete

delete

[DFLer4edu]

68. How many people joined this project because of this thread?

I learned about this project from this thread. I'm just wondering because this thread seems to mostly be the same familiar faces.

[Mabus]

69. I joined after ny_liberal first suggested starting a team

back in late December. I've been a proud DU Team member since then. After I had been running it about a month or so I got my husband to sign up. Okay, here's what really happened: I signed him up and then told him later. He tried signing up himself when he saw a thread on it and was happy to find out he was already running it.

As for the same familiar faces - we're a tenacious bunch. Some of us are hooked.

[Dont_Bogart_the_Pretzel]

70. I must say I did

first it was SETI
then EON (U.T.Austin,TX).
now Folding@Home.

I switched to Folding from EON because EON has connectivity(?) problems.

#13_melonhawg_24992_126

I looked at others above me and I doubt I will get in the top nine(9) this year. There are a couple of in-active or single members I'm passing up the ladder.

[alfredo]

71. I started with Seti, the Distributed Folding, then Folding

at home. I also do Climate Prediction

I was with the Macnn team for years before changing teams to DU.

[DFLer4edu]

72. Sorry, I meant this thread, #11

I was trying to see how many people joined up as a result of this specific thread and not previous ones.

[ny_liberal]

73. Other Team Stats sites

Team member stats: http://fahstats.com/t.php?t=48157

Team radar: http://fahstats.com/tr.php?t=48157

EOC stats: http://folding.extremeoverclocking.com/team_summary.php?s=&t=48157

[DFLer4edu]

74. Thanks for the stats! We're in 263rd over at holding@home!

But it looks like there has been a decline in the number of WU cranked out by the DU over the past few months. We need to get more people on board!

[Kire]

75. I'm so close to my firt WU

I can't wait to be able to reboot my computer. Maybe shut it down for a few hours.

[DFLer4edu]

76. Feels good to finish your first one doesn't it!

[Kire]

77. yeah, it's finished now

that's great, I'm on the list.

404 points no less, that's the best score for anyone with 1 WU

[Mabus]

80. Congratulations on finishing your first WU

and welcome to the DU Folding Team. :woohoo:

[Mabus]

78. You can reboot any time you want

I usually reboot on Sunday mornings after a full scan with my antivirus software. On days when I've used a lot of applications that remain residually in the memory I'll reboot. Otherwise, I've found if I reboot the "regular" way I don't lose any work. If, however, I have to do a hard boot because the computer freezes up there's a good chance that I'll lose some of the work. Most often of late the culprit in my computer freeze ups is my scanner. It's an old one. I'm waiting on it to completely die before I get a new one.

[corporate_mike]

81. DU #263 (with 282 CPUs) - FREEPers #110 (990 CPUs) - dKos #649 (77 CPUs)

[corporate_mike]

82. FREEPers team losing CPUs -- they lost 25 CPUs since May 4 (post #21)

The wheels are coming off the FRmobile :)

[DFLer4edu]

83. DU in 262th place

[alfredo]

84. with 282 CPU's

[DFLer4edu]

85. You should write an article about folding@home for the DU

We have kept this thread going for a long time, but it has only resulted in a maximum of 7 new folders. http://fahstats.com/t.php?filter=new&col=2&t=48157&search_text=
The points per week the DU is generating has stayed roughly the same for the past 6 weeks
http://folding.extremeoverclocking.com/team_summary.php?s=&t=48157
You seem to be the person who knows the most about holding@home here at the DU. If you wrote an article about it explaining what it was and why it was important I'm sure skinner would be willing to feature it on the DU homepage for a a day or two. We might even be able to convince him to put a little link to the folding@home website under the Advertise Liberally link. As it is, no one is using the space under that link. Maybe we could contact the people who put out the DU activism alerts and get them to do an alert about folding@home. This is a political site, but there's no reason why it can't make some time for fighting deadly diseases as well.

On edit: Can you please give me the code to link to folding@home download and the folding@home website in my signature?

[alfredo]

86. Thnks. There are others here that could do a much better job

at describing F@H.  

What I can do is give you the code


[center]<h4>[link:folding.stanford.edu/|Download
Folding@Home] -->
[link:vspx27.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/main.py?qtype=teampage&teamnum=48157|then
Join DU Folding@Home Team 48157]</h4>[/center]

[steely]

87. I just plugged in.

Used to do SETI years ago, I see where this is more worthwhile.
Found this thread from yer sticky.
Running in the background now as DU_Steely.
I may be able to fire one up at work too.
I need to read more about this "folding" - the chem stuff needs to be dumbed down for sparkys.

On Edit:

What's it doing to my CPU usage - it's pegged at 100% - doing good work I'm sure, but I rarely have seen it crunch up there.

[Wrinkle_In_Time]

89. Welcome to the team, steely!

alfredo has a link to the Stanford FAH website in his original post: http://folding.stanford.edu/ another good site is http://fahwiki.net/ They both have good FAQ sections (Stanford also has links to other FAQs) that should answer all your questions.

Don't worry about the 100% CPU usage, it's normal. You can limit it if you wish (it's in the FAQ).

:hi:

[DFLer4edu]

90. DU in 260th place

[alfredo]

92. We're up to 259 with 280 CPU's