Ion's WCG Essentials Thread

[Chicken Patty]

Yep, sounds about right to me as well.

 

[scaminatrix]

Fantastic, I've registered with WCG under Team TPU!, I'll chuck the dongle in Benny (my AMD rig) and download the client and start tonight (it's 7 p.m. here)

 

[[Ion]]

Awesome!

What's 'Cassy' going to be? And do you have access to any other systems that could crunch?

 

[Chicken Patty]

Heck yeah let it rip!!!!!!!

 

[scaminatrix]

Cassy's going to be my Son's rig; Cassy's named after my late Auntie, and Benny's named after my late Grandad.
I've only got a dongle, which brings another question; can you crunch while disconnected from the net?

EDIT: Yup, seems you can

 

[Chicken Patty]

As long as you have downloaded WU's not an issue. That's why we like to set the work buffer to "2" days. If the server goes down you have about two days of work to crunch before sitting idle.

 

[[Ion]]

Yep, just as CP said, as long as there are WUs downloaded, you can. So just set a decent cache (~2-4 days) and then make sure you can get it internet access before it runs completely dry

 

[scaminatrix]

I can only crunch about 8 hours a day so for now I've left it at 1 day
What would you guys recommend as a good, free stability tester for crunching (maybe add it to the OP, too)?

 

[[Ion]]

TBH? I just crunch to test stability

But LinX or Prime95 are also good if you want to do some pre-crunching testing....from what I've found, unstable systems just tend to lock up or reboot, and not harm the WUs in progress

 

[scaminatrix]

TBH? I just crunch to test stability

But LinX or Prime95 are also good if you want to do some pre-crunching testing....from what I've found, unstable systems just tend to lock up or reboot, and not harm the WUs in progress

Sweet, I'll just crack on with the crunching then

 

[[Ion]]

Sounds good...when I pushed my i7 too far, it would just reboot for no apparent reason, that was a clue to me to back off the clocks a bit

 

[Chicken Patty]

I let WCG tell me my stability, however prime 95 tells you rather quickly.

 

[VulkanBros]

Where do you get this:??

 

[[Ion]]

See this

 

[twilyth]

To see your host stats in Free-DC, boinc stats, etc., your hosts have to be exposed. To do this

1. Log in to WCG

2. go to the bottom of this page

3. check the box where it says 'show hosts'

4. click save

From there, you can view your host stats from most of the stats sites.

For boinc stats:

1. go to your personal stats page

2. find the entry labeled 'Number of hosts (active hosts)'

3. click on the second number in parenthesis. The first number will show you every host you have ever registered.

It works the same way for the team page but you will only see exposed hosts. Even though there is no way to identify the user from this information, you can only see stats for hosts where the user has chosen to expose them.

I think all of the boinc stats sites give you access to this info, you just have to know to look for it.

 

[[Ion]]

Good knowledge there

 

[Chicken Patty]

Good stuff

 

[[Ion]]

Yep, I'll add it to the OP once I'm on a device with copy/paste support

 

[twilyth]

Here is a sneaky way to limit the activity of WCG programs while you're on the computer. I have to do this with the CEP2 jobs because they are such pigs, and they still slow things down at times.

In the third preferences tab, if you set "Use at most x% when computer is in use" to a very low number, like 5%, it will have the effect of throttling jobs that are running.

You can do something similar with Process Lasso, but the problem there is that throttling is 24/7 and not just while the machine is in use. Also, for the CEP2 jobs I've found that even on the lowest setting, it really chokes these programs which is n/g for your ppd.

 

[[Ion]]

Really? I've never had that issue. And I'm sure that if it was doing that on the school computers I'd get a lot of shit about it.

Wouldn't you want to say "Use at most ~80% when computer is in use"? Wouldn't "Use at most 5% while computer is in use" almost effectively suspend computation while in use?

 

[twilyth]

Really? I've never had that issue. And I'm sure that if it was doing that on the school computers I'd get a lot of shit about it.

Wouldn't you want to say "Use at most ~80% when computer is in use"? Wouldn't "Use at most 5% while computer is in use" almost effectively suspend computation while in use?

That was the plan. Otherwise I have to suspend completely. It goes back to 100 after 5 min. though. I don't know why I have such an issue. I've got 8gig but it still hits the pagefile like a rented mule. Even with process lasso, I continuously get short freeze ups. Maybe it's possessed.

 

[[Ion]]

Ahhh. What OS? I've done not quite 2,000 CEP2 WUs with no issues....well, non confined to CEP2 in particular. I had issues in general w/ T400 w/ only 2GB, but that was across all projects.

Can you not set it to like 50% or 80% or something? Or does that still slow things up..?

 

[twilyth]

Ahhh. What OS? I've done not quite 2,000 CEP2 WUs with no issues....well, non confined to CEP2 in particular. I had issues in general w/ T400 w/ only 2GB, but that was across all projects.

Can you not set it to like 50% or 80% or something? Or does that still slow things up..?

I did try that and no. The only way to make it tolerable was to put it so low that half the jobs were waiting for memory and even then I had problems. Most of the time I have to snooze it anyway.

I'm running W7-64 with a 120gig SSD and 8 gig of DDR3-1600, cas 9.

 

[[Ion]]

That's very bizarre. My main setup (that presumably I would notice issues on the soonest) has a 2.8ghz C2D, at the time 2GB of DDR3-1066, and a 160gb WD HDD.

I'm going to have to see if I can replicate this, now I'm curious.

 

[twilyth]

I don't know. It's one of my 2 main rigs so I have a lot of apps open with at least 2 or firefox windows and a dozen or more tabs in each. Plus, FF leaks and can run up to 1.3gig before it freezes completely so I'm always restarting it. But give it a shot. I'm not screwing with it any more since I have at least 3 rigs that are dedicated. If I don't make as many points but also can avoid pulling my hair out, it's all good.