DU Folding@Home - Use your PC to help cure disease!

[Roland99]

This is the next thread for the DU Folding@Home team. The FreeRepublic team is still pulling ahead of us. They have about 3 times the CPUs we have. And we've lost some CPUs over the last couple of months. Team DU needs YOUR help!

For those of you 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.

DU's current statistics are:

Date of last work unit 2006-06-28 03:15:02
Active CPUs within 50 days 274
Team Id 48157
Grand Score 2206423 (certificate)
Work Unit Count 12239 (certificate)
Team Ranking (incl. aggregate) 230 of 44459
Home Page http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/
Fast Teampage URL http://fah-web.stanford.edu/teamstats/team48157.html

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

[mom cat]

1. K&R for all those who are sick or who might be someday!

:bounce:

[Imalittleteapot]

2. Folding now. kick.

[hobbit709]

3. I've been at it a month now

If I had space here for more computers I would.

Date of last work unit 2006-06-27 21:18:07
Total score 19672
Overall rank (if points are combined) 48225 of 557922
Active processors (within 50 days) 4
Active processors (within 7 days) 4

Donator Hobbit709
Team Democratic Underground (48157)
Score 19672 (certificate)
Donator Rank 48225 of 557922
WU 129 (certificate)
Date of last
work unit 2006-06-27 21:18:07
Active processors
(within 50 days) 4
Active processors
(within 7 days) 4

[Roland99]

5. Get some shelving.

:D

[hobbit709]

6. I wish it was that easy

We have a 1000 sq ft house. My wife has taken over about 900 of that with her "dust collectors". There isn't a square foot of wall space in the house that doesn't already have a shelf or something hanging on the wall- she's even started clutttering up her shrink's office with dust collectors. The only room I have is my computer room in half the garage. If I put more computers in, I'd lose my work-bench space- I need that to try to earn a living.

[Roland99]

7. Well, what's more important...work, wife, or PCs?!

::hide:

[Wrinkle_In_Time]

26. You are just screaming up the charts

You currently rank 5th in average points per 24 hours for the DU team. Way to go!

I can hear the patter of hobbit feet rapidly approaching... B-)

(kick & rec)

[hobbit709]

31. Well it helps

if you can run 4 processors, the slowest is 1.5 GHz.

[Anarcho-Socialist]

4. The Freepers are helping scientists??

:crazy: Now I've heard everything.

I'm surprised that they're not praying to 'Evil Jeebus' from the ST mirror universe.

[Mabus]

21. Shhh, they don't know what they're doing

They don't know they are helping to create chimeras that Bush warned them about in his SOTU earlier this year. ;)

They think they are helping to do research to help their two favorite icons, Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter. They think they are helping Rush with his impotency and Ann with her Adam's Apple.

:rofl:

[mcscajun]

8. Kickin' for the day shift and the cube rats.

C'mon, DUers!

MORE CPUs!!!

[Roland99]

9. Thanks for the helpful kick! Come on, DU! Put your PCs to a good use!

Crunch cures while posting rants and opinions. :D

[CabalPowered]

10. Update on foldmenow

I had to shut down the farm as I was using the electrical outlet that runs my office AC in the summer. I'm hoping to move the farm down into the basement soon but I'm not sure I have adequate power down there.

[Roland99]

11. My dad and I installed a new breaker and outlet in my basement back when..

I was in business for myself and had a good dozen PCs running.

[CabalPowered]

13. I was drawing just over 9 amps with the six PCs running

That's without the monitor on and with a small switch running. The circuit I was using was only one that didn't have any load. Most of the other circuits were close to full load when I last checked. There were a few that only had a few amps of load and I'm hoping it's one of those circuits that runs into the basement.

[Roland99]

15. And having them in the basement will help keep them cool

:)

[CabalPowered]

16. Yea that shouldn't be a problem..

I had them in the warehouse over the winter. Ambient temp in there was 40-50 F most of the winter. :)

[Imperialism Inc.]

12. I do BOINC

it has a couple folding projects and other projects as well (including 2 global warming related projects) that all share my processors.

[iconoclastNYC]

14. K&R

[Darkhawk32]

17. Kick! n/t

[Mabus]

18. I've been crunching a monster WU

for a while. It is a monster for my old machine. It should finish up today and I'll be back as "active" on the list.

[Roland99]

19. Woo hoo!

[Mabus]

20. Thanks for the encouragement

It has been crunching for more than a week now, so my status looks inactive on some of the stats but I'm still here. On the bright side I had 114 days to complete the project but my old machine will have dispensed with it in a little over a week.

Every time I see a DU folding thread it reminds that others are still participating in this project. :loveya: Every CPU brings us closer to cures.

[Roland99]

22. I added another CPU to my mix. I'm back up to 3 now.

Still have one more to add but it's a LOUD one. I need to buy some replacement fans before I fire it up at home (dual processor - AMD 1800)

[emcguffie]

23. Welll, I've been sick a long time, so I'll do this--

-- if my fairly old computer can handlel it. It's about 5 years old. Will that be okay? Can anyone answer that?

It's running Windows XP.

[Roland99]

24. I'm running on a 5 year-old laptop (PIII-M)

If you're able to run XP, you'll be fine. :)

[Mabus]

25. Our two old computers are working on folding

My computer is about 5 years old and my husband's is 6. I'm running XP, he's still using 98SE. Both computers have been cranking out WUs for months. You shouldn't have any problems.

[haydukelives]

27. folding for a while now

But I have a question.
I just moved my computer and the time was wiped out. The clock started at January 1, 2002.
I reset the time and date, but that really confused the folding display.
Now it looks like it is working, but at the bottom of the display it says
"could not connect to work server"
is this going to be a problem?

[Roland99]

29. Not sure if this link will help....

http://forum.folding-community.org/viewtopic.php?t=14807&


You may have to remove that Work Unit and start up w/a new one.

[Roland99]

28. Dang! The Freepers are about 4x more per day production than DU

Let's get Folding!!


We need MORE! MORE! MORE!

:D

[Anarcho-Socialist]

30. OK I'm giving this a go...

...and kicking it (and nominating) at the same time! :kick:

[Roland99]

32. .

:woohoo:

[Roland99]

33. Congrats to pauliedangerously for breaking the 100,000 point level!!

:woohoo:

[Mabus]

34. Yes. Congratulations!

:patriot:

[Roland99]

35. Kick for the Graveyard shifters...

[Roland99]

36. Morning kick

[Anarcho-Socialist]

37. a big kick

:kick:

[Roland99]

38. Kick for more Folders!

[alfredo]

39. 272 CPU's ranked at 229 Keep on folding! Join. It is easy,

and will not hurt your computer.

[Roland99]

40. Ack! That means we lost two.

:(

[alfredo]

41. Let's hit the different health related groups to see if

we can get them interested.

[Roland99]

42. Good idear!

[alfredo]

43. I've posted over at the

Chronic health forum. It was a general get active post but I did put in a word for our group and other forms of distributed computing. It wasn't just pushing our team, it was how I feel about dealing with my chronic pain.

[Roland99]

44. Many thanks, alfredo!

[alfredo]

45. No big thing. I just lined up a bunch of

zeros and ones.

[Mabus]

47. Or, like me, they are working on some big ones

and I won't show up on the radar again until next week. I got another big one, not as big as the last one, but one that won't be completed until next week.

[Roland99]

46. Fri. afternoon kick!

[Viva_La_Revolution]

48. kick!

for my old slow machine...

[alfredo]

49. kick

[alfredo]

50. Just finished a WU. I noticed we need more folders.

[kiahzero]

51. Half of my desktop is being used for this right now

I'd give more, but it can't handle being at 100% all time time. :shrug: