Clusters

[Ploaf]

I was just wondering if anyone is running or has tried to run fah on a Linux cluster or something similar, ie diskless booting. The current client is not multithreaded and Linux is a bit slower, but I thought it would be possible since the new client is supposed to be multithreaded and Intel just released a new FORTRAN compiler for Linux that should speed up the client. This way an efficient folding rig could be created for much less $$ since you would only really need an all-in-one mb, proc, psu, ram and networking hardware and it would be scalable without needing extra hd's and the hassle of messing with several different independent systems. I was looking at Mosix as a way to do this. It also occurred to me that if the new client is multhreaded then a cluster could be created with some of the older, currently unusable, equipment such as 75Mhz Pentiums that are lying around just dying to be used for something. I was going to try something like this, with newer processors though, but wanted to toss it out there to see if anyone else had an opinion or experience doing it.

[sfa ok]

I downloaded the beta client, and the server that receives wu's was down. A nice feature of the 2.0 client is when this happens, it saves the wu, and downloads a new one to fold while the server is down.

[Ploaf]

Originally posted by Would71
How did you get the beta client?

They have it available at the beta site.

Neither the site nor the client are completely ready yet, but it's looking better every day. BTW do we have a team number yet?

[sfa ok]

I downloaded the beta from the official message board, I forgot what message it was in, though. I would post it here, but I have the feeling that may be a bad idea? For some reason each wu was taking me 30 seconds, so I went back to regular folding.

[Ploaf]

Now that I think about it you may still have to contact them first before you can dl the new client to everyone from dl'ing it while they are testing it out. Then they send out an email to let you know where to get it or something. I never joined the beta group. BTW. Those times are probably about right. They wanted the wu's to be returned very quickly to increase the server load for testing which is probably why they went so fast.