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Resonant n00b
Joined: 10 Jul 2004 Posts: 11 Location: Chesapeake, VA
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Posted: Sat Jan 29, 2005 4:46 am Post subject: Best way to make a folding farm? |
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I want to make a rig for Folding@Home, but I do not know of the best way to go about doing it. I was thinking of SMP, but that was only for multiple processors on a motherboard. Then, I started thinking about maybe doing a cluster. We were planning on purchasing ~3-5 seperate 2 Ghz systems, and linking them with something like LTSP. Does anyone have any advice or past experiences? Is there anyway to do this with Gentoo?
http://folding.stanford.edu/faq.html says:
Quote: | The main aspect to consider is to make sure that the CPUID for each machine is unique. |
Does this mean if I buy three identical systems, the F@H will not work?
Thanks in Advanced. |
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SerfurJ l33t
Joined: 10 Apr 2004 Posts: 824 Location: Texas
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Posted: Sat Jan 29, 2005 5:15 am Post subject: |
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i think this is your answer (further down in that paragraph):
Code: | 3) For a Linux cluster, make sure that if you copy the directory, you DON'T copy the
MachineDependent.dat file. This file will be autogenerated by the client to get a new
ID.
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just out of curiosity.. you're buying these computers to run folding at home? that's great if so, but what's your motivation? |
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Resonant n00b
Joined: 10 Jul 2004 Posts: 11 Location: Chesapeake, VA
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Posted: Sat Jan 29, 2005 2:36 pm Post subject: |
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Great, I feel stupid now for not reading down the paragraph. It was late at night, lol.
I think I'm probably gonna do an openMosix cluster, or something like Overclockix.
Oh, and my motiviation (not sure about my fathers), is that my friend's sister died a few months ago from cancer. I think it would be great to dedicate it to her, or something of the sort. |
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blueSceaDa Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 05 Jan 2005 Posts: 90
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Posted: Sat Jan 29, 2005 2:54 pm Post subject: |
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there is a project like seti@home which helps in finding medicines against cancer...
maybe you want to know that ... you could run in on that cluster then _________________ Athlon XP 2500+ @ ~2100MHz; GeForce FX 5600 256MB; 3x256MB RAM; ASUS A7N8X-X
echo 'LDFLAGS="-Wl,-O1"' >> /etc/make.conf - no problems here |
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Resonant n00b
Joined: 10 Jul 2004 Posts: 11 Location: Chesapeake, VA
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Posted: Sat Jan 29, 2005 3:17 pm Post subject: |
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blueSceaDa wrote: | there is a project like seti@home which helps in finding medicines against cancer...
maybe you want to know that ... you could run in on that cluster then |
Well, the title of the topic says Folding Farm so I guess I would want to use Folding@Home, right? Thanks the advice anyways.
I was looking more into the Gentoo Diskless / openMosix guide, and it says that I must set up a DHCP server on the master node, wouldn't that mean that I'd have to put the amount of network cards into the master node that I have clients? Would it be possible to just use a router then? |
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NeddySeagoon Administrator
Joined: 05 Jul 2003 Posts: 54387 Location: 56N 3W
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Posted: Sat Jan 29, 2005 3:27 pm Post subject: |
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Resonant,
You just use a router. DHCP runs for an interface, not a PC, so it will serve addresses in responce to broadcasts on eth0, say but not eth1. _________________ Regards,
NeddySeagoon
Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail. |
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Resonant n00b
Joined: 10 Jul 2004 Posts: 11 Location: Chesapeake, VA
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Posted: Sat Jan 29, 2005 3:39 pm Post subject: |
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NeddySeagoon wrote: | Resonant,
You just use a router. DHCP runs for an interface, not a PC, so it will serve addresses in responce to broadcasts on eth0, say but not eth1. |
Thanks Neddy, you've been a big help! |
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NeddySeagoon Administrator
Joined: 05 Jul 2003 Posts: 54387 Location: 56N 3W
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Posted: Sat Jan 29, 2005 5:59 pm Post subject: |
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Resonant,
I have a seti@home farm _________________ Regards,
NeddySeagoon
Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail. |
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SerfurJ l33t
Joined: 10 Apr 2004 Posts: 824 Location: Texas
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Posted: Sat Jan 29, 2005 6:58 pm Post subject: |
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NeddySeagoon,
does that use a lot of electricity? |
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NeddySeagoon Administrator
Joined: 05 Jul 2003 Posts: 54387 Location: 56N 3W
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Posted: Sat Jan 29, 2005 7:32 pm Post subject: |
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SerfurJ,
Probably 60-80W per PC. I have 12 boxes, no keyboards, mice, monitors, mostly no video cards, CD-ROMS or floppies. I don't think I could take much more out. Making the boxes diskless would reduce the power further but thats a lot of work.
That costs about 7 pence per hour to run, total or about 1.70 UK Pounds per day.
PC power consumption has stayed fairly constant over the years. _________________ Regards,
NeddySeagoon
Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail. |
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tkdfighter Apprentice
Joined: 14 May 2004 Posts: 271 Location: Bludenz, Austria
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Posted: Sat Jan 29, 2005 10:39 pm Post subject: |
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NeddySeagoon wrote: | Making the boxes diskless would reduce the power further but thats a lot of work. |
Making them diskless would be a bit more work to get it working, but maintance should be easier (at least I think so). |
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NeddySeagoon Administrator
Joined: 05 Jul 2003 Posts: 54387 Location: 56N 3W
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Posted: Sun Jan 30, 2005 10:19 am Post subject: |
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tkdfighter,
The boxes are all different, ranging from a 486 to a P3. They are things I have picked up from family and friends over the years. Its not like they can share a kernel. If I aquire a diskless box at a time when I don't have a spare hdd, I would have a go at a diskless node.
With one disk shared over 12 or so PCs, when it fails, they all stop. That single point failure is a bad idea. _________________ Regards,
NeddySeagoon
Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail. |
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syg00 l33t
Joined: 23 Aug 2004 Posts: 907 Location: Brisbane, AUS
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Posted: Sun Jan 30, 2005 10:50 am Post subject: |
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NeddySeagoon wrote: | I have a seti@home farm.
I have 12 boxes, no keyboards, mice, monitors, ...
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Man, that has to be a "bragging rights" winner at the local pub on a wintry evening |
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tkdfighter Apprentice
Joined: 14 May 2004 Posts: 271 Location: Bludenz, Austria
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Posted: Sun Jan 30, 2005 2:43 pm Post subject: |
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NeddySeagoon, you have a point there. I was thinking of a homogeneous cluster. |
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DntKnwHw n00b
Joined: 14 Aug 2003 Posts: 74 Location: Philippines
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Posted: Mon Jan 31, 2005 2:45 pm Post subject: |
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tried building a diskless cluster of 3, (all netboot) if you want, i will give you the how to's
you need 3, (installing gentoo, installing mosix and installing it diskless,) you can find this all in the gentoo documentations,
took me a lot of trial and error testing to get my cluster working, and if you are having 12 box, a good bet is using a Gigabit and raid,
http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/2004.3/index.xml
http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/openmosix-howto.xml
http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/diskless-howto.xml |
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tkdfighter Apprentice
Joined: 14 May 2004 Posts: 271 Location: Bludenz, Austria
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Posted: Mon Jan 31, 2005 4:03 pm Post subject: |
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I thought about building a openmosix cluster like that once, but I gave it up because I don't have that many computers and because for me (as a student) it's hard to justify spending a lot of money on something I just want to play around with. |
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SerfurJ l33t
Joined: 10 Apr 2004 Posts: 824 Location: Texas
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Posted: Mon Jan 31, 2005 4:34 pm Post subject: |
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i made an openmosix cluster once. i thought it would speed up my computers for everyday use, but i don't use any apps that really take advantage of it. maybe it was because i don't have a gigabit network. |
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blatch n00b
Joined: 15 Oct 2002 Posts: 59 Location: bloomington, in
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Posted: Tue Feb 01, 2005 3:41 am Post subject: |
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I have an openmosix cluster in my dorm room. It gets really hot, and I have to shut it down at night cause it's too loud, but here are the specs: (I'll be folding once I get the bugs worked out)
6x1.2GHz Althon-Tbirds (yes tbirds, not mps)
3GB ram
250GB storage _________________ blatch.net |
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tkdfighter Apprentice
Joined: 14 May 2004 Posts: 271 Location: Bludenz, Austria
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Posted: Tue Feb 01, 2005 3:36 pm Post subject: |
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Nice! What will you be using it for (other than folding)? |
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SerfurJ l33t
Joined: 10 Apr 2004 Posts: 824 Location: Texas
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Posted: Thu Feb 03, 2005 5:32 pm Post subject: |
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NeddySeagoon wrote: | Probably 60-80W per PC. I have 12 boxes, no keyboards, mice, monitors, mostly no video cards, CD-ROMS or floppies. I don't think I could take much more out. Making the boxes diskless would reduce the power further but thats a lot of work.
That costs about 7 pence per hour to run, total or about 1.70 UK Pounds per day.
PC power consumption has stayed fairly constant over the years. |
NeddySeagoon,
is that just a guess or did you measure it? i'd like to find out how much electricity my computers are using. |
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NeddySeagoon Administrator
Joined: 05 Jul 2003 Posts: 54387 Location: 56N 3W
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Posted: Thu Feb 03, 2005 8:17 pm Post subject: |
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SerfurJ,
Its better than a WAG but its an estimate based on reading specificaions for the component parts for some of the PCs.
I'm not keen to measure it until the next power cut.
I suppose I can put a top limit on it by seeing how much power (kwH) I use overnight and divide by the time. Not much else runs overnight. _________________ Regards,
NeddySeagoon
Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail. |
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SerfurJ l33t
Joined: 10 Apr 2004 Posts: 824 Location: Texas
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Posted: Thu Feb 03, 2005 9:44 pm Post subject: |
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NeddySeagoon wrote: | I suppose I can put a top limit on it by seeing how much power (kwH) I use overnight and divide by the time. |
good idea, thanks. i'm going to give that a try. |
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