Help picking a new distributed project?

[TotalHavoc]

I was running Distributed.net's RC5 and lately OGR, but I don't like the direction D.net is moving in. I really would like to do something more productive and useful to the human race than prove encryptions. I was looking at Folding and Genome projects but I have a few stipulations in how it can run. I run the tech support department at a small community college and I have full aproval from the college to run any d.net style projects as long as any money won goes to the school. So with this I was running d.net off of our server. I have it set up so that when clients log into the network the client is run from a shared folder on the network. It is run in 'quiet' mode, so that the user of the computer does not see it. This was done because users tend to freak out when new windows open 'on thier own', that and they tend to close them.

So here is my question, what projects can I run from shared folders on a network where the 'buffers' and client sit so that clients can just run an executable that loads the client from the network and grabs the WUs out of the buffer? I don't want to have to go to every machine and install this client. I need one central place to do the maintance. I also liked the idea of the 'exit.now' file of dnet, this way I could kill all the clients running if I needed to.

<--Havoc--{{{

 

[Confused]

I can tell you exactly how Seti@home can be set up like this

If all the machines are running Win2k/XP, then you can run a program made by Shuxclams and bot2600 called the FlexInstaller. You run this on one machine, and it will install Seti as a service (aka hidden, and runs all the time, even when the user isn't logged on) on all networked machines.

You can also then run a SetiQueue on the server, which the clients can connect to, which is a store of work units. SetiQueue can then be set to connect to the internet to fetch/flush WUs when the internet is least in use (say at night).

Confused

 

[TotalHavoc]

The problem with that is we don't have all NT based clients... We still have 9x machines too... Also all of our labs have various forms of security that keep software from being installed permanately without disabling the security and installing the software. I'd hate to have to go to all the labs and disable the security just to run it...

Like I said before everything is run from the server. The executable is loaded from the server to the client and the client looks for the WU in the buffer file on that share.

I'm trying to keep from having to:

1 go around and disable the security
2 have installs floating around on all the computers.

right now if I want to kill dnet all I have to do is

1 put exit.now file in the shared folder
2 delete the folder
3 remove the line out of the login script that calls dnetc.exe

<--Havoc--{{{

 

[Confused]

I suppose you could still have the clients connecting over the network to get the data, it's just that it'll be a little bit slower than having all the stuff on the individual computers

As for how you could get it to run hidden without having it running as a service, i suppose you could have a look at SetiHide. However i have no experience with this program.

Then you can have each computer with its own personal cache on the server, which it pulls from as/when needed. However this would be something we'd have to investigate into.

For the Win98 machines, the FlexInstaller wouldn't work anyway, but if you can get to the machines directly (maybe its only a few of them?) and do those few manually. The FlexInstaller itself will install on machines as having Admin access, maybe installing it as Admin will bypass the privacy/security settings...?

Again, something that will have to be investigated into


Confused

 

[JWMiddleton]

Originally posted by: TotalHavoc

So here is my question, what projects can I run from shared folders on a network where the 'buffers' and client sit so that clients can just run an executable that loads the client from the network and grabs the WUs out of the buffer? I don't want to have to go to every machine and install this client. I need one central place to do the maintance. I also liked the idea of the 'exit.now' file of dnet, this way I could kill all the clients running if I needed to.

<--Havoc--{{{

As much as people complained about the dnet client it had some nice features! It also helped that the WUs/blocks were very small in size.

Well, you can run SETI from a share, but you would you would need a separate shared folder for each client. Each folder would have the executables and would load WUs as needed from a queue/proxy. If you think this would work then let us know and we can tell you more.