The 12th Annual Folding@Home Holiday Season Race

[crashtech]

Indeed! Let's hear it for petrusbroder! Hip Hip...

HOORAY!!!!!!!!

 

[HutchinsonJC]

6.6 Billion Points...

So we'll beat that next year, right?

 

[IEC]

6.6 Billion Points...

So we'll beat that next year, right?

Count on it!

 

[Orange Kid]

Count on it!

Gonna have to do it in one month. Don't know if I can retain attention for two again.

 

[Kiska]

Thanks prtrusbroder for the stats during the race.

@Kiska, 30 cents per KWH?! I don't suppose you can afford to buy a solar power system?

I got an appraisal for a solar system, 3 installers said that my house is covered with too much shade from my neighbours. So no solar system for me

 

[zzuupp]

Thanks for all the stats. I'll finish this WU and then off to the TourDePrimes.

 

[Talifan9]

6.6 Billion Points...

So we'll beat that next year, right?

Perhaps next year

 

[petrusbroder]

Well, December 1 2018 is only 330 days away; so you all better start to plan your upgrade strategies ... we need to think, adjust our daily budgets to save money for new hardware if we want to beat 6.6 B points in one month ... I myself have been given a GTX1080 (thanks StfanR5R!), have purchased a GTX980 and have been donated a GTX980 (Thanks Mark!). That will increase my F@JH production from approx. 200K/day to approx. 1.9M/day ... a 9-fold improvement. Not too shabby. OTOH: I plan for more ... when the prices for GPUs drop a bit to more normal levels.

To be sincere, I am quite relieved for not having to do daily stats for the next 10 months or so. OTOH: this race has been a lot of fun, inspiration and very lively posting. I've enjoyed it a lot!

 

[biodoc]

Thanks for all the hard work Petrusbroder!

 

[ao_ika_red]

Am I late to the party? Oh well...
Congrats TeAm! We defeated Brony the Pony by a significant number (217.5M is almost 100 times more than what I could produce in last 2 months ).

Excuse me for a lengthy post. Here we go.

This is my first team v team battle with TeAm AnandTech and it was a rollercoaster ride. We managed to build sizeable gap from our competitor since early December but server at temple.edu said "I don't think so" and decided to drop huge, in what FB runners used to say "bunker", and flipped the leaderboard upside down. And then the panic rush was building in our TeAm. But thankfully we got helping hands from Evga folks ( @HK-Steve , @yodap , Punchy , and others. Thanks a lot guys!) and levelled things out.

After Evga people left us in early January, there was some uncertainty about how things would fold out. I also remember that some of us decided to share their weapons to make sure that no resources were wasted. And guess what, even though we had some nail biting moment at early January, The Ponies looked losing their endurance in mid-January and since then the stats was favouring us. And here we are, winning by a good measure.

Personally, I want to offer this joyous moment to our member who is also the greatest Folding@Home contributor in our TeAm, Mark_F_Williams. @Markfw , I hope our win will be translated to your win against the cancer that you've battled for some time.

And also I would like to say thank you, first and foremost to our stat keeper / stat master @petrusbroder who tirelessly kept the numbers up to date even when he was not in the comfort of his home. Thank you also to all of TeAm members who had fought together day in, day out for the last two months. Your contribution to our TeAm and science won't be forgotten.

Spoiler: Credits to All TeAm Contributors (taken directly from EOC active member list per Feb 2nd, 2018 and petrus' intra team list)

Mark_F_Williams
Pokey_TA
theAnimal
xii5ku
10esseetony
crashtech
mike9o
Weiser
biodoc
vsteel
FoldingSolutions
HutchinsonJC
Spungo
IEC
Ron_Michener
OrangeKid
Cmaxx
TAS-petrusbroder
Bullseye
geecee
HK-Steve
salvorhardin
Ken_g6
sk560
Bri79
LANMANTA
VirtualLarry
XJ_[AB]
Mike_F
TA_Smoke
deninc66
Hefner
StefanLenz
Desslok
DainBramaged
slowbones
ensignlee
Athlex
[TA]Assimilator1
Monsieur_Kirby
Usandthem
AndersSwede
JohnnyBT
jkresh
bak688
Greg_Allbee
mondrasek
sduguid
Sheckmonster
ChasR
sixgoodreasons
TiO2
ch1gz
zzuupp
mmaresko
HappyCracker
rrunswickjr
GSmith
underthefloor
Spung
Marcellius_Ika_Permadi
Karsten_Silz
Greg
Viperoni
Danielley86
loststar1087
alandrums
mustache143
T0Y69
alexiseurope
JooJoo
indydude345
iwajabitw
Kiska
tyft86
GLeeM
Brownstone

It was an honour to fight The Ponies with you all. Thank you so much and see you in another challenge that TeAm involves in.

 

[hiigaran]

I'm going to say it once again, because I don't think it can be said enough. Thank you once again everyone. It was a fun ride. I only hope we can do this again to see just how much we can each beat our own records.

I'm finally relieved to be able to take my systems offline and do my upgrades. Hopefully with it, I'll be able to expand my Linux guide and make it easier and/or more effective for everyone who wishes to use it as well. On that note, I recall someone was going to develop a guide here as well. I'd be happy to collaborate.

@Kiska, 30 cents per KWH?! I don't suppose you can afford to buy a solar power system?

$20k for some solar panels, $5k for AGM batteries, inverters and charging controllers, and $1 or $2k for house renovations to create a battery bank room. I'd say it's a worthwhile investment. I've always wanted to live as off-grid as possible, and that's one of my priorities for when I finally save up the cash to build my own house.

Great effort everyone. :beer::beer: on me.

I'll do one better for you guys. I'm in the aviation industry, so if anyone lives in a city flown to my Emirates, I'll buy you all drinks!

 

[Markfw]

I'm going to say it once again, because I don't think it can be said enough. Thank you once again everyone. It was a fun ride. I only hope we can do this again to see just how much we can each beat our own records.

I'm finally relieved to be able to take my systems offline and do my upgrades. Hopefully with it, I'll be able to expand my Linux guide and make it easier and/or more effective for everyone who wishes to use it as well. On that note, I recall someone was going to develop a guide here as well. I'd be happy to collaborate.



$20k for some solar panels, $5k for AGM batteries, inverters and charging controllers, and $1 or $2k for house renovations to create a battery bank room. I'd say it's a worthwhile investment. I've always wanted to live as off-grid as possible, and that's one of my priorities for when I finally save up the cash to build my own house.



I'll do one better for you guys. I'm in the aviation industry, so if anyone lives in a city flown to my Emirates, I'll buy you all drinks!

I did, and here it is below:

First, disable secure boot. The easiest way I found was to delete the keys in key management.

Next, after booting with a linux mint USB or CD, install it. Use an empty disk, or one you don't care if its wiped clean.

Then open a terminal window and do the below commands

wget http://launchpadlibrarian.net/109052632/python-support_1.0.15_all.deb

sudo dpkg -i python-support_1.0.15_all.deb

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:graphics-drivers/ppa

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

sudo apt-get install nvidia-387 (or if it appears on the linix home page drivers list, you can do it from there.

sudo apt-get install nvidia-opencl-icd-387

sudo apt-get install libcuda1-387

sudo apt-get -y install python-gnome2 mesa-common-dev freeglut3-dev nvidia-settings gedit

Install fah client and console using these links:
Folding at home client (background service)  https://folding.stanford.edu/releases/public/release/fahclient/debian-testing-64bit/v7.4/fahclient_7.4.4_amd64.deb
Folding at home control panel (user interface) https://folding.stanford.edu/releases/public/release/fahcontrol/debian-testing-64bit/v7.4/fahcontrol_7.4.4-1_all.deb

cd /var/lib/fahclient

sudo wget http://fah-web.stanford.edu/file-releases/public/GPUs.txt

Then fire up fahcontrol and add the GPU client(will show under education in the menu), and maybe also the remote access by adding ,192.168.1.1-192.168.1.255 to the two IP places

sudo service FAHClient stop
sudo service FAHClient start
---I stop here now after having the blank screen problems: ----------
sudo nvidia-xconfig -a --cool-bits=28 --allow-empty-initial-configuration

cd ~

gedit fancontrols

and add and then save (for 2 video cards)

nvidia-settings -a [gpu:0]/GPUFanControlState=1
nvidia-settings -a [fan:0]/GPUTargetFanSpeed=100
nvidia-settings -a [gpu:1]/GPUFanControlState=1
nvidia-settings -a [fan:1]/GPUTargetFanSpeed=100

 

[hiigaran]

I'm actually having trouble following my own guide with my reinstallation! It's odd. Problem seems to stem from installing nvidia-*driver*. After a reboot, I get past GRUB, to the spash screen for Mint, and then a blank screen. Ctrl + Alt + F1 doesn't work, so all I can do is Alt + SysRq + B/hard restart.

What I don't understand is why this happens. I tried doing a clean install, then adding the driver ppa, apt update, apt upgrade, reboot, apt install nvidia-*driver*, reboot.

At the moment, I'm editing /etc/default/grub, changing the line GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash" to just GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="nomodeset".

The worst part is that I have to run back and forth between my computers, plugging my only keyboard into each whenever I want to switch between them!

Anyway, while my rig is doing its thing, I noticed you have nvidia-opencl-icd-387 and libcuda1-387 as packages in your guide, which I lack. Any idea what they're for?

EDIT: Right, so the last message I see before the screen goes blank after disabling quiet splash is: [OK] Started Light Display Manager

I'm...not sure what to do with that information.

 

[crashtech]

@hiigaran , I omitted "--allow-empty-initial-configuration" from my install since it seemed to cause some people problems.

 

[hiigaran]

I've noticed that as well. Seems to crash Cinnamon and force it into fallback mode.

 

[Markfw]

@hiigaran , Notice my comment ? about I stop here after having problems ? And I use the driver install from the mint menu, NOT the command line one.

 

[hiigaran]

Tried the menu as well as the command line. Both give the same results.

I've been at this for so long now that I've only just realised that I had skipped two meals. Lost count of how many times I've reinstalled, too.

Someone suggested trying Debian. I'll probably give that a go, though if I recall, I tried that about half a year ago and never made it past installing some python packages which were apparently 'uninstallable', as per the error message.

 

[Ken g6]

I have always installed the Nvidia driver manually. The tough part is getting rid of the Nouveau driver. Once that's done I stop the window manager, sudo run the Nvidia installer, and then restart the window manager.

 

[hiigaran]

Is it a requirement to remove that driver? Though I've tried using the .run file from Nvidia, I don't know if any additional action is required (though considering I've got issues, that's probably a yes!), however I'm sure I read somewhere that Nouveau is automatically blacklisted when installing via the ppa.

Either way, what's the process for removing it? I'll probably try it tomorrow or something. I've got a StackExchange question outlining what I've tried so far over here if anyone wants to see what's been done so far. So much time wasted, I swear!

 

[biodoc]

For blacklisting nouveau and other drivers:

sudo nano /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf then append the following to the end of the file and save.

blacklist vga16fb
blacklist nouveau
blacklist rivafb
blacklist nvidiafb
blacklist rivatv

then to apply these changes:

sudo update-initramfs -u

 

[hiigaran]

Righty, did that. Currently running Ubuntu Server this time around. Disabled the drivers, installed required packages for the 390 .run file directly from Nvidia, and installed fahclient. Going the route of pure command line this time. Copied my config.xml from the working system into /etc/fahclient and the xorg.conf into /etc/X11. Now, two things I'm stuck on:

1: After installing fahclient, I set up my name, team and passkey, set usage to full, and autostart to yes. Shortly after completing the setup, it freezes. Restarted in recovery mode, removed fahclient, and reinstalled with light usage and no autostart, then copied config.xml as mentioned above (I did not do this to begin with. Planned to replace it after setup). I'm going to leave this issue alone for now, because even if I get it to work, I need the fan control script running above all else.

2: Attempting to change any nvidia-setting paramater such as "nvidia-settings -a [gpu:0]/GPUFanControlState=1" results in:

Unable to init server: Could not connect: Connection refused
ERROR: The control display is undefined; please run 'nvidia-settings --help' for usage information

Now I know that each GPU requires an instance of X running for nvidia-settings to work. I haven't set anything up, so this is definitely the cause, as can be seen by nvidia-smi, where no X process is visible in the processes list. What I don't know is how to actually get X set up for such usage. I recall this is why I never originally ran headless folding rigs.

 

[crashtech]

Maybe a dummy HDMI plug would help? I keep a bunch of those around for headless rigs.

 

[hiigaran]

It doesn't have to do with that. nvidia-settings commands work on my other rig which boots with no monitors connected. smi reports each card on the other rig to be running an instance for fahcore and xorg. It works because it was installed with a desktop environment, so the most likely issue is that either I'm missing some package(s), or the packages need to be set up/started.

 

[biodoc]

So you want to fold on GPUs in a headless system. I'm not sure that's possible.

 

[biodoc]

It doesn't have to do with that. nvidia-settings commands work on my other rig which boots with no monitors connected. smi reports each card on the other rig to be running an instance for fahcore and xorg. It works because it was installed with a desktop environment, so the most likely issue is that either I'm missing some package(s), or the packages need to be set up/started.

maybe sudo apt install xorg would be a place to start.