UDmon Guide - For caching of WU's.

[[XC] riptide]

Caching of WU's. Use preferably with console version.

Download http://udmon.sourceforge.net/

Extract to a preferred folder.

'udmon_fah.bat' is how the program starts. (There is also a 'udmon-wcg.bat' for the old UD WCG client.)

Copy and Paste the Original Installation path to the client. If you opt for the Drop down browser, it'll ONLY filter 'Console.exe' format files... used to work before... not now with the new names.

Below is a picture guide. See if you can follow it. Many other options, but thats personal preference.

[Naja002]

I don't really have time to deal with this atm the moment, but I did want to say: THANK YOU!

And ask 2 questions:

1) Do you know if this works with Vista and/or x64?

2) Not sure what that means exactly:

Copy and Paste the Original Installation path to the client.

[[XC] riptide]

I don't really have time to deal with this atm the moment, but I did want to say: THANK YOU!

And ask 2 questions:

1) Do you know if this works with Vista and/or x64?

2) Not sure what that means exactly:

Check out pic 2! See the Red X? Thats what happens when you go to browse through UDMon for the client .exe. Now see the window at opens... it filters out only Console.exe name types. Meaning that my 'Folding@home-Win32-GPU.exe' won't appear. And since it won't appear I won't be able to select it as a F@H client. You see back when UDmon was put together, there were 'FAH*console.exe' filenames eg. 'FAH5.91beta5-GPU-Console.exe'. There was no problem. But now the naming has changed for the clients.. and UDmon is no longer updated to move with the times.

As for Vista etc... I don't know. I don't use Vista.

[WhiteFireDragon]

sorry for the ignorance, but what exactly will this do? increase performance?

[Naja002]

Cool--Thanx. I will check it out probably tomorrow evening or monday!

It allows us to cache work units. F@H only "stores" 1 WU at a time--the one its working on. This will allow us to store more.....

[[XC] riptide]

sorry for the ignorance, but what exactly will this do? increase performance?

Depends.... IF your connection is not great for uploads, and your client stalls until the upload is finished, (like 10 mins) UDMon is a good way to manage other Clients that you can fire up. ALSO when the F@H server is bust, you always have a few WU's to work on, while every other nOOb is sitting still waiting for the WU server to come back online.

UDmon used to auto swap around the cached WU's witht he older console clients... but I don't think it works now for my GPU clients. But anyone with SMP or CPU clients might jump in here and tell?


( as for this thread and why? there were a few other threads around here where a few guys wanted a guide. The Alien, Marvin said I might help....)

[Naja002]

Ok, I'm at the same road block I was in the other threads.....I deal with this tomorrow or monday!

Vista x64

[[XC] riptide]

Update.... I deleted some Old WU files that was in one of the cached folders... It appears to be auto switching now correctly between the caches. Now what is supposed to happen now is that UDMon runs through all the caches... when the WU's are 100% complete it shutsdown and then moves to the next cache. When All WU's are complete in ALL the caches it sends ALL results and Fills up all the caches, and the whole process is repeated. Of course you can select to have all the caches send back WU's after they all complete... but that takes time.


EDIT: Ok. I'm going to confirm this again. Confirmed! Autoswitching works fine for me now!

[Marvin_The_Martian]

The Alien, Marvin said I might help....

Wasn't he right

Though, maybe, knowing my stance, explicitly mentioning caching wu's is not advertised as a viable option by Stanford because of the way the assignement servers work. But, with servers going down allot, and people with conjested lines having to wait so long to upload work, I atleast, can't keep telling people not to cache wu's.

Now my opinion is just my own, though yes I am very vocal about it. Maybe I'm just waiting for people to respond to my statements, I wouldn't mind having an 'official' team policy about these kind of things. Maybe I am wrong there, I been told on other occasions some teams are just made out off various people who don't feel any connection other then putting in the same numbers as others when asked for a team account. But I always seen XS as something else, maybe more from the other dc teams though then Folding at Home right up untill recently. Now, I am starting to sence a much stronger community feeling in this team and I'm loving it

But, in some sences I feel we're a big ocean liner who set forth for the new world only to have lost it's rudder midway there. We're making way by steering with the props, but we're swaying from left to right somewhat. That's not always a bad thing, you do get to see more from the world that way. But it's not always the quickest way.

.02c

I have a technical question as well, if UDmon is able to up/down whole caches of wu's, is it possible to set the times for that? If you have to fill the whole cache before it get's send, isn't there a big risk to loose some of the wu's which we're done first if you can't alter the triggers on when to submit the whole cache?

[[XC] riptide]

You can 'send all' It'll look for all the completed WU's in the cache and start communicating to the server. It isn't possible to set times etc. And I'll say this again, the only point at which it becomes a problem is if you are stupid with it, and it doesn't get to finish WU's in time. ie too many Cached WU's.. not enough power/time to complete within deadlines.

EDIT: I dug up the log when I just tried it.... on a WU completed a few hours ago... When I hit 'send all' in the menu

Launch directory: C:\Program Files\Folding@Home\Folding@home-gpu
Executable: C:\Program Files\Folding@Home\Folding@home-gpu\Folding@home-Win32-GPU.exe
Arguments: -local -send all 

[10:50:53] - Ask before connecting: No
[10:50:53] - User name: XSriptide (Team 36362)
[10:50:53] - User ID: 400FD0D85681F5D1
[10:50:53] - Machine ID: 3
[10:50:53] 
[10:50:53] Loaded queue successfully.
[10:50:53] Attempting to return result(s) to server...
[10:50:53] Project: 5506 (Run 3, Clone 110, Gen 23)

[Marvin_The_Martian]

If you have a 3rd party tool in which you can set those times, you can call Udmon with certain flags and have it submit them? Just thinking, if it is that easy, I will try and make it totally 'Idiot proof' or atleast as much as can be.

[Naja002]

Well, geewhiz, I THINK I've got it running in Vista x64 ......now I just have to try to remember what I did in order to share it!

[[XC] riptide]

Cool. Hurry up and show us!

[Naja002]

Well, its reading the log for my current WU. I've added 2 new slots, change to "any type" in slot config, but I cannot seem to get it to fill the 2 slots. I did send/receive (more than once), wait like it says, yada, yada, yada. Do I need to wait for some reason for WU 1 to complete in order for it to send/receive and fill the new slots?

Here's a screenshot:



The "Switching Slots" was me, not auto....

[[XC] riptide]

Send/Receive ... When it gets the new WU in, you can just press 'next' on the little popup window, and it'll go to the next slot and DL WU.

[Naja002]

Ok, so how long should I expect to wait for it to actually DL the new WU (Say for slot 2)? I cannot tell from the little PC icons (next to the clock) that there is any communication. I'm just wondering whether there is a firewall or any other issue. I have it set to localhost, 8080, etc as You've shown above.

Maybe I'm just being impatient, but I hate waiting for nothing! Not sure if there's an issue or not. Not sure exactly how this all operates.......

[[XC] riptide]

Becasue it says WU from 11/08 [ID=2} in the list of caches. Hey. BTW are you using Console or Systray? Or WTF are you using?

[Naja002]

GPU2=6.20, Build 8-01-08

IIRC, we all agreed it was a systray.....

[[XC] riptide]

GPU2=6.20, Build 8-01-08

IIRC, we all agreed it was a systray.....

Oh right. Well I've since moved over to console for less Lag in XP and more. Also UDmon works for systray, but is not as compatible. I bet it will not auto switch either. It still can used observe and manage, start and stop, and you cna use to to check each WU's work slots aswell by right clicking the cache list and hitting 'Queue info' You'll have to check the logs of the systray instances to see is it actually sending/receiving to the server. I would guess that using UDmon to send/receive may not work with systray. I know I had some difficulty, but didn't care at the time, as i manually loaded up the caches, by just firing up all the instances at once.

[Naja002]

Ok, well, I checked the GPU2 logfile and it does not show any attempts to send/receive, so maybe it will fill the caches when this WU is done.

In Vista this stuff is in the "Roaming" folder: C:\username\AppData\Roaming\....

There are cache folders in F@H in Roaming, so maybe it will sort itself out....



I'll just have to wait and see when this WU is completed.....

[[XC] riptide]

Well... either switch to Console, or you'll have to manually laod up all the caches. And you may manually have to swtich them. They will work perfectly as a normal GPU client, but your caches would remain untouched if left.

[Loony]

LOL, nevermind...