[Merged] Team Seti & distributed computing

[tkiely]

whoa, the command line version rocks!

Joined the team now (seti name tdkuk) so will get on with adding some of the firms muscly boxes to the effort

[TheBlueRaja]

Originally Posted by SMHarman

Do you then uninstall (or select another) screensaver?

Yes, uninstall your seti graphical interface, and install this instead in the same directory - this may acually make things easier as you current work unit and user settings should still be available for the command line version to use.

It dosent work as a screen saver any more - it will work as a normal program.

Also guys if i missed anything with the procedure - can you post here so that i can tidy it up?

Might push for this to be put towards the front of the thread if you think its worthwhile.

There is another version i have used which forces the program to run as a service in the background too.

[greencreeper]

Originally Posted by theblueraja

Also guys if i missed anything with the procedure - can you post here so that i can tidy it up?

Good stuff

When you first install you need to give the SETI client your email address, so the setup for SETI driver is slightly different - cache size 1 and untick "hide processing" (otherwise you can't enter your email address). After that you can configure SETI driver as you suggest.

I've found that on boot SETI driver asks me for the location of the SETI client - maybe I'm doing something wrong but I'd expect it to remember the location of the client.

Not sure what difference ticking the "SETI Spy" option does in SETI driver makes - I suspect you're only meant to tick one of the options??

I vary the client priority depending on what I'm doing - most of the time it runs normal.

[TheBlueRaja]

Originally Posted by greencreeper

Good stuff

I've found that on boot SETI driver asks me for the location of the SETI client - maybe I'm doing something wrong but I'd expect it to remember the location of the client.

From the Official help.

SETI Driver will attempt to locate a SETI CLI program in the same directory as SETI Driver (setiathome.exe). If it cannot, or there are multiple choices, you will get a dialog box requesting you select the command line client you wish to use.

Originally Posted by greencreeper

Not sure what difference ticking the "SETI Spy" option does in SETI driver makes - I suspect you're only meant to tick one of the options??

If you wish to use SetiSpy (which is also included in the zip file i linked too), you can install it to the same directory and use this to "call" it whenever SetiDriver loads.

I find this to be a pain in the ass though so i dont select it, and only run SetiSpy independantly to check out my process when i feel like it. But again SetiSpy needs to be in the same directory as Setidriver to that it can look at your state.sah file.

[TheBlueRaja]

From the official web page if you are still having probs..

First Run Instructions:

Start SETI Driver
Select the number of processes you want to use in the Maximum Processes Box.
Clear the Hide Processing check box.
Set the Desired Cache Size to 1.
Click on the Transmit Button

Once the SETI Client has a WU, SETI Driver will start the client processing. If you are on NT or W2K, you may need to login to the client one more time.

Set your Desired Cache Size and click Transmit to fill the cache.
At this point, configure SETI Driver as desired.

The first transmit will be in a normal window so you can answer the SETI Client's questions for logging in. This will only need to be done once. SETI Driver will attempt to locate a SETI CLI program in the same directory as SETI Driver. If it cannot, or there are multiple choices, you will get a dialog box requesting you select the command line client you wish to use. SETI Driver doesn't work with the GUI version of SETI@Home.

Note: You must have the Desired Cache Size set to at least 1 for SETI Driver to work on a unit.

[Rob]

Originally Posted by tkiely

Wow! this I must see. Just taken delivery at work of a new dual Xeon Dell workstation which using the graphical thingie crunched its first WU in 3H 29secs! I'll give your suggestion a try, thanks.

Terry

Er with a dual processor setup you should be able to run two copies of seti at once. Not quite sure how you do it (think you copy seti into two different folders). I'm sure there's guidance on that somewhere on the web. If the Xeon processors allow hyperthreading then you could even have four Setis at once

Joined the team now (seti name tdkuk) so will get on with adding some of the firms muscly boxes to the effort

I'll look out for you climbing the team ladder

You may find it worth loading SetiQueue on one of your workstations. It will act as a server for all the other workstations. That allows you to se if the other PCs are playing ball, as you hope, and also allows you to track the total throughput of stuff in your network. I've got SetiQueue running as a service on my server. It sits there quite nicely, and gets me over problems getting past the firewall, that the rest of the network has to communicate through.

You should be able to set up your other PCs with the CLI version running in the background assuming you have Windows 2k or XP. That way users won't see little icons anywhere that gives the game away as to what is happening. Even better, if your users log on and log off, but leave the puter running, Seti will keep going. You can either set seti CLI up as a service.or alternatively as a scheduled task that starts up as the PC is booted.

[greencreeper]

Originally Posted by theblueraja

From the Official help.

SETI Driver will attempt to locate a SETI CLI program in the same directory as SETI Driver (setiathome.exe). If it cannot, or there are multiple choices, you will get a dialog box requesting you select the command line client you wish to use.

Ah. It's my natural inclination to neatly seperate and organise things that's at fault

Originally Posted by theblueraja

If you wish to use SetiSpy (which is also included in the zip file i linked too), you can install it to the same directory and use this to "call" it whenever SetiDriver loads.

I find this to be a pain in the ass though so i dont select it, and only run SetiSpy independantly to check out my process when i feel like it. But again SetiSpy needs to be in the same directory as Setidriver to that it can look at your state.sah file.

Same here. Ticking the SETI Spy option apparantly only affects the prediction info though - it doesn't have anything to do with controlling the client. But it doesn't seem to do anything when you tick/untick the options.

I've noticed that there's a big difference between SETI driver and SETI spy when it comes to predicting the total hours, etc. Probably something to do with the way the stats are calculated.

[greencreeper]

Originally Posted by MovedGoalPosts

Er with a dual processor setup you should be able to run two copies of seti at once. Not quite sure how you do it (think you copy seti into two different folders). I'm sure there's guidance on that somewhere on the web. If the Xeon processors allow hyperthreading then you could even have four Setis at once

I think in SETI driver you up the number of processes so one install of SETI goes like the proverbial off a shovel

[tkiely]

Originally Posted by greencreeper

I think in SETI driver you up the number of processes so one install of SETI goes like the proverbial off a shovel

That's the way! on my dual xeon with HT the setidriver defaulted to 4 processes. A new tick box also appears to set processor affinity.

[TheBlueRaja]

Originally Posted by tkiely

That's the way! on my dual xeon with HT the setidriver defaulted to 4 processes. A new tick box also appears to set processor affinity.

NICE!!!!

[greencreeper]

Originally Posted by tkiely

That's the way! on my dual xeon with HT the setidriver defaulted to 4 processes. A new tick box also appears to set processor affinity.

I tried it in the name of science and it slowed my PC a tad. I set it to two. The interesting thing is that it started processing two WUs simultaneously - my cache is 5. So the big question is - with a multi-processor system is it better to process one unit at a time (cache=1) or several units at a time? Taking into account how SETI works, I'd say the latter - especially if you're keen to increase your WU count. SETI sends out the same WU more than once, as a sort of fail safe, so the faster you process the WU, the more likely that it will be added to your WU count and not rejected as "already processed". Also, the processing of some WUs is aborted early because the WU contains nothing but noise.

[TheBlueRaja]

When you "Cache" work units using SetiDriver, it is not the same work unit that gets cached x number of times, it is a different unit. The cache is there so that if you dont have a connection for x amount of time it has something to work on OR if you have multiple processors so that it can work on two or more different work units at once. AFAIK.

Therefore with a dual processor system i would think that you could process multiple units, as with HT enabled processors.

No ideas about system performace or completion time however.

[tkiely]

Originally Posted by greencreeper

So the big question is - with a multi-processor system is it better to process one unit at a time (cache=1) or several units at a time?

I think it's a case of the more, the merrier!

I'm running 4 at a time using the CL version and they will finish in about the same time as one did on the GUI version, so smiles all round.

[greencreeper]

Originally Posted by theblueraja

When you "Cache" work units using SetiDriver, it is not the same work unit that gets cached x number of times, it is a different unit. The cache is there so that if you dont have a connection for x amount of time it has something to work on OR if you have multiple processors so that it can work on two or more different work units at once. AFAIK.

Therefore with a dual processor system i would think that you could process multiple units, as with HT enabled processors.

No ideas about system performace or completion time however.

Yes. Looking and thinking some more, at the moment it seems that SETI driver creates seperate SETI client processes, each one processing a WU. I wonder if SETI can take advantage of a multiprocessor system (with or without HT) in processing a WU? I.e. threading. If not, then tkiely's system would process WUs even faster if it did. I think I'm correct in saying that software that's written for dual processing systems runs faster than software that isn't, but even software that isn't dual processor aware still runs faster than on a single processor system? Computer Science was never my strong point

[SMHarman]

Dual vs Single processor was covered in the SETI app docs.

A dual processor system will be faster on the GUI version than a single proc as the second proc does the graphics and the first the numbers. I guess for the CLI you can do two at once, but the GUI only supports a single unit at a time.