|
|
 |
Running the
Agent |
|
- Do I have to do anything on a daily basis?
- How do I get Agent updates?
- Do I have to leave my computer on all the time for
this to work? Or always be online?
- Will running the World Community Grid Software
affect my regular computer use?
- How do I make the software recognize the free
space on a separate drive/partition?
- Why does the software immediately download a large
file as soon as it is started?
- My computer seems to be running slow since I
installed the World Community Grid agent?
- How do I set up my system so that the windows
agent starts for several or all of the users that log in?
- How do I open the windows World Community Grid
agent and what's there?
- Can I use Terminal Services with the software?
- How do I keep the agent from running while my
laptop is only using battery power?
- I need to completely stop the agent for a while.
How do I do it?
- I am already running a United Devices grid
technology agent from grid.org. Will I be able to run both?
- I have a result that the BOINC Manager reports as
being "Ready to Report." What does that mean?
- My Linux Agent keeps writing "Deferring
communication with project for W days, X hours, Y minutes, and Z
seconds". What does this mean and how do I get it to connect
now?
- Can you explain the screen saver?
- Will the software run faster if I shut down the
screen saver?
- How do I shut down or change my screen saver?
- I am running SETI@home on my computer? Will I be
able to run both SETI@home and World Community Grid?
Do I have to do anything
on a daily basis?
No you don't. Once you have downloaded
the agent, there's nothing that you have to do. The agent will run
on your PC when it determines that there are cycles available.
When it finishes with a calculation, it will send the completed
work to the grid server and then ask the grid server for more
work.
How do I get Agent
updates?
At the next communication with the World
Community Grid servers, your agent will be updated. This might
cause your software firewall to ask you to give permission for the
new agent files to access the Internet. Please permit them.
Do I have to leave my
computer on all the time for this to work? Or always be online?
The software can run only when your
computer is on. The software doesn't need to be connected to the
Internet to work its task, but once finished, it needs to
reconnect to return data and to get a new task to work on.
Will running the World
Community Grid Software affect my regular computer use?
No. Configured correctly, the software
will never interfere with your ability to use your own computer.
Most computers never use all of their resources and it is
estimated that up to 90% of the processing power of an individual
PC goes unused. The World Community Grid distributed computing
model is based on the ability to utilize this "idle"
capacity from individual computers.
How do I make the
software recognize the free space on a separate drive/partition?
The software will only recognize the
free space on the partition on which it is installed. If you have
a drive/partition with more free space that you want the software
to use, you must install the software to that drive/partition.
Why does the software
immediately download a large file as soon as it is started?
The task downloaded by your software is
comparing small pieces of data against a larger database. In order
to make this task effective and to maximize the potential of your
machine, it is necessary to keep some data locally. For the time
being, this is a one-time download. Subsequent tasks may or may
not have an up-front download depending upon the nature of the
computational problem.
 |
My computer seems to be
running slow since I installed the World Community Grid agent?
If your PC seems to run slower when
running the agent, then you may have relatively little memory in
your system. Using 100% CPU alone will not slow things down
because the agent runs at lowest priority so that it yields to any
other work. Otherwise, it consumes the unused CPU which makes the
total go to 100%. However, if your system has relatively little
real memory (usually about 512 meg or less) and you are running
other memory hungry applications, then there might be disk paging
delays. To solve the problem, you could set your agent to run in
screen saver mode only. Then, while you are actively using the
machine, the agent will stay out of the way.
|
How do I set up my
system so that the windows agent starts for several or all of the
users that log in?
You can place the World Community Grid
icon into each of the user's startup folders (in Start
Menu->Programs->Startup), which will make the agent start
whenever those particular users log on. You can also place it in
the startup folder for "All users" which should make it
run for everyone. One way to get to these folders is via: My
Computer -> Local disk C: -> Documents and Settings ->
All Users -> Start Menu -> Programs -> Startup, for
example.
|
How do I open the
windows World Community Grid agent and what's there?
On your windows desktop, typically in
the bottom right of your screen, is the system tray. It looks
similar to this in Windows XP:
In the system tray you should have an icon that looks like this:  Double
left mouse click on it and you will see the agent.
In the lower right of the agent you will see several icons. This
is what they are:
Agent home page. General information plus your Member Name.
Application page. Graphics about Human Proteome Folding.
Device page. Information about your PC. This is also where you can
stop the agent from running.
Snooze. Clicking on the button will stop the agent for 5 minutes.
Clicking it again will restart the agent. You can change the
length of time that the agent snoozes on the device page.
Help. Agent Help facility
Minimize. Minimize the agent to the system tray.
|
Can I use Terminal
Services with the software?
Multiple users running the software via
Terminal Services is not a supported configuration at this time.
Allowing multiple users to run from the same install image can
cause problems, whether this is via Terminal Services or running
from a shared network directory. The supported configuration is
one instance of the software per machine. The software will
prevent multiple instances of itself from being launched.
How do I keep the agent
from running while my laptop is only using battery power?
If you have the proper device drivers
installed for power management on your laptop, the agent should
automatically stop when you go to battery power. If this is not
the case, open your agent and click on the snooze option (moon
shape icon) or minimize the agent and then right click on its icon
in the icon tray in the lower right, and select "Exit".
This will stop it until the next reboot or until you explicitly
start it using the start menu.
|
I need to completely
stop the agent for a while. How do I do it?
If you need to stop your agent for a
little while, use the snooze icon (moon shape) on the agent. You
can change the default on the preferences page (check icon). If
you are running a memory intensive application for a longer period
of time and notice slight delays, you might want to set the agent
to run only as a screen saver. Go to the preferences window (the
one with the check icon) and select "Run only as Screen
Saver" and then click on "Apply". This will make
the agent only run when your pc is in screen saver mode. Finally,
you can completely stop the agent by first minimizing its window,
right clicking on its icon in the tray at the lower right, and
selecting "Exit". This causes the agent to stop until
the next reboot. You can also restart it at any time using the
Start menu.
|
I am already running a
United Devices grid technology agent from grid.org. Will I be able
to run both?
No. In order to participate in World
Community Grid, you must first shut down any running agent that
you currently have on your system. To do so, simply run World
Community Grid's installer once to uninstall the United Devices
client. Then run World Community Grid's installer a second time to
install World Community Grid's agent.
|
I have a result that
the BOINC Manager reports as being "Ready to Report."
What does that mean?
The BOINC client returns a completed
work unit to the server in a two-step process. The first step is
the uploading of the calculated data (called the result file). The
second step is for the BOINC client to contact the server and
report that the work unit is complete and to provide additional
information, including how long it took to process the work unit.
The BOINC Manager will report a work unit’s status as
'Uploading' as soon as the work unit has completed. Once the file
has been uploaded, then the BOINC Manager will report the work
unit as 'Ready to Report'. More information about work unit status
messages can be found at: http://boinc-doc.net/boinc-wiki/index.php?title=Work_Tab#Status_Column
|
My Linux Agent keeps
writing "Deferring communication with project for W days, X
hours, Y minutes, and Z seconds". What does this mean and how
do I get it to connect now?
This message appears when the agent has
experienced a problem connecting to the server. This could be
because of some problem on your local computer or because World
Community Grid's servers are temporarily unavailable due to
maintenance or updates.
Agents delay their attempt to reconnect because during the time
that the servers are unavailable, more and more computers will be
wanting to connect to the servers. Once the servers became
available they could become overwhelmed if all of the agents
attempt to contact them at once. This mechanism reduces the
chances of the servers being overwhelmed.
You can force your Linux agent to contact the servers immediately
by using the "Update Project feature of the BOINC client. If
you are using the command line client, then do the following
steps:
- Stop the BOINC client. You can do this by running the
following command:
pkill boinc
- Next change to the directory where you installed boinc. For
many users this will be /home/username/BOINC where username is
the name that you use to login into the Linux computer.
- Next start the boinc client with the following command:
./boinc -update_prefs
http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org
If you are using the BOINC manager, then you can cause the client
to immediately connect to the server by going to the projects tab,
selecting 'World Community Grid' and then click on the 'Update'
button.
|
Can you explain the
screen saver?
1. The screen saver shows a snapshot of
the molecule during the folding process and then shows it for a
minute +- some period of time. When it looks stringy, it means the
snapshot was taken near the beginning of a folding iteration while
it was not yet highly folded. 1b. Each work unit works on one
particular gene sequence and therefore one protein. It folds the
protein many times, each time using a different random number seed
so that many subtle alternatives are tried during the folding
process. The results of all of the foldings that your computer
processed are combined with those computed by many other
computers. This gives a sufficiently large statistical sample to
produce useful final results. 2. The rotation is just to give you
an idea of the 3-dimensional shape of the protein taken at the
time of the snapshot. Showing the live folding process would
consume far more CPU time than actually doing the useful
computations. On the average computer, the molecule rendering
takes just a very few percent of the CPU time. However, on slower
computers, this fraction can quite a bit higher. We are
considering having the rotations occur less often on slower
machines to counter this. Keeping the agent minimized and not
running as a screen saver actually makes it contribute the most
CPU time to useful work.
|
Will the software run
faster if I shut down the screen saver?
Yes. The screen saver diverts your
computer resources to motion and graphic processing. This is not
just for the World Community Grid's screen saver, but for most
screen savers.
How do I shut down or
change my screen saver?
Click on [Start] [Settings] [Control
Panel], and then double click on "Display." Click on
[Screen Saver]. Use the drop down menu to either change the screen
saver or shut it off by selecting "None."
I am running SETI@home
on my computer? Will I be able to run both SETI@home and World
Community Grid?
Yes and no. Any non-grid.org agent, such
as SETI@home, will be able to continue to run on your computer
after you download and install the World Community Grid agent.
However, while you can run both clients at the same time,
SETI@home runs at a higher priority than the World Community Grid
agent, so SETI@home will receive all the extra available CPU
cycles and will starve the World Community Grid agent. Because of
this, you should only run one or the other at any given time.
|
