As soon as the server is back on line, the top level graphs should start updating again.

Your cow graphs are unaffected by the server outage.

Best regards,

Kevin G. McCoy

I got her an NVIDIA GeForce GTX-275 graphics card (she is a graphics designer) and installed the DNET CUDA client on her system to crack RC5 keys while the screen saver is running.

Here is a line from the CUDA client log on Timmay, the new computer:

[Jul 10 08:20:58 UTC] RC5-72: Completed CC:28BE14C2:00000000 (62.00 stats units)
0.00:12:50.84 – [345,449,886 keys/s]

This one graphics card is faster than many peoples entire herd output!

I found that if you use the DNET screen saver feature to activate the CUDA client, and let the normal CPU client run as a service, the user does not notice any slowdown of the computer or video.

I will change Samovar’s settings to use a screen saver today, and replace the clunky batch files I am using to turn CUDA on and off.

Happy Saturday!

Kevin G. McCoy

Distributed.net beta clients

No OS/2 client yet, but many other OSes are covered. Keep checking – OS/2 clients are usually quick to follow windoze and Linux.

I just ran v2.9105.511b on a couple of my machines and the results were impressive. I got 10-15% improvement over the current stable client!

When you install the beta, make sure your DNETC.INI file is not configured to use a specific core. Run the benchmark and it will tell you which of the possible cores is the fastest:


DNETC -bench ogr-ng


Make sure you are not running any CPU hog programs or start up any apps while the benchmark is running.

Different CPUs require different cores for optimum results. Don’t assume a core that is fast on on one of your computers will be the best one for another.

Typically the default core is the fastest. If not, then you might want to configure your INI file to use the core with the fastest benchmark.

Have a good weekend, and for you folks here in the USA – Happy Independence Day!

Best regards,

Kevin

It only works with recent NVIDIA graphics chip sets, but man, it is really moovin along on my test computer! I have a couple year old NVIDIA GeForce card in this machine, pumping out some excellent key rates:

Projected ideal time to completion: 0.00:53:20.00
[Jan 31 14:28:08 UTC] RC5-72: 4 packets (256.00 stats units) are in
buff-out.r72
[Jan 31 15:22:32 UTC] RC5-72: Completed CB:F75B7435:00000000 (64.00 stats units)
0.00:54:23.00 – [84,240,854 keys/s]
[Jan 31 15:22:32 UTC] RC5-72: Loaded CB:F75B7476:00000000:64*2^32
[Jan 31 15:22:32 UTC] RC5-72: Summary: 17 packets (982.00 stats units)
0.13:35:24.89 – [80.07 Mkeys/s]
[Jan 31 15:22:32 UTC] RC5-72: 0 packets remain in buff-in.r72
[Jan 31 15:22:32 UTC] RC5-72: 5 packets (320.00 stats units) are in
buff-out.r72
[Jan 31 15:22:32 UTC] The keyserver says: “distributed.net / cracking keys in
idle time / many years to go”
[Jan 31 15:22:32 UTC] Refreshed project state data from server. (cached)
[Jan 31 15:22:32 UTC] RC5-72: Retrieved 5 packets (293.00 stats units) from server.
[Jan 31 15:22:33 UTC] RC5-72: Sent 5 packets (320.00 stats units) to server.
[Jan 31 16:16:56 UTC] RC5-72: Completed CB:F75B7476:00000000 (64.00 stats units)
0.00:54:23.29 – [84,233,187 keys/s]
[Jan 31 16:16:56 UTC] RC5-72: Loaded CB:F870A3E6:00000000:49*2^32
[Jan 31 16:16:56 UTC] RC5-72: Summary: 18 packets (1046.00 stats units)
0.14:29:48.18 – [80.33 Mkeys/s]

Newer NVIDIA graphics cards can run circles around my old card, so if you are considering a new system or upgrading your video for gaming purposes, give the NVIDIA cards a look.

The CUDA client needs a special driver loaded on your windows box to allow it to use the graphics card’s many microprocessors to crunch RC5 keys. You can download it for free from the NVIDIA web site.

Unfortunately, the CUDA client can’t crunch OGR work units, but if you are already concentrating on RC5-72, this could substantially increase your work rate. If you are currently doing OGR-NG exclusively, you can help Team Warped on the RC5-72 challenge and not take away from our OGR stats.

I use both the standard DNET client as well as the CUDA client on Samovar, our friendly neighborhood stats server. The two clients can run simultaneously, and since they use separate hardware, each can run full speed – you get the best of both worlds!

The only downside is that the CUDA client makes your graphics card run a bit hot and it vastly slows down the screen drawing speed. If I need to do actual work on Samovar, I have to pause the CUDA client to make the screen usable. I don’t have to pause the standard client, as this one runs at idle priority and is unnoticeable.

The computer screen looks perfectly normal when running CUDA – it just runs really slow.

I made desktop links to a couple of batch files that pause and unpause the CUDA client. That seems to work well for me. Pause; Do some work; Unpause.

The CUDA client really picks up speed if you overclock the graphics card. My graphics card came with a utility that can shift the GPU clock speed and monitor its temperature. My card heats up another 10-12C when running the CUDA client at its top clock speed. This is not too bad, as I have a lot of cooling fans in Samovar’s computer case.

So, if you already have an NVIDIA card or are thinking of upgrading, give the CUDA client try!

Kevin

Check your herd stats. If a cow is has a “No Server Comm” error, you may be running an out of date client.

Check your log by clicking on the hostname. If the entries at the bottom of the log say:

v2.9012-497
dnetc v2.9012-497-CTR-05111008 for Win32 (WindowsNT 5.1).
Using email address (distributed.net ID) ‘benji0001verizon.net’
[May 29 20:06:02 UTC] The keyserver says: OGR-P2 is closed.
[May 29 20:06:02 UTC] NetUpdate::All contests are either closed (keyserver) or
disabled (client)
[May 29 20:06:02 UTC] Network update is currently not available.
[May 29 20:06:02 UTC] *Break* Shutting down…
[May 29 20:06:02 UTC] Shutdown complete.

Then your client needs immediate replacement!

This means you Bob

Kevin

This should help a lot with everyone’s stats graphs.

I also made quite a few cosmetic changes to the the herd details grid. Hopefully your browser won’t cut off the right edge any more.

Back to work!

Kevin

The new stand-alone stats analysis server seems to be stable (finally), so as soon as testing is complete, I will switch it over to the Windows Service version to further improve reliability. Everyone’s stats graphs should improve over the next few days, now that outages have been minimized.

I am concentrating on Help text in the web server back end tonight. That should go fairly quickly and then I’ll get back to filling in missing features on the Herd Details page.

Stay tuned!

Kevin

The new stats site is located at:

http://idk.serveftp.net/cowboy/cowboyisapi.dll

Use the contest combo boxes to select the set of stats you want to see.

On the entry page, select the name of the person you wish to view (the herd).

All grids allow sorting of the data by clicking on the blue grid headers:

The column names are similar to the old Cowboy Stats Server page.

Hostname: the name of the workstation (cow), or its alias. I can rename your cow’s hostname, as it appears on the stats pages. If you have an actual hostname like topsecretname, I can have it show up as reallyboringname in the stats pages.

Heath: Green = healthy, Yellow = sick, Red=dead

Health Reason = reason for poor health or death

Peak = highest OGR or RC5 rate seen in your logs for the last 90 days

Average = the actual average rate of the cow, calculated as the number of work units accepted by the distributed.net key server. This number drops if you don’t run your cow 24/7, or if the cow is very busy doing non-contest related work.

Eff% = The cow’s efficiency, measured as: (Peak / Average) * 100

Last Log: Date and time (UTC) of the last log sent to the Cowboy Stats Server

Logs/Day: The number of logs per day this cow sent to the Cowboy Stats Sever. More than 10 per day affects the speed of your cow. Please adjust your mail-log-max value in dnetc.ini if you see this error. You typically need to double the number found there. The Cowboy Stats Server averages this logs/day number over 2 weeks.

Last Server: The last date/time (UTC) this cow sent/received work from the distributed.net key server.

Last Ckhpnt: The last date/time this cow was improperly shut down and restarted

Client: The version of the distributed.net client the cow is running, if known

OS: The operating system of the cow

CPU: The CPU type of the cow

Cores: The number of CPU cores, if known. If a cow has multiple physical CPUs, each with multiple cores, then this number should reflect that. Example: A dual CPU, Core-2 Quad will show up as 8 cores. I am working on this number for CUDA clients that have something like 64-128 cores.

Log: A link to the raw cow log.

For people with large herds (more than 10 cows currently), there is a “Prev” and “Next” button to view pages of 10 cows. Click these buttons to view other pages of cow stats:

I am currently working on the menus found at the tops of the various stats pages. Yes, I know they don’t work yet. Stay tuned for lots more stats and graphs.

Please add comments here with any bug reports and suggestions.

Enjoy!

Best regards,

Kevin G. McCoy

Check out it out here.

and let me know what you think. I will be making frequent updates to fix bugs and add features, so check the link often.

Note that you will not be able to bookmark your own stats page with the current software. I may change that in a future revision.

The cool part is that the main “team” screen updates in real-time and I will be able to update the graphs more often.

Have fun!

Kevin