I've decided to give this a shot using my spare computer, an aging Pentium 3 1.2GHz w/ 512MB RAM. How long does it usually take to complete a WU? I am doing this from the Linux console version so I don't have a nice picture of my progress. It's been stuck on 0% for the last five minutes or so
WU's can take days (even weeks) to complete. Depends on the size of the WU and the speed / power of your computer.
i doubt it will send a large WU to a machine like that, if F@H does, it will more than likely not finish in time, so it won't even be worth it. So yeah, i can
I don't think F@H bases the WU's on the speed of the machine it's running on - last time I checked the only option for WU sizes was an option to only work on WU's that are less than 5MB (possibly for dial-up users?)
ok, well from experience. If large WU don't get done on time, (there are time limits) or don't get done because they fail or something dumb happens, then the server won't send your machine larger work units for a while until you get through a couple small ones first.
I was hoping a WU would take around 2 hours, because I rarely leave my spare computer on for the whole day. There is an option to launch the program in timeless mode, which means that your computer will be sent WUs without a deadline. That's ideal for older computers which may not be fast enough to make the deadline. However at the moment no timeless work is being sent out. I think I read in the FAQ that only sometimes will timeless work get sent. It's ashame that Linux users don't get a nice graphical display. All we get is a blinking cursor in a terminal and a percentage done. I'd prefer it to print out continous scientific mumbo-jumbo, at least I'd know my computer is doing something. And I could pretend to know what it all means....
yeah, that confused the crap out of me, i had no idea whether it was working, or if anything was happening until i saw the log, but at which time i had deleted all that stuff..... haven't got the time to get it running again, but this weekend WWOO. But yeah, i know what your saying, and it is weird that they don't have any display for Linux. That said, i completely forgot about the timeless WU, but its also weird that they aren't sending any our as well.
The command-line version takes up less CPU cycles anyway. I haven't set it up under Linux, but initially, there's an option to allow F@H to only take up a certain percentage of the spare CPU cycles. By default, it's 100%, but you could change it to 75, 50, or whatever you want. It usually takes my P3 800MHz laptop several days to go through a WU with XP on it. It's not good for much as I don't need it to act as a router anymore, so it's just a full-time folder.
You leave your laptop on 24 hours a day? What about heating and ventilation? I wasn't aware that laptops were suitable to that amount of uptime.
It's plugged into the main. The battery has almost no life left in it...just enough for Windows to shut itself down properly, so it has to run. That sucker does get hot, but I've had F@H running on it 24/7 for at least a year without issue. I did have to replace the original hard drive, but this unit has been through a lot and it's probably 5-6 years old. I should buy a laptop cooler, but I haven't yet. I've subjected this poor thing to fairly warm environments running F@H, and it's still ticking. Oh, and, it's a Compaq, BTW.
That's interesting to know, especially because laptops use less power then traditional desktop PCs. Running a laptop 24/7 won't be so taxing on the electricity bill I've been meaning to check out laptop coolers. Older laptops generally run hotter, and my old P2 class laptop is no exception. If I lay it down on my duvet for an extended period, it can reach temperatures of up to 75c
i will add that the graphical version is much more stable. If my computer restarts for some reason and the console version is running and isn't shut down properly, it usually gets corrupted. But with the graphical version, i have only had one WU that got corrupted.
