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World Community Grid Forums
Category: Retired Forums
Forum: UD Windows Agent Support [Read Only]
Thread: How to install WCG, alternate support web site |
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Thread Status: Active Total posts in this thread: 9
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schepers
Advanced Cruncher Canada Joined: Oct 11, 2006 Post Count: 85 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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I've installed WCG on Windows XP and have been testing various running configurations (as an app and a Windows service) in our training labs for the past several weeks. I've made many notes, documenting the strengths and weaknesses of each mode, with variations, and have put up a site regarding what specifics I found. Hopefully, this will help others with how to setup WCG under whatever conditions are needed:
http://ist.uwaterloo.ca/~schepers/wcg/index.html Comments, corrections, additions are welcome. My email address is on the bottom of each web page. |
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Sekerob
Ace Cruncher Joined: Jul 24, 2005 Post Count: 20043 Status: Offline |
Hi schepers,
----------------------------------------great stuff.... on the quick, the Extraordinary Unofficial WCG wiki is going off line in the near future. Some of the work is transported to the www.WCGwiki.org. Were u intending to also do WCG specifics related to BOiNC agent? That one , for the more technical inclined is a better choice..... it's getting a simplified GUI makeover as i'm writing and alpha'd in version 5.7.5....sponsored by WCG. Anyway, I'll peruse the stuff and if anything is glaring, I'll or any other Community Advisor will drop u a note. Cheers 
WCG
----------------------------------------Please help to make the Forums an enjoyable experience for All! [Edit 1 times, last edit by Sekerob at Nov 29, 2006 3:54:03 PM] |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
schepers, that's impressive. It should be very useful to people who have to use the United Devices client.
However, I can't stress enough how much better suited BOINC is for most of the installation options you explored. Just as an example, BOINC has the single user/all users/service option available as a simple choice during installation. Perhaps most importantly for a large deployment, individually registering each computer is not required. I could go on. But just for UD, your results are awesome. In fact, the only improvement I can suggest is the alternate throttle setting - you can use an environment variable instead of the registry key to set it for all users. It should be in the FAQ, somewhere. Sadly, United Devices seem unlikely to implement the features you suggest, or fix the issues you identify. WCG feel no pressing need to do anything about the situation because again, BOINC provides nearly all the features you mention - logging, configuration, deployment, etc. |
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Sekerob
Ace Cruncher Joined: Jul 24, 2005 Post Count: 20043 Status: Offline |
schepers,
----------------------------------------one note to Didactylos typ on the environment variable "Wcgrid_Max_CPU" (not case sensitive), which can be set at both user and system level is, that once u've used the throttle tool, the registry key overrides the environ key i.e. u have to delete the registry key. cheers Edit: The registry key to delete if switching from throttle tool to environment variable is: Key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\IBM\World Community Grid DWORD Value: 'CPU Throttle' Value: anywhere from 25 - 100.
WCG
----------------------------------------Please help to make the Forums an enjoyable experience for All! [Edit 1 times, last edit by Sekerob at Dec 1, 2006 8:09:50 AM] |
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schepers
Advanced Cruncher Canada Joined: Oct 11, 2006 Post Count: 85 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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Didactylos: regarding BOINC, I do intend to research this option for installation as well. It's just that the UD client seems to be the option of choice from the grid site, endorsed by IBM. (How does BOINC work with Deep Freeze?)
Regarding the CPU throttle environment variable: I got the distinct impression from some forum postings that the registry key method has superseded the environment variable (i.e. the environment var was passe, yesterdays method for an older version of UD) and was now the preferred method so I didn't even consider using the var. It will make configuring UD for all users easier and I will include this on my site. I still have a list of details to include, and likely re-arrange a bit of the site content for better presentation. |
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Sekerob
Ace Cruncher Joined: Jul 24, 2005 Post Count: 20043 Status: Offline |
As far as Disk Space is concerned the largest needed per the System requirements page is 2gb. The setting in UD up to 10gb is marginally effecting the device rating, but never used. In BOiNC it's not considered for benchmarking. When running BOiNC on multi-core machines and e.g. 2 parallel threads doing Help Defeat Cancer, 2gb might work out to be to restrictive. For now and in the future 5gb should do u perfectly fine.
----------------------------------------The mb/gb are metric. 5gb is actually 5000mb... some legacy thing. As for Deep Freeze and Thawing, first for me and can guess what it does. Here a search result that mentions it. One post by Viktors indicates he's familiar and how to address it. http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/forums/wcg/...0&submitbutton=Search cheers
WCG
Please help to make the Forums an enjoyable experience for All! |
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schepers
Advanced Cruncher Canada Joined: Oct 11, 2006 Post Count: 85 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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When you stated that the mb/gb sizes for the disk storage profiles are metric (divider=1000), I thought I had made a mistake somewhere. However, if you set your profile to 5Gb, the UD client, under Storage Performance/Storage, shows the value for "this device" incorrectly (4.88Gb instead of 5Gb). It's using the divider 1024 for this value instead of 1000. A minor quibble, but another reason to dislike the UD client even more.
Why would IBM choose to endorse UD as it's apparent client-of-choice when there's so many flaws, and no apparent plans to fix/upgrade to a contemporary level? |
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Sekerob
Ace Cruncher Joined: Jul 24, 2005 Post Count: 20043 Status: Offline |
Ah, but now u are asking for the nitty gritty.... it was selected as not to have to start a distributed computing project ground up, but to use one that had a proven track record: Grid Today: http://www.gridtoday.com/04/1122/104295.html
----------------------------------------After one year, BOiNC was added. UD agent is still serving 80+% of the clients happily, but with the upcoming 5.8 BOiNC few reasons will remain for sticking to the old and not going for the new....simplified GUI, Throttle, work buffering, Error logging, all projects having a Graphical Display of the Science (IMPORTANT for many) and and and (that i wrote several times  )
WCG
----------------------------------------Please help to make the Forums an enjoyable experience for All! [Edit 1 times, last edit by Sekerob at Dec 4, 2006 3:01:39 PM] |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
Hello schepers,
The UD client works well, but does not offer many options. BOINC offers a lot of options, but is a work in progress. Lawrence |
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