Hi guys,

just wondering... I recently installed Debian Linux on my Laptop and now I\'d like to know if someone has experience with how slower machines do under Linux. I tried to run BBC CPDN on that machine when I was running XP and that was not really nice (had a few odd crashes then gave it up; probably just too little performance) but Linux should be a bit less demanding on the poor little thing ;-) so maybe there is a chance I\'ll get CPDN to work on it after all? With 1,3 GHz and 496 MB of memory I\'m only slightly below the suggestions on the CPDN homepage...
As I said, just wondering, so don\'t beat me up if there is no way this will work. It just occured to me that it might. XP almost halved my memory, so if part of that would be left for BOINC... I\'d appreciate comments from more experienced users here.

Laptops have enough handicaps, e.g., HD less capable than Desktop\'s (in addition to heavy floating point demands, CPDN has heavy HD demands [though less now than earlier implementations of CPDN]), without introducing low-end liabilities.

If you try it, be aware of the relatively poor cooling of laptops and keep the thing elevated. Two or three years ago, a participant cracked a wood desktop when a laptop was running flat on it overnight.

Edit: The current version of CPDN is more efficient on Windoze than on Linux. Consequently, none of my machines now run Linux whereas, before, all but one did so.

---

"We have met the enemy and he is us." -- Pogo
Greetings from coastal Washington state, the scenic US Pacific Northwest.

I have yet to finish a CPDN work unit so really, what do I know about CPDN? I might be wrong but my thinking is that low performance does not directly increase your chances of having a CPDN crash. Does the data/evidence indicate otherwise?

Mind you I said directly. It can indirectly increase the chance of a crash if you don\'t take precautions. My thinking is that the longer a WU runs, any WU from any project, the more chance it has of crashing due to voltage spikes and noise on the mains power. Power outages are another killer. I have all my crunch boxes attached to UPS, quality spike protection and EMI filter. If you\'re crunching CPDN then you should too, if not UPS then at least quality spike protection, EMI filter and a proper ground on a 3rd prong on the mains receptacle. Spike protection and filter don\'t work optimally when the ground is poor.

I\'m trying Annika\'s strategy on my 1.2 MHz P3 with 512 RAM, ATA 66 HD, probably simlar to Annika\'s laptop wrt resources. I\'m using Fedora Core, no desktop, just CLI. I find my Linus config saves just enough additional RAM compared to XP to significantly reduce paging on other projects. I think I\'m probably doing a lot less paging on CPDN too though I have never crunched CPDN on that machine under XP to give me a solid standard for comparison.

Annika, my question to you is this.... Did you install X and other luxuries that gobble up RAM? Maybe KDE or Gnome? Or are you running a leaner CLI Linux?

Here is a link courtesy of Trog Dog and team BOINC@Australia that explains how to install BOINC on Damn Small Linux aka DSL, one of the smallest distros you\'re likely to find. Never tried it myself but Trog Dog says it\'s good.

I\'ve been thinking of signing up at LinuxQuestions.org and picking a few brains there for ideas on stripping down Linux to the absolute minimum required to run BOINC and crunch CPDN. No frills, no thrills, just the smallest possible install to squeeze the most out of a RAM starved box. I have heard of heavily kernel hacked Linux configurations small enough to live on and boot from a 1.44 meg floppy that has TCP/IP and http. What more would one need to crunch CPDN?

---

I\'m running a CPDN coupled model with only 256 MB of Ram on a Mandriva distro (X and KDE installed, using the Boinc GUI) and have no problem (Desktop P4 2Ghz with 256 MB of Ram)

---

Arnaud

As for cooling-no problem there, except maybe in a really hot summer. My lappi has been crunching (SETI, Einstein and HashClash) overnight more than just a few times and never showed the slightest hint at problems (not when I was gaming, doing Inet-Radio streaming, making MP3s or whatever CPU-intensive tasks came to my mind). It does get quite warm, but from my and other peoples\' experience (and the type sheet... is that word right? the CPU\'s description from the manufacturer) this kind of Banias CPUs can take the heat. I do take care of decent air circulation, of course.
Disk speed might be an issue. Sucky IDE HDD, unfortunately.
@astro: Maybe the Windoze version does crunch more efficiently but I couldn\'t get that to run decently on my lappi. So that\'s not really an option. Besides, I need the Linux functionality for other reasons, just as much as the opportunity to collect experience with it. I should have mentioned that BOINC is not the single or even most important purpose of that laptop. Can\'t afford anything like that; I mainly need it for university and for server administration.
For that reason, I also installed GNOME. Normally, I\'m a command-line kind of person, but some of the things I need for uni need a graphical interface. It doesn\'t run all the time, though.
@Dargorath: My first WU definitely didn\'t crash (repeatedly) just because I had bad luck and ran it a long time. Firstly, my Windoze installation at that time was about as stable as that OS can get. So it wasn\'t software failure. Nothing else crashed apart from the climate model. Of course, power outages are not that much concern on a laptop. Besides, furthest I ever got into the model was around 8 hours. So, while your explanation is of course completely correct and helpful if people want to increase stability on their systems, my problems were quite certainly due to memory/CPU problems- or maybe the HDD, good point astro, didn\'t think of that...

(and the type sheet... is that word right? the CPU\'s description from the manufacturer)

I think you mean data sheet.

Disk speed might be an issue. Sucky IDE HDD, unfortunately.

I don\'t see how slow disk speed can contribute to a model crashing but I\'ve been wrong before.

Of course, power outages are not that much concern on a laptop.

Doh! I don\'t know what I was thinking there. I do standby my suggestion that good spike protection and EMI filter will decrease the chance of a model crashing. OK, maybe not so much the EMI but spikes will get around the battery and possibly cause a few bits to go awry. That\'s all it takes.

@ [AF>Est>Linux]Arnaud... Glad to hear you\'re doing well with less than recommended RAM. It gives me hope. I\'ve been thinking that starting a CPDN on my resource starved system was a mistake that I should reverse before I get too far into the model. But if you can do it then... what the heck... so can I, it\'ll just take me a little longer.

---

In this thread at the BOINC site, Mike Mars mentions the coupled models (the type being sent now) need only 90 MB RAM. The suggested minimum RAM is outdated and applys to the old SAP models which are not being sent anymore. So breath easy as far as RAM goes, Annika, I know I will be.

---

I don\'t see how slow disk speed can contribute to a model crashing but I\'ve been wrong before.

Not exactly on topic -- but not far removed; suggestive:
http://www.climateprediction.net/board/viewtopic.php?p=53422#53422

[Edited to make the link hot.]

---

"We have met the enemy and he is us." -- Pogo
Greetings from coastal Washington state, the scenic US Pacific Northwest.

In this thread at the BOINC site, Mike Mars mentions the coupled models (the type being sent now) need only 90 MB RAM. The suggested minimum RAM is outdated and applys to the old SAP models which are not being sent anymore. So breath easy as far as RAM goes, Annika, I know I will be.

The difference between the recommended RAM and the actual memory used by the model is due to other stuff which may be running and using up memory. For example...

Microsoft XP - 100-200MB
Antivirus - 80MB
Firewall - 20MB
MS word, outlook, etc...

Linux is much leaner and running in 256MB is much more practical.

---

I'm a volunteer and my views are my own.
News and Announcements and FAQ

Linux is better in handling memory and disks.
I had no problem when running SAP that uses 430 mb memory on a box with 512 mb memory installed.
No defrag required either

---

AstroWX, thanks for the link with the answer to my question. The access timeouts explanation makes good sense.

Sorry if my question was off topic. It seemed on topic to me at the time because you mentioned \"HD less capable\" in your first post in this thread. I thought you were saying \"slow HD access can cause a model to crash\" but it appears I was mistaken. Did I miss your point?

---

It\'s more that they\'re not designed to run 24/7, get hotter, and are quicker to wear out than larger disk drivers.

---

I'm a volunteer and my views are my own.
News and Announcements and FAQ

Yep, I was not quite on topic. Thanks for the patience and info.

---

AstroWX, thanks for the link with the answer to my question. The access timeouts explanation makes good sense.

Sorry if my question was off topic. It seemed on topic to me at the time because you mentioned \"HD less capable\" in your first post in this thread. I thought you were saying \"slow HD access can cause a model to crash\" but it appears I was mistaken. Did I miss your point?

It was my answer, not your question, that I thought might be a bit off topic. Sorry about any confusion.

---

"We have met the enemy and he is us." -- Pogo
Greetings from coastal Washington state, the scenic US Pacific Northwest.

Here is a link courtesy of Trog Dog and team BOINC@Australia that explains how to install BOINC on Damn Small Linux aka DSL, one of the smallest distros you\'re likely to find. Never tried it myself but Trog Dog says it\'s good.

Thanks for promo, unfortunately, I wasn\'t able to get CPDN to run on DSL and couldn\'t find out why. I can run plenty of other projects on this distro - just not CPDN.

---

I just joined up today and run all Linux machines except for one my little sister uses (it doesn\'t crunch all that much either as its not full time on like my other machines). I did post a how to on setting up a Kubuntu Linux boinc cruncher in the seti forums. Im still waiting to hear back if it worked or not for people new to Linux. One thing i have found is that if you install it this way you can setup your projects and then reboot your machine. As its starts before you log in it crunches away as if it were CLI only (low to no overhead) yet has a nice GUI for easy setup. I haven\'t gone into how to strip back the Install but its a fairly small install anyways. My smallest hard disk is 3.2Gb and has it installed on it with over 1.5Gb (1.7Gb if i remember correctly) to spare and a 500Mb swap drive so it can be stripped back fairly heavily if someone is comfortable doing this.

Anyways heres the link if anyone wants to give Kubuntu a try http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/forum_thread.php?id=36333&nowrap=true#486018
Add to the end of this how to - reboot your computer and do not log back in.

---