Folding@home -- too much CPU Usage??

[quantumburnz]

I just started Folding again yesterday using the FedoraForum team code. I have F@H set up and working fine as a service. I see most people's concerns are how to get F@H to use all of their CPU power. Well, my F@H seems to be using too much of my CPU! =) My niceness values for the threads are set to 19, but when I'm playing music from Rhythmbox there's a lot of breaks in the music. I can notice sluggishness in other programs at times as well. I have a P4 with HT so my system monitor shows 2 CPUs and the breaks in music are accompanied by CPUs maxing out at 100%. When I'm not running F@H, everything is fine so I'm sure that's where my problem lies.

While I'm happy F@H is taking advantage of my CPU, I would still like it to throttle back when other programs need CPU time. Anyone else experience any problems like this? I honestly have no clue what to do. I even tried turning the niceness value of Rhythmbox up to -5.

[Hlingler]

I don't think that renicing a service daemon will have much effect on CPU consumption unless you also run a cpuspeed daemon that disallows low-priority processes from increasing CPU speed. Thats' how I keep CRON jobs from hogging CPU power: renice CROND to +19 and set /etc/sysconfig/cpuspeed to IGNORE_NICE=1.

HTH,
V

[quantumburnz]

Thanks for your response Hlingler. I changed IGNORE_NICE to = 1 like you said. I believe I have cpuspeed running as a daemon. When I do service --status-all it tells me cpuspeed is stopped. The problem seems better, it's not cutting out as much, but it's still doing it every once in a while. Any other suggestions?

[Hlingler]

Well, I would suggest to turn the cpuspeed daemon on and set to start on boot:

~]$ sudo /sbin/service cpuspeed start
Password:
~]$ sudo /sbin/chkconfig --level 2345 cpuspeed on

To check:

~]$ sudo /sbin/service cpuspeed status
Password:
Frequency scaling enabled using ondemand governor
~]$

V

[quantumburnz]

Hmm, I tried service cpuspeed start, then did chkconfig --level 2345 cpuspeed on and rebooted. However, when I do service cpuspeed status it still says cpuspeed is stopped... After rebooting, I tried service cpuspeed start again but it still shows it's stopped.

[sidebrnz]

Open up boincmgr, go to Preferences (If you're in the Simple View, it's right at the bottom.) and you'll see where yu can set the maximum amount of CPU it can use. Set it, click OK and Bob's your uncle.

[quantumburnz]

I think you may be talking about a different program, BOINC. I'm using Folding@home. I don't have a command called boincmgr that I can find. Please correct me if I'm wrong though!

[sidebrnz]

I got involved with the folding project several years ago, through the World Community Grid: http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/ and am currently working both on their projects and Einstein@home. I use the latest client from the grid, BOINC, and the GUI for it is boincmgr. If you're using some other client, I can't help you. I can, however, suggest that you talk to the people who provided the client you're using as they'll be the ones most likely to be able to help you.

[Hlingler]

Well, I assumed for some reason that you had a CPU(s) with speed-stepping, but if not, then cpuspeed is useless. Maybe that's why it's not starting? The only other choice that I know of is to set audio to "real-time" priority/scheduling.

V

[quantumburnz]

sidebrnz -- I checked out the F@H forum and found a program called fahlimit, but it doesn't exactly do what I was looking for. I'll probably post up there and see what they say. Thanks for your help.

Hlingler -- After Googling speed-stepping, I would agree I probably don't have it. =) The P4 is in my desktop so you're probably right as to why it's not starting. I hate to set the audio to "real-time" but I may give it a shot. Thanks!

[mpolo]

Originally Posted by quantumburnz

While I'm happy F@H is taking advantage of my CPU, I would still like it to throttle back when other programs need CPU time. Anyone else experience any problems like this? I honestly have no clue what to do. I even tried turning the niceness value of Rhythmbox up to -5.

Yes! I just disabled the service, because it was constantly getting up to 98% CPU time, and wouldn't let go of it -- to the point that I couldn't get the computer to wake up from the screen saver in a reasonable amount of time (it was over a minute and top revealed FahCore as the only thing eating up CPU time)...

[nico80]

Just an advice: if you want to give a try to BOINC, don't use the version in the Fedora 10 repos. Download the latest release from their website and it works like a charm.

See also: http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/fo...d?thread=22479

[quantumburnz]

mpolo -- I'm using F10 now and haven't noticed this problem in quite some time...