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PLease let this thread die

Insidious

Insidious

Diamond Member
I have had a dramatic reduction in time per step using this little application.

edit: removed link

Before I was getting times which would fluctuate between 13.5 and 17 seconds on my SMP clients.

Check out what they have become!!!!! :shocked: (and they are consistant!)

This blows me away..... 4K per machine! WoW

-Sid

edit: It didn't seem to have any affect on my X2 or Opteron SMP clients, so I'm only using it on the Q6600 PCs. It's supposed to help C2D machines too, but I don't have one of them so I don't know. I did read that it will not affect a Q6600 running a single SMP client either. So I guess this is really for the people running 2 SMP clients on a C2Q machine.



As requested by the OP, I have locked this thread.
AnandTech Moderator - Smoke
 
Good luck folks. If you find any issues, please let me know ASAP so we won't lead anyone astray.

Nate, I'm curious if Vista benefits from this. My guess is that it will I didn't notice on the website what versions of Windows it is good for.
 
Who vetted this? They "say" the prog doesn't connect to the 'net (easy to verify) but what else does it do? It doesn't "have" to use it's own executable, it could easily use fah.exe or smpd.exe (already granted) or any other allowed process and no one would be the wiser. I'll wait a bit. It's sorta rare that anything is "free" these days...

-jim

Oh look. They called us noobs. Scroll down to the bottom of that first post for the Anandtech DC forum link. 😕
 
yeah, I read that too.

I wasn't uncomfortable with running it, but that's a choice everyone should make for themselves.

If your PCs aren't protected and/or you aren't comfortable that you would know how to notice if your PC is being misued then your choice would be obvious.

No one is demanding anyone try this. I was only trying ot offer up something that I have found to help me.

-Sid
 
After running this service steps went from 17/18 min per step to 14/14 min per step on a 3.0 GHZ q6600 running 2 smp clients. :thumbsup:
 
The only time any F@H process should use the internet is when uploading results or downloading new WU.
 
Originally posted by: GLeeM
The only time any F@H process should use the internet is when uploading results or downloading new WU.
Click to expand...

Sigh. An executable run as administrator can modify ANY executable granted with remote access. Not just the FAH processes...

I'm quite versed with monitoring processes, but I'm not going to install a VM sandbox to test this with a packet sniffer.

Yet. 🙂

-jim

 
Originally posted by: caferace
Originally posted by: GLeeM
The only time any F@H process should use the internet is when uploading results or downloading new WU.
Click to expand...

Sigh. An executable run as administrator can modify ANY executable granted with remote access. Not just the FAH processes...

I'm quite versed with monitoring processes, but I'm not going to install a VM sandbox to test this with a packet sniffer.

Yet. 🙂

-jim
Click to expand...

Jim,

It's cool that you'd rather take a bit of a wait and see on this one, but please, with no evidence to be found of complaints or wrongdoing by googling or otherwise about this app. I'm not sure it really deserves to be crapped all over.

-Sid

edit:
Your post came in while I was typing. I think heuristics are designed to indicate a file that could cause harm if malicious code modified critical system services. It is NOT indicative of a malicious app.

There is more to this story. Can you tell us why this particular "free" app is receiving such attention..... FahMon didn't seem to

 
Originally posted by: Insidious
Jim,

It's cool that you'd rather take a bit of a wait and see on this one, but please, with no evidence to be found of complaints or wrongdoing by googling or otherwise about this app. I'm not sure it really deserves to be crapped all over.

-Sid
Click to expand...

No worries. Sorry 'bout dat. 🙂

-jim
 
Originally posted by: caferace
Originally posted by: GLeeM
The only time any F@H process should use the internet is when uploading results or downloading new WU.
Click to expand...

Sigh. An executable run as administrator can modify ANY executable granted with remote access. Not just the FAH processes...

I'm quite versed with monitoring processes, but I'm not going to install a VM sandbox to test this with a packet sniffer.

Yet. 🙂

-jim
Click to expand...

Thanks Jim for your watchfulness :thumbsup: 😉

Just wanted to make sure that everyone monitoring knows that F@H should not use internet except to up and download.
 
caferace wrote:

Who vetted this? They "say" the prog doesn't connect to the 'net (easy to verify) but what else does it do? It doesn't "have" to use it's own executable, it could easily use fah.exe or smpd.exe (already granted) or any other allowed process and no one would be the wiser. I'll wait a bit. It's sorta rare that anything is "free" these days...

-jim

Oh look. They called us noobs. Scroll down to the bottom of that first post for the Anandtech DC forum link.
Click to expand...


Caferace, I posted a very similar question on the folding.stanford.edu forums:

http://foldingforum.org/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=136

Hello,

There is a link on your website with the comment "security noobs" that points to a discussion in the Distributed Computing forum on the AnandTech website. I am one of the "security noobs" in that discussion. I am assuming that you labelled me a "noob" because I would like someone to vouch for the author of this program and/or I'd like the author to post the source code for this program so that it can be reviewed by the community. This program will probably never have any commercial value so why are you reluctant to make the source code available?

If the label "security noob" applies to people who don't blindly download software from the Internet without verifying that the program is not malicious, then I guess I am a "security noob".

Until the source is made available for review, I will not be downloading the affinity changing program from your site. I don't care if the program promises a "FREE 1000 PPD increase!1!!1!!!!1111". You can leave the "security noobs" label on your site if you wish. When hundreds or thousands of Folders find their Windows boxes (running the affinity setting program) sending spam or being used for other nefarious purposes, people will be asking "Why didn't we listen to the security noobs?"

Thank you,
-Scott
Click to expand...

You can read the response from "rilian" who appears to be the mouthpiece for the person who actually wrote the code. At no time did he offer to make the source code available for review (even though that program will probably never have any commercial value).

Caferace, like you, I am quite suspicious of this program. What better way to infect thousands or hundreds of thousands of powerful PCs around the world that are most likely powered on and connected to the next 24 x 7 than to write a trojan and distribute it for free to the Folding community?

If this program is really what it appears to be (code that adjusts the affinity on the SMP Folding client processes), why won't the author post the source code? Why doesn't the author submit his code to the Folding team at Stanford so that this code can be incorporated into future versions of the client?

Thanks,
-Scott
 
Insidious wrote:

There is more to this story. Can you tell us why this particular "free" app is receiving such attention..... FahMon didn't seem to
Click to expand...

Insidious, there is something about the Fah SMP Affinity Changer program that makes my "spidey sense" tingle. The whole "leet speak" by rilian does not increase my confidence in that program. The icing on the cake is the "testimonials" by Folders who have installed the program on their PC, experienced an increase in PPD and posted a "my PPD went up by 1000 PPD!" story on the various forums. If I was going to write a trojan, I would make sure it did something useful so that the program would spread by word-of-mouth. Yes, setting the affinity on the F@H processes will increase your PPD. Set the affinity by hand and you will see results. But who knows what else that piece of code is doing to your machine? Some of the replies to my question on the Stanford forum mentioned "yeah, but I'm running Zone Alarm so I'll know if this code does something bad" or "my anti-virus didn't find anything bad. Riiiiiight. Just because Zone Alarm didn't bleep or Norton didn't find anything doesn't mean the Fah SMP Affinity Changer isn't doing something malicious.

I had the same thought that Caferace mentioned eariler: create a vm and run the program in that environment for a while, monitoring all of the Internet traffic with a sniffer. I may have to set that up when I get a little time.

One other thing: Why did rilian go out of his way to label us "security noobs" when we were asking legitimate questions about the program? Instead of the name calling, I think he could have just omitted the link to the Anandtech forum or he could have responded in a reasonable manner to the questions I asked.

I am not telling people to avoid this program (I don't think Caferace is telling people to avoid it either). We (if I can speak for Caferace) are simply warning people to be careful. There is something about this whole deal that doesn't smell right.

Thanks,
-Scott
 
For the record, I really don't understand these concerns for this particular application. We use so many of these....

BUT it doesn't matter if I understand it or not. I'd rather error on the side of conservatism and I have removed the link in my first post so I won't endanger anyone else, good intentions or not.

I've also sent a PM to Smoke asking for this thread to be locked so it can go away. Please help me by not posting anymore and just letting this thing die

-Sid

:beer:
 
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