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Unnoticable Distributed Computing

amcdonald

Diamond Member
From experience, are there any DC programs that can run completely 'silent'?
I have several workstations at work that are just sitting there except for running outlook and I would like to put them to use.
I need a DC to run as a service, or at least unobservable from the desktop (systray).
More importantly it needs to run unattended and be completely unrestrictive of system performance.
Thanks
 
DPAD has a client that runs totally invisibly in the background, and will work not only on WinNT/2000/XP as a service, but it will also run totally hidden in a similar way on Windows 9x/ME.
 
Well I'm running DF right now and operation is pretty smooth.
I installed it as a service with a 20 priority.
The main way I judge it is how smoothly IE runs since thats the most common task.
Its doing well, there's only a slight lag in the address bar autocomplete and browsing.
Much better than anything else I've used.
I'll start setting this up tonight on some machines and see how it does over the weekend.
Thanks 🙂
 
I agree that DF was a great choice for that situation. It is also a really great project and sometimes I miss it. Welcome aboard the DF team amcdonald!🙂
 
Checking the taskmanager SOB doesn't even let DF work at all. Why can't all DC programs have this kind of priority?
Also I'm running into a slight issue with macaffe viruscan 5.1... on one computer it started taking up a lot of cpu time and I ended up restarting the service. anyone else run these 2 together? It could be several things within viruscan in combination with DF.
 
it sounds like SOB doesn't work and play well with other children. DF is VERY sensitive to the needs of the system and will back out of the way (as it should)
I've had several other projects I tried that would not let DF run. (Greedy developers, IMHO)

I can't help with the virus scan thingy though.... I don't run VS in the background. They mess up too many things. I
just keep a Ghosted HD updated weekly or so in case something gets in.

Keep asking, someone will probably know.

-Sid

(Folding@Home has a nice configuration where you can specify what % of the idle cycles it should try to use... I wish all projects would do that. DF is my favorite project, but F@H has the utilization best handled, IMO)
 
Originally posted by: Insidious
(Folding@Home has a nice configuration where you can specify what % of the idle cycles it should try to use... I wish all projects would do that. DF is my favorite project, but F@H has the utilization best handled, IMO)
Neo has/had that as well, but I think anyone else who participated in that project will understand my feelings about it. :frown:

I believe the RC5-72 client is rather configurable and gets along well with other programs as well.
 
ECCP2 would be a good choice. You could win $2500 bux. I think everyone should run this for awhile. It is like making your own lottery tickets. The client has a small footprint and can be run as a service. If you play lotteries you might as well get into this one. The odds are that you will have fun. Anandtech has a team.
 
since I don't think anyone else has mentioned it, please be very careful if these are not your machines... get permission in writing to run the client on the machines... our very own David McOwen is evidence to why you should not run the client without permission...
for more information, check out www.freemcowen.com
 
As for the liability I'm a network administrator. Thats also why I'm not running any program like eccp2 that could have personal gain. And about the Virus software... I don't run any on my personal comp, but this is a work environment where people are likely to endanger themselves (and the network) so its very much necessary 🙂
I'll see if anyone else runs into macaffe compatility issues monday morning, but for now I'll hope it was a fluke.
 
First off, welcome to TeAm DF! 😎

Second of all, I run an antivirus (AVG) and haven't had any problems so far.

If you want to you can use dfDetect to restart DF every X minutes so that it won't misbehave with McAffe. It has some other features too. You can also set it up to exit DF when McAffe starts scanning (on the condition that a new executable starts running). It can auto-restart when McAffe stops.

It doesn't run an as a service (well, I haven't set that up yet... another thing to add on to the list, I guess), but it does run completely hidden.

Give it a try and see if it'll take care of your problem.
 
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