FahMon (multi-platform app to monitor various F@h clients)

[Dave]

since that system's hard disk is 99.8% full

[offtopic]
Whoa! Might I suggest that you free up a LOT of hard disk space prior to doing anything else.
I hope that you do not have any critical data on that drive.

Just trying to be helpful.
[/offtopic]

I would if I could, my friend. I haven't been able to identify yet what could be taking up all of the space, so I'm running a search for all files on my hard drive greater than 1 MB, then sorting the list in descending order by size. I can then eliminate at least some of the space hogs. There are no critical files on my old system, except for my Folding@Home files.

[314159]

Restore points? (never worked well for me so I disabled them)
Paged data due to very limited memory?
Check Task Manager.
ALSO: check out the minimum requirements for running that operating system.

When a WIN drive gets that full, it becomes virtually totally undependable based on my experience fixing machines of others.
The 99.8% reported may not even be accurate.

Just do not try defragging with the drive in this condition.......

No critical files? Why not reformat and reinstall - at some stage?
A bare bones linux distro might work well on that machine.

Good luck!

[Dave]

These are all great ideas, you guys. However, I replaced that 7-year-old Presario 1200 system with my brand new Compaq CQ50 system, and then I put the Presario away in a box, intending that to be a permanent action. The Presario has many other things wrong with it, such as a missing F8 key, a broken CD drive, no battery, a broken screen hinge... shall I go on?... You probably get the picture by now -- it's simply not worth it to invest any money in such a ramshackle system. Since it does actually run, though, my nephew convinced me to just use it until it totally dies, so I've taken it back out of the box and hooked it it back up so that it can run (smaller) Folding@Home projects. I can't update its service packs until I figure out exactly what I can delete first. I estimate that I'll need about 1.2 GB freed up in order to be able to run both service pack updates. I will look at my Outlook database to see if I can just delete it, or if I'll need to archive it onto an external 88 GB hard drive that I have. There are plenty of things I can do, but time is at a premium for me lately (look at the date/timestamp on this post!), so I have to go for the proverbial "low-hanging fruit" first.

When a WIN drive gets that full, it becomes virtually totally undependable based on my experience fixing machines of others.
The 99.8% reported may not even be accurate.

Just do not try defragging with the drive in this condition.......

I did the computation of used space myself, and not the system. I opened Properties on C: drive, and then took the total space used (55.7 GB) and divided it by the total disk capacity (55.8 GB), giving my result of 99.8% used. Don't worry, you guys. I'll find space somewhere.

[bruce]

A 7 year old machine probably won't boot from a flash drive but it might. You can run the notfred code without a hard-drive and that's probably faster than trying to clean up Windows. Of course that assumes the "time is at a premium" condition is truly temporary and you'll have time to clean it up later -- and that copy of Windows is worth saving.

[mephistopheles]

I am running FahMon 2.3.2b on Mac OS X (10.5.6 - Leopard), according to the FahMon download page 2.3.2b is the latest version available for Mac.

FahMon runs on a Macbook laptop, the FAH clients are on the LAN - a Mac mini and an Ubuntu server w/SMB, 4 clients in total.
Adding/removing clients and reloading one client at a time works.
But

• "auto reload clients" - crashes whenever it tries to reload
• change "calculate PPD based on.." setting - immediate crash
• "manually set timezone" - immediate crash
• computer drops off the network - crashes at reload

After a crash it takes several attempts to get FahMon up and running again - I guess it tries to read all logfiles for all clients at once and fails. After 4-5 attempts (and using the OS X "reset and restart" option) I normally get it up again, I imagine FahMon reverts to locally stored data.

I like FahMon a lot. Any hope of getting fixes for some of these network issues in a not too distant future?

[Dave]

Bruce et al, I dumped all of my massive Hotmail .dbx files on the Presario, gaining me 553MB. I also found several Windows .msp (installer patch) files that were 117MB each. Several of those 117MB files were in the SoftwareDistribution folder and could not be deleted (I tried), but the others could. In total, I regained almost 1 gigabyte of hard disk back on the Presario. That, however, is a mere drop in the bucket, relative to the total 55.8GB capacity of the disk. Still, it helped some. I can regain a lot more space by uninstalling Microsoft Office, since the Presario is not hooked up to a printer nor is used for anything else other than folding.

As you had recommended, I ran the Microsoft Update (as opposed to the Windows Update, which only updates Windows itself), and it immediately found 14 updates. Well, 13 of the 14 updates installed successfully. The only update that wouldn't install was the most important one -- Windows XP SP2.

I know that it is necessary to run the update process iteratively until no more updates are found. However, much to my chagrin, it appears that my Windows XP product key has gotten corrupted (I was given this computer as an emergency backup, so it may have already been corrupted), and now it won't apply Windows XP SP2 because of the invalid product key. The person who gave me the Presario was given it as well by a neighbor who was moving, so there is now no hope of recovering the original product key. Apparently, the original owner had upgraded the operating system from Windows ME to Windows XP, but didn't attach the Product Key info or the Certificate of Authenticity label to the bottom of the machine. So, it looks like I'm stuck with Windows XP SP1, unless I backup my folding data, reformat the hard disk, install an OEM disk of Windows XP Professional Edition SP1a that I still have.

I know that I will need to restore Folding@Home and a few other key tools (antivirus software, anti-spyware, etc.) after rebuilding the system. At that point, I should have plenty of hard disk space and a valid, working, current copy of Windows XP on the Presario. Now, if only I can solve my time issue...

UPDATE:
After several calls to Microsoft Support, I finally connected with the exact person I needed to help me with the product key issue. After providing Microsoft with appropriate proof of legal ownership for my own copy of Windows XP Professional SP1a, they provided me with a brand new OEM product key, which I promptly installed successfully. Ultimately, I did do the reformat/clean minimal install, so I now have a much cleaner system than I was wrestling with initially. I have run all of the requisite high-priority updates, and I have upgraded Internet Explorer to the most current version (v8). I still have 1.15 GB of free space on my 5.59 GB hard drive, or almost 20.6% free space, including Folding@Home and FahMon. I ran a defrag, and it finished within 5 minutes. All system and application functions work properly now -- even the Folding@Home display function works, albeit the rendering is abysmally slow and coarse (I don't normally run it, but I did want to test it to see if it even works). Thanks to all for your guidance!

[WangFeiHong]

Hi, could i ask what exact files are read by FAHmon, 'coz i'm monitoring my clients over the internet, having trouble monitoring them well.

the messages log says cannot read queue.dat, logfile_00.txt, unitinfo.txt, logfile_655370.txt, so i assume these are needed in addition to the FAHlog.txt i have?

[uncle_fungus]

FAHlog.txt, queue.dat, unitinfo.txt, work/logfile_*.txt

[seljo]

This is not really related to FAHmon directly, but I am having an issue with a SMP client not updating the log.txt that FahMon needs to display info. Anyone seen any threads on this or know how to fix it?

[toTOW]

You should post in the appropriate client forum with more details if you expect us to be able to help you ...

[seljo]

I cannot find anything about this by searching... Should I post in the SMP forum?

[bruce]

I suspect it really problem with your FahMon setup, not with SMP. Somewhere on your system you'll find a copy of FAHlog.txt which is being updated and you have to configure FahMon to point to that copy. If you start SMP with a shortcut, what is the "start in" information in that shortcut?

Most of the new Windows clients install the software in \program files and create a shortcut that points to a data directory somewhere else. That's probably the best way to do it if you have Vista or later. I just go to %APPDATA% and create a FAHSMP directory there. (I expect that that makes it pretty close to whatever the next version will do.)

[Nebbuchanezzar]

Hey, I am trying to get FahMon 2.3.99.1 running on an ubuntu 8.04 [kernel 2.6.24-19] machine...I followed the guide found on the fahmon site, and it was giving the libcurl-so.1 issue, so I ran sudo ldconfig, well...now it opens, but instantly opens the "Downloading new projects" window and that immediately locks it up, and I have to force quit...can someone help me? or is there a better place for me to get an answer? TYIA!

[MtM]

Hi Andrew, think I hit a strange bug, strange since I haven't seen it before. I saw Fahmon reporting 70days for a 2669, first thought it was running on one core but nope, only then looked at the log and saw fahmon is miscalculating? According to the log I'm going to need about 12 and a half hours which is normal.

[bollix47]

Have you checked the date and time in Linux to make sure it hasn't 'drifted'?

Also, there is a version 2.3.4 now .... maybe try updating?