FCI: Folding@Home Client Info (Web based client monitor)

[smoking2000]

I'm glad to announce that the completely rewriten FCI is finally released!

FCI, short for Folding@Home Client Info, is a web based FAH client monitor supporting all major Operating Systems. It consists of a client and a server, both written in Perl. The FCI client runs on all OSes that FAH runs on too, and the FCI server runs on Linux, FreeBSD and OpenBSD.

More information is available in the documentation on the FCI project website.

The project website also features extensive installation instructions for each supported operating system.

Currently the supported Operating Systems are as follows:
FCI Client: Linux (Debian & Ubuntu, Fedora, CentOS, Gentoo, Arch, Slackware, Mandriva, OpenSUSE), FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Mac OS X & Windows (XP, Vista, 7)
FCI Server: Linux (Debian & Ubuntu, Fedora, CentOS, Gentoo, Arch, Slackware, Mandriva, OpenSUSE), FreeBSD & OpenBSD

The lastest FCI release (and previous releases) can be downloaded from the project website.

Since I first wrote FCI, I've been running a FCI server for my subteam of the Dutch Power Cows where you can see FCI in action.

[smoking2000]

new release of FCI: v1.1

This release involved mostly serverside changes, where by default inactive usernames, teams, clients and projects are no longer showed now. The display of inactive objects can be toggled using the link on every page. This way inactive clients that haven't sent a new upload for hours (or even longer) don't pollute the overview.

The timing of requests has also been inproved, these are now done using Benchmark combined with Time::HiRes instead of looking at the wall clock. The execution time is shown in the FCI server output at the end of a client upload, and as a comment at the bottom of every web page.

There has also been a minor change to the FCI client, that only affects Windows users. STDERR is now redirected to STDERR for all systeminfo commands.

The lastest FCI release (and previous releases) can be downloaded from the project website:
http://fci.bile.nl/?target=downloads.plc

Or you can use the direct link:
http://fci.bile.nl/downloads/fci-1.1.tar.gz

[smoking2000]

new release of FCI: v1.2

This release includes a bugfix for fci-update-xml-files.pl to properly detect the status of new clients.

It also includes the new username_link(), team_link(), client_link() and project_link() functions which display the links to the respective items and its optional markers. These markers are used to inform the user of certain noteworthy states:
I - Inactive username, team, client or project.
* - New client (its first upload is included in this update)
! - The current work unit is expected after the final deadline (clients only)
! - The current work unit is expected after the preferred deadline (clients only)

The current work unit markers were already part of FCI 1.0, and have now been extended with the two markers.

The lastest FCI release (and previous releases) can be downloaded from the project website:
http://fci.bile.nl/?target=downloads.plc

Or you can use the direct link:
http://fci.bile.nl/downloads/fci-1.2.tar.gz

[smoking2000]

new release of FCI: v1.2.1

This release has bugfixes for the 'Bizarre copy of HASH in refgen' errors, this error is triggered on Apache 2 but not on Apache 1.3.x. There has also been a minor modification to the installation instructions for Arch, Debian, Gentoo & Mandriva regarding PerlOptions, the example apache config is now the same again as that in apache-conf.

The lastest FCI release (and previous releases) can be downloaded from the project website:
http://fci.bile.nl/?target=downloads.plc

Or you can use the direct link:
http://fci.bile.nl/downloads/fci-1.2.1.tar.gz

[smoking2000]

new release of FCI: v1.2.2

This release contains a bugfix for usernames.plc were the client list was not properly displayed and contained 'n/a' strings. There has also been a minor change to projects.plc were the unused sort parameter was removed. And finally the inactive teams and usernames are no longer displayed by default in team-stats.plc.

The lastest FCI release (and previous releases) can be downloaded from the project website:
http://fci.bile.nl/?target=downloads.plc

Or you can use the direct link:
http://fci.bile.nl/downloads/fci-1.2.2.tar.gz

[smoking2000]

new release of FCI: v1.2.3

This release contains a bugfix for team-stats.plc where the link to the team stats was broken when the team name was used.

The lastest FCI release (and previous releases) can be downloaded from the project website:
http://fci.bile.nl/?target=downloads.plc

Or you can use the direct link:
http://fci.bile.nl/downloads/fci-1.2.3.tar.gz

[Shadowtester]

Ok I just updated my Server and client to the new version and now I am running into a error any ideas as to the cause here is the output from the server.

When trying to update the client I get the following error

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Warning: The server encounterd one or more errors while processing the upload!
Forcing verbose output to display the server respose.

##############################[ Server Response ]##############################

FCI Server v1.2.3: Receiving new upload on 2009-02-11 09:13:13.

Checking client version...
v1.0 or newer, no conversion required.

Upload parameters validated.

Client      : NAS-SMP
OS Name     : Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 (etch)
OS Version  : Linux 2.6.18-6-amd64
OS Hardware : x86_64
OS Uptime   : 09:13:13 up 7 days, 19:03,  3 users,  load average: 3.43, 3.19, 3.                                                            01
CPU         : Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU     T7500  @ 2.20GHz 2194.549 MHz 4096                                                             KB Cache
RAM         : 4037996 kB
FCI Version : 1.1
IP Address  : 192.168.0.120
Hostname    : 192.168.0.120
User-Agent  : fci-client/1.1

Saved qd data to client-data/NAS-SMP/qd-data.xml.new

Saved unitinfo.txt file to disc.

Saved MyFolding.html file to disc.

Saved client.cfg file to disc.

Saved FAHlog.txt file to disc.
Appending FAHlog.txt to FAHlog-Complete.txt

Saved current.xyz file to disc.

Saving uploaded client information in client.xml.
Saved client information to: client-data/NAS-SMP/client.xml.new

Checking if project of xyz file is seen before.
Extracted from xyz file:
 Work Unit : p2665_IBX in water
   Project : 2665

Project not seen before.

Copying xyz file to project data directory.
client-data/NAS-SMP/current.xyz -> project-data/p2665.xyz
<div style='color: #FF0000'>Error running upload.plc: <pre>Error: Cannot copy fi                                                            le: client-data/NAS-SMP/current.xyz -> project-data/p2665.xyz
</pre></div><br><hr>
Execution time: 19.8866 wallclock secs (19.61 usr +  0.03 sys = 19.64 CPU)

##############################[ Server Response ]##############################
NAS:/usr/local/bin#

And when I am trying to update the xml files on the server I get the following error

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NAS:/usr/local/bin# ./fci-update-xml-files.pl
Undefined subroutine &main::parse_delta called at ./fci-update-xml-files.pl line 209.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks

[smoking2000]

The first issue during upload, is most probably caused by a permission issue, try setting the permissions using:

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chown -R shadowntester:www-data /var/www/fci/
chmod ug+w /var/www/fci/project-data/*

The second issue is caused by me releasing FCI v1.2.3 before fully testing it. While I have been working on v1.3 since 2009-02-01, it is not near release yet, so I've made an interim release including the updated fci-update-xml-files.pl of v1.3 in v1.2.4:
http://fci.bile.nl/downloads/fci-1.2.4.tar.gz

In another future release I'll include either upgrade functionality in the installer to avoid these issues, or document the procedure in the INSTALL files. In the mean time the only reliable way to install a new version of FCI is with a complete reinstall (rm -rf /var/www/fci /usr/local/bin/fci*), or manually merging the changes. Personally I use the latter method, but this is not very good for non-developers of FCI. When only the perl code has been changed, it's enough to copy the latest versions over the old, but if the XML files have been extended these changes need to be added by manually.

[Shadowtester]

Thank you that fixed the problem and I bet my problem was on the reinstall of the server and the client on that machine I did not do the (rm -rf /var/www/fci /usr/local/bin/fci*) I just used the force option on the installer.

[Shadowtester]

I have noticed that the FCI 1.2.4 is having problems with the new GPU2 5902 work units. I does not display the point value or ppd for that work unit. I have tried to download an updated project summary file from Stanford but that did not help. FCI does show the value of the project when you check the detailed info about the project just not on the client summery page. I also looked at your groups FCI page as well and it is also having the same problem with the 5902 wu's so its not just my setup.

[smoking2000]

I'm currently at work, and not able to fix this issue right now, but I'll have a go at it when I get back home this evening.

The missing Credit & PPD values for p5902 should be provided by qd, which is run by the FCI client.

Project 5902 was added to qdinfo.dat on 2008-03-08 04:00:13 CET:

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[2009-03-08 04:00:13]     New project : 5902  new credit*100: 168000
[2009-03-08 04:00:13]     New preferred deadline for project : 5902  new preferred deadline:   259200

The project is listed on both the "Currently Running Projects" that's why the FCI project page for p5902 does show the credit and other info.

Your (and my) FCI clients are using the most recent qdinfo.dat which contains the data for p5902, as they automatically downloaded the qdinfo.dat of March 8th:

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qdinfo.dat	:	8 March 2009 (update-qd.pl)

This qdinfo.dat contains the current credit for p5902 on line 484 (see the last two columns):

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pt 5800  48000  5801  48000  5900  42000  5901 168000  5902 168000

Therefor qd should have displayed this information, but since it hasn't, there is probably a more fundamental issue.

It may have skipped using this data if the project data buffer in qd is now full, I haven't checked this yet.

Can you email me a zip file of the FAH client directory in question so I can test qd against this?

[Shadowtester]

Sure no problem I have a 5902 running now I will zip it up and send it to you shortly.

[smoking2000]

I got your client files, thanks.

Unfortunately I cannot reproduce the problem, nor your environment fully. The closest qd.exe I have to your version is the one released 21 December 2008 (fr 071), and it shows the points & PPH as expected:

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$ wine ./qd.exe -n ./qdinfo.dat -iaf ./gpu2-p5902/
qd released 21 December 2008 (fr 071); qd info 8 March 2009 (update-qd.pl)
** NOTICE: This version of "qd" is out of date (info file is fr 073). **
qd executed Tue Mar 10 19:52:08 CET 2009 (Tue Mar 10 18:52:08 UTC 2009)
Queue version 6.00
Current index: 9
[...]
 Index 9: folding now 1680.00 pts (295.634 pt/hr) 16.9 X min speed; 78% complete
   server: 171.64.122.70:8080; project: 5902
   Folding: run 11, clone 271, generation 0; benchmark 0; misc: 500, 200
   issue: Tue Mar 10 07:05:18 2009; begin: Tue Mar 10 07:05:07 2009
   expect: Tue Mar 10 12:46:04 2009; due: Sat Mar 14 07:05:07 2009 (4 days)
   preferred: Fri Mar 13 07:05:07 2009 (3 days)
   core URL: http://www.stanford.edu/~pande/Win32/x86/NVIDIA/G80/Core_14.fah (V1.24)
   CPU: 1,687 Pentium II/III; OS: 1,8 WinXP
   tag: P5902R11C271G0
   flops: 1064567259 (1064.567259 megaflops)
   memory: 1024 MB; gpu memory: 258 MB
   assignment info (le): Tue Mar 10 07:05:18 2009; BA118227
   CS: 171.65.103.100; P limit: 524286976
   user: Shadowtester; team: 10688; ID: 8B66702BF7251B4F; mach ID: 3
   work/wudata_09.dat file size: 65280; WU type: Folding@Home

The only change to qd (fr 071) between December 21 and December 25 was an update to the project data:

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[2008-12-25 02:00:11]     New project : 4447  new credit*100:  22500
[2008-12-25 02:00:11]     New preferred deadline for project : 4447  new preferred deadline:  3715200

The client experiencing the same problem on my FCI server uses the most recent functional revision of qd, so the changes to the code between the functional revision your using and the most recent can't be the issue:

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qd         : 8 March 2009 (fr 073)
qdinfo.dat : 8 March 2009 (update-qd.pl)

I spent most of yesterday night casing ghosts in the qd source code, terribly on the wrong track of what was causing this unexpected behavior. Just now I realized that qd is not at fault here, it truly doesn't know about p5902 in its build in project data table. p5902 was released long after qd fr 071, so that data lives only in qdinfo.dat. The qdinfo.dat your FCI client is using was released 8 March 2009, so you'd think that it actually contains p5902 which was added that day.

It just so happens that on Sun Mar 8 03:27:01 2009 CET I released qd-tools v2.3.7 containing the new qd fr 073 and recent builds of xyz2pdb for all platforms (first time that FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Mac OS X/PPC, Mac OS X/x86 and Mac OS X/Universal binaries are available), only 33 minutes before p5902 was added to qdinfo.dat on 2009-03-08 04:00:13 CET.

So now there are two version of qdinfo.dat using the date (da) 8 March 2009. The only difference is the point table generation time (pg):

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# qdinfo.dat 8 March 2009 (2009-03-08 03:27:01)
$ grep ^pg qd-data/qdinfo.dat
pg 1145F13D

# qdinfo.dat 8 March 2009 (2009-03-08 04:00:13)
$ grep ^pg ~/.fci/qdinfo.dat
pg 1145E762

The pg value is an epoch, and the difference between the two is 289796413 - 289793890 = 2523 seconds, or 42.05000000 minutes. Sounds about right:

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perl -e 'print scalar localtime (hex("0x1145E762") + 946684800), "\n"; print scalar localtime (hex("0x1145F13D") + 946684800), "\n";'
Sun Mar  8 03:18:10 2009
Sun Mar  8 04:00:13 2009

The problem here is that FCI client is not smart enough to see that qdinfo.dat released 8 March 2009 (pg 1145F13D) on your FCI server is newer than its local copy of qdinfo.dat released 8 March 2009 (pg 1145E762):

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Upload URL: http://fci.fatalerrorgroup.com/index.pl
Verifying access to URL ... Success!

Updating qd files.
Retrieving URL: http://fci.fatalerrorgroup.com/qd-data/qdinfo.dat ... Success
Reading file from disc: /home/bas/.fci/qdinfo.dat ... Done.

  Local version: 2009-03-08
Fetched version: 2009-03-08

  Local functional revision: 071
Fetched functional revision: 073

Versions are the same, no update of qdinfo.dat necessary.
Not updating qd binary, use --update-qd to also update the binary.
The binary will only be updated if there is a more recent functional revision.
Finished updating qd files.

I'll build some more intelligence into fci-client.pl before I release fci-1.3, in the mean time you can work around this problem by downloading the most recent qd binary and/or qdinfo.dat manually.

[Shadowtester]

Ok thank you I will try that I also like the new OS and client icons on your 1.3 version for you team its a nice addition /eye candy And if you need an additional beta tester please feel free to ask me I would be happy to help it would be the least I could do to help your development I have the server running on Debian Etch and clients running on both Debian Etch and Mepis 8 which is based on Debian Lenny.

[smoking2000]

Heh, if you haven't manually updated the qd files on your FCI client yet, you don't have to any more.

p5773 was just added to qdinfo.dat, so the new version trickled down to all the FCI clients

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[2009-03-12 19:00:10]     New project : new credit*100:  76800
[2009-03-12 19:00:10]     New preferred deadline for project : 5773  new preferred deadline:   345600