Team Gäöl – Rosetta@Home – Daily Stats

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FAQ

Frequently Asked Questions
How do I join?
Will my system performance change by installing this client?
I have a slow PC, can I still join?
How do I add another PC to my own account?
There are dozens of distributed computing projects, why Rosetta@Home?
Team Gäöl, does that mean only people from your silly village can join?
How do I join?
To join, you will first have to create a Rosetta@Home account. In this step it is very important that the name you enter starts with ‘Team_Gaol~’ (excluding the quotes, including the tilde sign), else your results will not be added to Team Gäöl’s total. As an example, my account name is as following: Team_Gaol~DesperateDan.

After you created your account, you will have to join the DPC team, login to your Rosetta@Home account, then under ‘Account statistics’ there’s a link that will allow you to join a team, or you could click the following link to join DPC now (you have to be logged into your Rosetta@Home account for this link to work, do NOT click if you have already joined DPC, or another team).

Before downloading and installing the BOINC client software it is important to set some settings which will determine some of the client software properties (if you skip this step it is possible the client software will stop doing or getting work when you try to run it later on!). Login to your Rosetta@Home account (if you aren’t already), go to View or edit general preferences. Then go to Edit preferences. You may set these settings as you prefer, but for ‘Disk and memory usage’ is it recommended to use the following settings:
Use no more than 20 Gbytes
Leave at least 0.2 Gbytes free (this is about 200 Mbytes)
Use no more than 85% of total disk space
Write to disk at most every 60 seconds
Use no more than 75% of virtual memory
These settings may seem a bit exaggerated and they are, but are necessary for the client to run without hick ups, in most cases the client will use nowhere near as much system resources as specified here. You could also choose to ignore these settings by selecting ‘Run always’ from the ‘Commands’ menu in the BOINC manager.

Next, you will have to download the BOINC client software: Windows client, other clients can be downloaded from here. This is not the actual client for the Rosetta@Home project, but a manager that allows you to participate in all other BOINC projects as well (see main BOINC site for more information).

After you have downloaded the client software, run the setup. It will first ask you for a folder to install the client software to, which you can freely change to anything you prefer. The setup will then ask you for a setup type, recommended is to use the ‘Shared Installation’, as this will run the client software whenever anyone is logged on. Optionally is to choose the ‘Service Installation’, this should make the client software run completely in the background, even when no one is logged on, you will not however be able to see any screensave or graphics from the client software. The next step will allow to run BOINC as your default screensaver, this feature is not required for the client software to actually run, so you can safely switch it off. Whether or not you wish the client software to launch when you log on is up to your personal preference (it is recommended however). If you picked the ‘Service Installation’ in the previous step, you will also have to supply a login and password for the BOINC client software to be able to run while your computer is running. Finally, the setup will ask you to launch the client software immediately after the setup is done, it is recommended NOT to do this, as the client usually refuses to work correctly if you do.

After you have successfully created an account and finished the installation of the BOINC client software, launch the client software (the BOINC manager) from the Windows Start menu. The client software will immediately ask to attach to a project, for which it requires a link, for the Rosetta@Home project this link is http://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/. Next you will have to supply the client software with your e-mail address and account password (the one you used to create your Rosetta@Home account with, don’t forget to select ‘Use existing account’). After you click ‘Finish’, the client will proceed to download work from the BOINC server when necessary and should run correctly as long as you’re connected to the internet (this is required for Rosetta@Home).

When you have finished to do all of the above, you should send me an e-mail including a username of choice (one that isn’t in use on our stats site of course), you will then be added to our stats a.s.a.p.

Will my system performance change by installing this client?
This depends on the specs of your system, the Rosetta@Home client uses about 100MB of RAM when running, so at least 256MB is recommended. If you have less than the recommended amount your system performance could drop significantly (systems running out of memory, forcing it to use the Windows swap file). With anything over 512MB, you shouldn’t notice it’s running in the background.

Processor power is not a real issue with this client, since it’s running with a very low process priority, only using idle processor time.

I have a slow PC, can I still join?
Everyone is welcome to join, there are absolutely no requirements to what your system specs should be. I would like to ask you to read the above FAQ question though (Will my system performance change by installing this client?), since this might be an issue for you.

How do I add another PC to my own username?
Just install the BOINC client software as explained in the How do I join? FAQ question, of course you can skip the creation of a new Rosetta@Home account. Your new installation will be added to the stats automatically.

There are dozens of distributed computing projects, why Rosetta@Home?
Before Rosetta@Home we participated in the D2OL project, we switch because the D2OL project lacked news from the project administrators, also there were some doubts about what was happening with the results we were all turning in. Also we reached a very high position in DPC in the D2OL project, so we had little left to go for, as well as the Team Gäöl stats being pretty much fixed. With Rosetta@Home we were hoping to make a fresh new start on a fairly new project in which everyone was going to start back at 0. Because most of the fun for all members of Team Gäöl is still the competition, both inside our team as well as in DPC and maybe even worldwide again.

Another very important condition the projects have to meet is, they have to be ‘useful’. With this we mean the work our PCs are doing should potentially contribute to science, in particular health. Something you won’t see us doing is trying to find mersene prime numbers, cracking 128-bit keys, these projects are (to my opinion) completely useless. Our history also proves this as we have only participated in projects with a medical background: Distributed Folding, D2OL, now Rosetta@Home.

Team Gäöl, does that mean only people from your silly village can join?
No, anyone can join, actually Team Gäöl already has some international support.