Start and Stop Prime 95 on Large Groups of Windows XP Machines

Does anyone out there have an existing toolkit to start and stop Prime 95 (running as a service) on large groups of Windows XP machines?

Of late my participation in GIMPS has declined due to the fact that almost all of the machines I have access to at work are now small form factor with variable speed fans. A lab sitting idle is very quiet. A lab running GIMPS is VERY loud and gets VERY hot.

I currently have 11 large computer labs with just under 400 2.6 to 3.0 GHz machines and one lab with 19 dual 3.0 GHz Xeon CPU machines that could potentially be contributing CPU time. Almost all machines are Dell OptiPlex small form factor machines, all are running Windows XP Pro, all have the Windows firewall turned on, all are in a MS Active Directory, and all machines have the SMS client on them. Baring hardware failures, these machines are imaged only twice per year.

What I would like is the ability to schedule the times where the Prime 95 service starts and stops, be able to modify said schedule, and be able to turn off Prime 95 manually in a particular lab when needed (even if this is done through modifying the schedule to turn off the service 1 minute from the current time). I also need the ability to schedule each lab individually.

Any ideas?

-Marc

CC: GIMPS Mailing List

[Paulie]

Take a look in the readme.txt and undoc.txt files.

If you want to just leave it running but cooler, undoc.txt talks about Throttle= setting. Readme.txt talks about Time= (though it's a little unclear).

You could send a remote net stop command to the clients in a pinch if Prime is configured as a service. Could script it as a batch file.

[moo]

if you get really ambigous you could take on the small task of turing an old computer into a gimps service control useing php mysql and a nice helping of the exec command mainly what im saying is database back end php front end mabey a database for each lab then chose the lab and your off. might take some work but it should be useable. use netstop command i will have to look into that

[Eivind]

Originally Posted by MarcGetty

Of late my participation in GIMPS has declined due to the fact that almost all of the machines I have access to at work are now small form factor with variable speed fans. A lab sitting idle is very quiet. A lab running GIMPS is VERY loud and gets VERY hot.

I use Prime95 on a working computer too and the fan of the P4 3 GHz was also unbearable loud . I checked the undoc.txt and fund the savior : Throttle=n, where n is the numbers in milliseconds the program pauses before another iteration (this is not working with Factor jobs ;-).

I have added the follow 4 lines to the bottom of the prime.ini file:
Time=1-5/8:00-16:00
Throttle=45
Time=1-5/0:00-8:00,1-5/16:00-24:00,6-7/0:00-24:00
Throttle=0

This Throttle=45 powerdowns the 3 GHz to around 1,2 GHz, but hey no noise.

The best thing – the computer tells me when it’s time to go home

-Eivind