Automating your distributed Computing Setup with NT4.0/Win2k.
I'd been interesting in getting my SETI/distributed computing network running windows NT 4.0 and windows 2000 to be as low maintenance as possible. VNC is useful tool and there's a guide for it here, however I'm far to lazy to use it :-). I have a home network with 21 or so CPU's, several of which run "headless" in a stack without keyboard/monitor or mouse. Most of the machines are dual CPU also. Although its hardly rocket science and has probably been done by people with access to large corporate networks I thought I'd use the services utilities from the NT resource kit so set up SETI@Home, Genome@Home and Folding@Home as a service and use scripts to start/stop the services remotely from a single workstation. It also needed to be configurable on a per cpu basis to allocate a CPU to a particular project if required and be compatible with SETIQ (There is a guide here). I also wanted to monitor the services from a single workstation.
First of, here's the files you'll need.
SETI Single processor
SETI Dual Processor
SETI Quad Processor
Folding Single Processor
Folding Dual Processor
Genome Single Processor
Genome Dual Processor
There is a readme text in each of the zip files. READ THEM. Here is the MOST IMPORTANT Section they will NOT WORK otherwise.
**IMPORTANT: I've set this up to work with SETIQ running on proxy 192.168.0.1:5517. You'll need to edit the seti.reg to change this if you have a different proxy server or SETIQ or remove the proxy switch if you want to connect to SETI direct.**
Once you've unzipped the files you will need to make changes to the SETI.reg file if your proxy configuration is different or you want to connect to SETI@Home direct. You can do this with a text editor (Notepad will suffice). Right click on the seti.reg file and choose edit. You will be displayed with a text file like that shown below. You need to change the "-proxy 192.168.0.1:5517" to suite your proxy/SETIQueue or remove everything in the "" if you want to connect direct to SETI@Home.
REGEDIT4
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Sysrun\parameters]
"Application"="C:\\PROGRA~1\\sysrun\\sysrun.exe"
"AppDirectory"="C:\\PROGRA~1\\sysrun\\"
"AppParameters"="-proxy 192.168.0.1:5517"
Email me if you are in any doubt.
Below is a screen shot of what happens when you install the service. (This is the same for all the other projects). One important point is if you install all of the projects at the same time make sure that you stop the other projects running and set them to manual as the installation starts all the services. You also may want to change all the startups to manual of the projects you don't want to run if the machine restarts, the services all default to automatic startup. Here's a screenshot of the install.
Now that you've got all the services installed you need to copy 1 of the files from the distribution to your winnt\system32 directory. NETSVC.EXE is the file you need.
You can then use script files to start/stop and show the status of the projects from your main workstation.
Here's some example scripts. You'll obviously have to edit them to change the names of the machines (you can use IP address) to suit your network.
Start SETI
Stop SETI
SETI Status
Start Folding
Stop Folding
Folding Status
Start Genome
Stop Genome
Genome Status
Here's a screenshot of the what the script file will show.
Once the services are installed they are invisible, however they can be seen in task manager and in the services applet. For monitoring purposes across your network for Genome and Folding you can use TheJet's most excellent file monitor which you can download here. For SETI I use Mark Loukko's SETIWatch which you can grab here.