Prime95 on ghosted machines
 

I want to run Prime95 on 6 machines that are on 24/7 but ghosted every night at 2am

Before I try loads of different things, what is the best way to do this?

Thoughts so far,

Run Prime95 from a \\servername\share

Have a schedule that copies the mersenne directory to a server and then back again once ghosted?

Thoughts please!

Lawrence......

[QUOTE=lozcs]Run Prime95 from a \\servername\share[/QUOTE]
Looks like a good idea.

why not run prime95 straight from the server with a bat file.

[QUOTE=moo]why not run prime95 straight from the server with a bat file.[/QUOTE]

so set up the shares for each PC on the server

eg.

\\server\computername

the on the client simply call

\\server\%computername%\prime95.exe

That's it?

if your users logout, then you might not be able to run the prime95 as a service

lets play the game then
make a schduled task that runs each time the computer starts have it call
\\servername\%computername%\prime95.exe
have it run under admin account. if its xp all the better ok so use that as what program to call have it run on startup and you should be set. if you get to a client machine and get on msn i can show you clearly how to do it.

So I can use the variable %computername% in the scheduler - as long as the shares are in place?

[QUOTE=moo]lets play the game then
make a schduled task that runs each time the computer starts have it call
\\servername\%computername%\prime95.exe
have it run under admin account. if its xp all the better ok so use that as what program to call have it run on startup and you should be set. if you get to a client machine and get on msn i can show you clearly how to do it.[/QUOTE]

yes you should.

Hi,

Just added another 5 P4 machines to this network so working on this now...

I have created the shares on the server \\servername\01$ 02$ etc

first I mapped a M drive to the share then tried to install the ntprime service. This installed OK but couldn't start

So I tried to run prime95.exe from the share

\\servername\01$\prime95.exe

and I get the following error.

[SIZE="2"]ERROR: unable to open spool file
unable to open log file
ERROR: unable to open spool file
unable to open log file
ERROR: unable to open spool file
unable to open log file
ERROR: unable to open spool file
unable to open log file
Mersenne number primality test program version 24.14
Cannot write to file worktodo.ini
Error opening results file to output this message:
Unable to open log file.
Cannot write to file worktodo.ini
Unable to open log file.
Will try contacting server again in 60 minutes[/SIZE]

Can anyone help?

Thanks,

Lawrence......

[QUOTE=moo;74453]lets play the game then
make a schduled task that runs each time the computer starts have it call
\\servername\%computername%\prime95.exe
have it run under admin account. if its xp all the better ok so use that as what program to call have it run on startup and you should be set. if you get to a client machine and get on msn i can show you clearly how to do it.[/QUOTE]

A service wil not be able to start from a share since the share will not be present at startup.

I see two possible causes :
- the clients do not have write access to their shares.
- more probable since I suppose you already checked that, prime95 cannot run from an unc location. So you must start prime95 from your M:\ drive not from the UNC.

You could use one share only with subdirectories per computer.

A batch file like this should do the job :
Prime95_start.cmd[CODE]net use M: \\SERVERNAME\PRIME95$
M:
cd \%computername%
start prime95.exe[/CODE]Next you put this batch file in the windows directory for instance and add the following to the registry of your ghost sources to have the batch file run at startup with the system account :[CODE]Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run]
"Prime95"="C:\\Windows\\Prime95_start.cmd"[/CODE]

try this
right click on server share and click allow users to change my files
also you might want the main share to include a dollar sign after it
so sharename$ this will hide the share.

[QUOTE=Jacob Visser;92693]
- the clients do not have write access to their shares.
- more probable since I suppose you already checked that, prime95 cannot run from an unc location. So you must start prime95 from your M:\ drive not from the UNC.
[/QUOTE]

:unsure:

Doh...

Gave write access to share mapped a drive and added it to startup.

All working now!

:smile:

Thanks

Couldn't find an online definition for "ghosted machine." Judging from the Google hits, it means to take the data on one machine, whether it be RAM, a hard drive, a cd, a thumb drive, etc., and exactly duplicate it in another location.

The question in my mind is, do you have to duplicate the entire cd, hard drive, RAM, whatever, for it to be called ghosting? What about a directory with a program that could benefit from running on more than one computer, like Prime95? Linguistically speaking(I hope I wrote that correctly) can you ghost a Prime95 directory?

In this context, ghosting refers to rewriting a computer hard drive from a stored image, ensuring that the system is restored to a known good state. The tool used is a disk imaging application, like [URL="http://www.symantec.com/home_homeoffice/products/overview.jsp?pcid=br&pvid=ghost10"]Norton Ghost[/URL].

[QUOTE=jasong;92930]Couldn't find an online definition for "ghosted machine." Judging from the Google hits, it means to take the data on one machine, whether it be RAM, a hard drive, a cd, a thumb drive, etc., and exactly duplicate it in another location.

The question in my mind is, do you have to duplicate the entire cd, hard drive, RAM, whatever, for it to be called ghosting? What about a directory with a program that could benefit from running on more than one computer, like Prime95? Linguistically speaking(I hope I wrote that correctly) can you ghost a Prime95 directory?[/QUOTE]

to answer your question
its like taking a picture with a film camera
the picture doesnt change but you can make copies of it.
thats how places with large ammounts of computers deploy them

i work after hours at my school as an intern now we keep about 500 or so im guessing computers going thats a lot when they go down we dont reinstall windows we ghost them which takes the time from 5 - 6 hours for a reinstall and configure to about 15 minute ghost 30 minute configure and patching can be done once its deployed.

I thought you could run Prime95 locally but point to data on a server.

From the readme:
-Wdirectory This tells prime95 to find all its files in a different
directory than the executable.

And if each machine didn't have its own share, I suppose you could use a single one with:

-An This is used to run two or more copies of prime95
from the same directory. Using this command line argument
causes prime95 to use a different set of filenames for the
INI files, the results file, the log file, and the spool file.
Just use a different value of n for each copy of
prime95.exe you start.

Just a thought, and I haven't tried this type of configuration.

every time i run p95 over the network its slow as all get out

mabey you could by 6 small usb drives with and have them auto run or something

that way the info is local and should speed things up a bit