Beta team requests (both new and reinstatment from FCF.org)

[bruce]

Beta team request

If you want to be considered for membership to the beta team for testing new developments in the Folding@home project (or if you already joined at the forum.folding-community.org site), you have come to the right place. To apply for membership, please read the entire topic and if you believe you can be helpful with this effort, post a reply saying a little about yourself.

The beta team tests new projects and new versions of FahCores only, not new clients. If you wish to test new clients they can be downloaded from and the discussion groups are found here: index.php?c=4

Please do not apply if you're new to FAH or you have not been an active participant in this community support forum or its predecessor, the folding-community forums.

The best candidates are those who have been folding for a while and have experience with this forum, and the current clients, fahcores, work units, servers, stats, etc., so we will check your user history*. Beta testing also requires that you post problem reports when strange things happen. Those who participate regularly in this forum (either asking questions or helping others) tend to get priority over those who rarely post, simply because it shows your willingness to be an active part of the FAH community. If you just joined this forum, and have very few posts, your post asking to join should distinguish you as to why you would be a good addition to the team. If this is your first visit to our forum, you are not eligible for membership in the beta team.

*If the forum name used here is different than the fah name used for your stats, please include your fah user name in your request post. Posting your team affiliation is not required.

The beta forum is never 'full' as such, it is open to everyone who wishes to actively participate and is prepared to put the time and effort into doing so. It is just a hidden forum to avoid clutter for people who just want to fold.

Many thanks for your co-operation.

Ann Onymous wrote:
What is Beta team...? What does it do?

The beta team tests new fahcores and work units from new projects. (Testing of new client is generally done as a public beta, followed by an official release.) Team members are expected to report back any unusual behaviors, glitches, errors, points/performance issues, logs, etc. Detailed feedback is very important.

You also have to accept the risk that you will run into occasional problems. Do not run beta software on any computer that cannot tolerate even the slightest instability or problem. By posting your request to join, you have indicated that you have accepted these risks.

Miss Tyrious wrote:
I see this thread is old, but I'll post anyway.

This thread was started a while ago, but does not get old. Once we've added you to the beta team, your post is removed so the date of the last post means nothing.

The forum will send an email to the address you used at registration time notifying you of the change. Be sure you registered with a mailbox that you check regularly.

Caesar Sallad wrote:
Is there a link to the responsibilities of a beta-tester, i.e., what kind of feedback is expected?

Probably the best overview is here but you'll learn more as you read the posts in the beta forum.

C. Cretive wrote:
Grr u stealin all the good protiens! (p5**) gimme gimme gimme, jk. nice output.

If you're looking for higher points, then joining the beta team is NOT the way to get them. More often than not, if a client/core/work unit is still in beta, it is because problems still need solving. You will likely score fewer points than those who are running non-beta software. You accept that by joining the team.

Once you have been added, please be sure to read as much as you can from the Beta Team Forum, starting with the Beta Team Rules of Engagement. You'll find a lot of information there.

Di Sguised wrote:
Does it matter if we're overclocked? If not, I'd like to join.

Overclocking does not disqualify you from membership. When fah is running, you may find that a machine you thought was stable needs a little bit more tweaking, but that's not related to beta testing. The SSE or SSE2 optimizations used by fah push machines a bit harder than most other burn-in tests. It all depends on how conservative your settings were. Unfortunately, some WUs have errors that look a lot like overclock failures. We expect you to be willing to distinguish between the two possibilities by switching back to stock settings, and retesting at stock speeds to eliminate overclocking as the cause.

New proteins do come along regularly and they often have a higher risk of problems than those being distributed to everyone. They often need a new type of analysis, so don't be surprised if an update fahcore downloads too.

The new clients are generally beta tested in a public forum. The beta team's primary responsibilities relate to testing new fahcores and work units, so this is NOT the place to apply if you're only interested in new clients. For those testing an open beta client, discussions of current issues usually occur within a public beta forum for that client.

Shirley I.M. Wright wrote:
Can we "beta" only on a particular computer, or is it all computers under a given name?

You can use any computer for which you have permission to fold (like the EULA says). All we ask is that you monitor it's progress closely and report any strange events that might need fixing. You can select which computers get beta WUs and which will continue to be assigned normal WUs or -advmethods WUs. DO NOT beta test on computers with which you do not have frequent access.

With your request, please include a short statement of your personal qualifications, including why you would make a good beta tester, and why you would like to be added to the team. If you fail to do this, you will not be eligible to join the beta team, and your post will be deleted without notification.

Ima Secret wrote:
Why would you want to have us write a short message about our wanting to become a Beta Tester?

It would be nice to know a little about your technical background, and why you feel you would be a good beta tester.

There is much more to being a beta tester that just being able to use the latest client, cores, and work units. There is A LOT of work involved as well. A true beta tester actually tries to break the software, uses it in many scenarios and system configurations, tries all combinations of settings, switches, clients, etc. Then they have to try and figure out exactly what they did to break it, and report their findings clearly, and the precise manner to where it can be fixed.

Also, beta testing is exactly that. Beta testers, must have a fairly good understanding of computers and their inner workings, as when beta testing you come in to it knowing that it may likely break something. Beta testers need to know how to fix what breaks.

So basically, we would just like to know that you are serious about beta testing, and that you have the background and understand fully what you are getting yourself into. If you don't plan to stick with it, we'd rather you didn't join. And if you don't stay active, you will eventually be removed from beta team list.

This thread will not give you access to the high performance software listed here http://folding.stanford.edu/FAQ-highperformance.html These developments are not yet ready for beta testing, unless otherwise listed below.

NOTE: If you don't understand anything you read in this post, please ask. There are important statements here, and if you miss some of them, your may not be added to the beta team until you understand what you read. Please include a comment in your request stating that you have read and agree to these guidelines. Posters without this comment will not be added to the beta team.

Indie Script wrote:
Are cores for future clients being tested yet, or only the open betas for SMP and GPU?

This is a very common misunderstanding of what the beta team does. After people read first two posts in this thread, this misunderstanding still persists and I'm not sure why.

The FAH software consists of three important pieces. [1] A client (the software you install), [2] A WU (data), [3] a FAHcore (software that the client installs or updates automatically that does the scientific analysis of the WU).

The FAHcore's that work with the V5.xx and V6.xx clients will (probably) also be used with any future clients, so there's no such thing as a "core for a future client".

Joining the beta team means that you want to be assigned WUs from projects that might or might not need an updated FAHcore but are still in the very early part of the run. They are more likely to be numerically unstable.

If you want to test future clients, posting here will not help because that is not what we do here. If you want to test newly minted, possibly less-stable WUs with any of the clients on the download page, then do post here.

[bruce]

While the WINE implementation is quite an accomplishment, I don't think it qualifies for beta testing. As John has suggested, we're interested in reports of problems from supported configurations that potentially would lead to bug fixes or other items that should be corrected before WUs or new FahCores are stable enough to release to those who run with advmethods. The experts wouldn't have any real way to know if a problem that you report would be applicable to everyone or if it's just a peculiarity of the WINE wrapper.

Right now it can be a challenge to decide if GPU issues are related to WinXP or Vista or both, to ATI vs. nVidia or both, etc. and you'd be adding one more level of complexity that couldn't be fixed at Stanford or ATI or nVidia.