How to set up a dedicated Folding@Home box with Ubuntu

Tushon

How to set up a dedicated Folding@Home box with Ubuntu

primesuspect

Thanks, Tushon! Great guide!

ardichoke

I've got an init script I wrote to automatically start folding at boot and stop it at shutdown

http://ardichoke.info/folding/folding.sh

quake101

This is a great guide! Looking forward to your windows guide as well.

Gargoyle

This is a great guide, but I think we'll lose beginners in the sudden jump from the introduction to creating a dedicated box. It'd be great if we had a basics of FAH guide that we could situate the OS guides within.

Windows guide link doesn't work, btw.

NiGHTS

Nice guide man!

Thrax

Fantastic guide.

Leonardo

I tip my hat!

Thank you for your hard work on this. It looks good. Although I've already got Linux Folders going, I'll definitely use your HFM.net setup guide for to get HFM running on one of the Linux boxes. I've got it running on my Windows machine, but haven't been successful yet with a Linux box.

_k

I have my one Windows machine running HFM.NET all the time and with the Linux boxes having the folding folders open as a samba share. Course then I have HFM.NET create a webpage summary and upload to a Linux machine so I can always check summary anywhere on my network.

Tushon

@ardichoke Were you encountering problems with WUs? My method starts at boot time (in the special cases) after starting langouste. The normal shutdown process should kill the folding process without any problems, unless you know something of which I am unaware.

@Gargoyle Are you thinking of something like this? My windows guide is forthcoming, hence the broken link.

@quake101, @Thrax, @NiGHTS thanks!

@primesuspect thanks for the editing and encouragement to get this done.

@Leonardo The info I gave is for using an existing HFM setup on another box monitoring your "new" folding machine. The HardOCP forum has a very detailed guide for getting HFM running under Linux here.

Leonardo

Right, I was able to set up HFM.net on one of the Linux Folders, to monitor the local machine's Folding client. I have been unable to set up shares so that the Linux HFM can monitor the other boxes' clients. It's not a show stopper, as my main rig, my Windows rig, runs HFM.net also, which was a breeze to configure to monitor all the Folding clients, including the Linux machines. If we pursue this further, I'll open a new thread for it. I don't want to dilute this "discussion."

Tushon

Ah, I gotcha. The shares can be weird to configure and I know exactly what you mean now.

shwaip

@leonardo smbmount should let you mount it like any other drive in linux

Tushon

This is a great guide, but I think we'll lose beginners in the sudden jump from the introduction to creating a dedicated box. It'd be great if we had a basics of FAH guide that we could situate the OS guides within.

Windows guide link doesn't work, btw.

Did you see my tag in there? I am curious about what you are requesting.

Thrax

I believe he's saying that there's very large rift between the optimal folding configuration for a newcomer that wants to get started on their current OS, and someone looking to create a dedicated folding box for it.

I feel like this article should have come second, being introduced with: "Now that you've learned how to install and configure F@H on (insert OS here), let's kick it up a notch with a dedicated folding box."

Most people are not going to make an Ubuntu folding box, honestly. They just want to know how to get the most out of the PC and hardware they have.

Tushon

I have a "add folding to your existing windows box" type article near completion.

This article addresses any users of existing (supported) *nix OSes simply by ignoring the installing Ubuntu section and tailoring install responses to appropriate OS commands. I did volunteer that I would DL whatever distribution people had and help support that to my ability, but for most Linux support, the v7 beta client is probably the easiest and most straightforward solution.

Leonardo

I understand why Tushon focused on Linux first. Windows Folding, with a basic computer configuration, is rather simple. Install Folding client V7 and it automatically sets up most of the necessary parameters. Since most people are not familiar with Linux, and since Linux is such a pain to install anything until you learn a new language, good guides are necessary. I know that I had almost zero interest in Linux until I found out how much of a superior platform it is for advanced Folding. Guides for Windows Folding are plentiful; not so with Linux.

_k_

@Thrax there have been windows F@h guides posted on Icrontic. Simply reposting articles is, to my understanding, still a no go. To get a windows guide posted it has to be under the context of introducing new functions or clients while rehashing old literature.

A linux guide is a brand new venture for IC and one can simply turn the process/service off and on at will or configure the client to use <100%.

Gargoyle

Sorry for not responding earlier, I've been preoccupied with work. This really is a great guide, Tushon; I don't want to detract from that in the slightest. Thrax pretty much summed up what I was thinking, though. I just would have expected more baby steps for people who are new to Folding. I think I'd try to get people hooked by running a client on their daily driver and see the points come in before getting them to set up a dedicated box. Some other questions that I think would be useful to answer are what kind of benefits should I expect for going with a Linux dedicated box? Do they get X% better PPD than Windows, all things being equal? Does that only count for SMP, or do they run GPU now? I don't even know the answer to these questions (the only Linux box I have Folding is an old Pentium 4).

Of course, I may be assuming a different audience for the article than Tushon intended. More advanced users could certainly find this in a search and be grateful for it, in which case it's pretty much flawless.

This reminds me that I've been wanting to write an article to light the fire under existing members to get back folding again, but it'll be weeks/months before I get around to it, so maybe someone else would want to collaborate on it or take it on. Something to the effect of, "if you leave your computer on, why isn't it folding?" That, and remind people we kind of owe our community continuity to the Folding team.

Re: Windows guide, it'd probably be less confusing if "see my guide here" was changed to "coming soon."

primesuspect

Just to clear the air a bit: the intro to the article was a lot of my work; I realize that it makes the article read a lot like a "Folding for newbs" guide, which dedicated Linux folding isn't, but my philosophy was that the intro to folding content couldn't hurt. It's just extra info. It doesn't detract from Tushon's wonderful Ubuntu guide in any way, it's just there in case there are people out there who would benefit from the intro.

BlueTattoo

I've been folding for years on Windows and have been trying to get it to run on Linux. This guide (and another site with permissions info) got me folding in just a few minutes. Thanks.

Tushon

Glad to be of assistance and happy folding!

Leonardo

BlueTattoo, thanks for Folding. It's a great philanthropy. It's basic research will provide (and is already providing) data that will greatly benefit humankind. I had zero interest in Linux before Folding, but I've discovered Folding+Linux is a match made in Heaven.