Getting started on Project Uberfoldix

Alright, I've just about got everything ready to attempt to remaster Knoppix 3.2 into a new, more robust version of overfoldix. Overfoldix is a distribution of Linux that runs from a CD and is equipped with folding@Home. With it you can run a folding box without a case, mouse, or hard drive. This new graphical version of overfoldix will be called uberfoldix, if I can get it to work that is...

Overfoldix will still probably fold a tiny bit faster than Uberfoldix. And Uberfoldix will require more ram if you use one of its GUI's, as much as 160mb-192mb at a guess. I hope to add the following features:

Custom OC/folding boot screen, KDE spalsh screen, and backgrounds (coolness factor)

The ability to save your work automatically to a local or network drive, possibly a zip disk or pen drive in case you have to shutdown or for some reason need to transfer the work to another computer.

Headless capability (you can run it without a monitor and keyboard by using VNC or SSH from another computer on your network)

Samba sharing (I'm not sure if I can share the ramdisk folding runs in, but if I can, you can monitor your uberfoldix layer with Electron Microscope 3 from a windows box)

Hardware monitoring (lm-sensors should be doable, maybe gkrellm also)

Easy to use scripts to control folding and VNC, and the ability to customize settings and save changes to a floppy.

Easy install script to install UberFoldix to a Hard Drive if desired. It basically becomes Debian after that. I'm hoping those who've never tried Linux before will enjoy playing with Uberfoldix whether they run it from CD or choose to install it.

Choice of Window Manager: KDE 3.1, Fluxbox, IceWM

A plethora of GNU/Linux software-
office apps, browsers, graphics software, development tools, ftp/webservers, games, network security tools, crash recovery utils, benchmarks, etc.

Since its Knoppix, you'll be able to change settings and save them if you have a local hard drive with linux file systems or fat32 partitions. I think you can even pack some custom configs into a floppy.

If anyone would like to contribute to the Uberfoldix project, feel free PM me.

Nice. I'd kill if someone gave me one of those 16 meg copies of 98se they came out with.

Can we sam ramdrives baby?

Toysrme said:

Nice. I'd kill if someone gave me one of those 16 meg copies of 98se they came out with.

Can we sam ramdrives baby?

Click to expand...

hmmm...

Toysrme said:

Nice. I'd kill if someone gave me one of those 16 meg copies of 98se they came out with.

Can we sam ramdrives baby?

Click to expand...

would you kill anyone? lol

But good idea Arkaine23!

Talk to david he knows alot of stuff! lol

Thats cool, I got plenty of CD Drives I get with these rigs from my dads office when they upgrade, I just usually need the HDs for other rigs and lan storage. Where can I get this Overfoldix you talk about? I hope this project goes well, I know I will prolly want to run it since I got these PCs laying around w/o HDs but with plenty of ram and CD-drives...

After the machine booted up from the cdrom, would it have to keep the cdrom connected? Or could you just unplug it and boot up the next layer?

If you had a mobo with onboard nic/vid, you could then have a layer for only the cost of the mobo, memory, and cpu....

Wedo

http://sourceforge.net/projects/ofdx

You just burn the .iso image and boot from the CD. Its a really small linux with no GUI. All that's required is at a CPU, mobo, communications device hooked to the net, vid card, and 128mb of ram for it to run in a ramdrive. It should detect most hardware.

I have it but haven't gotten to use it since I'm without internet at home for the time being. I'm pretty sure this is the procedure to get it going (italics are literal commands to type at the prompt):

login like so:
root <press enter>
0verf0ld1x <press enter> ( the O's are zeros and the i is a 1)

foldoff (to stop folding)
cfgclient (so you can make your changes to the config file so you aren't folding for the ninjas)
foldon (to start folding again)

top (is kind of like a task manager so you can see that its working. press q to quit)

I have been talking with David about Uberfoldix. The goals are to make it easy to use for people unfamiliar with linux, and also to offer a more complete linux system. If any scripts I write are improvements on overfoldix's design or if I can get samba shares or remote connectivity working from a CD OS, then overfoldix will probably be updated to include those features as well.

Overfoldix is perfect for barebones folding but doesn't feature many linux applications. Uberfoldix will work just like overfoldix, but will be a complete linux system and should hopefully allow for EM3 monitoring and VNC connections from a second computer running windows.

Also, if I get it functional and hosted somewhere as a variant of Knoppix, people outside our team will download it and fold for us.

I might include the windows client so you can save it to Windows machines with FAT32 partitions that you don't have permission to write/download files to . That's kind of unethical, hmm maybe not.

Wedo said:

After the machine booted up from the cdrom, would it have to keep the cdrom connected? Or could you just unplug it and boot up the next layer?

If you had a mobo with onboard nic/vid, you could then have a layer for only the cost of the mobo, memory, and cpu....

Wedo

Click to expand...

It depends on how you use it. I guess if you get it folding and just leave it alone, you could unhook the CDrom. On the other hand if you called up something that's not already in memory, it would need to read the CD.

A lot of what I'm doing now is guesswork. I only just moved my linux machine into my new apartment and set it up tonight. So I have much experimentation ahead of me....

Arkaine's Linux skills = 20% stuff I KNOW, 20% stuff I think I know, 60% guesswork and research as needed

Arkaine23 said:

Overfoldix is perfect for barebones folding but doesn't feature many linux applications. Uberfoldix will work just like overfoldix, but will be a complete linux system and should hopefully allow for EM3 monitoring and VNC.

Click to expand...

I don't feel that it should have any real linux app support unless maybe you can make EM]I[ work with it, maybe a monochrome version

The goal is to be able to use samba to share the uberfoldix machine's ram drive to a Windows machine on the same network. EM3 will then be able to see what the uberfoldix box is doing and monitor its progress. I'm still not sure if this is even possible, but it should be. And its Linux, so I can make it possible if I try really hard.

Basically, if you have a windows machine and a router you could-

Run an uberfoldix rig with minimal hardware- no case, no monitor, no keyboard, no mouse, and no hard drive. Be able to monitor its folding from the windows box with EM3. Be able to connect to and use the uberfoldix box from your windows machine in a VNC window as if you were actually on it.

It will probably work best if the uberfoldix box has a floppy drive where you can put config files. I'd include the files with a generic configuration on the CD. There's a script built in to knoppix to allow you to disregard the default configs and make your own. You can save them on a local or network drive or on a usb pen drive or floppy.

For example- I'd preconfigure the folding directory to be shared. At most, samba would require you to enter your workgroup/domain name, and to create a samba user and password- the same user and password you would use to connect to the network share from your windows box. You would only need to do this once and then keep the modifed file on a floppy.

Sounds good, I hope it all works out, I am really excited about this. I would help except I dont know much about linux so this new version would really help.

Actually, now that I've had a chance to read the knoppix docs, I've found that the scripts I need are already there. Its just going to be a matter of adding the folding scripts, creating some generic configs, writing some how-to's, customizing the look of the 3 window managers and VNC, adding and removing software with apt-get, then remastering the ISO. loosks like it won't be ahrd once I have somewhere to connect my linux machine to the internet dump 1GB of ram into it. If I don't have any serious problems, it should be done by early next week.

For those interested in the project, what kind of boot screen would you like? I'll post some links shortly to some of the potential boot logos I run across.

It has to look good in 16 colors, and the size will either be 640x480 or 640x400 if I opt to put a boot message at the bottom of the screen. Potentioal Boot Screens and Backgrounds to be used/included in UberFoldix

OC logos http://freespace.virgin.net/alasdair.ewen/bootscreens.htm

http://www.kde-look.org/content/files/6265-debian-blue.jpg

http://www.kde-look.org/content/files/202-devurandom.jpg

http://www.kde-look.org/content/files/2382-tux-borg.png

http://www.kde-look.org/content/files/2091-linuxinside.jpg

http://www.kde-look.org/content/files/5938-linux-matrix-1-800x600.jpg

http://www.kde-look.org/content/files/6011-matrix_illusion.jpg I like this one since it looks like a Debian symbol and is low-color. Would be a good boot logo...

http://www.kde-look.org/content/preview.php?file=2082-1.jpg

Folding-oriented
http://www.medialab.chalmers.se/projects/molecules/data-proj.jpg

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~wildman/Proteins/archive.html

The only problem is that wouldn't work down here in Alabama...

Tornadoe power outtages would kill entire WU's, which would have a great ability to be vastly annoying

It'd take some massive battery/generator power to back up large clusters heh.

That's why I'm writing a script to back-up the work folder and queue every hour or so.... but you could only use it if you had something to save it on like a local or network hard drive or zip disk... not sure on the size, but you'd probably need a medium with at least 4 or 5 MB.

Arkaine23 said:

Alright, I've just about got everything ready to attempt to remaster Knoppix 3.2 into a new, more robust version of overfoldix. Overfoldix is a distribution of Linux that runs from a CD and is equipped with folding@Home. With it you can run a folding box without a case, mouse, or hard drive. This new graphical version of overfoldix will be called uberfoldix, if I can get it to work that is...

Overfoldix will still probably fold a tiny bit faster than Uberfoldix. And Uberfoldix will require more ram if you use one of its GUI's, as much as 160mb-192mb at a guess. I hope to add the following features:

Custom OC boot screen and backgrounds (coolness factor)

Click to expand...

That would rock . Using SysLinux?

The ability to save your work automatically to a local or network drive, possibly a zip disk or pen drive in case you have to shutdown or for some reason need to transfer the work to another computer.

Click to expand...

This is something that should be rated as important: WUs are too big for floppies, few people have zip drives, so we need to figure out how to access USB Pen drives.

Headless capability (you can run it without a monitor and keyboard by using VNC or SSH from another computer on your network)

Click to expand...

Overfoldix has SSH, but VNC depends on X, which Overfoldix doesnt have and wont have.

Samba sharing (I'm not sure if I can share the ramdisk folding runs in, but if I can, you can monitor your uberfoldix layer with Electron Microscope 3 from a windows box)

Click to expand...

I've never set up samba, ever. I don't even know if it depends on X or not: I will look into this and hopefully add it to Overfoldix.

Hardware monitoring (lm-sensors should be doable, maybe gkrellm also)

Click to expand...

The thing with lm-sensors is that you need to run a script on each different machine to set up the sensors for that system. However, if you have a disk of setup files etc it may be possible to add the lm-sensors config to that.

Easy to use scripts to control folding and VNC, and the ability to customize settings and save changes to a floppy.

Easy install script to install UberFoldix to a Hard Drive if desired. It basically becomes Debian after that. I'm hoping those who've never tried Linux before will enjoy playing with Uberfoldix whether they run it from CD or choose to install it.

Click to expand...

I beleive Knoppix comes with this function built in? Shouldnt be too hard - would be nice for people playing with Linux for the first time.

Choice of Window Manager: KDE 3.1, Fluxbox, IceWM

A plethora of GNU/Linux software-
office apps, browsers, graphics software, development tools, ftp/webservers, games, etc.

Since its Knoppix, you'll be able to change settings and save them if you have a local hard drive with linux file systems or fat32 partitions. I think you can even pack some custom configs into a floppy.

If anyone would like to contribute to the Uberfoldix project, feel free PM me.

Click to expand...

Count me in if you want a hand

Yes, I found a guide to get it done- the boot logo. http://knoppix.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=7 is how its done for syslinux


Knoppix does do USB pen drives but I don't know the details. Its own persistent /home scripts look for a usb pen drive, hard drive, and floppy drive in order to find a user's personal configuration settings, in which case it is probably done AUTOMAGICALLY! I've got a little SH one-liner to back up the WU files that I sent to you via PM, David. All the user will need to do is enter the save location as the first argument when running the script. It should work for a pen drive, local hard drive, network hard drive, and probably zip disk or tape drive as well. I'll include the instructions to set up a crontab to do this savewu script once every 30 minutes. Very painless for a user to setup really. But consider it an optional feature since not everyone will have a place to save the WU. There will of course be a script to restorewu that can be run as needed. The user will also have to set the $savedir by entering the path as the first argument.
example useage-
savewu /mnt/windows
restorewu /mnt/windows

Yeah, I thought you added SSH in the last update. VNC will be nice for a new user, essentially giving them a second system without the need for a second monitor, keyboard, or mouse.

Samba doesn't need X. I've set it up before. I'll make a samba config file and put the samba daemons to run at startup. The user will need to edit smb.conf to add the name of his/her workgroup IF its different than MSHOME. They'll also need to run a short command to create a samba user and password. sambapasswd -a knoppix
and run a small script to reread the new samba config file
restartsamba
They'll connect from their windows machine using this user/password and they can map the network drive. EM3 should be able to see folding inside this share. The setup for this only needs to be done once if the user has a persistant /home on floppy or a local HDD as they can save the changes they made.

All very painless, the 30-second samba install! I'm trying to make the initial config and user controls for folding and VNC all very simple like the method to configure samba above. If I was better at manipulating text with shell or perl scripts, I could just make one script to configure the whole shehbang. It should also work fine with the default configs on the CD, but the user would have to alter his/her Windows network to conform to Uberfoldix rather than vice-versa.

lm-sensors- yup. I'll include the files. You should be able to run sensors-detect and edit one config file to set it up. This config change can also be saved to a persistant /home on floppy , USB pen drive, or HDD.

Other goodies will go into uberfoldix, tools for network security for admin types, some games, some benchmarks, Prime95 and memtest86, GNU parted, and any diagnostic or crash reovery tools I can find. Probably even Seti@home

Persistent /home is awesome. It'll search for a user's saved settings and use them in place of the default configs on the CD. This includes just about every config file in /etc and /home, which means the user can really customize it to their liking if they have the space to store the files. Floppy would fill up pretty quick, but a pen drive or hdd wouldn't. I think it can work with a network HDD too, but I'll have to check.

Hooked up my linux box for the first time in months last night. Got my friend working on the boot logo....
Should unpack the knoppix 3.2 CD today and start with the tweaking.

David, your help will be most welcome. You should be able to get samba working using the same method that I do, and make overfoldix a nice 640x480 16 color boot logo. I don't know about the scripts for saving/restoring WU progress- those still need some testing. I'll probably get started in about 6 hours, but I think unpacking the ISO might take awhile....
I'll post back on the status of uberfoldix frequently.

I could use the overfoldix folding scripts to make sure I've got the method correct.... I'm still not sure of the safest way to kill the client.
I don't really know how to configure fluxbox, but that's not a major obstacle....


Current Status:
Collecting icons and images
Custom Scripts 95% completed but untested
Knoppix 3.2 burned but not yet unpacked for remastering
Remastering machine beefed up to 1.28 GB of ram and moved to a location with cable internet
Readme's/Guides/How-To's 33% completed

bugfixing

Nforce2 drivers are not in the current Knoppix so I'll have to try to add them in. Guess I'll get to dig around in the hardware detection scripts....

When I boot into Knoppix with my Abit NF7-S nForce2 system, it all works except the on board NIC. Looking at the unified Linux drivers at nVida, theres no Deb packages, only RH, Mandrake & SuSE RPMs, but there is a source tar you might be able to compile.

Yup, source is the only way in this case. http://www.nvidia.com/view.asp?IO=linux_nforce_1.0-0248

I'll try to write a script that will take source stored on my remastered CD and compile it, then bring ifup eth0 and any other networking daemons that failed because the NIC wasn't detected.

In system Bios Plug N Play OS option should be set to "No" if problems continue after installation.

Notes for myself:

http://packages.debian.org/stable/ -debian packages for apt

How to make a 64mb ramdisk-
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/ram bs=1024 count=65536
mkfs.ext2 -vm0 /dev/ram 65536
mkdir /mnt/ramdisk
mount /dev/ram /mnt/ramdisk


A thread about network/security/servers/recovery tools I might want to include... http://knoppix.net/forum/viewtopic....&start=0&sid=20a73e0dbc9542ebe5c892bf848da456

A great website with all kinds of linux info that will no doubt be useful to me. http://jetblackz.freeservers.com/

Pen Drives-
pen drives are /dev/sda1 assuming there aren't any other scsi devices.

/dev/sda1 /my/mountpoint vfat defaults,user,noauto 0 0 is an exxample fstab line for a pen drive if Knoppix doesn't handle it automagically.

standard mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/mountpoint will do it manually and umount /mnt/mountpoint done as root will do it manually

Will make these into little scripts for ease of use if it turns out knoppix doesn't have a hotplug module. But I have a feeling that it does....