Dedicated folding boxen? I can help!

Hi, team 32! unhappy_mage of team 33 here. I've developed a lightweight Linux distro designed specifically to fold with minimal requirements. It runs in about 30 MB of memory, leaving the rest free for folding purposes. It's an automated installer, so all you have to do is burn a cd and boot from it, and then it installs itself to the (ide, primary master) hard drive. It's simple, secure, and lightweight. Oh, and EM3 works with it, too.

So, you may be thinking, where can I get this, and how do I run it? Well, it's simple, Johnny! Download it, and burn a cd with it (burn it as an image, not as a file on the disk; google for more help), then pop it in the machine you want to fold on. It installs itself in about a minute (really!) onto the primary master hard drive. This is not reversible. Make sure it's not a disk you care about losing all the data from. Find an old cheap junk drive, not a brand-spankin'-new one. 1gb is enough. It'll automatically reboot when it finishes; take the cd out. You don't need it (or the drive, for that matter) any more.

So now it's installed. What's next? Zeroth, we need to log in at the prompt. The username is "root", and the password is "Fold@on". First we'll set it up for your username and (dare I suggest such a thing) it's also possible to change the team number. Type "cfgfold" and hit enter. Type your username, team number, confirm it, and then say "no" to "manually tweak config files". That was easy, no? Second, we'll get the actual FAH files from Stanford. Ready? Type "getfold" and hit enter. This should grab the FAH executable (something like FAH502-Linux.exe) from Stanford's website. Now it's time to actually start the FAH client. Type "/etc/fold start". In a few seconds, it'll jump to a different screen, with the normal-looking output of Folding@Home in it. You're all done! Folding will automatically start on boot from now on.

Any questions can be emailed to me at [email protected]. I'll be happy to talk to anyone about problems, questions, comments, and concerns related to this project.

Enjoy!

OMG! awsome....so awsome...but one thought related to these 2 sentences

Type "getfold" and hit enter. This should grab the FAH executable (something like FAH502-Linux.exe) from Stanford's website.

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what happens if stanford changes the url of the pages.....

edit: just imagine the ppd....just another thought: can this be run as a live cd ONLY without install (so I can toss it in my main pc while im at school for optimum production)

The "getfold" script downloads the download page's html and looks for the linux client on it. This means that unless Stanford changes the name of (or the format, substantially!) the download page, it'll keep working. In any case, it wouldn't affect already installed users; just new ones, and I'd release a new version that would properly get the newer client.

Oh, and WRT livecd - I can't do that easily. This OS does *nothing* but fold. And the stanford client isn't included; the license terms prohibit that. You'd also have to finish a unit in one sitting or nothing would get accomplished; where would the data get stored? Unfortunately, livecds aren't great for FAH.

One thing I forgot to mention is how to set up EM3 to monitor one of these boxes. Here's the executive summary:
while logged in, run "ifconfig eth0"
look for "inet addr: XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX" on the second line
start EM3 setup, go to the "General Info" page
in "Box Path" box, enter "\\XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX\fold\1" where XXX etc is the IP address above
give it a name and hit "Add Box"
Profit

mage has this been used, and what benefits regarding PPD does this have over say Windows.

If you use a live CD, add a mount USB device with a dongle of at least 32M and store data there. Now you won't have to deal with drive heat and save a few watts. I'm planning to do this with a couple of CDR only systems. One will have a JumpDrive, the other will use a flashreader and 32m card.

You'd also have to finish a unit in one sitting or nothing would get accomplished; where would the data get stored? Unfortunately, livecds aren't great for FAH.

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I'd do what Alabama said:

add a mount USB device with a dongle of at least 32M and store data there. Now you won't have to deal with drive heat and save a few watts. I'm planning to do this with a couple of CDR only systems. One will have a JumpDrive, the other will use a flashreader and 32m card.

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o ya..almost forgot..... to the forums!

@unhappy_mage, this sounds like the "dream" distro I've been lookin for! Will be checkin it out!

Forgot to ask- A64, SATA support?

oh yeah... mage.... look at overclockix as for what a GOOD live-cd folding distro can do... LOL.

however... folding only.... if its got any better support for hardware than overfoldix (another folding only distro of linux) then it should be decent to use for yatta monsters

TollhouseFrank said:

oh yeah... mage.... look at overclockix as for what a GOOD live-cd folding distro can do... LOL.

however... folding only.... if its got any better support for hardware than overfoldix (another folding only distro of linux) then it should be decent to use for yatta monsters

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That's what I was thinking for yatta. Ill try it out.

If you answer yes to manually config files, can you change big packets and such. what about flags?

Mage and I have been known to collaborate a bit in the past. I've been using his "getfold" as part of Overclockix's folding service for several months.

I don't know the answers for certain but I would expect- if you set bigpackets, it stays that way unless you edit client.cfg. I'd imagine the safe route for client flags is that the startup service uses only -forceasm. You'd have to edit the script to use more exotic flags.

But perhaps Mage has experimented as I have in detecting # of cpu's, SSE capability, and amount if installed memory, to determine if -advmethods is wanted and if bigpackets might be a good idea.....

i dunno if he has or not... but your experimentations generally work.

Arkaine23 said:

But perhaps Mage has experimented as I have in detecting # of cpu's, SSE capability, and amount if installed memory, to determine if -advmethods is wanted and if bigpackets might be a good idea.....

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There is an "autoconfig" script which looks at # of cpus, amount of memory, SSE, whatever else, and figures out what the highest possible WU you should be able to handle is. This runs on every boot, and overwrites the config files unless you tell it not to. You could do this if you decide that you want to run normal packets and it's autoassigning big, or timeless because you're on dialup, or whatever.

WRT A64, sata, etc - a64 will work fine, in 32-bit mode; since FAH doesn't have a 64-bit executable, it doesn't cause any slowdown. sata *can* work if it's recognized as an IDE device by linux. This isn't very likely. The reason I didn't put sata support in is because they're recognized like scsi drives by linux, and I didn't want to delete anything scsi on the grounds that it's not likely to be used in a FAH-only box.

TollhouseFrank: Can you run normal WUs in 128 with overclockix? This has much lower memory requirements than Overclockix. OCix is a much, much better general purpose distro than this, that's not in dispute here. The idea is, you can use this on *any* machine.

dicecca112: It's about the same PPD as windows; the Linux version is what Stanford benchmarks with. The real advantage is that you don't have to *cough* pay for *cough* another windows license just to have a farm.

Anyone who wants to help name it, take a peek at the [H] forums over here. I'm no good with names

The real advantage is that you don't have to *cough* pay for *cough* another windows license just to have a farm.

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That's my main concern, in a nutshell.


EDIT: I didn't like any of the names, but ended up voting for DamnSmallFolder .

I tried it in an old hp yatta monster. it loaded 2 files, then said ready. the screen then went blank and rebooted. I pulled out the cd, and the comp started booting the win98 os that was on the hd before. what am i doing wrong.

it sounds like you're not giving it enough time to get done installing. try installing with that hard drive on a different 9newer0 machine, and then move the hard drive to the old machine.

meanwhile, my shift key has stopped working1 what in the world/