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notfred's Virtual Folding Appliance

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harlam357

harlam357

Senior Fold-a-holic
​
Joined
Sep 22, 2004
http://reilly.homeip.net/folding/vm.html

Anyone else tried it? It's really nice... just like his USB stick folding (and I imagine his Live CD folding too).

It's a pre-fabbed VM, very small - 16MB, that is setup and ready to Fold. Works very well. The only thing I had trouble with is monitoring it due to the fact that it doesn't sync to NTP under VMWare. :shrug: I still have to figure that one out.

Otherwise, it's a great alternative to running other full linux distros under VMWare. No need for a GUI, just Folding... no need to eat all that HD space with a full Ubuntu install. Once I get the monitoring issues figured out I'll be moving all my VMs this way. :)
 
I haven't tried Notfred's actual Virtual Folding Appliance but the vm's i run are picked up by the farm server and fold just like the diskless Ip35's. It is the cats ***. I was pretty happy when i realized i could show Ubuntu the door. :)
 
That's what I'm trying to do as well. I use Ubuntu for Folding, that's it. So why have that thick, full OS install there when I could use something much thinner.

The nice thing about the Folding Appliance is that it backs up the WUs directly to the VM disk. Most of my machines are Windows based and have other uses... so I have disks in all my machines, making the full diskless farm w/farm server thing just not for me. Hopefully I can get the time zone issues worked out and move to these Folding Appliances.

Really, I don't care if they're on a different time zone. I just need to be able to monitor them properly with FahMon... and I'm using an svn build right now, maybe I need to go back to v2.3.2b and see if it does any better. If so, bye-bye Ubuntu. :)

How are you running your VMs cuda? Off a notfred's Live CD?
 
How are you running your VMs cuda?
Click to expand...

Exactly, as Notfred has laid out in his guide. "Windows Network Boot Diskless Folding"

What you need:

*

Broadband always on Internet connection.
*

Router for the Internet connection which can have DHCP disabled on it.
*

PC to act as a server for the diskless clients. This can be your ordinary PC but it is going to need to be on all the time – it should be on all the time folding anyway!
*

Other PCs as diskless clients. These need at a minimum:
o

Motherboard, processor, memory, power supply.
o

Network card that supports PXE booting. This can be built in to the motherboard, in fact nearly all the ones that are built in to the motherboard seem to support network booting.
o

You will need a keyboard, graphics card and monitor to set them up initially, but once the diskless computers are running they are not required. Usually just use one of each between all the diskless computers.
Click to expand...

Complete how to: http://reilly.homeip.net/folding/diskless.html


Notfred has alot of other folding goods there as well. Debain/Ubuntu diskless, cd, virtual appliance & usb.

The only one i've tried, is his "Windows Network Boot Diskless Folding".


Once that is setup up, install VMware. Setup your two vm's, (assuming a quad) Let em boot. The diskless server will see them & hook them up for some folding action. The vm's will fold and get backed up just like any other diskless layer you've got running. :beer:

Fold on :attn:
 
I've set up VMware VMs, then dropped the folding.vmx file in the VM folder, and point the VM to boot a notfreds .ISO, using put into the same VM folder.
 
cuda340 said:
Once that is setup up, install VMware. Setup your two vm's, (assuming a quad) Let em boot. The diskless server will see them & hook them up for some folding action. The vm's will fold and get backed up just like any other diskless layer you've got running.
Click to expand...

Ahh, I see... you are PXE booting your VMs as well. Now why didn't I think of that? :D

ihrsetrdr said:
I've set up VMware VMs, then dropped the folding.vmx file in the VM folder, and point the VM to boot a notfreds .ISO, using put into the same VM folder.
Click to expand...

Ok, so you're using the folding.vmx file from the 'Virtual Appliance' link, then modifying it to use and point to a virtual CD-Rom drive with mounted notfred ISO instead of using his packaged folding.vmdk file. Is that what I'm reading?

In that configuration do you have trouble monitoring the clients via FahMon?

Also, since the ISO is read-only, where do the WUs get backed up?

The nice thing about using the folding.vmdk file is that it can backup the WUs locally within that virtual disk image.

I just finished up some units on my full Ubuntu VMs so I can give this 'Virtual Appliance' another go. Like I said, it works great... other than the fact that I've been less than successful getting FahMon to monitor them properly.
 
H, i don't use fahmon or other to monitor. I just bookmark the ip for each folding layer & check there, but if you sniff around over @ TR forums, i know i've seen it discussed there. It will work, if not fahmon, one of the monitoring utilities.
 
harlam357 said:
Ok, so you're using the folding.vmx file from the 'Virtual Appliance' link, then modifying it to use and point to a virtual CD-Rom drive with mounted notfred ISO instead of using his packaged folding.vmdk file. Is that what I'm reading?

In that configuration do you have trouble monitoring the clients via FahMon?

Also, since the ISO is read-only, where do the WUs get backed up?

The nice thing about using the folding.vmdk file is that it can backup the WUs locally within that virtual disk image.
Click to expand...

I'm not modifying the folding.vmx file, just dropping it in the VM folder created by vmware setup.

I have not been able to monitor notfreds with fahmon, I do just check progress like Cuda mentioned by typing the notfreds VM ip in a browser address window.
 
Running Ubuntu VMs on top of XP and XP64... have no problem monitoring those, I can sync the VMs to NTP.

My problem is trying to run notfred's VM... there's no way to set the system clock and it does not sync to NTP. :bang head I tried this again last night and remembered that the log file does also as one would expect... only once every 1 1/2 hours (if memory serves). It basically looks like the machine is hung, then it will write out 5-6 frames worth of log at once... again, making it impossible to monitor w/FahMon. :bang head

I'm going to get on the Tech Report and see if I can get directly to notfred... maybe help me/him sort some of these issues out.
 
I'm going to get on the Tech Report and see if I can get directly to notfred
Click to expand...

You should have no problem with that. Notfred has helped me out directly in the past......and promptly i might add. :thup:
 
Edited - I misunderstood the problem using FahMon, so my answer made no sense. harlam, fwiw FahMon seems to be monitoring my notfred instance just fine. Maybe I need to give it more time to see the problem you mentioned above.

So far this is running well. One issue: I don't see any way to turn off the -forceasm flag on his config page. This is causing me problems with some WUs and I need to get it disabled.

Edit: never mind - found and edited the init file. (Yikes - been a while since I used vi.)
 
Last edited:
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