BF2S Forums BF2S folding@home team

Sydney's Linux Tutorial	Fold with Linux
Uniprocessor CPU Client	Fold using your CPU
GPU + SMP Client	Select the correct one for your card and OS. For the SMP client you should use the deino client for 32bit OSs and the MPICH client for 64bit OSs
Statistics	Official Stats (may be updating)
ExtremeOverclocking	Unofficial Stats
Kakao Stats	More Stats
[H]ardFolding	Even more stats
XCPUs	And one more for luck
foldingforums	For more help if you need it

What is Folding@Home?
Folding@Home (also known as FAH or F@H) is a distributed computing project that studies protein folding when your PC is idle. The data that is produced from this project helps us understand how proteins work, why they sometimes they fail at folding properly and it will hopefully help us find cures for horrible diseases. The diseases that could be cured or at least better understood by this include Alzheimer's, Mad Cow (BSE), CJD, ALS, Huntington's, Parkinson's disease, and many Cancers and cancer-related syndromes. More info available at Stanford's official site.

Why not simply do the calculations on a supercomputer?
F@H is more than twice as powerful as the world’s current most powerful supercomputer (in terms of operations per second). So using a supercomputer would be a massive step backwards for the project. Even with that in mind, the project is still restricted by the power available to it and needs all the extra silicon it can get.

Folding is useless! I won't do it!
Read though this please.

What about trackr? Aren't we moving?
BF2s is scheduled to close at some point, and turn into a new forum called trackr. We do have a group over there - head over to trackr.net and request membership in the group. If you haven't been accepted, contact me (max) at either of the forums.



General Notes
This may look rather complicated, but once you read through everything and follow it through you'll find it really isn't!

When you join the team, simply enter a nickname and our team number (137764) into the client. From now on you and the team will get their points credited correctly:

• Check the last checkbox on the connection tab / allowing big work units. Bigger work units tend to give more points
• Add "-verbosity 9" to the additional client parameters under the advanced tab.  It makes diagosing problems much easier
• Add "-advmethods" to the additional client parameters under the advanced tab. It allows you to run new cores and projects. Rarely a project will crash though, so you need to check up on the client every few days
• Theoretically folding@home should not take any resources away from your other apps. If a possible performance loss affects you, you can safely quit or pause the program (just right click the icon on your taskbar or press ctrl+C for the console clients)
• each instance of fah needs its own machine ID on your PC. Change it accordingly
• You don't need to enter a passkey

Uniprocessor ClientJust follow the instructions here. If your PC has multiple cores, you'll either need to have a seperate install per core (just copy the whole install and change the shortcuts accordingly. So if you have a dual core PC, you can run two instances of FAH). You can also use the SMP client (see below).Notes: - Check your task manager. Your CPU should be running at close to 100%- Caution to laptop users: If you have a particularly hot notebook, keep an eye on the temperature. If it gets too warm for comfort try setting the max CPU usage to ~85% in the config (post here if you need help on this)SMP ClientFollow the guide here if you have a 32bit OS. If you have a 64bit OS, follow this guide. Notes:- The SMP client needs a lot more resources to run than the standard uniprocessor CPU client. You need a newish dual core PC that is on most of the time to meet the deadlines. If you can't meet the deadlines, you don't only not get any points, but it also hurts the project as a whole- It is somewhat buggy and thus you should check on the client every day or so. Sometimes it will screw up and you need to delete the queue and work folders and start over. This is not a set-it-and-forget-it client- The windows SMP client scales terribly beyond 2 cores. If you have a quad, run 2 instances of the SMP client- It tends to misbehave if you run it as a service. I advise to run it in the console "dos" mode- Make sure that you are running the -smp flag. Check your task manager to make sure you are running on all cores. If you are using the 32bit deino client, also run the -deino flagGPU ClientJust follow the instructions here. If you have multiple cards, you'll need to have a seperate install per GPU. Just copy the folder and create an according shortcut. You need to use the -gpu 0 flag in the client for the first GPU, -gpu 1 flag in the second etc.Notes:- If you want to OC your GPU for more speed/science/points, increasing Core and Shader clocks helps most. OCing the memory hardly ever has any effect- ATI cards need a lot more CPU power than nVidia cards. There are experimental environmental variables to fix this. - Under Vista you need to attach a monitor to each card. Alternatively you can use dummy plugs. Under XP you need to either attach a monitor or run with the -forcegpu nvidia_g80 (for nvidia cards) or -forcegpu ati_r600 or -forcegpu ati_r700 (for ati cards) flagPS3 ClientYou can also fold on your Sony PS3. You can install and run the PS3 client under Network. Press triangle --> auto-start to have the console automatically start folding.FahMon - The Folding MonitorFahmon allows you to monitor the status and progress of your folding. It can also tell you how many points per day you make. Download fahmon from here and install. First step is to open the app and right click the white field. Select "add a new client". Give the process a name. The location is either the directory you installed to or for Vista:Or for XP:Unfortunately the PS3 can't be monitored, as it doesn't supply the necessary info to the network. It does about 900ppd.Click OK. Rinse and repeat for all other running folds. Green means everything is OK, yellow means it's not performing at 100% (most likely the process throttled back to allow for other apps to run, don't worry about it). All other colors mean that there is a problem. But if the CPU doesn't appear to make any progress, don't worry. It can take up to an hour until you see progress when you start a new WU. It's just the way fahmon reads your status.Shutting Down Folding@HomeShutting down FAH is relatively easy:

• right click the systray icon and select quit
• hit Ctrl + C with the window selected when you're running the command prompt
• stopping the service. To do this: hit the windows key + r. type "services.msc" without the quotes and press enter. Select the fah service and hit stop

If you don't stop fah by the methods described, you risk losing data up to your last checkpoint (which is created every 15min by default). Note: you can also stop the service by using a batch file with the net stop command.

Flags
You can set flags to change the way the client behaves. The most important ones are:

-configonly : allows you to change the config values like name, team number or machine ID
-verbosity x : where x is 1-9. Sets the amount of info recorded in the log. If you're having problems, set to 9 and post your log
-forceasm : force the client to use SSE/3Dnow! instructions if possible.
- smp : to run the smp client in smp mode
-advmethods : request new projects. May be buggy but can sometimes increase your score
-gpu x : where x is the number of your gpu, starting with 0. If you run a multi gpu rig, you'll need to set the flag to tell the client on which GPU it should run

Source + More info

To tell the application to run with the flags, you can change the shortcut, run it from the run command or edit the service.


<sub>Some info copied and pasted from folding@home, wiki and/or foldingforum. Most bits typed up by me. Feel free to pass the guide on, and last but not least happy folding.

27/2/09: OP redesigned and edited by Kyle</sub>

Last edited by max (2009-06-24 18:33:46)