Folding @ Home tips

[ColinD]

What is Folding @ Home?
This series of essays was developed as part of FASEB's efforts to educate the general public, and the legislators whom it elects, about the benefits of fundamental biomedical research—particularly how investment in such research leads to scientific progress, improved health, and economic well-being.
For more Information please click Here

The FAQ can be found Here just to help you out and make everything clear

Useful Links

The Team's Current Statistics | Here

The Top 1000 Teams : Here We are on page 2

The Team's break down, more details : Here

The Stanford Folding Forum: Here

The Point/Time Summary of current Work Units (WU): Here


Originally posted here by Neo X1 Reproduced here for historical insurance.

Suggest you read it all, another link at the bottom.

Optimizing your computer for folding

1. Preparing Your Computer for Folding
a.) Disable Your Screen Saver, System Standby, and Hibernation.
b.) Get rid of spyware!
c.) Destroy all Viruses

2. Optimize Graphical Client Settings
a.) Uncheck "Logos Enabled"
b.) Slide Molecule Draw rate all the way to the left
c.) Select "Folding@Home" for client type.

3. Use flags to control what WUs you get
Locate your shortcut to the folding @ home program or create a new one. Right click it and press "Properties". Unde the "Shortcut" tab, find the "Target:" box. Add -advmethods -forceasm to the end of the target outside of the quotes so that it looks something similar to:
"C:\Program Files\Folding@Home\winFAH.exe" -advmethods -forceasm
AMD processor users, however should not use "-forceasm" and add "forceSSE" like this:
C:\Program Files\Folding@Home\winFAH.exe" -advmethods -forceSSE
The "-forceSSE" flag makes a big differance for AMD's. Watch your temps, though, it does seem to get a little warmer. Make sure the "SSE" part is capitalized.

Running two instances of Folding@Home on one PC.

To run 2 copies of Folding@Home, you have to have 2 copies of the software in two different directories (From what I hear, do NOT try 2 copies of the GUI version. 1 Gui and 1 console, or 2 console, I've never tried 2 GUI, so I don't know). The main points to remember are to use the -local switch, so your shortcut will look like this:

"C:\Program Files\Folding@Home\Folding@home3.25-beta.EXE" -local -advmethods -forceasm

Also required is that the machine ID MUST be different. So the first "instance" of folding must have machine ID 1 and the second ID 2.

The fastest way to do this (Correct me anyone if you know differently) is to set up folding in a directory, with all the info correct. Let it start up and then turn it off. Set up folding in a second (different) directory, start it up then shut if off.

Go to the 2nd directory and open the client.cfg file using notepad. Find the area where it says "machineid=1" and change the 1 to a 2. Save the file.

About the -verbosity flag

The -verbosity flag is useful when a finished wu is in the queu. By default, Folding tries to send this wu at some time-interval. When you put the
-verbosity flag to 9 [ -verbosity 9] Folding@home will try this more often.

Add flags to F@H service on the 5.xx console version.

Note to the wise. Make a mistake editing your registry and your computer may stop working. Export your registry to a floppy or something just in case.


Click START, RUN, and type in REGEDIT.

Click your way down to this entry on the left side of your screen: (Please note: C:/Program Files/Folding1 is the directory I use. Your's may be different!)

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Services\F AH@C:+Program Files+Folding1+FAH502-Console.exe


Once there, on the right side, double click on the entry - ImagePath


At the end of the value, enter your flags. They may be different than mine, but you can check your log files to see if they worked or not.

This is what my ImagePath value is:
C:\Program Files\Folding1\FAH502-Console.exe -svcstart -advmethods -forceasm

Enter your flags AFTER the -svcstart just in case!

Running F@H as a service and using flags

Instructions on running F@H as a service are here http://folding.stanford.edu/console-userguide.html
To use flags while running it this way follow these directions....
1) Open regedit and...
2) find this registry item: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Services\F AH\Parameters
3) Double click where it says AppParameters REG_SZ -service
4) Change AppParameters to say: -service -advmethods -forceasm

Note:
One comment about the fashi program to run as a service. This may have been just me and my lack of luck, but every time I set it up, it changed the client.cfg file to show a user named "0".

I would recommend having a good copy of client.cfg that can be copied into the folding directory just in case. Giving WU's to "0" is the pits.... I see there is a folder named "0" here, but it MAY be a real person or a misconfigured client.cfg file.

Note2:
when you set it up as a service you have to do one of 2 things to get the userid info right

1) have a good config file like said above.
2) stop the service, create a temp shortcut to the client with a -config flag, and enter the config info.

option 2 works if your setting it up on a pc from scratch.

I don't really know why the installer enters the info wrong, but it always does.

Use MMC to set F@H as a service to manual

when you set the fah up to run as a service you can then use the mmc to set the service to manual start and this gives you more control.

administrative tools\services right click on FAH and choose properties.
then the folding doesn't start as soon as you boot up and you can do mantenence work on the computer (defrag) or whatever and then start the service when you want using the same thing
Admin tools\services click on FAH and start. you can also stop it the same way if you need to.

Get Folding Running Correctly on a Multi-User PC.

Those with computers using the "fast-user switching" feature of Windows XP to keep F@H running 24/7 may get errors when someone else logs in. This is easily rectified by turning off fast-user switching and instead setting up F@H to start on log-in by placing a shortcut for it in the "startup" folder of the Start Menu.

Doing it this way causing all programs, including F@H, to close during the logout. Then, when the other person logs in, F@H will start on their account.

More information made be found here:
http://forums.extremeoverclocking.co...ad.php?t=96729

[skodaw]

Usefull info. I'm running the graphical style with an AMD 64 processor so I tried using the

C:\Program Files\Folding@Home\winFAH.exe" -advmethods -forceSSE

But when I then try and start folding it just brings up a box with the permitted switchs - both of the above feature - but it doesnt like them for some reason.

Have reduced it to

C:\Program Files\Folding@Home\winFAH.exe" -advmethods

And it's fine!

Any ideas ???

[devonutopia]

I don't know about the flags thing, but I have found the console is a nice way of running FAH as a "let it run" service. Means I no longer have to watch the molecular cr4p going on, and even for a PC numpty like me, the DOS/command prompt stuff is fairly OK to comprehend

(thanks to TKW for going through this with me the other night! )

the good old "c:\FOLDING\FAH504-Console -config" seems simple enough to use and I know its working after getting some points on the board yesterday.

[KLB]

Don't forget that FAH isn't restricted to Windows. There's a (console-only) version for all flavours of Linux, which will also run (with a suitable flag) under OpenBSD.

[devonutopia]

Originally Posted by KLB

Don't forget that FAH isn't restricted to Windows. There's a (console-only) version for all flavours of Linux, which will also run (with a suitable flag) under OpenBSD.

And Macintosh.

I'm wondering if its worth having stickies for:

Setting up program version on windows

Setting up as a service on windows

Setting up on Linux

Setting up on Macintosh OSX



Anyone?

[skodaw]

I'll happily do a tutorial for setting up the graphical version for windows.
can do it this week/weekend wiv photo's n evryfink

[devonutopia]

This thread is so useful I decided it needed a good kick up the ar......

[Gwilo]

well, just loaded it onto my new mac Mini with dual core cpu...
only to find i need to run two clients...pants.
will have to re-read these instructions carefuly before doing it.
Here to hoping the release a new client that actually fully uses dual core cpu's SOON!

[mannyo]

To install onto dual cpu/core system, install 1 client using a processor ID of 1, then install it again into a different folder using a processor ID of 2. You then have 2 folding sessions on the same machine.

The above doesnt apply to a single hyperthreading CPU though.

[cheezemonkhai]

Anybody got any info on how to make it work when you ahve more than 8CPU cores working on the task at hand? The machine ID is only 1-8

[cheezemonkhai]

DO we want a linux multi core how to doing as i'm pretty good with that now