Guide to VMware and SMP install for F@H

[wevsspot]

thanks jboys,

 

i may give it a go then once again, since i've received some expert advice!

 

how about pausing and exiting the program?

[KimTjik]

An alternative to making a bloated *buntu installation would be to follow this guide: http://forums.extremeoverclocking.com/t277698.html

 

I'm maybe biased since Arch is my main OS, but frankly speaking: if you only wish to run F@H this is the most efficient option, just a base system and the smp client. It's just text, but most will manage this install since no real difficult editing is needed, like getting a 3D desktop and such things.

 

Using VMware gives you a boost in points, but performance is still about 10 - 20 % below that of a standard Linux installation. Besides performance the only possible culprit I've seen reported is that the virtual OS might get out of sync with the host, causing errors.

[jboys47]

I don't know of any way to pause folding and the only way that I know to stop it is to give a Ctrl-C in the Folding cmd window. The Ctrl-C caused me to lose a couple of work units so now I always make a backup (if possible) of the fah and fah/work directories before stopping it. I also make backups on the Ubuntu machine but I don't remember losing anything under linux.

[EllisD]

Great job on the guide. Im gonna get this running tonight. I had given it a shot a few days ago, but things werent working properly for me. I believe i know what i did wrong (was tired, missed a step -_- ) and hopefully things should work better after the fact.

[EllisD]

Wewt! I got it working. Got the Opty chuggin along at ~26mins per % (i think ). It is kinda hard to tell though, because the freakin system clock in ubuntu wont stay in sync. I tried the suggestions on the earlier pages, but they didnt seem to work. Its so out of sync that 1 second in linux = ~2 seconds real time.

[AnUnknownSource]

I have my Virtual machine updating right now, and I'll be folding shortly. Thanks for the guides!

[AnUnknownSource]

I got mine up now too...

 

 

man that didn't come out right....

 

 

I got my SMP/VMWare up... I noticed beta 6 has some extra config options... here's what I used:

 

User name [Anonymous]? AnUnknownSource

Team Number [0]? 45454

Passkey []? 29acca0687671fe598111cee7c5d977a <--- feel free to fold under my name :-)

Ask before fetching/sending work (no/yes) [no]? no

Use proxy (yes/no) [no]? no

Acceptable size of work assignment and work result packets (bigger units

may have large memory demands) -- 'small' is <5MB, 'normal' is <10MB, and

'big' is >10MB (small/normal/big) [normal]? big

Change advanced options (yes/no) [no]? yes

Core Priority (idle/low) [idle]? low

Disable highly optimized assembly code (no/yes) [no]? no

Interval, in minutes, between checkpoints (3-30) [15]? 3

Memory, in MB, to indicate (1003 available) [1003]?

Set -advmethods flag always, requesting new advanced

scientific cores and/or work units if available (no/yes) [no]? yes

Ignore any deadline information (mainly useful if

system clock frequently has errors) (no/yes) [no]? yes

Machine ID (1-16) [1]? 16

 

edit:

I now have my wifes laptop single coring... my Windows install single coring just to finish this half a WU it had going) and Linux/VMWare SMP...

 

is anyone else using beta 6.02? does it get any extra points these days?

[wevsspot]

I've merged two threads with the same topic into this one single thread here. PM me with any questions.

 

Go DIY-Street FAH Team!

[EllisD]

is anyone else using beta 6.02? does it get any extra points these days?

 

Yep, ive been using the 6.02 beta 1 on my linux server since it came out...or since i put my server up....whichever came first, lol. With it i believe they added an "a2" core which really takes some crunching power, moreso than the "a1" cores (2605 etc.) and gives slightly less points.

 

At first i think the "a2" core was a bit buggy and it errored out on me a few times, so i set "advmethods" to no, and that prevented grabbing the new "a2" core WU's. Been chuggin with 2605's since.

 

Also, thanks for your contribution :beer

[AnUnknownSource]

Mine grabbed the a1 core and was working on 2653 for a couple hours before it crashed... when I brought it back up, it grabbed a 2605 and has been chuggin along since... ~24.5 minutes per 1%, with the other instance running in windows... maybe that'll go up a bit when it gets ~20% of the CPU back, lol

 

 

dumb question... how do I pause it while I game? will pausing the whole VMWare session screw it up?

[EllisD]

Assuming that you installed it to the directory noted in the first post, to stop and start again you could simply:

 

-hit Ctrl+C to stop FaH

-Be sure that you wait a few minutes after you stopped it. It will notify you when it has actually killed the processes. I lost a few WU's cause i didnt wait until the message came up.

-Assuming that you installed the live cd to the VM, instead of just running the live cd, you should just be able to shutdown the VM after the FaH processes have stopped.

-When you want to resume, start the VM again, navigate to your folding dir (again, if the same as the first post then "cd ~/folding/FAH" then run the executable by typing "./fah6 -smp"

 

*note, im not sure if the -smp flag is needed, i havent restarted my linux box since its been folding, but im pretty sure i put the -smp flag when i first started*

 

Also, i would just run one or the other (VM or windows console), but not both at the same time. The SMP WU's have really short deadlines (3 days preferred) so you want to make sure you get them in by that time. The console client WU's however have deadlines of over a month, so dont worry if it takes a while to complete those ones. Having both going will cause a fairly big performance hit to both clients if i recall correctly.

[wevsspot]

I'm not going to even attempt the VM version. My primary rig is running much too well for me to screw something up, or even worse find it impossible to uninstall if things get really batched up.

 

I may try the regular SMP client again though. For all these years I've been using the old GUI client (going back to MSI RedRockets days).