Folding@Home 6.02

[Sunny]

In an old post, I described the steps to install FAH v7 in FatDog_521:
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=84587

Those steps have to be modified somewhat if you want to install FAH v7 in FatDog_630:

Step 1) Installation of FAHControl
FAHControl is used to configure/monitor/control the version 7 CPU client.

FAHControl requires python and pygtk. You can get these packages at this site:
http://distro.ibiblio.org/fatdog/pets/600/

Use the python-2.6.6.pet file. I could not get the python-2.7.5 version to work due to a problem with gtk.
(Note that python-2.6.6 is included in fd64-devx_630.sfs so you may not need the pet file if you always boot with that sfs file loaded.)

After installing python-2.6.6.pet, then download and install pygtk-2.24-x86_64.pet

Now, download fahcontrol_7.3.6-1_all.deb from Folding@home website and click on it to install it. Then, go into the /usr/shared/pyshared directory and copy/move the two directories (fah & FAHControl-7.3.6.egg-info) to the /usr/lib64/python2.6/site-packages directory.

I then went into /usr/share/applications and edited FAHControl.desktop to add an appropriate Category so that it would show up in my menu (use terminal command "fixmenus" to update the menu). At this point, you should be able to select FAHControl in your menu and it should open up correctly.

Step 2) Installation of FAHClient

Download fahclient_7.3.6_amd64.deb from Folding@home website and click on it to install it.

I disconnected from the web at this point so that I could get the FAHClient configured before it downloaded any WUs. I then edited the file /etc/init.d/FAHClient ... I changed USER=fahclient to USER=root and I changed HOME= to the directory I wanted it to use for the work directory. Save the file and then start the client from the /etc/init.d directory by typing: "./FAHClient start"

The client should start, and you can now configure it using FAHControl (installed in Step 1). Type in your identity and hopefully you will be using Team Puppy Linux (157623). Also set the slider to full if you want to use all your cores for folding. Save the configuration, and you are now ready to start folding. You can just reconnect to the web at this point to grab a WU.

One minor detail ... the config.xml file gets saved in your work directory initially. This seems to work fine, but I noticed that /etc/init.d/FAHClient points to /etc/fahclient/config.xml You could either change the entry in /etc/init.d/FAHClient to point to your work directory, or you could move config.xml to /etc/fahclient

Step 3) Installation of FAHViewer
This is mostly eye candy, so it is not really needed. (Don't think it works with the vesa driver as it probably needs to be run with direct rendering ... works fine on my machine once I configured the intel driver for the onboard graphics).

Download fahviewer_7.3.6_amd64.deb from Folding@home website and click on it to install it.

Then, go into /usr/share/applications and edited FAHViewer.desktop to add an appropriate Category so that it will show up in the menu (use terminal command "fixmenus" to update the menu). At this point, you should be able to select FAHViewer in your menu and it should open up correctly. Normally, this is opened from FAHControl by clicking on "View".

This should get you up and running with SMP Folding on FatDog_630. If you have a Fermi (or newer) nVidia GPU, then it is easily configured at this point for folding (these will fold natively on FatDog without wine).

[joaomcteixeira]

Hello Sunny!!

I finally got time to make FatDog64 running on this machine

Successfully installed FAH Client following your instructions!

Now I guess I will have to spend some time for setting up the GPU

[Sunny]

joaomcteixeira:

Glad you got the FAH Client running in FatDog! If you are going to try and fold with your GPU, then the steps you need to do depend on which GPU you are using.

You can natively fold on FatDog if you have a nVidia Fermi or newer board. With these boards, you will be using FAHcore 0x17 which requires at least version 15 of glibc (which is newer than the one provided in FatDog).

For FatDog Version 630, you have to first compile and install binutils (configure binutils with: "configure --prefix=/usr --build=x86_64-t2-linux-gnu"). Note that for FatDog Version 521, you do not need to compile/install binutils.

Now compile and install glibc-2.18.0 (when compiling glibc, use "configure --prefix=/usr").

Once the new glibc is installed, use FAHControl to configure your gpu client using "client-type=advanced" and you should be ready to go.

This native configuration for the Fermi and newer boards is nice since you do not need to fool with wine or the cuda toolkit installation. My GPU also runs about 10 degrees C cooler running the FAHcore 0x17 and v7 Client (verses using the v6 GPU Client with wine).

If you do not have a Fermi or newer GPU, then you can still run a v6 GPU client on your machine using wine. My post on Feb. 10, 2013 of this current thread describes how I installed the v6 GPU client and FAHMon on FatDog.

[joaomcteixeira]

Hi Sunny,

Thanks a lot for your tips!
By now I will continue solely on CPU because doing what you told me may require some more time but I will definitively look for it.

I noticed that in fatdog the temp of my CPUs is about 5ºC higher, roughly.

There is also the process kswap0 that is almost continuously occurring, which also contributes to the temperature increase. But I guess that is an fatdog issue I've to try to understand somewhere else

Puppy does really work amazingly when one understands it

keep in touch,

[Sunny]

There is also the process kswap0 that is almost continuously occurring

I have not noticed this problem when folding in any of the Fatdog releases (and I have done CPU folding with Fatdog_630-Final). An excessive kswap0 is probably a kernal bug. The way the folding activity is interacting with your particular hardware may be initiating the problem.

First question I would ask is what kind of swapfile you are using. Fatdog_630 did not automatically recognize my linux swap partition. I had to include it in fstab in order for Fatdog to recognize it. If you do not have a swap partition, you may want to set up a Linux swap file in RAM and see if that clears up the problem with kswap0.

If an active swap partition (or swap file) does not clear up the problem, you may want to try folding on an older version of Fatdog_630 to see if the problem is kernel dependent. A frugal install does not take very long to set up just to try it out. Fatdog_630_rc1 uses linux kernel 3.11.4 (and Fatdog_630_Final uses linux kernel 3.12.9).

I would also note that you may not have seen this kswap0 problem when folding on one of the 32-bit puppies. Firstly, they use different kernels. Secondly, the folding cores and work units are different for 32 & 64 bit machines.

[joaomcteixeira]

Hi Sunny!

Thanks for your answers!

Yes, I do not have this kswap0 problem with precise 32bit. (I am running on that right now)

I can't remember if kswap0 also occurs when folding client is off. I've to check that out.
and I have a traditional swap partition on /dev/sda5.

I hope I can take a better look next days.
Thanks!

[Sunny]

The command "swapon -s" will tell you if Fatdog recognized your swap partition. I had to have an entry for the swap partition in /etc/fstab so that Fatdog_600 would see this partition on start up.

I can't remember if kswap0 also occurs when folding client is off. I've to check that out.

The folding client (FAHClient) is a service which is started from the /etc/init.d directory. You can disable the executeable flag on this file so that it does not start up when you reboot. If your system powers on with no kswap0 problem, you can then enable the executeable flag and start the folding client with the "/etc/init.d/FAHClient start" command. This should tell you if the FAHClient initiates the kswap0 issue on your machine. (Note that you can stop the FAHClient at any time by using the "/etc/init.d/FAHClient stop" command.)

If it looks like FAHClient is kicking off the kswap0 problem, I would then try it on FatDog_630_rc1. (FatDog_521 will take you back to Linux kernel 3.03 ... I use that FatDog on my main file/print server)