FAH Setups

[jimwah]

Quick-find
Post #1 --- CPU Client Console guide - jimwah
Post #2 --- CPU Client Service guide - SparkyJJO
Post #17 -- GPU Client install guide - SparkyJJO
Post #22 -- VMWare 64-bit Linux SMP guide - jimwah
Post #23 -- Managing Folding Clients across a Cluster - angra
Post #38 -- Simple, Non-service, Linux Client guide - jimwah
note - Authors will not take responsibility for any hardware/software failures that may occur following these guides, install & configure at your own risk - etc etc

So I'm thinking we should post up how we set up our folding rigs, since we get asked quite a bit, and I'm curious to see how others do it. This is not the only way to set up folding@home, this is simply how I tend to do it.

I run the majority of my rigs on Windows2000 [I only hang a CD/DVDrom temporarily to install OS] running VNCserver, this way I can boot them with a monitor & keyboard/mouse, then unplug the lot [apart from network of course] & log in from my main machine on the network [100mbit switch hanging from a 4-port ADSL router & DHCP enabled] from then on.

folding@home client: the jimwah <non-service> console method
[typically used to set up the standard client on windows machines, to start & stop folding manually]

- Make folder C:\fah\one\
- Download Folding client to this folder (from http://folding.stanford.edu/download.html)
- Create shortcut to the FAH_Console.exe on my desktop, rename this shortcut Core1, just for clarity
- **Optional** Specify any special flags in this shortcut (see Console Client Configuration Options here> http://folding.stanford.edu/console-userguide.html) as shown below:



- Double-click shortcut & run through initial configuration as below; crucial parts are the username of your choice, and the team number 36362!



Note - I only tend to enable the enable Large WU's over 5mb option on machines with at least 256mb per core - again, it's just the way I do it. I also don't do a service install, I like to see the client chugging away

..And that's it, you have a core folding for team XS. Simply click the X top-right of the title bar, to close the client, and double-click your shortcut to restart the client where it left off.

..time for a celebratory drink

Multiple Core Systems
- Repeat from beginning for each core, next time creating C:\fah\two\ folder, and naming the desktop shortcut Core2, and finally altering the Machine ID option to 2 in the configuration shown above. Then C:\fah\three\ folder, shortcut Core 3, Machine ID 3, etc.. for further cores.

Remote Monitoring
- I also share the C:\fah\ folder from each machine, and ensure all machines are on the same workgroup, this way I can point FAHmon at the shared folder of each machine [eg \\tomcat\fah\] & monitor the WU's progress. This is something I've let get a bit untidy recently & need to reconfigure

If you've got a way that makes sense to you, or how you set up your GPU client, or even how you got the SMP client running in MacOSX, post it up & let everyone have a look. Considering the recent spate of new folding clients we have added into the mix, folding can look like a complicated business from the outside - lets make it a bit simpler if possible