Folding @ Home Guide

[Tawcan]

Folding @ Home Guide

In this thread hopefully you will find everything you need with F@H.

Note: For performance/point purpose you should install the non-graphical console (text only console)

Joining The Team

- You can get the folding client here. It is recommended using the non-graphical console since it is much faster.

-You may use one username for multiple computers. Make sure that you input the exact same name or else you’ll show up on the stats multiple times. This includes: punctuation, capitalization, and spacing.

-If you are running Intel Pentium 4 “C?type CPU’s or AMD Duallies, you can run two instances of folding. To do so, create 2 different F@H directories and run the clients. During set up make sure you enter machine ID 1 for the 1st CPU and machine ID 2 for the 2nd CPU. (For Intel make sure hyper-thread is enabled).

-To join Speedguide, during installation, enter 15 as the team number.

-Latest beta version ?In this version if the –foreasm flag is used, SSE will be used, if available, on every work unit run.

Other Guides
Here are some other guides written by SG members.

-Lance's Guide. Listen to everything he says except for the user name you really should put down Spankin_Barbaric_Beavers

-UOD's SG F@H setup videos
I particularly like Ken's pic.

Folding @ Home Stats

Here are some stats pages you can use to see how well you’re doing.


Official Stanford Stats

Statsman
All Teams - HTML / JAVA
Speedguide Team 15 - HTML / JAVA
Statsman stats that are updated every 6 hours.

EOC Stats Page
All Teams
Speedguide Team 15 Summary
Speedguide Team 15 Members
EOC stats are updated every 3 hours.

Folding@Work
Folding @ Work

Useful Links

Some links you may find quite useful.

Stanford Main Page

Stanford Folding Forum

What is Folding

Folding @ Home FAQ

Protein Summary
This link is particular useful if you want to find out how much point the protein you’re folding is worth.

Downloads

Folding Monitors
Electron Microscope Track your Folding@Home progress. Written by TheWeatherMan and updated constantly.

FAHSTAT
FAHSTAT
This is a very simple stats tracking program. It's integrated in IE and allows you to view various online stat pages. Has a very simple design as well. Best of all, you can get its source.

KDFold
Yet another monitoring program.

Folding Spy
Folding Spy is a little program that "spies" on the progress and performance of the Folding@home client. It also provides some stats as well.

Stealth F@H client

Some of you may not want to see the ugly F@H client window on your taskbar at all.

-Running F@H as a service in XP/2000 machines
Method 1
Note: This method requires you to edit Windows registry.

-Running F@H as a service using Firedaemon.
Setup Guide

-Running F@H as a service using this guide
Service Installer

-Hide client window
WatchCat
A small system tray applet for hiding application windows

-Use HideIt
HideIt
This is the best program that hides the client in my opinion.

-Ocforum One Click Service install
Service for 1 CPU
Service for dual CPU or Intel with Hyperthread
I found this on Overclocker's forum. More info on this later.

Advanced Stuff

This section will be for advanced setup/tweaks.

Diskless Guide
This guide helps you set up diskless f@h folding machines.

Knoppix 3.2 bootable CD
This is a Linux bootable CD with f@h on it.


That's all for now folks!

Fold on!

[Mark]

here is an edited version of one of UOD's SG news videos, you need the divx codec to play it.

I assume it is okay to post this without his permission, but I will PM him to be sure.

*edit*

can't figure out why the sound doesn't sync up too well

[Set]

good job tawcan

Will be very helpfull when recurting ect.

[rickoic]

Thought I'd add a trick that I've learned from when servers went down big time and whenever Stanford has a planned power outage that might last all day.

1. Treat your pc like it had 4 cpu's. (Make 4 folding folders, I call them FAH1, FAH2, FAH3, and FAH4, when you run FAH3Console in each one answer 'Y' to change advance features and when you get to cpu number put in the number for which ever folder you are in.)

2. Now when you hear of a planned power outage you can load all of them up with work units and keep on folding on 2, 3, or all 4 directories.

Just make sure that you use the -local switch on each shortcut in each folder.

Rick

With 4.00 release you can now do as many as 8 folders.

[lance-tek]

The original post needs the links checked as many of them are dead or have changed....

-lance

[Cypher]

The following quote was from Ezee at ABX from OCAU. I found it informative
and wanted to post it here.

G'day folks. I may not be all that welcome since I fold for OCAU, but here's my 2 cents direct from the horse's mouth (Bollocks @ OCAU, the folding guru.)

On an athlon xp, both gromacs and double gromacs will lower your folding points production, by 10-50%.

-advanced methods tries to get Gromacs before Tinkers. Do not use on an athlon xp system, but definitely use on a p4 or athlon 64 system.

On the otherhand P4's love Gromacs, they adore Double Gromacs.

If I could get Doubles all the time, I would be able to produce 3000 points + per week. Tinkers suck on a P4.

For folding athlon 64's are the most versatile, but like P4's somewhat better at Gromacs and Doubles.

Recommended settings for 64's are both advanced methods and forcesse.

P4' s - adv methods only

xp's -forceasm only.

Hope this helps.

Advance the cause!

P4's all have SSE in their basic architecture.

the forcexxx flags will, at best, do nothing for a P4. At worst, they confuse the console and/or override the advmethods flag to produce more of the less desirable Tinkers.

There appears to be some disagreement on the latter.

But clearly, for P4's only use "-advmethods", and, of course, "-local" if running 2 or more consoles simultaneously.

Now, I may have misled re: the best XP flags. There are trade-offs.

Athlon chips that are SSE capable will process a gromac faster using forcesse than if it only used forceasm or if by default 3dnow! is used, ie, gromacs like SSE (the gromac core was designed for SSE to remove the previous P4 disdvantage)

But Athlon chips that process Tinkers using SSE will be slower than they would naturally be. So it would have been better if you get a tinker, to have flagged -forceasm.

-advmethods tells Stanford that you prefer Gromacs, it does not guarantee that you will get a gromac, but increases your chances.

So I repeat my previous advice, without -advmethods, xp's are likely to get more Tinkers, their best preformance. When they get a Tinker, they will perform in optimum mode using 3dnow!, so set to -forceasm for an xp (and MP) do not use -advmethods. But certainly use (-local) if you have set up a second console in a separate directory and process 2 wu's at a time.

Clear as mud?

Happy to respond to queries.

G'day

[Mytflyguy]

So when they are set as services ... we need to add -advmethods into the Appparamters string in the registry ?

[Cypher]

They found that the AMD's do better with tinkers, so the the only flag would be
-forceasm.
If it's a service you would add -service to it as well.
I've been using the service installer from overclockers forums above
http://www3.telus.net/tawcan/F@H_service.zip
It's allot lighter than using Firedeamon. You can edit the parameters in the .reg file by naming it .txt and using the desired flags, save than rename it a .reg again and click it.

[Mytflyguy]

I've been using the Windows registry hack to make it a service ....

[Cypher]

Same thing as OC's they just automated it for simplicity.

[Crabtoes]

[morbidpete]

so my registry peramiters for the stealth install should look like this?

-service -advmethods

[Tawcan]

Service Install Procedures

There are several ways to run F@H clients as service. Here I'll list some ways to hide the F@H text clients. (Sorry no graphical client).

Ocforum One Click
I found this in Ocforum.com. All credits go to them.

Service for 1 CPU
Service for dual CPU or Intel with Hyperthread

Here's how you can set up the client using this way:
1. You download the file
2. You edit the client.cfg(s) with your username. Right now the client has the 5MB work unit download enabled. If download bandwidth is a problem change bigpackets answer to no.
3. You click the .exe
4. The One-Click then creates the appropriate directories (C:\Program Files\FAH), (now) downloads the FAH502-Console.exe, creates and installs FAH as a service in the registry, removes the extra install files after completion, and starts FAH as a service.

There is an extra edit required in the client.cfg if you want to fold BigPacket WU's. There has been ample discussion about this, but here's the basic rules: If you have more than 1GB of RAM per CPU, then you can fold BigPackets. If you want BigPackets, simply edit the client.cfg's to "bigpackets=yes".

*Note: With some W2K and XP Home rigs you have to reboot to get the service running. So if you use the One-Click and don't see FAHCore_##.exe running after a minute in the task manager, just reboot.

Buzzard from the OCAU team made an excellent install for people who want to chose all the options themselves (flags, run as a service, install directory etc). You can download it here.

Win9x One-Click

Nitro-Boie made this nice batch install for Win9x machines. Download it here.

How-to Install FAH as a service and set the flags, the long version.

For those of you interested in what was just accomplished in the above One-Click FAH Installs and want to know where the FAH service is installed, what we are talking about when we say "flags" and where they are located, read on.

Your computer needs three things to run FAH as a service: The appropriate files have to be located on your computer, the service has to be entered into the registry, and the service needs to be started. Let's take a look at them step by step.

The FAH Files.
To start using FAH as a service,FAH needs three files located in a directory (such as C:\Program Files\FAH), which are;

1. "The Client" the actuall folding program from Stanford which is currently FAH4console.exe.
2. "The Client.cfg" This is the client configuration file which holds your username, team number, and many other specifics about you computer and how it should fold.
3. srvany.exe Microsofts own creation that's been around for years. This program enables you to run any other program as a service as long as the registry is set up correctly.

*Note: There are other files necessary for FAH to run, however, to simply installed FAH and set it up as a service, these three files are all you need. One such example is "The Core", the proggy that crunches the numbers and whose name is formatted as Core_##.exe.

With these three files in place, we can now check out what is required in the registry to initiate the service.


FAH in the registry

(Appropriate Disclaimer here: editing you registry can kill your OS, blow up your computer, and make your pets pee on your carpet. Wedo, The One-Click, and all partners therein are not responsible for your actions on your computer. Do so at your own risk)

To set up FAH in the registry, you need to only make a handful of registry additions in one location. An example of an exported install reg file is located below (one could copy/paste this into notepad, save it as "FAH-Install.reg" and merge it if need be):

---copy below this line ----

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\FAH]
"Type"=dword:00000010
"Start"=dword:00000002
"ErrorControl"=dword:00000001
"ImagePath"=hex(2):22,00,44,00,3a,00,5c,00,50,00,72,00,6f,00,67,00,72,00,61,00,\
6d,00,20,00,46,00,69,00,6c,00,65,00,73,00,5c,00,46,00,41,00,48,00,31,00,5c,\
00,73,00,72,00,76,00,61,00,6e,00,79,00,2e,00,65,00,78,00,65,00,22,00,00,00
"DisplayName"="Folding@Home 1"
"ObjectName"="LocalSystem"
"Description"="Uses your computer's spare CPU cycles to solve complex scientific problems."

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\FAH\Parameters]
"Application"="D:\\Program Files\\FAH\\FAH4Console.exe"
"AppDirectory"="D:\\Program Files\\FAH1"
"AppParameters"="-local -service -forceSSE -advmethods"

---copy above this line----

In the above settings, "Type", "Start", and "ErrorControl" are DWORD hex values. When you create the keys manually, you would use the actual values of:

Type: "16"
Start: "2"
ErrorControl: "1"

and Windows will convert them to hex values. Furthermore, "ImagePath" is a string value that should match the directory for your FAH installation, such as: "C:\Program Files\FAH\srvany.exe"

Note the reference to the 'srvany.exe' here, this is what kicks FAH into a service.

In addition, for additional client installs (dually/quad installs) the service name is changed in the registry from FAH to FAH1, FAH2 and so on. The appropriate paths would also have to be placed in the registry entries to point to directories such as C:\Program Files\FAH\FAH1 and FAH\FAH2 etc.

The "Flags" explained

You'll notice that in the above registry export file under the second key (\FAH\Parameters) there is a little line called "AppParamters", herein lies the much talked about option flags for running FAH.

Here is your guide to the flags:

-local: Used with multiple cpu rigs (dually, HT, quad cpus etc) to set up FAH as one client per one cpu. If this flag isn't used on a dually and two instances are running, your rig will show up as running at 50% in task manager as both instances will split the processing power of one cpu leaving the other to sit at idle.

-service: Sets FAH as a service. Very important flag that will tell your rig to use srvany.exe to run FAH4Console.exe as a service instead of running the client in the console window. Thereby keeping your rig folding even when no one is logged on.

-forceasm: Forces the use of 3DNow and SSE. In some instances, if a power failure occured, your computer locks up (not due to FAH), or your kid brother kicks over your tower, FAH will restart in a form of "safe mode" that doesn't use 3DNow/SSE. This will cause your machine to fold much slower so this flag forces the higher setting on no matter how the client was turned off previously.

-advmethods: The gromacs flag. This flag tells FAH to only seek out Gromacs (a type of protein) from the Stanford servers. Gromacs used to be the end-all-be-all of point production. However, recent changes to the point value for Tinkers have made this flag counter-productive on AMD rigs.

-verbosity 9: Gives you the uber update in your log files. More info will be written in case your having issues or are just interested in what FAH is doing.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

[Ken]

Awesome post Tawcan!!

[Tawcan]

Setup questions for F@H 5.x client.

1) Enter your folding name here (remember it is case sensitive)
2) Enter Team number 15
3) Launch automatically at machine startup, installing this as a service? [NO]
Note: If you're installing F@H as service using 3rd party software method answer as no. Otherwise yes. More info on this later.
4) Ask before sending work unit (Enter your preference here) [NO]
5) Use Internet Explorer settings (Enter your preference here) [NO] (Dial uppers may want to chose yes.)
[humour]Hmmm they should put in a question for Firefox users. [/humour]
6) Allow receipt of work assignments and return of work results greater than 5MB demand? <such work unit may have large memory demands> [NO]
See notes above. If your machine is a delicate folder then yes.
6) Change advance option? [YES]
7) Core priority <idle/low> [Idle]
Note: Idle for everyday machine, low for delicate folder. (I use low)
8) CPU usage requested? <5-100> [100]
Note: Here you can change the max amount of CPU power the client uses. ie. If you want to use a server to fold you may change it to say...50.
9) Disable highly optimized assembly code? [NO]
10) Pause if battery power is being used [NO]
Note: If you're using a laptop you may want to change this to yes.
11) Interval in minutes between check points? <3-30> [15]
Note: If you turn on and off the computer often you might want to change this to 3 so the client saves progress every 3 minutes.
12) Request work without deadline? <no-pref/yes/no> [no-pref]
Note: Yes if you have a low power CPU.
13) Ignore deadline information? [No]
Note: See 12
13) Machine id? [1]
Note: For your first client and 2 if your setting up two instances of F@H or Hyper-threading can set up to 8 per computer (also helpful for Dual Processor users)


Folding@Home will now self install and if it is your first installation it will set up the necessary files into your new folder.
Benchmark your system and download your first WU (work unit)

If you already had F@H installed on your PC it will begin at your current WU.

Close Fold@Home so we can create shortcuts and add flags.

Go into your computer and right click on FAHconsole and send to your desktop

Now right click on your Icon and click on "Properties"

In the "Target box" click after the last " marks
type {space} -{appropriate flag}

Recommend flags to use:
-forceasm -advmethods

[Tawcan]

Now I haven't done any work on this and I haven't been able to find anything on it so if anyone tried this and found out any more info let me know.

Again if you don't want to use 3rd party software to install F@H as a service you can do the following while answering the setup questions.

3) Launch automatically at machine startup, installing this as a service? [YES]

F@H will then create a service for XP/2000 users.

Install Firedaemon then use it to set up the necessary flags.

[Ken]

This thread has been replaced by a new version that Tawcan has posted. I am closing this so that it will slip down.

Please see the new sticky thread, link for your convenience:
http://forums.speedguide.net/showthread.php?t=164153

Thanks again, Tawcan, for a fine job!