What the hell is "Folding@Home"?

[WritingIsMyReligion]

I've seen ads and whatever for it 10,000,000,000,000 times.....but what the hell is it? What do you do? Why does DU have a "team"?

:shrug:

[billyskank]

1. It is a distributed computing project which studies protein folding,

misfolding, aggregation, and related diseases.

http://folding.stanford.edu/

Similar to the SETI effort. You volunteer your computer's processing power.

[WritingIsMyReligion]

4. Okay, that was NOT what I expected.

That is majorly strange. I'm afraid I still don't quite get it....How do people "help" this process? Do they need a brazillion CPUs or something? Why?

*scratches head*

[LSK]

6. networked computers can share their cpu power

And act the same as a supercomputer.

[billyskank]

7. "Distributed computing effort" means that it's a gigantic computing task

that can be parcelled out to millions of little computers that together can accomplish great tasks that would cost too much to do by mainframes or supercomputers.

[mainegreen]

8. You help by downloading and installing the client on your PC.

Simple as that.

[mainegreen]

2. Its a lot like SETI at home, but medical in nature.

It's distributed computing. Each computer downloads a chunk of data and 'simulates' protien folding. Protien folding is complex and no university could ever afford the computing power needed to do proper research, but if everyone helps out a little, BAM! millions of computing hours can be done in days. Which helps find cures for diseases. Which is good for humanity.

Plus the stupid FReepers have their own team 'in tribute to Ronald Reagan' and they're kicking our pants and this sucks.

The software uses spare CPU cycles on your computer, and runs in the background. It has no performance hit on your computer, even if you're gaming.

It's great stuff and for a good cause.

http://folding.stanford.edu/

[WritingIsMyReligion]

5. So how do you get points?

By "simulating" this folding?

:shrug:

[mainegreen]

10. Yup. The client downloads data

and does it's thing to it. Then when it's done, it uploads the results back over the web to the main servers. You get points for doing so, and then the client downloads more data to fold.

If you do it, make sure you set up the software using our DU client number: Team # 48157

[billyskank]

14. I'll help

my machine kicks ass :7

[Anarcho-Socialist]

15. Yay!

:)

[mainegreen]

17. Dont forget to set your team number when installing it!

Our team number is 48157!

A great place to see out team summary/stats/graphs and how we're doing compared to others is here:
http://folding.extremeoverclocking.com/team_summary.php?s=&t=48157

[billyskank]

19. Can you run it from your init script?

Or does it need to be a user-space program?

[mainegreen]

20. I think you can. Some people at this link ranting about how to do it:

http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-12071.html

Personally, I never ever turn off my server, so I didn't bother trying.

[billyskank]

21. I turn off my computer every day

I don't care about my uptime. :D

[Anarcho-Socialist]

3. Here is Team DU

http://vspx27.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/main.py?qtype=teampage&teamnum=48157

[billyskank]

9. So I just went to their site

and the "Linux client" is a .exe file.

What's wrong with this picture? :wtf:

[mainegreen]

11. Just set executible permissions on it to true.

Retarded I know.

[billyskank]

12. So it's not really a Win32 executable?

It just has a name like it was?

[mainegreen]

13. Yup. Bizarre eh? The 'exe' is running fine on my Fedora Core 4 machine.

[billyskank]

16. Bit bummed that we don't get a graphical client though

:(

[mainegreen]

18. Yeah, well. They just figure *nix people are command line happy.

Like we dont have KDE or GNOME or anything.

[billyskank]

22. It's just saying

Completed 0 out of 1000000 steps (0%)

and taking all my CPU time, but doesn't appear to be doing anything. :shrug:

[mainegreen]

23. It only updates the % when it's completed a step.

On my AMD 64 w/1gb ram that only hosts my personal web server it takes about 15 minutes to get 1% done. But you get 150 points for each work unit. I'm averaging ~500 points a day pushing it on 6 computers. It's intensive stuff. But I've never noticed any sluggishness any PC I use it on. It's running at a very, very low priority, just below solitaire and just above randomly ping things to alleviate boredom.

:P

[billyskank]

25. If you close the client

will it resume where it left off next time you start it?

FWIW, it takes about 25 mins to do 10000 steps on my Athlon XP 3000+

[mainegreen]

26. Yup. nt

[billyskank]

27. I wrote a script to start and stop the client for people using BSD init

like Slackware does. I think Slackware is the only Linux distro to do this.

I copied all the client files into a new directory /usr/local/folding and wrote a new init script:

#!/bin/sh
#
# /etc/rc.d/rc.folding
# folding@home init script

if < $1 = "start" >; then
echo Starting folding@home...
if < -d /usr/local/folding >; then
cd /usr/local/folding
if < -x FAH502-Linux.exe >; then
./FAH502-Linux.exe >>/var/log/folding.log 2>>/var/log/folding.log &
else
folding@home executable not found!
fi
else
echo folding@home work directory not found!
fi
elif < $1 = "stop" >; then
echo Stopping folding@home...
killall FahCore_a0.exe
else
echo Invalid command: $1
fi

The client can then be started and stopped with the commands:

/etc/rc.d/rc.folding start
/etc/rc.d/rc.folding stop

which can of course be put in the /etc/rc.d/rc.local script to be run at startup. It writes all its output to /var/log/folding.log.

:)


Edit: replace the angled brackets in the "if" statements to square brackets. DCForum changed them for me. x(

[mainegreen]

28. Cool! And welcome to the DU Folding team!

Now we only need about 100 more people to beat the freeps!

[billyskank]

24. Oh wait, no

it just went:

Completed 10000 out of 1000000 steps (1%)