Alright Coronavirus, this has gone on long enough. It's time to kick your arse. Want to help? We've made a team on Folding@home for you to spare your unused CPU/GPU cycles for research.
Hold on, what is this Folding stuff? It's a distributed computing project that simulates protein dynamics, including the process of protein folding and the movements of proteins implicated in a variety of diseases. It does this using your hardware and then sends all the data back to them—for science! It can help people working on diseases to better understand them. A good time to remind people on this, with everything going on right now and they have special simulations setup for Coronavirus.
How to get involved: Head to the official site to download it for Debian /Ubuntu/ Mint and Redhat / Centos / Fedora. If you're on Arch/Manjaro, you can see a guide on the Arch Wiki. If you're on NVIDIA, and it won't use your GPU, ensure you have OpenCL installed.
When you're setting it up and it asks you for a team ID, enter "245680" (stats page) which is the GamingOnLinux ID and we can work together to make a better world. Right now, my GPU is purring away working on Folding, come and join me.
You might see errors and delays, as they've been a little overwhelmed. Eventually though, it should assign your PC some work to do to help. They did a little FAQ thread recently on Twitter.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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I had the same problem on default settings, so I set the GPU slot’s opencl-index to 0 manually instead of -1:Joined the team - great idea, Liam!There should be one, it’s called FAHControl but I don’t remember the steps involved in installing it. Should be explained somewhere on their website :)
I wish there was an actual client/shortcut as part of this build though. I had to visit the Arch WIKI to realise that you have to visit http://localhost:7396/ to see your progress and turn Folding on/off.
I downloaded the client only, which has no interface. I've now downloaded control and viewer, both of which are fat-clients. Strange approach, but it's all working now, although FAHcontrol doesn't recognise my GPU (Nvidia GTX 1080, running 440 driver). I'm looking into it now, appears I'm not the only one to have this issue.
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Mohandevir 21 Mar 2020
Did it!
It the configuration windows, there's an expert tab and there was a GPU 'False' variable. Switching it to off and a reboot later solved my issue.
It the configuration windows, there's an expert tab and there was a GPU 'False' variable. Switching it to off and a reboot later solved my issue.
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No joy getting my GPU recognised. I have the OpenCL libs installed, I've tried manually over-riding the OpenCL-Index in FAcontrol, and I've tried editing /etc/faconfig/config.xml to both include a GPU slot AND to make "gpu v" true instead of false. When I reboot, all the config.xml changes reverted.
It's a mystery. I can still contribute via CPU though, but it's a shame I'm not taking advantage of my beefy GPU.
It's a mystery. I can still contribute via CPU though, but it's a shame I'm not taking advantage of my beefy GPU.
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Mohandevir 21 Mar 2020
No joy getting my GPU recognised. I have the OpenCL libs installed, I've tried manually over-riding the OpenCL-Index in FAcontrol, and I've tried editing /etc/faconfig/config.xml to both include a GPU slot AND to make "gpu v" true instead of false. When I reboot, all the config.xml changes reverted.
It's a mystery. I can still contribute via CPU though, but it's a shame I'm not taking advantage of my beefy GPU.
I don't know if my experience can help, but in the configuration window of fahcontrol, there is an Expert tab. Check for a variable GPU 'False' or similar to that. When I changed it to 'True' and saved it, it downloaded a GPUs.txt file in /var/lib/fahclient. After that, the web control showed me the GPU beside the CPU with a "unsupported GPU" entry. At this point, a reboot made it get detected and I could start folding with it.
Hope it helps!
Last edited by Mohandevir on 21 Mar 2020 at 11:13 pm UTC
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Thanks. I've done that, I see the GPUs.txt in the /var/lib/faclient folder. I'm just going to finish the CPU job that's running before trying a reboot. Fingers crossed, but not very hopeful, as the web interface didn't update in the way you describe! I've also installed the ocl-opencl libraries for dev too, which required quite a few other libraries to download. We'll see.
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ElectricPrism 21 Mar 2020
I'm a million points in so far for the week, took some time to figure out to configure it and find all the linux-friendly tooling like fahcontrol.
Remember @everyone to check your $sensors and those of us on AMD to setup fan curvature to keep our equipment in good health. It gets a bit toasty.
Right now, I mainly run it between bedtime to around morning or noon.
AMD fan control
https://github.com/cyring/CoreFreq
Resources
apps.foldingathome.org
(Jesus the spam filter wont let me post 2 links)
Last edited by ElectricPrism on 21 Mar 2020 at 11:34 pm UTC
Remember @everyone to check your $sensors and those of us on AMD to setup fan curvature to keep our equipment in good health. It gets a bit toasty.
Right now, I mainly run it between bedtime to around morning or noon.
AMD fan control
https://github.com/cyring/CoreFreq
Resources
apps.foldingathome.org
(Jesus the spam filter wont let me post 2 links)
Last edited by ElectricPrism on 21 Mar 2020 at 11:34 pm UTC
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Mohandevir 21 Mar 2020
Thanks. I've done that, I see the GPUs.txt in the /var/lib/faclient folder. I'm just going to finish the CPU job that's running before trying a reboot. Fingers crossed, but not very hopeful, as the web interface didn't update in the way you describe! I've also installed the ocl-opencl libraries for dev too, which required quite a few other libraries to download. We'll see.
I installed nvidia-cuda-toolkit too.
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Well, it's working. I didn't do the toolkit, but either the GPU = true worked, or the ocl-opencl-dev did the trick. After a reboot, it still didn't detect anything, but when I went to FAcontrol, I could add my GPU (without having to change the OpenCL ID either) and it just popped up. I'm now waiting on two queued downloads - one for CPU, one for GPU. It keeps timing out, but apparently that's fairly normal because they're under a fair bit of load right now. I've run two loads on CPU already, it just takes time to initiate.
Thanks for the help everyone!
Thanks for the help everyone!
2 Likes, Who?
In the settings you can set it up to contribute to other projects (like cancer and Alzheimer's). I don't see such an option for covid-19/coronavirus. Can I assume the default is sufficient as long as I'm part of the GoL group?
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I've been folding for some weeks now and just switched teams from Archlinux to GOL :)
@Liam: thanks, good idea. There's also a game to help discover an antiviral, programmed by the University of Washington Institute for Protein Design in Seattle: [fold.it](https://fold.it/portal/node/2008963)
@Liam: thanks, good idea. There's also a game to help discover an antiviral, programmed by the University of Washington Institute for Protein Design in Seattle: [fold.it](https://fold.it/portal/node/2008963)
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In the settings you can set it up to contribute to other projects (like cancer and Alzheimer's). I don't see such an option for covid-19/coronavirus. Can I assume the default is sufficient as long as I'm part of the GoL group?"Any" includes COVID-19 work units, and those are currently handed out with the highest priority, so if you want to focus on that, "Any" is the way to go for now. I believe they want to add a specific category in the next client release, but that could be a whiel
The team you’re in is irrelevant, it’s just a vanity thing that tracks points.
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There's also a game to help discover an antiviral, programmed by the University of Washington Institute for Protein Design in Seattle: [fold.it](https://fold.it/portal/node/2008963)I must be missing something obvious, but how do you run the executable?
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Kuduzkehpan 22 Mar 2020
finally setup everyting and contributing to human future.
both gpu and cpu burning like a hell XD.
many linux based teams are in top 100 list with this cause
i hope darkest of the days will past away soon.
both gpu and cpu burning like a hell XD.
many linux based teams are in top 100 list with this cause
i hope darkest of the days will past away soon.
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Our team now actually shows up. We're ranked currently 12,516 of 238,810.
1 Likes, Who?
Our team now actually shows up. We're ranked currently 12,516 of 238,810.
I left my GPU running last night, only to wake up this morning to a jump from 600 points (two jobs on my CPU) to 137k!!
The team is now visible with detailed stats too: https://stats.foldingathome.org/team/245680
My GPU runs at 82 degrees when it's folding - roughly the equivalent of playing a AAA game. But the loads it takes are worth much, much more than the loads my CPU is assigned. Very impressive!
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it should come with fedora. really it should be integrated into boinc which comes with fedora. and it should support drivers which come with fedora. right now they aren't that much interested in my donation
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Hmmmm...
My Folding client seems to support calculataion of Cancer, Alzhheimer's, Huntington's, Parkinson's, but no COVID-19...?
FYI: I'm using web control UI; not using fahcontrol => I failed installing it on Ubuntu 18.04, 19.04, 19.10 and 20.04beta, and after trying all possible solutions (none of them worked) I just gave up trying for now....
My Folding client seems to support calculataion of Cancer, Alzhheimer's, Huntington's, Parkinson's, but no COVID-19...?
FYI: I'm using web control UI; not using fahcontrol => I failed installing it on Ubuntu 18.04, 19.04, 19.10 and 20.04beta, and after trying all possible solutions (none of them worked) I just gave up trying for now....
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Hmmmm...This was answered above:
My Folding client seems to support calculataion of Cancer, Alzhheimer's, Huntington's, Parkinson's, but no COVID-19...?
FYI: I'm using web control UI; not using fahcontrol => I failed installing it on Ubuntu 18.04, 19.04, 19.10 and 20.04beta, and after trying all possible solutions (none of them worked) I just gave up trying for now....
"Any" includes COVID-19 work units, and those are currently handed out with the highest priority, so if you want to focus on that, "Any" is the way to go for now. I believe they want to add a specific category in the next client release, but that could be a whiel
1 Likes, Who?
Oh, I missed that one. Thanks for clarification :)Hmmmm...This was answered above:
My Folding client seems to support calculataion of Cancer, Alzhheimer's, Huntington's, Parkinson's, but no COVID-19...?
FYI: I'm using web control UI; not using fahcontrol => I failed installing it on Ubuntu 18.04, 19.04, 19.10 and 20.04beta, and after trying all possible solutions (none of them worked) I just gave up trying for now....
"Any" includes COVID-19 work units, and those are currently handed out with the highest priority, so if you want to focus on that, "Any" is the way to go for now. I believe they want to add a specific category in the next client release, but that could be a whiel
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