FAH v7 SMP on Puppy Linux

[Sunny]

FatDog is a 64-bit version of Puppy Linux. I use this as a frugal install on a small USB stick to run the FAH v7 client in the SMP mode. To conserve power, I shut down the swap and turn off the hard drive when folding.

My post on Feb. 24, 2013 at the following link describes how I installed the FAH v7 client on FatDog:
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=84587

Concurrently, I run a v6 GPU client on the same machine using wine. My post on Feb. 10, 2013 on the following link describes how I installed the v6 GPU client and FAHMon on FatDog:
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 0&start=15

Configuring a 32-bit Puppy Linux installation would follow similar steps if one was interested in running a uniprocessor client. Note that in this case it may be necessary to compile python if you want to install FAHControl ... In FatDog, compiling was not necessary as the pet package for python was complete.

[sc0tty8]

Have you tried the v6 smp client at all? Looking at making a thumb drive image for my BA folders...

I've just started to dabble with puppy.

[Sunny]

Actually, I have used the v6 smp client on FatDog ... I used it for a few months before trying the v7 client.

For the v6 smp client on FatDog (version 521), I just extracted the client, went into that directory and configured it using this command: ./fah6 -configonly

After that, I just started it using the following command: ./fah6 -smp -verbosity 9

Worked great without any other setup using FatDog as a frugal install on a USB stick. I mainly wrote the guides linked to above for the v7 smp client and the v6 gpu client since they took a little more effort to get running. The v6 smp client worked right off the bat.

[sc0tty8]

Ok, I will have to give it a whirl. I was playing with precise puppy, thinking if based on ubutnu I could do "sudo apt-get install openssh-server" but no joy.

I'll play with it some more.

[Sunny]

"sudo apt-get install openssh-server" ... Puppy is not quite that compatible with ubuntu.

Precise puppy is a 32-bit linux, so you will not be able to run a smp folding client.
For an openssh-server, see the following links:
http://puppylinux.org/wikka/SshWithPuppy
http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?p=234111

For questions specifically related to Puppy ... the puppy forum is very helpful.

FatDog is the 64-bit version of Puppy that I use to run the smp folding client. It does come with a ssh telnet client ... for a openssh server, you would probably need to compile it yourself. However, FatDog does come with xllvnc-server and NFS-File Sharing already installed. I use NFS-File Sharing when using FAHmon remotely.

[Sunny]

As most Puppy installations are 32-bit, I have looked further into the use of the V7 FAHClient. On a 32-bit installation, FAHClient will detect the number of processors available and it is capable of running multiple cpus using smp. The main difference between the 32-bit and 64-bit installations is in the Core_a4 that is used to do the actual folding. Different projects are assigned to each Core_a4 (32 or 64 bit).

The 32-bit version of V7 software is available on the Folding@home download site under "other platforms -- 32bit Linux". Three packages are available that will install on PuppyLinux: fahclient_7.3.6_i386.deb, fahcontrol_7.3.6-1_all.deb, & fahviewer_7.3.6_i386.deb

The following are notes from my installation on different Puppies:

Installation on Puppy Slacko 5.4

fahclient_7.3.6_i386.deb & fahiewer_7.3.6_i386.deb will install and run properly in PuppySlacko. When FAHClient is installed, edit /etc/init.d/FAHClient to change USER=root and HOME= for directory you want to use for Folding.

fahcontrol_7.3.6-1_all.deb requires Python. I load devx_slacko_5.4.sfs at boot as it contains Python2.7 I then used the Puppy package manager to install pygtk-2.24.0 (along with it's dependencies pycairo-1.8.10 & pygobject-2-28.6). After installing fahcontrol, I had to copy/move folders (fah & FAHControl-7.3.8.egg-info) from /usr/share/pyshared to /usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages

Installation on Puppy Precise 5.4

fahclient_7.3.6_i386.deb & fahiewer_7.3.6_i386.deb will install and run in PuppyPrecise. When FAHClient is installed, I could not get the script /etc/init.d/FAHClient to start (I got a command "start" not found), so it would not run as a service. I ended up running FAHClient in the terminal mode for PuppyPrecise.

fahcontrol_7.3.6-1_all.deb requires Python. I load devx_precise_5.4.sfs at boot as it contains Python2.7 I then used the Puppy package manager to install from Repository: ubuntu-precise-main
python-gtk2_2.24.0.3 with Dependencies python-cairo_1.8.8 & python-gobject-2_2.28.6
After installing fahcontrol, I had to copy/move folders (fah & FAHControl-7.3.8.egg-info) from /usr/share/pyshared to /usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages

Installation on Puppy Lucid

The main problem I ran into on PuppyLucid was problems with dependencies. To run fahclient_7.3.6_i386.deb & fahiewer_7.3.6_i386.deb a newer version of libstdc++ is required. PuppyLucid comes with /usr/lib/libstdc++.so.6.0.13 ... to run fahclient/fahviewer, then replace this with libstdc++.so.6.0.16 (and create symbolic link libstdc++.so.6 for the newer version). libstdc++.so.6.0.16 can be obtained from the debian repositories or you can just grab a copy from Slacko or Precise.

I never could get fahcontrol_7.3.6-1_all.deb to run in PuppyLucid. This requires Python, and I could not get a good Python environment set up. I tried the development sfs, various Python pet packages and I even tried compiling Python for PuppyLucid ... too many dependency issues. As an alternative, you can always use FAHControl from a remote computer to control/monitor the Lucid client.

[kaoh08]

Have you run GPU slot natively on it?

[Joe_H]

A requirement for the GPU folding core that can be used on Linux is a 64-bit Linux installation. So, no, GPU folding can not be run natively.

[Sunny]

You can natively run GPU Folding on Puppy Linux if you use FatDog which is the 64-bit version of Puppy.

Like in any 64-bit linux distribution, currently you have to use FAHcore 0x17 and you have to meet the system requirements described in the FAH v7 installation instructions.

In my first post of this thread, I provided a link which describes how I installed FAH v7 on FatDog (version 521). I was using the v6 GPU client on this machine, but I recently configured it to run the v7 GPU client with a nvidia Fermi board (560TI)

The FAHcore 0x17 requires at least version 15 of glibc. This is newer than the one provided in FatDog, so I compiled and installed glibc-2.18.0 in FatDog (version 521). I then configured a gpu client using "client-type=advanced". This installation runs without any problems and it is easier to set up since you do not need wine or the cuda toolkit installation.

I also noticed that my GPU runs about 10° C cooler on the v7 client and it gets more PPD (compared to my v6 installation using this same nvidia board). The v7 client uses OpenCl , so it does use one CPU core at 100%. This decreases the PPD's from the smp folding, but the GPU PPD increase more than makes up for this.

[PantherX]

The difference in temperature could very well be due to the difference between CUDA (FahCore_15) and OpenCL (FahCore_17). I had a 10 °C - 15 °C difference on my GTX 675M between the two FahCores and prefer FahCore_17 due to the lower temperature.