Configuring FAH to run as a Service

[JustinAlmeida]

Hello friends,

I was able to convince my office to allow me to run FAH on our work stations. Multiple people use these stations and so there is a lot of logging in and out.

I figure installing FAH to run as a service on all accounts is the optimal installation.

However, how do I configure the FAH service to attribute points to my account/team without the console?

I appreciate help with this n00b question!

-Justin

[Joe_H]

Welcome to the folding support forum.

I have not installed F@H on Windows as a service, but as I understand it, all that does is setup the FAHClient process to be started as a service running in the background. FAHControl and the Web Control still can communicate with FAHClient and change its settings. It can be configured to have a FAHControl process running on a different workstation administer the setups as well.

One limitation with running folding as a service is that GPU folding can not be done due to limitations imposed by WIndows.

Other considerations that you will need to handle are that if you do want want remote administration of the clients, a data transfer over a port will need to be allowed on the LAN. By default that is port 36330. If there is a firewall or anti-malware software in place, FAHClient will need to be allowed to communicate with folding servers over ports 8080 and/or 80, the same as a browser.

[bruce]

There's no problem if folks logon and logoff. A Windows service is not run in the user-space of the logged user but rather as a part of the Windows operating system, itself. It starts processing when the OS is initialized and keeps running until the OS is shut down, whether or not anybody logs on. There's no need to start or stop the service, but it can be managed through Control Panel by anyone with Admin permissions -- more or less like the installation of the software itself.

(You'll need to train folks to use "sign out" rather thn "shut down" and you'll want to configure Windows to avoid sleeping.)

Important settings include the number of CPUs allocated to FAH, and the Name/Team/Passkey, but they only need to be set once using FAHControl.

[JustinAlmeida]

Thank you both. I was able to configure the service to run for my account/team on the workstations. I did need to mess with the group policy settings re: power and sleep, etc. But from what I can tell it's all running smoothly. Cheers!

[bruce]

In the past, we have always recommended that folks who get permission to run FAH on office computers obtain WRITTEN authorization. It's not a bad idea since the EULA says the "owner" of the computer must run FAH. Depending on the management structure of your office, there's always a chance that staff changes may someday cause earlier verbal authorization to be questioned. Even though that may seem unlikely, it's better to be safe than sorry.