Folding Forum

Are there any plans to develop a Folding@home dedicated operating system? It could be far more efficient than the normal client, even where Folding@home is the only process running, which would increase in percentage hugely. Dedicated operating systems have the potential to provide major amounts.

There have been some that have taken LINUX and stripped it down to what is only needed for folding. Here is a link to a few, check out the Diskless folding programs (based on linux) section. viewtopic.php?f=14&t=52

For the life of me I can't get Notfred's diskless folding program working. I used the ISO maker, built a bootable image on USB disk, and keep getting the "No boot media" message when restarting the computer.

This doesn't seem like a Notfred problem. It does seems like a computer problem. Maybe the bios isn't configured to boot from USB. Or so old it doesn't support it. Can you boot from other USB sticks?

Again, Notfred has a dedicated thread to answering questions on his home forum. Your best bet for assistance is posting over there.

orion wrote:There have been some that have taken LINUX and stripped it down to what is only needed for folding. Here is a link to a few, check out the Diskless folding programs (based on linux) section. viewtopic.php?f=14&t=52

I like the idea, though a simpler method needs to be developed. I'll try getting F@H working on a USB stick I own and see what I can do. I'll try to get latest Linux SMP working.

Spitfire19 wrote:

orion wrote:There have been some that have taken LINUX and stripped it down to what is only needed for folding. Here is a link to a few, check out the Diskless folding programs (based on linux) section. viewtopic.php?f=14&t=52

I like the idea, though a simpler method needs to be developed. I'll try getting F@H working on a USB stick I own and see what I can do. I'll try to get latest Linux SMP working.

I was able to get a LiveUSB of Ubuntu running 6.02. Now the question is if I can run newer version on a 64-bit OS w/ SMP. (Current computer is not capable) Whether or not I can make it as simple as copy pasting the files on the USB for distribution. And try out other LiveUSB like CentOS or Scientific Linux. (Everyone loves stability).

Hmm, no persistent storage on CentOS 5 Live USB eh? guess I'll think of work arounds. Or would you guys instead prefer to see it on Scientific Linux? Just to get on Scientificy for the hell of it.

If you are struggling check out the forums of the top teams, they have excellent guides for loading up ubuntu and letting rip. Even for a total windophile they are easy to follow

I used to run notfred's usb setup which backs up to a usb stick. Basically, when starting up it would copy the client files from the usb stick to memory. If you copy the latest client to the usb's backup directory (?/?/1/) and rename it to fah6.exe or maybe just fah6(sorry but it's been a while) then it will be restored to memory when the client start's up. What the client does when starting up is create a link to 6.02 but it can't now because a file is already there with that name so the newer client will be used for processing.

When you tried to use notfred did you run syslinux:

"From a command prompt run "syslinux <device>" where <device> is the device or drive letter of the USB stick, e.g. "syslinux X:" for Windows, "./syslinux /dev/sda1" for Linux (should not be mounted). If it complains about unable to lock the device for exclusive access, ignore the warning."

http://reilly.homeip.net/folding/usb.html

Needs:

• Live USB with persistent storage solution
• latest Linux SMP client. (v7 w/ Wine attempt can come later)
• fahlimit
• lm_sensors

anything else? I plan to do this first on Ubuntu (or other official Canonical supported release) & CentOS (or SciLinux). (64-bit)

Help choose which OSs I should do this with! maybe I'll try Yellowdog even.

Need to get my hands on a new USB drive before trying this though.

There are some really small FreeBSD based distro's I find interesting ( mostly because my router is FreeBSD based ).

If you could add the gpu wrapper in a live os you'll have something which has greater functionality then NotFred's.

MtM wrote:There are some really small FreeBSD based distro's I find interesting ( mostly because my router is FreeBSD based ).

If you could add the gpu wrapper in a live os you'll have something which has greater functionality then NotFred's.

Very true, unfortuanately I can not start on the 64-bit attempt until the end of the week because I am actively using the i386 live USB for other projects this week.

What's the best way to distribute a 7GB file?

8 GB flash drive.

Gigabit internet