Folding Forum

Hi all..

sorry if my question will be for the most of you boring: I read various post and guides of the forum and pf the site, but it seems to me that all is a little bit confused.. there is no a unique place where all the info is placed.. I start to open link and link and tabs and tabs and after 30 minutes I got 10 tabs opened in my Firefox!! and I was not too much experienced about my problem!! Maybe is only an impression of mine, maybe I have to look around the forum.. and surely I'll do it, but just to start I prefer to explicitly ask for help..
First of all: this is my first question here at the folding@home forum but I signed up months ago, when I first finally start to use my PC not only for myself.. I started with the PC you could see in my signature, but then I stop to donor the project I choose for 2 reasons: I had not an internet connection at my new home and after few months (September 2011) I bought a new laptop, which is so configured:

• Intel Core i3 2310M (2.10GHz, 3MB L3 Cache)
  RAM 4096MB( 4096 x 1 DDR3)
  NVIDIA Geforce GT 520M (Optimus) 512 MB DDR3

Actually I installed into this Samsung laptop: Win7 (but I use it once per month, maybe.. but maybe not) and Linux Slackware 13.37_current 32bit..
My primary question is: which client I have to use? I would prefer no wine emulation, only for all the .exe processes that must be started every time wine launches a windows application; I also read that some of the last GPU client (beta, it seems) are available for Linux, too, or at least they seems to work on it.. Do I well understand?
Second problem.. My nVidia card (it's reported to have this Optimus technology that I absolutely don't know what it is) seems to be a CUDA one (I have a stick placed on the chassis that says this): but I don't know if CUDA could be compiled and ran into Slackware.. what can you say me about that?

Thank you very much for your patience, the main problem is that I'm absolutely a newbie about all those new technologies related to the GPU: this is my first nVidia graphic card and much of all my first video card of middle-high value I ever used into my long experience with PC.. so please understand me..

P.S.: is there an IRC channel somewhere related to folding@home?

It would be best to run it with Linux SMP client for the CPU. I recommend trying out the latest beta 7 client. It's fairly mature for being beta. If it doesn't work for you, just uninstall and run the current v6 release.

Optimus is a GPU switching technology that is supposed to save power by using the i3's built-in HD 3000 GPU when it is in 2D mode, and the GT 520M when in 3D. It's a great theory. In practice, it's hit-and miss.

512MB is adequate for folding, and the 520M has 48 shaders, which isn't bad, but I'm not sure how nice Optimus + Wine + Gpu client would be. Get the SMP client running stable and watch for overheating, since it is a laptop. After it's looking ok, you can try to tackle the GPU setup.

As a wild guess, I would expect the i3 to get 2000-3000 Points Per day. You'd be lucky to get 1300PPD from the GPU, and it would probably hit your CPU for 200 or so PPD from the processing load needed to keep the GPU fed.

Wine is about your only option for GPU folding on Linux, and it may not be worth the effort given the PPD loss from the CPU, extra heat in the laptop, complexity and overhead from Wine, and the relatively low PPD from a mobile GPU.

That 520M will however CUDA accelerate some web browsers and Flash-based websites if it's setup right. I know this works under Mac OS and Win, but I have never tinkered with CUDA-accelerated apps on Linux(yet).

Hi there brainvision, and welcome to the Folding@home support forum!

I'm sorry that you're having so much trouble. Please note that native GPU folding is not yet available for Linux, but does run in Windows. Those that have a Nvidia GPU can fold through Wine. Our latest software supports it, but the main issue is the drivers and the similar software; those aren't ready just yet.

The new v7 software that Slash_2CPU mentioned is indeed in beta, but will be fully released within a month or two. It tries to make installation and setup very simple, and to this end it works remarkably well. Most of the bugs are cosmetic or are relatively subtle. You can find information on v7 here: https://fah-web.stanford.edu/projects/FAHClient/ Currently many of us (including myself) are testing it out. We are recommending it to people because it has certain advantages over the standard clients, but its current disadvantage at this moment is that it has a few bugs here and there. But in theory (I haven't tried this for Linux myself) it should configure itself for your OS and hardware.

It's up to you if you want to fully utilize your laptop. Laptops are more compact, so it's important to keep them cool, and often they are designed more for battery life or portability rather than performance. But I fold on a laptop, because that's all I have, and SMP+GPU works just fine for me. Your machine may be different. To my knowledge there's no IRC channel. This site is the main support forum, and further information about F@h can be found on folding.stanford.edu, folding.typepad.com, and on the Folding@home article on Wikipedia. But this is the main technical support place, and we do what we can. Sometimes the Pande Group answers posts, but mostly its regular people with various levels of expertise.

there are two unofficial irc channels related to folding@home. both are on irc.freenode.net and are as follows

##folding
#folding@home

both are pretty quiet but stop on by and we will do what we can to help.

hi all, boyz!
Thank you very very much for your precious and fast help: I appreciated it a lot! Thanks again!!

As I told in my first question, I would not like to use wine because it launches (naturally) 4 or 5 processes emulating the windows ones (for examples explorer.exe, services.exe, start.exe and so on) but I'll give it a try anyway.. I'm curious to see if with wine I could use the GPU for donor: yes, surely I have to evaluate if it's a convenient way to donor.. in terms of energy and resources consumption / points gained and projects terminated. I'm worried about the fact that this is laptop, as Jesse_V also underlines...

Now, if that doesn't hurt you and if I'm not boring, I would like to better understand..
so, if I'm understanding the Slash_2CPU words, if I would like to use both CPU both GPU I would have to use 2 different client, wouldn't I? that's right? And if yes, why coders choose that kind of things?

As a wild guess, I would expect the i3 to get 2000-3000 Points Per day. You'd be lucky to get 1300PPD from the GPU, and it would probably hit your CPU for 200 or so PPD from the processing load needed to keep the GPU fed.

Are you talking of wine's emulated clients, naturally, aren't you?

And what about teh v7 beta client for Linux? what is the PPD estimated with an i3 processor?
And what If I would use the v6 client?

Another question is: I read that the SMP client is only for 64 bit OS: this is not true anymore, today?

The OS-X client for the PPC was a uniprocessor client. The SMP client was developed about the same time that Apple switched from PPC to Intel, and the Intel client was initially SMP only. Meanwhile, on MSWindows, three different V6 clients were developed, one for uniprocessor, one for SMP and one for GPU. The uni and SMP code was later merged but the GPU client remains separate in V6. More recently, the client code was totally rewritten and V7 was designed from the "ground up" to support all options on all three platforms.

It's not just a question of the client, however. When a client downloads a new assignment, it also downloads a FahCore that will process it. The GPU clients for Linux/OSX have never been developed and there are no projects that assign those jobs to Linux/OSX so even though the OSX V7 client may recognize your GPU, it can't be used due to the lack of a FahCore. You'll have to run a Windows version of a client to use your GPU.

The native OSX client, whether it's V6 or V7, can receive SMP assignments and download the FahCores for OSX, all of which are 64-bit cores. While it would technically be possible to run either a uniprocessor or SMP in the Windows V7 client in wine, I'm not aware of anybody who has tried that and for several reasons, it's hard for me to recommend it. Being that V7 is beta code, you're welcome to try it (if you're really adventurous) and report your findings but I expect that the native SMP client will be more efficient.

brainvision wrote:...Another question is: I read that the SMP client is only for 64 bit OS: this is not true anymore, today?

It depends on the OS being used:
Windows 32 bit -> SMP/Classic Client (UNI)
Windows 64 bit -> SMP/Classic Client (UNI)

Linux 32 bit -> Classic Client (UNI) only
Linux 64 bit -> SMP only

OSX 64 bit -> SMP only

sop even the v7 beta for Linux is still uniprocessor!! I thought it was SMP able!!!
I'm using a Slackware Linux 32bit..

I still 2 more question for you:
1. I saw that the client for linux are released as deb and rpm package.. but there's no way to download a source code to build and compile it for others distros?

So, finally.. at this point, if I don't want to use wine emulator, with my 32 bit Slackware, the only choice for me is the classic uniprocessor client (beta or 6 version)! That's right? No possibilities to use SMP or GPU at all!!

and 2. last question: I backup the folding@home directory containing my last fah6 client data.. do I have to reconfigure the client or I can resume this folder and start gain the process?

(Not a Linux user)

1) If it isn't present on the main V7 Beta site, than I am sorry that there isn't any choice.

2) If it was a console client and you backed up the entire folder, then it might be able to work without any issues.

PantherX wrote:(Not a Linux user)

1) If it isn't present on the main V7 Beta site, than I am sorry that there isn't any choice.

2) If it was a console client and you backed up the entire folder, then it might be able to work without any issues.

thanks pantherX..
now the site for download is down, but I well remember that into the various Linux OS dirs, there were different version of every client.. so, to say, there was the Xxxxxxxx-7.38.deb package and there was to, for the same version, a Xxxxxxxx-7.38.tar.bz2 archive.. do you know what the last one refer to?

for my second question, yes it was a console client, the 6.02 uniprocessor, if I well remember.. but what about the broken project I stop months ago.. will I restart from there or someone still ends it (as I thing)?

can you please repluy to my biggest question into my latest post (before this one)?

thabks!!!

Your question has already been answered.

There is no FahCore for GPU that runs on Linux.

The FahCore for SMP requires 64-bit.

That leaves you with the options of running as many copies of the uniprocessor client as you have CPUs in your system or running wine or Windows.

Future support for a FahCore (and client) for the GPU is being discussed in several other topics, including viewtopic.php?f=67&t=19896 and viewtopic.php?f=38&t=20039 (3 pages). Feel free to add your +1 to one of them.

bruce wrote:Your question has already been answered.

There is no FahCore for GPU that runs on Linux.

The FahCore for SMP requires 64-bit.

That leaves you with the options of running as many copies of the uniprocessor client as you have CPUs in your system or running wine or Windows.

Future support for a FahCore (and client) for the GPU is being discussed in several other topics, including viewtopic.php?f=67&t=19896 and viewtopic.php?f=38&t=20039 (3 pages). Feel free to add your +1 to one of them.

sorry if I force you to reply to me even if if - as you say - my questions had been yest replied, but I wanted to be sure.. I wanted to read sentences like you (I'm not english, as I'm sure you just understand by yourself.. ). Thank you very much..

Now, going on.. I take a look at the BOINC project, too.. it seems that they have a better Linux integration and a client that better takes care of Linux regarding SMP and GPU.. I would like to know if is it possible to use the BOINC client with the folding@home projects.. could it be possible?

If you're talking about integrating FAH and BOINC, that was investigated a few years ago and both sides didn't wish to go forward with it for various reasons. I'd imagine things haven't changed much since then.

BOINC does not create applications -- they simply provide the tools to DEVELOP an application for Distributed Computing. The FAH V7 client, itself, already provides those same capabilies. In addition, many FahCores are available to support specific FAH applications. It's the analysis code which still needs to be ported to Linux and validated scientifically.

Even if the client were ported to BOINC (and I'm not suggesting it might be) it would still need the same FahCores to do the required analysis.

Please follow the links that I gave you in my previous post.

bruce wrote:Please follow the links that I gave you in my previous post.

OK, I understand.
I have one more time question, not related to Linux/GPU/SMP: as I yet said, I started to donor with FAH months ago and I stop it in June.. in the meanwhile I bought a new laptop, even if I still use the old PC (but I formatted it for various reasons). I did backup of the folding directory where data were stored.. Now, my question is: in general, what to do with broken and stopped project? I mean: if I start a folding and for various reasons I stop to donor for one or two months, when i start again to donor I imagine I will not find anymore the donor I was elaborating 'cause someone else still finished it.. that's right? So, what to do, in general and in my situation? is it useless to use the old backup folder?

thanks..