Folding Forum

I can't seem to find an answer regarding passkeys.

I have a number of computers that I use for folding.
Previously, each machine had a separate name and passkey but were all part of the same team.
It seemed to me that not all of the machines were getting their bonus points after completing WUs.

This lead me to wonder if it would be better/more efficient to have all machines folding under the same team/name/passkey.
Since the passkey helps prove that I am who I say I am, I figured that this kind of setup would be allowed and not considered cheating.

So I recently changed all machines to fold under the same name and passkey.

Is this the expected setup or is this actually not allowed?

Today while checking each machine, they are now in a waiting state. The logs state that they are unable to retrieve assignments, the server actively refused the connection.
So I changed one machine back to its original name and passkey but this did not fix the issue.
My machines use different internet pipes over different ISPs, so I am fairly certain that this is not a connection issue and is leading me to wonder if it is the passkey issue.

Sorry if I posted in the wrong section!

Thank you for your assistance.

Hello frozenjoe, welcome to the forum.

ONE passkey is the recommended method. Not sure where the recommendation to use multiple passkeys came from, but that should be corrected.

Also, please see the News Blog (link at top of page) about the on going server maintenance, likely causing your lack of work assignments.

See also: http://folding.stanford.edu/home/faq/faq-passkey/

Thank you for verifying. I will keep using the single passkey and share it among all of my machines.
The interesting this is that since the switch, I have only been credited with a single WU even though three or four machines have uploaded completed WUs. I guess I will give it more time and see if they appear later.

I read the FAQ already but it was not very clear for people with multiple computers.
I also checked the server status page and the announcements topics (which listed previous maintenance but nothing recent) and everything shows that they are up and running just fine.

I just checked the New Blog you mention and the maintenance was two days ago with the last update stating yesterday that everything was fine for all servers except for one. It is a server that I do not believe I am using.
So are they still down for maintenance?

Without the log file of your client, we can't really tell if you are being effected by the current Server outage or not. While it was a single Server, it did host multiple Virtual Machines so it is not as simple as a "one server". Moreover, please read this post which may give you additional details -> viewtopic.php?p=248138#p248138

Passkeys have several requirements to receive bonus points. They need to maintain an 80% success rate on QRB eligible WU's and at least 10 QRB WU's need to have been returned.

If you are using a passkey that is lower than either number than you won't be receiving bonus points. if you need to verify the passkey, then you should PM any moderator with your folding username and passkey. The second thing you can do is simply look at the logs and record several Project (Run, Gen, Clone) numbers from completed WU's and a moderator giving that info can look up the exact number of points given and then you can compare that to the base points to see if you received any bonus points for those WU's.

I think I will just wait and see what happens, if in the next few days I still cannot connect, I will then post the logs.

My line of thought at the time was this: "I already know the requirements to get the bonus points, perhaps some of my machines are not meeting these. I wonder if they all shared the same passkey, they all could then meet the requirements and all will contribute bonus points." This is how I started wondering about my question in my original post. I started researching and didn't find anything concrete, so I made the switch anyways to see what would happen.
I only made the switch a few days ago, which is not enough time to see what would happen, so I will just wait for the maintenance to clear and see what happens after that.

An additional requirement not mentioned already is that each username and passkey combination needs to be qualified. So by moving all your folding to one such combination, going forward it should be able to qualify more quickly if not already QRB qualified.

frozenjoe wrote:...

snip

I read the FAQ already but it was not very clear for people with multiple computers.

The use of the term passkey on the FAQ page is always singular, as in only one passkey.

I've added language to the Passkey FAQ to emphasize this point. The updated page will post in about 30 minutes.

Thank you much!

Joe_H wrote:An additional requirement not mentioned already is that each username and passkey combination needs to be qualified. So by moving all your folding to one such combination, going forward it should be able to qualify more quickly if not already QRB qualified.

..but since some passkeys that may be currently qualified will no longer be used, you may temporarily get no QRB points.

Changing passkey in the middle of the WU may cause a loss of bonus points. Use the Finish option to complete the WU, then make the change.