Folding Forum

why does my startup have FAHClient run after HIDECONSOLE.exe?

and why does the web control sometimes switch to full, seemingly on its own, when running the client side controller?

and why do I lose all the parameters tabs on FAHControl when I switch ports?

and why can't proper accounting principles seem to reconcile my points allocations for points accrued for my account, and the team?

where is the balance of unaccounted for points vanishing to, and why?

and is there any way to track WHEN accounts and teams get their points?

because to me, all of this seems tailor made for crooks to take advantage of people like EVGA, unless there's some transparency and overslght.

Welcome to the F@H Forum healingshoes,

1) FAHClient is a command prompt window and thus, hideconsole will actually hide the command prompt window. You can control FAHClient from either the Web Control (aimed for basic information) or Advanced Control AKA FAHControl (aimed for detailed information).

2) Are you doing any changes from Advanced Control? If so, the Web Control might be updated to reflect these new changes.

3) If FAHControl can't communicate with FAHClient, almost all settings are inaccessible. Please ensure that FAHClient is running before trying to make changes with FAHControl. If the port number is being changed in FAHControl, the configuration too has to match that.

4) Are you using a passkey and have qualified for the bonus points (http://folding.stanford.edu/home/faq/faq-passkey/)? Please note that if you change teams, your old points will not be carried over to the new team, instead, they will remain with the old team. Same applies to the usernames too.

5) If you are not using a username, the points are being assigned to "Anonymous". An incorrect team number results in the points being assigned to Team 0. If you can post the WU (looks for a line like this, Project: 10450 (Run 286, Clone 0, Gen 88), values might be different but that's okay), we can look it up and see exactly how many points were assigned to the donor.

6) The official stats are updated every hour. Third party updates vary so you have to check the particular site in question.

7) F@H is vendor agnostic. If you can tell us what you want, maybe we can point you in the right direction. A good place to start would be our homepage (http://folding.stanford.edu/home/).

For additional troubleshooting, can you please provide us with the log showing the errors and the initial section which contains the system configuration and F@H configuration.

FAHClient is intended to run as a service that starts when you start your computer and runs continuously. Unfortunately Microsoft does no allow a service to fold using a GPU so instead of being a service (which is entirely hidden) it runs as a user task with the output hidden, making it very much like a service.

All of the user controls that are needed to manage what the FAHControl "serivce" is doing and any changes you might work to it's settings are managed through either one of the GUI interface programs: WebControl (designed for simplicity) and FAHControl (designed for experts). Both can start or stop jobs being processed by the service and manage any of the settings associated with the FAH installation. FAHClient is NOT designed to be operated by a human except by way of a control program.

ok, thank you, those are both very helpful and honest answers.

please try and see how it looks from my perspective...

my audit log tells me someone is ninja stealthing startup stuff that's running at console level and making sure I can't see whats being done while inside my windows shell... this does not help promote a warm fuzzy feeling.

but given how enormous the overall linkage tasking must be on your end, and how clueless the average person is about back end infrastructure, myself included, I can see how this is just simpler and less painless as a path of least resistance.

so fair enough. and thanks for responding.

but I still have this remaining concern about transparency and oversight...

I'm no fan of or cheerleader for corporate conglomerates or Wall St or insurance companies. Insurance companies are a particularly offensive type of golem from my perspective. But even with these negative perceptions I have of them, I don't think it would be fair or reasonable for them to be getting screwed over by rampant abuse within a system like this.

And I see huge potential for that abuse, and I see signs that it's happening, and may be ongoing.

EVGA is kind enough to be offering this 10 EVGA bucks a month incentive for people to donate resources. I'm guessing they're doing it the same way that the pop bottle and candy companies and McDonalds do with their "skill testing question" promotional contests where money and prizes are offered...

They print the necessary promotional materials, branded and labeled and what not for retail distribution, and then a reinsurance company covers the prize money handouts. EVGA pays a fixed amount, gets a tax deduction and tax credits for donating to a certified 501 educational cause, and the reinsurance company also gets tax credits for all the costs it has to cover which are incurred by EVGA for cashed in EVGA bucks being used to buy hardware.

But if there's rampant abuse of the system going on, that's precisely the sort of thing that ends up helping justify insurance companies being creeps with people when it comes to sticking to the letter of an agreement and screwing them over based on the letter of the law, because of the amount of abuse they can show themselves having to deal with.

So when I see something like this... groups with 1000 people in them, and group leaders boasting about redecorating their home on the front page of their group's web page... in my mind, it demonstrates that there is probably large scale abuse going on, and the people doing it feel very safe and shielded while doing it.

This is not a good thing, guys.

I think you need a way to graph and track WHEN points are accumulated by people in a group, to look for repetitive patterns of clusters of people within a group cycling in and out on the heels of other clusters of people within a group, to look for evidence of alt account abuse by group leaders.

An even bigger concern is that if these guys are doing what I suspect, and cashing in EVGA points for gear, and then selling the gear, they know where that gear is going, and have an IP as well as a physical address. So they could even be setting up accounts for those hardware buyers IN ADVANCE, and hijacking resource time and EVGA bucks without the hardware buyers even being aware that their name and ID and maybe even their computer resources are being used to generate cash for someone else.

I think you need to take a serious look at this, because I'm fairly sure it's happening right now.

peace

If you do not like the hide console, for any reason, it is not required to run. First, you can run folding as a service which eliminates the DOS box but then you will not be able to GPU fold (A microsoft security requirement that no service has access to the video subsystem). The second solution is to edit the startup shortcut to remove the hide console program and run FAHClient directly. This will put the FAHClient DOS box in the taskbar where you can see it running.

healingshoes wrote:And I see huge potential for that abuse, and I see signs that it's happening, and may be ongoing.
...
I think you need to take a serious look at this, because I'm fairly sure it's happening right now.

I think you should actually show us some of these signs if you want anyone to take this accusation seriously.

I can understand some of your concerns, however the PG is not involved in the awarding of prizes or other incentives done by EVGA or others as support for folding teams. These are concerns best taken up with EVGA, and on their forums. The folding forums here are team and vender neutral.

PG does take use of the folding software that violates the terms of usage seriously, and has voided points in the past. What you are alleging however is outside those terms and would fall under the terms set by EVGA.

I think I would trust a For Science university project like folding@home before I would trust a For Profit company like EVGA, no offense EVGA. Folding@home has been running 10+ years, far longer than EVGA has been offering EVGA Bucks.

That being said, there is no way to cheat the points for any one person or team. The security between fah clients and fah servers is too well done for that to happen. It's is all digitally signed and encrypted.

@ healingshoes - You are more than welcome to duplicate the oversight that Pande Group already does on their own. PG ensures no hacking or cheating to make sure all of the Science done is above board and without reproach. All the stats are published openly. Track the points for any person or any team as you wish and prove it to yourself.

You may want to educate yourself by reading a few of the FAQs, like FAH Policy, FAH Points, and FAH Security before making wild and unsupported accusations. Thanks.

You're welcome to remove the "hideconsole" portion of the startup shortcut. FAHClient does output log data to the console. Just do not close the console if you have chosen to run Folding@home.

This same log data can be viewed in the log tab of FAHControl and it's a lot easier to look there if you need it rather than forcing you to leave a console window open. There's nothing confidential in that log -- just debug information that might be useful in debugging FAH -- and most people look at it very rarely (if they have a problem with FAH).

Microsoft runs many services which write debugging information to a log that's hidden somewhere for the same reason. There's no conspiracy. Unhiding the console, satisfying your curiosity, and then closing the window would be the FAH equivalent to suspending Microsoft's printer spooling service and then wondering why you couldn't print anything from other applications.