Folding Forum

What is the best way to track progress of multiple clients that reside on the same network?

I used to use Electron Microscope many years ago.

TIA

The Advanced Control can track clients across multiple machines. HFM can also do that, and in addition will keep track of your folding history. I have my clients set up in both.

jonault wrote:The Advanced Control can track clients across multiple machines. HFM can also do that, and in addition will keep track of your folding history. I have my clients set up in both.

Care to give me some guidance on using Advanced Settings ?

First, on the client you want to monitor, you need to set up remote access. Open up Advanced Control on that machine, select Configure, then select the Remote Access tab. (You should pause folding first.)

There are a few options in this window. First, if you want to add a password for remote access, you can. The Port number you don't want to change, so leave that alone. Next, you'll need to add a range of IP addresses that are allowed to access the client. By default, the Allow field should have 127.0.0.1. You want to leave that address in there and add to it. You could just enter the IP address of the single machine that you intend to monitor from; I chose to allow any IP address on my home network to remotely access the client. So the Allow field on my machine looks like "127.0.0.1 192.168.1.0/24" (in case it isn't obvious, there's a space separating the two addresses); this allows any computer with an IP address starting with "192.168.1" to remotely monitor the client. You don't need to change the Deny value. Finally, if you don't want to use a password to control access, you'll need to set the Allow field under Passwordless IP Address Restriction - it should match the previous Allow field. If you DO want to use a password, then I think you can leave this field alone. Either way, you don't need to change the Deny value. Once you're done with all that, press Save. You will probably need to restart the client to get the changes to take effect (easiest way is to just reboot).

Now go to the machine that you want to use for remote tracking and bring up Advanced Control. In the lower left corner is an Add button, select that. Enter a name for the machine you want to monitor, enter its IP address, and if you set up a password above, enter that password again here. Then press Save. The specified PC should now appear in the list of clients on the left.

Repeat those two steps for each additional machine you want to remotely monitor.

jonault wrote:First, on the client you want to monitor, you need to set up remote access. Open up Advanced Control on that machine, select Configure, then select the Remote Access tab. (You should pause folding first.)

There are a few options in this window. First, if you want to add a password for remote access, you can. The Port number you don't want to change, so leave that alone. Next, you'll need to add a range of IP addresses that are allowed to access the client. By default, the Allow field should have 127.0.0.1. You want to leave that address in there and add to it. You could just enter the IP address of the single machine that you intend to monitor from; I chose to allow any IP address on my home network to remotely access the client. So the Allow field on my machine looks like "127.0.0.1 192.168.1.0/24" (in case it isn't obvious, there's a space separating the two addresses); this allows any computer with an IP address starting with "192.168.1" to remotely monitor the client. You don't need to change the Deny value. Finally, if you don't want to use a password to control access, you'll need to set the Allow field under Passwordless IP Address Restriction - it should match the previous Allow field. If you DO want to use a password, then I think you can leave this field alone. Either way, you don't need to change the Deny value. Once you're done with all that, press Save. You will probably need to restart the client to get the changes to take effect (easiest way is to just reboot).

Now go to the machine that you want to use for remote tracking and bring up Advanced Control. In the lower left corner is an Add button, select that. Enter a name for the machine you want to monitor, enter its IP address, and if you set up a password above, enter that password again here. Then press Save. The specified PC should now appear in the list of clients on the left.

Repeat those two steps for each additional machine you want to remotely monitor.

Did exactly as you said and I am now able to track all 3 clients.

Thanks for the help, much appreciated.

I also tried this, but for me it only says "Connecting" at the Advanced Controls in the computer I want to control from.
Do you know, what the problem could be, do I have to enable the Port in my Windows Firewall?

Just started folding across 14 slots on 6 hosts, so I am interested in doing this. But, at home I use DHCP, so the IP for each host changes over time on my LAN. Before I start allocating them fixed IP addresses (which my ORBI router something doesn't like to do without multiple reboots per fixed-IP device), is there a way to do this using hostnames? After all, HOSTNAME--->IP on the fly shouldn't be a difficult thing to do in the FAHControl. Just wondering if that is already done before spending cycles.

Thanks
Tuna

hostnames should work, and are allowed in the Connection tab used for setting Remote Access up. In the past there were some reports of occasional issues with using this option, but I don't recall any recent reports.

The Remote Access tab only allows IP addresses or ranges.

Joe_H wrote:hostnames should work, and are allowed in the Connection tab used for setting Remote Access up. In the past there were some reports of occasional issues with using this option, but I don't recall any recent reports.

The Remote Access tab only allows IP addresses or ranges.

Yes!! Thank you!

Tuna

UAEDester wrote:I also tried this, but for me it only says "Connecting" at the Advanced Controls in the computer I want to control from.
Do you know, what the problem could be, do I have to enable the Port in my Windows Firewall?

I had the same issue. I am using a Win10 host to look at all other hosts (one Win7 and four Win10) remotely (using their hostnames on my LAN instead of hardcoded IP addresses). Enabling Remote Access on the Win7 host was successful; local FAH's access to the local machine on that Win7 host stayed intact, and I could add it to the FAH of the remote Win10 management host successfully. But, enabling Remote Access on the Win10 hosts resulted in their local FAH losing access to the local machine, and connecting to them from the remote Win10 host (that was already connected to the Win7 host) resulted in the forever "Connecting"; plus, the Win7 connection continued to show "Online" but it was stuck in "Updating" when selected.

Then I removed all hosts from the managing FAH, rebooted all five remote hosts which resulted in their local FAH regaining access to the local machine, then re-added them to the managing FAH. That worked for the one Win7 machine and three of the four Win10 machines. One Win10 machine is still stuck in the "Connecting" mode. Rebooting that machine and/or removing/re-adding it to the managing FAH didn't change the situation. I tried that a few times. I also made sure that the Remote Access settings on the remote host as well as the connection setting on the managing host didn't have any typos.

So, any thoughts on why this last bit of problem might be persisting would be welcome.

Tuna

PS: Tried HFM.NET, as well, and the same Win10 host couldn't be connected to while the rest had no problem. Another issue with HFM seems to be that it doesn't know much about the more modern CPU/GPU models. A lot of the slot types are marked as "Unknown" and there is no %progress number against them, even though the slots are shown as green/running in HFM. Oh well...

Tuna_Ertemalp wrote:So, any thoughts on why this last bit of problem might be persisting would be welcome.

Fixed it, even though not in a way I would have liked. In all my other hosts, the "fahclient" inbound rule on the Windows Firewall is PRIVATE (there are two such rules, one for TCP, another for UDP). Somehow, on this one WIn10 host, I had to change both to PUBLIC. Neither PRIVATE nor DOMAIN selections worked, but as soon as I made it PUBLIC, both the managing FAH and the HFM were able to connect to that problematic machine.

Right-click the Start button.
Click Search.
Type Windows Firewall.
Click Windows Defender Firewall.
Click Advanced settings on the left.
Click Inbound Rules in the left frame of the window.
Scroll (if need be) and find the two "fahclient" entries.
One by one, right click on each + select Properties + ENABLED under GENERAL tab + PUBLIC under ADVANCED tab + APPLY + OK

After this, the managing FAH should be able to connect to the problematic remote host.

Good luck!

Tuna