Folding Forum

Like anyone else, I am concerned about covid-19. I had tried to get FAH to work, a decade ago on another Ubuntu Linux box. I never could get it to work. Given the gravamen of the virus, I very much want FAH to work. I have a 6 core cpu, etc. I am retired and do nothing but email and light reading nowadays. So lots of cpu cycles could be folding.

I returned to fah.org and d/l'd the packages for this computer. There were no install instructions on that page and no links to instructions, either. So naturally, the install failed. I came to this forum, hoping for help. Someone posted the install instructions page url. I read it, last night. So this morning, back to the d/l page and get the 2 other packages. Open one with GDebi. I'm told there is a dependency problem for python-gnome2. I search that via google. Amazingly, the 2nd citation of that search brings up a fah post. It's url is:

viewtopic.php?f=16&t=31972 (sorry for the extra spaces, as a new forum member, my posts cannot contain urls).

At this post I see someone has found a workaround for the dependency. But I also learn that python2 is about to be deprecated next year. And as the fah.org site says they rebuilt the app from the ground up, I wonder if they knew about the python deprecation. I'm not going to risk having to reinstall the OS, if the patch breaks my main computer. And this is a shame. I know their are solid coders who could write their app for them with current standards. And enough transparency to insure cybersecurity.

To wind this up, I also have an old laptop with win10 and it's not folding, all the time. Or will be as soon as the fah has sufficient servers to handle their increased load, and send it a WU to work on.

Thanks for reading.

The current client was released about 2 years ago, work was in progress towards a new release of the client software. That is currently on hold due to the COVID-19 response.

I suspect the developer knows about the issue with python2, that and other dependencies on older versions of other components is part of the reason for working on a new version. There is a GitHub repository for F@h, and there are a number of known issues and problem reports that can be looked through.

My apologies for posting on this thread, as I am wishing to obtain assistance with finding a work around that I can use with the latest FAHControl (v7.6.13) on Fedora v31/32. To resolve the Python dependency issues.

Should there be a thread that will answer my question on this issue, please point me in the right direction so I can find it.

Paul

Welcome to the F@H Forum psaam0001,

Please have a look at this topic as I think you might find it useful: viewtopic.php?f=106&t=33345

TYVM. I'm going to take a closer look later this week. As I want to do all of my tinkering while I have no urgently needed work units running.

Note: I'm going to be applying the work around to 2 Fedora 32 systems. My Win 7-SP1 system is humming along just fine running 2 work units at a time BTW. 1 on each core.

psaam0001 wrote:...My Win 7-SP1 system is humming along just fine running 2 work units at a time BTW. 1 on each core.

Generally speaking, you can run 1 CPU Slot on a system which uses multiple CPUs to fold 1 WU. If in doubt, please post the log file and we can help you optimize. If you require guidance, please review this topic: viewtopic.php?f=24&t=26036

I'm set for now on the Win 7-SP1 (x86 64 bit) system....

You might want to make sure that running two slot as one core each that they are going to complete their WUs within the Deadline (if not your client will drop the WUs when they reach the deadline and the work will be wasted

If at all possible it is best to return WUs not just within Deadline, but within the Timeout - as if not the WU will be reissued to another folder as well as yourself, which if this can be avoided is a good thing … Generally "The Science" is helped by quick return of WUs and so it would be usual to use the fewest slots possible, in your case that would be a single slot with two cores/threads assigned to it, as this allows the WUs to be returned faster

If you use Web control the "My computer has 9.99 days to complete" is an indication of the Deadline - The Timeout length can be found by looking at https://apps.foldingathome.org/psummary … It is however easier to see these in Advanced Control which actually calculates and displays when the Timeout and Deadline (labled as Expiration) occur.

It might be more beneficial for the project (and for you, in case points matter to you) to rather have 1 CPU slot with several threads / cores than using a separate slot per core. Unlike BOINC projects, FHA WUs do benefit from multicore CPU slots and scale across several cores very well. Since the next generation of WUs is dependent on the results provided from the current WUs, it's more beneficial to FAH to have 1 WU at a time running on several cores and therefore finish faster, than running several CPU WUs in parallel, but slower.
This is reflected in the Quick Return Bonus points, which encourage fastest possible return of a WU.