Folding Forum

I'm folding using 4 elderly Linux Mint 18.3 and 19.3 Laptops.

One has run into problems with failed wu which I've tracked down to running out of disk space. I've cleaned it up and freed up a couple of GB, but I'd really like to know how much space FAH needs.

The basic problem I have is that 3 of the 4 laptops were dual boot WIn/Mint, with minimal space on the Mint partition and a large shared data partition. None of them still have functional Windows,with that space having been already used for extra data.

Resizing the partition isn't simple because of the order on the disc, so depending on the answer as to how much I need, I will probably have to do a full reinstall of the OS. I can do that on 2 of the 3, but as the 3rd is my main machine, it would be a major task.

How much space does FAH need?

You probably need about 300 MB of disk space for F@h, 500 MB to be really safe. Some workunits can rarely get up to 100 MB, especially some of the Wuhan Coronavirus / COVID-19 projects, but most workunits are 5-10 MB depending on the size of the molecule that they are studying.

I don't have a Linux machine to check, but on my Windows PC with 1 GPU & 1 CPU slot folding F@H is currently taking up just over 500 MB. About 180 MB of that is for the applications & core files, and about 320 MB is the working directories for the two work units currently being processed. To be on the safe side, I'd add another 100MB or so per slot - when the current WU is almost done it will download the next WU, and when the next WU starts folding the results from current WU will still need to be uploaded. So about 700 MB total.

On my MacMini which is only doing CPU folding it's currently taking about 270MB - roughly 100 MB for apps & cores, and 170 MB for the working files; add another 100 MB for overlap & it would be 370 MB.

If you managed to free up another GB of disk space on each machine on top of what it was already using, I'd say you're in good shape unless you have an unusually large number of folding slots.

Sounds like I'm good new then.Thanks.

Jesse_V wrote:You probably need about 300 MB of disk space for F@h, 500 MB to be really safe. Some workunits can rarely get up to 100 MB, especially some of the Wuhan Coronavirus / COVID-19 projects, but most workunits are 5-10 MB depending on the size of the molecule that they are studying.

Apologies for kicking old horses, but I am noticing a very concerning habit of my client. The work folder has grown to 3.5GB of data with the oldest files dating back to 4 days ago. Is it safe to clear up the garbage? I'm assuming it is for the time being, since the machine has been folding basically non-stop.

The garbage collection processing happens when the results file gets uploaded. If a server is resisting the upload, the data need to be preserved for now. If the upload was completed and the client though it was unsuccessful (like a file was in use or something) you can manually clean up the data.

Hi Bruce, thx for the swift response. As always (:

I had a lot of waiting for connection things lately, and then it started uploading. The log showed so much uploading, i couldn't believe it. Slowly the size is coming down towards normal. 1GB has already been shaved off, with the oldest folders now being from 9/4/21. I hope this trend will continue.

I've loaded FAH on a few units with 4GB emmc successfully. The OS took 1,5GB. I disabled /deleted swap / hybernation file / partition though...