Folding Forum

Hi,
Getting back into this and have installed Gentoo on my PC. If I emerge folding at home it installs the 7.6.21 release. From what I've read it is not recommended to use this version. Is that true? Is there a way to install 8.x from source? I've found the bastet page for source on git but it doesn't have any instructions for compiling for something other than debian or rpm. Thanks for any help.

Also, I use open rc not systemd.

I didn't think anyone using Gentoo would need any instructions?
On a serious note. Take Debian guide, and replicate the steps with Gentoo alternatives.
There is not going to be a Gentoo guide because no one in dev team are using Gentoo

You can however are free to raise a ticket in GitHub asking about it. I'm sure there might be some people who will help and guide you through it

I guess there's a first for everything..

There could be a gentoo guide because 'devs' aren't the only ones using it (?)

The guide could include all distributions that aren't the main ones its written for.

Additionally, I can't just replicate the instructions for debian because it involves using systemd. I use open-rc.

jeffmr4 wrote: ↑Thu Oct 02, 2025 3:36 pm I guess there's a first for everything..

There could be a gentoo guide because 'devs' aren't the only ones using it (?)

The guide could include all distributions that aren't the main ones its written for.

Additionally, I can't just replicate the instructions for debian because it involves using systemd. I use open-rc.

Are you seriously expecting for a guide to the niche of the niche of the niche distros? Please be realistic with expectations when you are using a system which is used by 0.00000000000001% of Linux users.
The guides for various more popular distros were developed by community members themselves and not the dev. Dev has his hands full as is.
FAH source code was developed with systemd in mind

Most source files have general instructions so that the software can compile to match the hardware of your system. I didn't know if this was possible with open-rc or even systemd for that matter (It is possible to run Gentoo with systemd but that involves starting over from scratch). If it was possible for systemd not all of the dependencies that are used on debian or redhat are available in gentoo. Also, I think that as far as being realistic goes your stats are pretty far off. For someone that is trying to contribute their computing power to this project your answers have been extremely unhelpful.

You can compile on a system without systemd. You can then build the tarball with “scons dist”. The installer package would be useless to you because it uses systemctl.

Thank you.

jeffmr4 wrote: ↑Thu Oct 02, 2025 4:00 pm <...> For someone that is trying to contribute their computing power to this project your answers have been extremely unhelpful.

When you set the tone that you expect things to be catered to your niche distro usage, that is the answer you will get. You said you found the source code on github. Who put it up there? Definitely not folding forum community aka people who are folding, but not developing. Ever thought of asking on github about it? Dev resides there, he does not visit these forums. Same way you will not find casual discussions about simple FAH issues on fah-client-bastet github, because that is purely for client development.
As I said, create an issue on github, and work on getting instructions put up which would help not only you, but maybe others.

calxalot,
Thank you for that. I downloaded the source, compiled and built the tarball. Sorry if I am misunderstanding you but when you say installer package do you mean a .deb file from the build? Systemctl will work on Gentoo if it is installed originally with systemd. I can actually run the client but it hangs when it detects my nvidia card. Thanks for your help.

When you use "scons package", an installer package is built.
Depending on the system, you get a .deb, .rpm, or macOS .pkg.

You can try it and see if it creates something usable.
Note that the client data directory is the CWD when the client is launched.

I can't help much with gpu problems.
I believe you would need both OpenCL and CUDA libs from nvidia.

I think when I did scons dist it built a tarball which I unzipped and tried to just run the fahclient. Thanks for the help. I'll probably still keep working on it. Maybe there is a way to get Gentoo to run .deb or .rpm packages. Have a nice afternoon.

calxalot and anyone else that is interested in installing client 8 on Gentoo,

I got it installed and working. I installed OpenCL and nvidia CUDA libs using emerge. I later found out that the CUDA libs already have a version of OpenCL with them so i'm not sure if installing OpenCL by itself was necessary. I pretty much followed all the installers instructions, unmasking and adding USE keywords where it said to and then following the instructions from the source directories READMEs. The webclient is working as well.

Thanks for your suggestions calxalot. Anyone who wants to try this please message this thread with any questions and I will try to answer them if I can. I did use Google AI for some questions I had which was very helpful.

Cheers!

Did you create a non-systemd service for the client?

Did you create an unprivileged user to run the client?

No and No. I started the client from the fah-client file by typing ./fah-client and then started the webclient with npm i, npm run dev and then opened http://localhost:3000 in the browser which brought everything up. After that I enabled the nvidia card in settings through the browser and its running away.

As far as users, I have just run it through root so I haven't tried a regular user. I did install fakeroot at one point as was a suggested dependency. I'm not sure if that affected anything. I'll test to see if my user can run it.

[edited]

Any user should be fine, as long as it has ownership of data files. For GPU folding, it needs render and/or video group membership.