Folding Forum

Hello! I am curious if there are any issues with having two different accounts (the account through the v8 client that then links/binds all the machines to one control page through the v8 web client) that share the same username and passkey combo. That way, they can control all their machines on one page but we don't have to have all our machines mixed in together. But I'm curious now because the machines on my account are now having trouble getting the QRB, and I'm trying to see if it's related.

I recently brought another friend into the Fold, and they decided to just fold under my username/passkey combo and such. However, while copying over my passkey to share with them, I think I didn't close my settings page or something, not sure exactly how it happend, but it blanked out the passkey field for my account info. That leads to today, where I finally figure out why my PPD has gone down so much, and it was because the 5 machines/GPUs that fold under that account had been doing so without a passkey for probably about a week (as the blank field naturally copied over to all the other machines).

So, a little bit less than 24 hours ago, I added the passkey back into my account and figured the bonus would shortly return, but it still has not. I know that cumulatively, another 10 Wus have been done already, and that username/passkey combo I don't think ever lost its Bonus eligibility. Further, when I check the 'Recent CPUs' page to track which machines are getting what on my username, it seems like all of my friend's machines on his new account are getting the bonus, while all of mine are still not (as indicated by the 'Got Bonus' column).

Is this just a time delay with the bonus points system as my account/machines becomes re-qualified for the quick return bonus or something? Or is there some sort of restriction with having multiple F@H accounts using the same username/team/passkey combo?

Thanks so much for your help!!

Only one account can have a particular passkey.

I think what happens when you create a new account with the same passkey is that the passkey is removed from the other account.

Do not share your passkey.

Okay, well that is very good to know then. So two questions then:

1) If I want to put the passkey back onto my account rather than my friend's, would I just have them delete their v8 account and then re-add the passkey to my computer again?

and 2) If we still wanted to fold together but have our machine-swarms separate (as in, they have their machines in his account and my machines are in my own account), can you just create a new passkey and then both accounts will be QRB-eligible for the same username, just with different passkeys? Or can a username only have one active passkey at a time?

Thanks again for the quick response! Hearing your response makes a lot of sense heh

1. Yes, have him delete his account and you should be able to add back your passkey. I have never tested such tho.

User names are not unique. He can use your user, team with his own passkey that he generates using https://apps.foldingathome.org/getpasskey

Okay, well looks like we will test out if that works today! Adding the passkey back into my passkey field didn't seem to let my account begin to get QRB again, so maybe with the other account being gone, that will change.

And okay just to check I understand you right, if they wanted to continue contributing points under my username, they could create their own passkey and that would allow both to be eligible and get the quick return bonus?

He can probably just change his passkey without deleting his account. Then he won’t need to re-link his machines to an account.

Yes, as long as he has his own passkey and returns 10 WUs with that key and maintains 80% success rate.

Note that web control stats tab shows stats for user+passkey. If you want to see all points for your username, see the stats page on foldingathome. Note also this may include points by others. Because user names are not unique.

Okay, sounds great. I will try having them change their passkey first, then if that doesn't work we will try deleting the new account, and then I think worst case scenario, to get my account working with the original passkey again, I could make a brand new account with that passkey, and that should hopefully rip the passkey back to my swarm of machines.

I'm not sure if there are any more clever/direct ways to try and make my account become the new 'master' of the passkey again (after the passkey is changed on the other account or the new account is deleted), so I think for those first two options above, I'll just enter a slightly different passkey value, save the info, then enter in the correct passkey again and then save that again, and hope that makes it update (and hopefully, it will start working again now that the second new account isn't using the same passkey).

Fingers crossed!

Please share what you find out.

Okay, have everything set and looks like it all worked out as it should have!

After having my friend get his own passkey, my machines returned to getting the QRB once more. They generated a new passkey and changed their account to that, and then right after that I changed my passkey to something else then back to the valid passkey, just out of paranoia to try and encourage any backend updating. My friend didn't need to delete their v8 account and neither did I, all seemed to go back into place once separate passkeys were being used .

An interesting thing I did notice though is that only the machines that had the 8.5.5 client seemed to start getting the QRB again right away. Any old clients that were on 8.4.9 still didn't get the bonus, even while other machines that were on 8.5.5 had already begun getting it again. A restart on an 8.4.9 system and a fresh WU downloaded after that restart didn't make the bonus return either, it was only after I updated that client to 8.5.5 that it began correctly giving a bonus again. I noticed this behavior on an 8.4.9 machine for as long as about 12 hours after the bonus came back for all the 8.5.5 clients, as one machine I couldn't update until the next day. I remember reading elsewhere in the forum that the past versions did have a problem with account settings being applied, and that seems to be what was happening perhaps.

So, I'm glad to say that all the clients are getting their bonuses applied again! Thanks for your help, and hopefully we learned a little something today from all the self-caused troubleshooting strife that I caused for myself.