Folding Forum

Why Need Machine ID When Each Folding@Home Use Own Folder Own Config File Own Exe File Own Core File Own Data File?

Due to the risk of loosing work-units due to network errors Stanford records the last work-unit sent to a User ID.
If you dont return it and you try to get more work for that User ID, Stanford reissues that work-unit twice more before sending new work out.
Because you can run more than one client on a computer, Stanford needs to be able to tell the clients apart that are on one computer.
This is where the Machine ID comes in.
Your full User ID that Stanford records is made up of your User ID + Machine ID.
This needs to be unique for each client otherwise you end up folding duplicate work-units.
If you do fold duplicate work-units you only get the points for the first one returned.

Luck ............

I think the machineID is most used to prevent people from deleting unwanted WU's. Historically, there have been people that have chronicly deleted any WU's that had less than optimum productivity, hoping that the next one assigned would be better, leaving the rejected one to be reassigned to someone else after the prefered deadline. That behavior produces a time delay that affected the science extremely negatively that it was necessary to discourage it by insisting that deleted WU's are simply reassigned to the same machine.