Folding Forum

Do we still need the -local flag? I'm running one SMP and one GPU client, and I remember that the -local was required before.

If you're running V6 (at lest Linux and Windows), -local is ignored.

If, for some reason, you're still running a copy of the V5 client, -local works as it always did.

Except for OSX!

The -local flag tells the client to set up the Folding data files and work folder inside the same directory where the client itself resides. To stay local, as it were. In both the fah5 and fah6 OSX clients, the default directory is ~/Library/Folding@home (where the ~ denotes the user's home directory). Without the -local flag, wherever the client resides - on your desktop, in your Applications folder, wherever - it will create the Folding files in ~/Library/Folding@home and always use the ones there. This is OK if you are running a single client and aren't picky about where the computer keeps it, but there are a number of reasons that you might want to have two clients going at the same time. You can't keep them in the same folder, so there has to be some way to tell the client NOT to use the default folder. Hence the -local flag.

If you set up Folding under OSX using a third party helper application like InCrease or Finstall, or if you set it up under the console client in a directory other than the default directory, you need to use the -local flag every time. If you use the Stanford Universal ("Pref-Pane") installer, you don't have a choice - it always uses the default directory.

As I understand it, in Linux (the fah6 client at least, it's the only one I've used) -local is implicit: the client always uses the local folder to set up Folding files. So the -local flag is never needed.

bruce wrote:If you're running V6 (at lest Linux and Windows), -local is ignored.

Really? Didn't know that.

-local is ignored because it's the default, whether you specify it or not.