A guide to using the V7 client on non-DPKG/RPM Linux distros

[att]

I know most you around here are Windows users, therefore this will be useless and irrelevant to you, but there may be some Linux user who doesn't use Debian or Red Hat based systems, I for one, am one of these people, and the new V7 core only provides installers for DPKG- or RPM-based systems. The point of this rare event where I post something is just to get the V7 core working (to be honest, I wouldn't bother with the control client, it uses CPU power up, which could be used to get points

).

This does involve using the terminal, but if you aren't using dpkg or rpm for your package management, you probably aren't on one of the 'beginner' distros anyway

.

Firstly, go to the folding@home website, and download the .deb client, which will look like this:

fahclient_7.x.x_amd64.deb

Once downloaded, extract the data.tar.gz file out of it, the other files are not needed, then open the data.tar.gz file, where you will find a single directory called '.', open that and you will see etc and usr, which would normally correspond to the directories where they would be installed if installed it via dpkg.

Now is where you decide whether you are doing to run folding@home as a daemon (good for 24/7 folding), or run from the terminal every time (good for monitoring progress).

To run it from the terminal, you can copy the file from the /./usr/bin/ directory in the data.tar.gz file to your /usr/bin/ directory by typing:

[font=courier new,courier,monospace]sudo mv /directory/to/FAH{Client,CoreWrapper} /usr/bin/[/font]

(where /directory/to is where you extracted the files to)

Now you should be able to open a terminal up and type FAHClient and it should start folding, but then you've not got your name, team-number (98860 of course), -bigadv &c. set.

To do this you can call FAHClient with the --configure flag:

[font=courier new,courier,monospace]FAHClient --configure[/font]

Then you can call FAHClient without any flags and it will start folding.

... but you still haven't told it that you want to do bigadv folding or whatever, to do this you need to open your favourite text editor up and edit the config.xml file it created, which will be in the same directory as where you have installed it (/usr/bin/). Here are some pages that tell you how to configure this file:

https://fah-web.stan...ClientUserGuide

https://fah-web.stan...fferencesV6ToV7

Do fold as a daemon, we need to copy (after doing the steps above) the FAHClient file from the /./etc/init.d/ direcotry in the data.tar.gz file to wherever daemon scripts are kept, which is either /etc/init.d or /etc/rc.d, depending on your distro:

[font=courier new,courier,monospace]sudo mv /directory/to/FAHClient /etc/rc.d[/font]

(cp will also work, but mv saves you deleting it afterwards)

If you were to call [font=courier new,courier,monospace]rc.d start FAHClient[/font] (or however daemons are started in your distro, Google is your friend) now, it would start folding, but the same issue would occur as before, being it doesn't know how you want it to be configured.

I hope you've kept your favourite text editor handy, we'll need it again.

Open the FAHClient file that has been copied into your /etc/rc.d or /etc/init.d directory with the editor and notice at line 19 how it says:

[font=courier new,courier,monospace]CONFIG=/etc/$NAME/config.xml[/font]

Just change it to [font=courier new,courier,monospace]CONFIG=/usr/bin/config.xml[/font]

If you find that you aren't allowed to save it, because you don't have permissions, just go back to your trusty terminal and type:

[font=courier new,courier,monospace]sudo YOUR_FAV_EDITOR /etc/rc.d/FAHClient[/font]

but adjust it to fit your needs, and all should be well.

Now if you call the FAHClient daemon, it should be working with your configuration, so now would be a good time to add it to your /etc/rc.conf or whatever and make the thing start at startup.

You should have a working V7 client on your non-DPKG/RPM-based Linux machine.

 

[hmmblah]

NIce job on the guide!

 

[kilobravo]

Nice job done with this guide.

Should/could be pinned

 

[att]

Cheers, glad you liked it.

 

[mrDMxtreme]

nice guide, out of curiosity what distro are you on?

 

[att]

arch linux, it says in the sig.

 

[att]

UPDATE: (moar terminal goodness)

There has been a move towards systemd for dæmon management, which means that the part of the orignal guide about dæmonisation is obsolete, which means I need to write some moar guide for you lot.

If you want to port your existing dæmonised FAHClient to systemd, all you need to do is make a new file, /etc/systemd/system/FAHClient.service and fill it up with the following (you need root privileges to do this, aka sudo fav_text_editor again):

[Unit]
Description=Folding@home Client used for getting points for team 98860
After=network.target

[Service]
Type=simple
WorkingDirectory=/opt/folding/
ExecStart=/opt/folding/FAHClient

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

To test whether this has worked, get a terminal back up and enter the following:
systemctl daemon-reload
This basically makes your system aware that there is a new dæmon.

Then you need to load the daemon up:
systemctl start FAHClient.service

Check your log file or enter systemctl status FAHClient.service in a terminal to see if it has worked. As long as everything is in the same directory (config, logs &c.), it should load it all normally (as it did under SysV (the old one)):

# systemctl status FAHClient.service
FAHClient.service - Folding@home Client
Loaded: loaded (/etc/systemd/system/FAHClient.service; disabled)
Active: active (running) since Sun, 14 Oct 2012 02:53:26 +1100; 1min 8s ago
Main PID: 15840 (FAHClient)
CGroup: name=systemd:/system/FAHClient.service
├ 15840 /opt/folding/FAHClient
├ 15853 /opt/folding/FAHCoreWrapper /opt/folding/cores/www.stanford.edu/~pande/Linux/AMD64/Core_a4.fah/FahCore_a4 ...
└ 15857 /opt/folding/cores/www.stanford.edu/~pande/Linux/AMD64/Core_a4.fah/FahCore_a4 -dir 00 -suffix 01 -version ...

Oct 14 02:53:26 Hacktal_R3 FAHClient[15840]: 15:53:26:WU00:FS00:0xa4:
Oct 14 02:53:26 Hacktal_R3 FAHClient[15840]: 15:53:26:WU00:FS00:0xa4:Assembly optimizations on if available.
Oct 14 02:53:26 Hacktal_R3 FAHClient[15840]: 15:53:26:WU00:FS00:0xa4:Entering M.D.
Oct 14 02:53:32 Hacktal_R3 FAHClient[15840]: 15:53:32:WU00:FS00:0xa4:Using Gromacs checkpoints
Oct 14 02:53:32 Hacktal_R3 FAHClient[15840]: 15:53:32:WU00:FS00:0xa4:Resuming from checkpoint
Oct 14 02:53:32 Hacktal_R3 FAHClient[15840]: 15:53:32:WU00:FS00:0xa4:Verified 00/wudata_01.log
Oct 14 02:53:32 Hacktal_R3 FAHClient[15840]: 15:53:32:WU00:FS00:0xa4:Verified 00/wudata_01.trr
Oct 14 02:53:32 Hacktal_R3 FAHClient[15840]: 15:53:32:WU00:FS00:0xa4:Verified 00/wudata_01.xtc
Oct 14 02:53:32 Hacktal_R3 FAHClient[15840]: 15:53:32:WU00:FS00:0xa4:Verified 00/wudata_01.edr
Oct 14 02:53:32 Hacktal_R3 FAHClient[15840]: 15:53:32:WU00:FS00:0xa4:Completed 5700001 out of 10000000 steps (57%)
​

SUCCESS!!!
You should get something like this if it has worked.

If you are dæmonising this from scratch, just ignore everything about dæmonising in the original post and follow this one. The only thing in common is that you need to add it to your dæmon array (please refer to your disto's documentation, yep, RTFM) in order for it to start up during startup, so you're never not folding. ^_^

Hope this helps you (although realistically there won't be many of you who need this ).
Happy folding.

 

[SnW]

Very helpfull (nice) guide mate,
and i noticed we can EDIT first posts again,

So i can finish the other guides ...