If you already have your Folding@Home client configured correctly (including the use of the -local option) you can click here to skip ahead to the nFoldMan setup instructions.
Start with the Folding@Home clients and directories
Before setting up nFoldMan, you need to set up the Folding@Home client. This requires some pre-planning, creating some directories, and copying some files. You should make some notes and write down a plan before proceeding; it's easy but it's not trivial.
Home many processes should I run?
You can run more than one Folding@Home process at a time, and there are reasons why you may wish to do so.
To maximize raw computing efficiency, you should run one copy of Folding@Home for each processor on your computer. One copy for single-processor machines, and two copies for dual-processor machines. However, there are reasons why you might choose to run fewer or more processes than this:
- On a dual-processor machine, you might choose to run only one copy of Folding@Home. Since this will be using less than the full computing capability of the machine, you will reduce the demands the Folding@Home client makes on your machine even more than its normal state. Your machine will remain cooler and will be more responsive.
- On any machine, you may wish to run more copies of Folding@Home than the number of processor in the machine. While this will not make the computing go any faster (since the cpu is already working 100% two copies will simply take twice as long as one) you may still marginally increase your overall throughput. This is because, when a Folding@Home client finishes its assigned work (after several hours or days of computing) it can take from several minutes to several hours to send the results back to Stanford and get new work assigned, depending on the network and the state of the servers at Stanford. If you are running multiple copies of Folding@Home it is very unlikely that they will all be stalled at the same time, so your machine will continue to work on the other problems while one copy is waiting to communicate.
At the time I am writing this, the Stanford system allows you to run up to 8 copies of the client program on each machine.
For simplicity, you might start with one copy until you have everything running smoothly. You can always add extra copies of the computation client later.
Important steps for multiple processes
If you decide to run more than one copy of Folding@Home there are three critical steps you must take:
- You must make separate copies of the Folding@Home client, and each copy must be in a separate directory on your machine. (Only the client program downloaded from Stanford need be copied. You will use a single copy of nFoldMan no matter what you do.)
- You must use the "-local" option when you run the Stanford client. This causes the client to store all its work files in the same directory as the program, and is necessary to prevent the multiple clients from conflicting with one another. If you configure and run the client through nFoldMan, this option is supplied for you automatically, but if you run the client from the command line in the Terminal program, you must specify the -local option every time.
- Each copy of the Folding@Home client must have its own "machine ID" number. This is a number from 1-8, which you will specify when configuring the client. The number doesn't mean anything but each copy of the client on a given machine must have a unique number. (There is no need for numbers to be unique across different machines with different network addresses.)
Configuring the Folding@Home client
To configure the Folding@Home client through nFoldMan,
- Get a copy of the client program (it's called "fah4" at the time I'm writing this) into a unique directory with no other files.
- Run nFoldMan. A new document and its Settings window will open:
- Click "Set Path" and then point to the client program.
- Then click "Config Client" to open the client program configuration sheet:
- Fill out this sheet.
- Your "user name" must be unique in the project. You can test the availability of the name you have in mind at the Stanford Folding Web Site.
- The "machine ID" is a number from 1 to 8 which must be unique on this machine. So if you are running more than one copy of the Folding@Home client, assign each a different number.
- You might want to join a team. Mine, "Team Mac OS X", would love to have you. We're team 1971.
- The other settings can usually be left in their default state. Help on the other settings is available at the Stanford site.
- Click "OK" and save your document. You are now ready to use the client.
To configure the Folding@Home client manually using the Terminal (for the unix-aware):
- Open a terminal window and "cd" to the directory containing the client.
- Run the client by typing "./fah4 -local -configonly"
- Answer all the questions it asks you.