nFoldMan is designed for a small collection of computers such as might be found in a small office or a family home. The idea is that you might want to have several computers running the Folding@Home client, and that you would like a simple graphic monitor and control interface available on each. Also, you might want one or more computers to act as central monitor stations, monitoring and controlling other machines on your network.
nFoldMan accommodates all 3 of these uses: a graphic monitor for folding processes, control of folding processes, and the ability to monitor and control processes on other computers on your network. Only the nFoldMan program (and, of course, the Stanford Folding@Home software) need be installed on your computers -- there are no separate "client" or "server" programs.
nFoldMan is a document-oriented application. You define and save one document for each folding client process of interest. Each document can represent one of:
- a folding process running on the machine where the document is located; or
- a folding process running on a different machine and accessed, for monitoring purposes, by mounting the relevant disk with Apple File Sharing; or
- a "remote process" - which monitors or controls a second nFoldMan document running on a different machine, by communicating over your network.
Every nFoldMan document corresponding to a local process can be "published", enabling it to be accessed over the network from another nFoldMan document. The following diagram shows all the various permutations that are possible:
An nFoldMan document that wants to monitor a remote process can specify the address and name of the remote process directly or, on a local network, can browse for published processes using Rendezvous.