nFoldMonOnly is not difficult to set up if you are already familiar with using the Folding@Home command-line client and are already familiar with nFoldMan. If you are not already familiar with nFoldMan, I strongly recommend you set it up and experiment with it before proceeding on to nFoldMonOnly.
nFoldMonOnly is a unix command, not a Mac application, so you should not put it in your Applications folder. Instead, just create a folder in a convenient place somewhere on your Mac and put nFoldMonOnly there. To make path names simple, I suggest creating a folder at the root level of your hard disk, so its full path name is simply "/whatever". I will be using "/fah" in the examples below.
You need to have the nFoldMonOnly program and a text control file in the folder you created. The actual folding client downloaded from stanford can be somewhere else. For simplicity, you can put the folding client in the same folder if you like -- as long as you are only running one folding process. If you are running more than one folding process you will need additional folders, because each process must be in its own folder.
For purposes of this example, and as a recommended approach, we'll have a folder structure like this:
We have created a folder called "fah" at the root level of the hard disk. It contains the nFoldMonOnly program and control file, and two subfolders "fah1" and "fah2", each containing a copy of Stanford's folding client and its configuration file. (We'll be running two processes in this example, so need two folders each with its own client.)
Note: Since nFoldMonOnly has no user interface, it can't help you configure the Stanford clients. Either configure them via nFoldMan or manually by running the unix command
./fah5 -local -configonly
in each folder.
This nice simple folder structure is easy to manipulate with the Terminal program:
Next, you must edit the nFoldMonOnly control file. Here are detailed instructions on what goes in that file.
You'll likely be setting nFoldMonOnly up to run automatically. However, please run it manually from the Terminal a few times (you can always leave it running and minimize the Terminal window) until you are sure you have it right. It's much easier to see messages it may produce, and to stop it with control-C, while manually running it from Terminal.
Here is a test run of the setup shown above:
The first output line, starting with the phrase "nFoldMonOnly starting", is the program announcing it is running. It then would sit there forever, waiting for incoming network requests. I then hit control-C (you can see the "^C" at the beginning of the 4th line from the bottom) and the program shut down.
Finally, you should set up a copy of nFoldMan somewhere (this computer or another) and use the Rendezvous feature to locate the process(es) defined in your nFoldMonOnly control file.