Folding at home/ubuntu

[cbrunnem]

i am having massive problems with ubuntu. to start i do not have the apps/places/system on the top just file/help/other ***. for that reason i do not know how to uninstall anything because i do not have the toolbar options to do so. this all leads to problems with folding at home inside ubuntu. i says connecting but does not ever connect.

specs are in sig and I AM RUNNING A VM through windows.

 

[nhasian]

well your specs dont matter because you are running a vm. if you are running Ubuntu 12.04 then it uses the Unity interface and will not have the classic apps/places/system toolbar.

press the Super key (the one with the windows logo) then type in "software" that should pull up the software center where you install and uninstall software.

 

[cbrunnem]

i think a main problem is the VM i am actually using as it is limiting me to 1 core and 1 gb of ram. you need atleast 2 cores to get a WU.

what VM do you recommend.

 

[amdfangirl]

If you have Intel Vt-x enabled in the BIOS you should be able to use any number of cores. In Virtualbox, you can use up to 6 cores.

I would recommend running Ubuntu server or the like for F@H to reduce CPU overhead. (graphics is run by CPU inside VM, Ubuntu server is text-only).

 

[cbrunnem]

If you have Intel Vt-x enabled in the BIOS you should be able to use any number of cores. In Virtualbox, you can use up to 6 cores.

I would recommend running Ubuntu server or the like for F@H to reduce CPU overhead. (graphics is run by CPU inside VM, Ubuntu server is text-only).

you will have to speak in english for me to understand that.... lol if you dont mind.

 

[amdfangirl]

You will need to enable Intel Virtualisation Technology. This technology allows you to use more than one core in a virtual machine. Most virtualisation programs support more than one core and once enabled in the BIOS, you can use more than one core in the virtual machine.

If you have a choice in the matter I would pick Ubuntu server because it is text only and runs folding at home faster.

Google what you don't understand. It helps and I'm lazy. I also don't fold anymore.

 

[randomizer]

i think a main problem is the VM i am actually using as it is limiting me to 1 core and 1 gb of ram. you need atleast 2 cores to get a WU.

what VM do you recommend.

For starters, are you running VMware or VirtualBox (or something else) as your hypervisor? Both can be configured to provide more than 1 core and 1GB of RAM. As amdfangirl said, you will want to ensure that Intel Virtualisation Technology (or VT-x) is enabled in your BIOS and also in your hypervisor settings. Otherwise your performance is going to be far worse than it could be.

 

[cbrunnem]

wmware and its currently only allowing me to use 4 cores not 8. VT-x is enabled and i dont think win 7 ultimate has hypervisor.....

 

[amdfangirl]

Well more often than not, you can just make 2 VMs. Last time I checked, that got more ppd.

 

[nhasian]

I dont understand why you want to run folding inside of ubuntu which is also inside a virtual machine. why don't you just run folding in windows? Or why not dual boot with ubuntu and then run folding?

 

[cbrunnem]

Well more often than not, you can just make 2 VMs. Last time I checked, that got more ppd.

that is a solid idea. just one lasting problem. i end up not being able to use FAHcontrol because it will not load a WU so i end up running through terminal. any suggestions on that?

I dont understand why you want to run folding inside of ubuntu which is also inside a virtual machine. why don't you just run folding in windows? Or why not dual boot with ubuntu and then run folding?

linux gets you more ppd.

 

[amdfangirl]

that is a solid idea. just one lasting problem. i end up not being able to use FAHcontrol because it will not load a WU so i end up running through terminal. any suggestions on that?

Aren't you supposed to load it through terminal? That's what they did when I folded.

 

[audiovoodoo]

There is a dedicated section for distributed computing queries and an active thread in the CPU section for F@H which might be worth asking for advice on this but I'll add what I know.

From what I know of F@H then running it in a VM would not be the most efficient way to do things. At present the graphics acceleration is not going to allow you to make full use of that 6950 graphics card which will significantly affect your WU rate. While virtual box and the like do a good job keeping system resource usage to a minimum it will use CPU time and RAM that could be better used by F@H.

When I used to donate CPU time to SETI@Home I had my main rig (K6 2Gb RAM) running XP and using the command line version of the SETI client. This gave me significantly more throughput than running the GUI version on the same HW. I also ran the Linux client on a Duron rig I had. This was setup with no GUI and absolutely minimal services. Despite being seriously underpowered compared to my main rig it kept plugging along.

 

[amdfangirl]

For some weird reason, CPU folding works best in Linux. GPU folding is a no-go but hey there's Windows.

 

[nhasian]

hey i just found Foldix - An SMP and Nvidia GPU3 folding linux distro

 

[audiovoodoo]

Nice find. Interesting that they don't support AMD/ATi GPU client under Linux though. Running the NVIDA one via a cut down WINE install is a neat solution but I'd love to see the performance tests.

I'm still thinking that GPU client plus a couple of instances of the command line CPU client each bound to a different proc ID would give the most performance though.

 

[pdxalex]

i says connecting but does not ever connect.

Don't know if you're experiencing the same issue but I recently set up another rig to fold on Linux/Mint and am running FAH 7.1.52 It wouldn't get past "connecting" either, until I found I had to go to configure > connection and under local client hit start.