Building A Diskless Folding @ Home Farm

Project: Folding @ Home
Date Written: November 25, 2002
Written By: Jason Rabel

Configuration Files (cont):

/opt/ltsp/i386/etc/rc.d/startfah

The startfah file you will need to create, it is what each client will run when it boots up. If you will recall this is the same file name we specified in the /opt/ltsp/i386/etc/lts.conf file. The startfah file starts F@H automatically, plain and simple. Note that I added in the nohup command, for some reason it would kill off my F@H client when it switched levels, this was a quick and simple fix that solved that problem. However since nohup and nice aren't part of the standard LTSP files, you will need to copy them from the Farm Server's regular file system and put them the same locations on the /opt/ltsp/i386 file system. They are usually located at:

• /usr/bin/nohup

• /bin/nice

Creating The Extra Directories

Okay, everything we just did was the hard part, now comes the easy part making a few directories and setting up F@H. 

First, you will need to make the /fah directory in the /opt/ltsp/i386 file system, you simply run the following command:

This is where the folding directory will be mounted, it will look like just /fah on the client side. You don't actually put any files in that directory.

Now you need to create now is all the directories that WILL contain the F@H program & config files.

Next you need to go into the ws001 directory, and download the Linux F@H client from the Stanford website. After downloading you run the configuration program and set it up how you want with your username & team and all that. Usually it will start to fold, so break out of the program so you can continue to configure the machine.

You will need to copy the F@H file itself FAH3Console-Linux.exe and the client.cfg file to the ws002 directory. Do NOT copy any of the other files or the work directory, those are unique to each machine. Don't worry, they will be auto-generated the first time the client runs.

Start Up The Services:

You can use the chkconfig program to set the run levels of each of your services, but for now we will just start them manually. Cross your fingers... You need to issue the following commands to startup portmap, bind, tftp, dhcp, nfs:

If all goes well they should startup just fine, if they give an error you will need to fix whatever is wrong. If you need some help you can post a question in the distributed computing section in The EXTREME Overclocking Forum.