F@H, Linux, and GameServers:

The Folding@home cores run at the highest "nice" level, so they tread very lightly on the system, but they do still run and sometimes use a lot of memory. Usually the effects aren't noticeable, but we've had plenty of reports of people running games who say they can tell the difference. We tell them they are absolutely right to disable FAH if the performance effects are objectionable.

People playing games are extraordinarily sensitive to changes in performance. Usually the problems seem to be related, as far as we can tell, to the minimum scheduling quantum on systems which handle a very high rate of interrupts. The effect isn't usually very large, but it might be enough to matter.

Your own experience with it is really the only true indication of whether the client should be run on those systems. -- by rph_iv

The ideal solution would be to find a configuration of FAH which reduces the impact on the system sufficiently that nobody notices it. i.e.- not zero, but very, very close to it.

It's certainly not necessary to REMOVE FAH from the system to test the responsiveness - - simply stop it from running for a while. Then, for a minimum impact system, remove any command-line flags. Run it once with the -config flag and (A) be sure you say NO to WUs>5 MB and then in the Advanced section, specify deadlineless WUs. The current WU will finish, so there may be some impact for the next day or so if that's acceptable. If not, you'll need to discard the current WU.

Hopefully, that will reduce the impact sufficiently that it can continue to run. -- by Bruce

-=MB=- FCF MOD 00:35, 10 Jun 2005 (PDT)