FoldingAtWork

From FaHWiki

Folding At Work (F@W) can be downloaded from here.

F@W is small tool designed to make installation of Folding@home in an office environment easy.
It's main target is system administrators, but it can be useful even for a single computer to easily setup Folding@home to run only at desired time.

Features:

• Configuration through two text files.
• Installation as a service of as many Folding@home clients as you need.
• Folding@home can be scheduled to run when you want (nights and weekends if you want)
• Once the first computer is configured, installing on another one just means copying files and running two commands.

Note: If you find F@W useful, and use it to install Folding@home clients on your office computers, you can put one or a few of them crunching for my team Jmol #44383, that will show that F@W is appreciated ;)

Example on how to configure Folding At Work

Let's take a simple example on how to configure F@W. Let's suppose you are the administrator of a lot of computers at your office, and you want to run Folding@home on them. You have a few constraints:

• You want to run one instance on single processor computers.
• You want to run two instances (one advmethods, one normal) on duallies.
• You want to run four instances (one advmethods, three normal) on quad.
• You want to run Folding@home only during offwork hours (not from 8 am to 6 pm on Monday to Thursday, not from 8 am to 4 pm on Friday).
• You also have a few computers on which you can run Folding@home 24/7.

With F@W, you can configure this easily.

Create the file and directory structure

Let's suppose you want to install everything in C:\Fah :

• Create the directories C:\Fah, C:\Fah\Fah1, C:\Fah\Fah2, C:\Fah\Fah3, C:\Fah\Fah4, C:\Fah\Faw.
• Download Folding@home "no nonsense" text-only console, rename it to FAH.exe and copy it into C:\Fah\Fah1, C:\Fah\Fah2, C:\Fah\Fah3 and C:\Fah\Fah4.
• CD to C:\Fah\Fah1 and configure the Folding@home client with FAH -local -configonly.
• CD to C:\Fah\Fah2 and configure the Folding@home client with FAH -local -configonly (don't forget to change the MachineID).
• CD to C:\Fah\Fah3 and configure the Folding@home client with FAH -local -configonly (don't forget to change the MachineID).
• CD to C:\Fah\Fah4 and configure the Folding@home client with FAH -local -configonly (don't forget to change the MachineID).
• Download Folding At Work, and unzip it in C:\Fah\Faw.
• If srvany.exe is not in the C:\Fah\Faw directory, then download it (for example, from here, here, ..., or google for srvany.exe download) in this directory.

Setup the different configurations

Since you want to run Folding@home on single processors computers, on duallies and on dedicated single processors computers, you need to setup three configurations for F@W. The two configurations can be defined in a single file named Faw_install.ini. This file will be used to install Folding@Home as a service on each of your computers.

Note: if you prefer, you can install yourself Folding@home as a service, but it's probably more work to do it manually than to use F@W

The configuration is done through the Faw_install.ini file:

[Configurations]
1=Folding1
1d=Folding1d
2=Folding1,Folding2
4=Folding1,Folding2,Folding3,Folding4

[General]
ExecutableName=FAH.exe
UseForceAsm=y
UseAdvMethods=n
Description=Folding@home client
Verbosity=

[Folding1]
Directory=C:\Fah\Fah1
UseAdvMethods=y
Display=Folding@home client 1

[Folding1d]
Directory=C:\Fah\Fah1
UseAdvMethods=y
Display=Folding@home client 1 dedicated

[Folding2]
Directory=C:\Fah\Fah2
Display=Folding@home client 2

[Folding3]
Directory=C:\Fah\Fah3
Display=Folding@home client 3

[Folding4]
Directory=C:\Fah\Fah4
Display=Folding@home client 4

The [Configurations] section lets you define the different configurations you have among your computers: 1 for computers with one client, 1d for dedicated computers with one client, 2 for computers with two clients and 4 for computers with four clients.

The [General] section contains settings that will be used for each client unless stated otherwise in the client configuration. In the above example, you can see that:

• The filename for the Folding@home client is FAH.exe
• The -forceasm flag will be used
• The -advmethods flag won't be used
• The description of the client in the Services window will be "Folding@home client"
• The default verbosity will be used

The other sections contain settings about each client. In the above example, you can see that:

• The client Folding1 (and also Folding1d) is in C:\Fah\Fah1 and will use the -advmethods flag.
• The client Folding2 is in C:\Fah\Fah2
• The client Folding3 is in C:\Fah\Fah3
• The client Folding4 is in C:\Fah\Fah4
• The name displayed in the Services window will be "Folding@home client n"

Configuration of the conditions to run the clients

The second step is configuring when you want the clients to be run.

The configuration is done through the Faw.ini file (this file will need to be copied in your Windows directory):

[Folding1]
Start=1234:1800;5:1600
Stop=12345:0800
ForceStart=n
ForceStop=n

[Folding1d]
ForceStart=y
ForceStop=n

[Folding2]
Start=1234:1800;5:1600
Stop=12345:0800
ForceStart=n
ForceStop=n

[Folding3]
Start=1234:1800;5:1600
Stop=12345:0800
ForceStart=n
ForceStop=n

[Folding4]
Start=1234:1800;5:1600
Stop=12345:0800
ForceStart=n
ForceStop=n

Each section contains the settings about when each client will be run. In the above example:

• clients Folding1, Folding2, Folding3 and Folding4 will be started at 6 pm (1800) from Monday (day 1) to Thursday (day 4), and at 4 pm (1600) on Friday (day 5);
• clients Folding1, Folding2, Folding3 and Folding4 will be stopped at 8 am (0800) from Monday (day 1) to Friday (day 5).
• if client Folding1, Folding2, Folding3 and Folding4 is started/stopped manually, F@W won't stop/start it (you can change this by modifying the ForceStart and ForceStop parameters)
• client Folding1d will run 24/7, and F@W will restart it automatically if stopped manually.

Note: Sunday is day 0, Monday day 1, ..., Saturday day 6

Deploying Folding At Work on many computers

The setup is done, now you only need to deploy F@W. That's quite easy:

• Copy the complete C:\Fah directory to the computer you are installing.
• Move the Faw.ini from the C:\Fah\Faw directory to your Windows directory ( C:\Windows, C:\WINNT, ...).
• CD to the C:\Fah\Faw directory and run the command:
  • Faw -install_fah 1 for a single processor,
  • Faw -install_fah 2 for a duallie,
  • Faw -install_fah 4 for a quad,
  • Faw -install_fah 1d for a dedicated computer with one client.

All the Folding@home clients are now configured as service.

• Run the command Faw -install to install and start F@W.

That's it :)