#11359
Folding@Home is a distributed computing project run by Stanford University in America and they are turning their attention to research on Covid-19.

I have been Folding for many years and we once had a Team called Swannys Irregulars (the missing possessive apostrophe is, alas, deliberate as Stanford's system doesn't accept apostrophes in Team names!) made up of Sale supporters who joined the project. Teams are unnecessary but do add a little bit of competition. The Team still exists, but with only me currently active! :sad:

In simple terms, you join the project, download a piece of software which, when installed, calls for a "Work Unit" to be downloaded. It then processes that unit (don't ask me how, it's well above my pay grade), returns it and downloads another unit ... and so on until you quit. All this happens in the background although you can "see" your unit's progress through the front end application.

It costs you nothing except for the small amount of electricity involved in keeping your machine running 24/7 and it doesn't affect the processing power of your device as the software is written to cease or reduce processing whenever you need it for something else.

The Stanford University site which goes into detail and from where you can download your application is here ...

https://foldingathome.org

... and Folding's statement on Covid-19 ...

https://foldingathome.org/2020/03/10/covid19-update/.

The software can be run on many different computer systems and gaming machines.

Message me if you want further information.

And if you want to join Swannys Irregulars, enter the Team number 37761 when setting up your system. Please consider Folding@Home, it is an excellent project which I joined originally when Her Ladyship was diagnosed with MS.
#11397
Don’t forget to re/join Swanny’s Irregulars, team 37761.

I seem to be the only Sale Unoffy member of SI 37761 still Folding, somewhat depressing even before Covid-19 as it is such an excellent project.

I don’t begin to understand the science, but at little cost to me and absolutely no effort after the initial installation I am helping medical research.

There is an incredibly helpful on-line forum if you ever get into trouble and, amazingly, the Senior Project Director actually answered one of my queries when I stalled - it turned out they had released a bad batch of Work Units and it wasn’t anything to do with me!

What’s not to like?
#11399
I'm back on, I think. Everything loaded okay as far as KI can tell. However, I seem to recall more of a definite indication that things were running than there appears to be now. When I go to Statistics I get "Bad Gateway". I shall look through the help files and the forum to double check that in spite of that it is actually folding , or, if not, how to sort it.

Ignore most of that (I think). I've just returned to the and the green wheel is now turning.
iBozz liked this
#11457
The laptop has done one quick work unit and is on another, or it will be when I plug the mains in again. I also loaded onto the desktop, on which it took ages to get going. However, an unplanned switch-off stopped it in its tracks and nothing seemed to happen thereafter. I've tried a reinstall, but have had no luck so far. I shall have a look later to try to find the problem.
#11458
If you are Folding (and why wouldn't you, especially at this time when Covid-19 research is so vital) be advised that such has been the amazing uptake of new Folders that there is currently a temporary shortage of Work Units so you may find that you aren't actively Folding from time to time.

The researchers at Stanford University are working especially hard to produce new units in order to benefit from these public spirited new Folders.

Don't panic, new units will be released in increasing numbers over the next few days. If you have installed Folding you need do nothing, your application will poll regularly for available Units and will automatically download one when they become available.

Keep Folding!
#11459
DaveAitch wrote:
Tue Mar 17, 2020 5:42 pm
The laptop has done one quick work unit and is on another, or it will be when I plug the mains in again. I also loaded onto the desktop, on which it took ages to get going. However, an unplanned switch-off stopped it in its tracks and nothing seemed to happen thereafter. I've tried a reinstall, but have had no luck so far. I shall have a look later to try to find the problem.

If you can't get going again (having read my post above about Unit shortages) then the Help Forum is an excellent resource and the Folding Admins are pretty quick in giving advice when you post.

https://foldingforum.org

Dave: This may help, a query raised by a Windows Folder and extended to Macs by me, as it discusses the error messages received when there is a current shortage of Units.

https://foldingforum.org/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=32627
#11495
Roy, thanks for the help and the link.
It's working fine on the laptop, but not so good (I was going to use 'strikethrough' here and alter it to 'not at all'- but strikethrough doesn't seem to be implemented on this forum) on the desktop. After a couple of days of reloading and fiddling there was still nothing happening. I went back to it early this afternoon and re-uninstalled and re-reinstalled. Bingo, it came up working.....or so it seemed. It spent two hours trying to find a WU or connect host server, and a further hour or so when it seems to have done nothing at all. One of the pages on the website says "Maximize Your Effort". These days, I only have a certain amount of effort that I can maximize. I wonder how many folders the system has lost though never getting started. Silicon valley is only about 15 miles from Stanford: surely there is someone there who could get things up and running with some degree of ease and efficiency. Ah well, I shall keep trying.
Dave.
#11499
DaveAitch wrote:
Thu Mar 19, 2020 5:38 pm
Roy, thanks for the help and the link.
It's working fine on the laptop, but not so good (I was going to use 'strikethrough' here and alter it to 'not at all'- but strikethrough doesn't seem to be implemented on this forum) on the desktop. After a couple of days of reloading and fiddling there was still nothing happening. I went back to it early this afternoon and re-uninstalled and re-reinstalled. Bingo, it came up working.....or so it seemed. It spent two hours trying to find a WU or connect host server, and a further hour or so when it seems to have done nothing at all. One of the pages on the website says "Maximize Your Effort". These days, I only have a certain amount of effort that I can maximize. I wonder how many folders the system has lost though never getting started. Silicon valley is only about 15 miles from Stanford: surely there is someone there who could get things up and running with some degree of ease and efficiency. Ah well, I shall keep trying.
Dave.

OK, availability of WUs (Work Units) is a tad sporadic at the moment but I've done a fair number today and downtime is reducing dramatically. They try to assign individual WUs to those configurations best suited for that specific OS and WU.

I'm Folding on a 2017 iMac under macOS Catalina v10.15.3 (19D76) with Quad Core Intel i5, 3.8GHz and 64GB RAM.

I am using a Front End called FAH Control and, no doubt you have the Windows equivalent. I attach four snapshots from FAH Control which might, or of course might not, help you to see the difference (on a Mac, at least) between working and waiting.

Actively Folding (look for a Project number in the style of : 14238 (1,2157,15) - 14238 being on one the Covid-19 Projects:

Image

Actively Folding log:

Image

Stalled Folding (note Project number of 0 (0,0,0,0)

Image

Stalled Folding log (look at the bottom bit)

Image
#11502
Window's screens are pretty much the same as those you have posted.. As I say, there have be been no great problem on the latop. The two finished WUs have each been followed pretty quickly by a new one. The desktop has been looking for a WU to suit its configuration. It has had 12 attempts and the next attempt is in 1hr 47 minutes. I'll leave in on overnight. Who knows, I might have cured a major illness by morning.
I should have added, it is online, and has been since the last re-install, so I'm sure it's on the verge of springing into life.
iBozz liked this
#11544
Finally, the desktop kicked into action late this afternoon, and it is going reasonably strong. I see the person at the top of the leader board has something like 24 computers on the go, and the associated team has a page full of people folding. Still, as they say, every little helps: team Swanny is doing something. By the way, Roy, the homepage is still given as sportsnetwork.
Windows has a web control which gives the main information in a more graphic form. From that it's easy to see that the CPU is doing all the work. The Nvidia GPU is doing nothing. I shall have to read further to see if there is any way of getting it, the GPU, folding. (Just had a further look at the log and the GPU has been trying to connect, but without success. I suppose it's just a case of waiting and hoping.)

No one else tempted?
iBozz liked this
#11546
DaveAitch wrote:
Fri Mar 20, 2020 7:49 pm
By the way, Roy, the homepage is still given as sportsnetwork.


sportsnetwork! So it is. I cannot immediately see how to change that, I'll have a look around anon.
DaveAitch wrote:
Fri Mar 20, 2020 7:49 pm

No one else tempted?
There are one or two new Folders but not as many as I'd hoped. Many Folded last time I asked for volunteers, many many moons since, but not this time.

Swannys Irregulars statistics.
#11570
I suppose we could carry on this conversation on the FAH forum. Surely, one of the moderators on here will be moaning soon - especially that iBozz!

The state of play as it stands:
Laptop going well, but is fairly slow. Significantly more points were earned from the Radeon GPU than from the Intel CPU. I don't really understand why.
Desktop: three times now it has failed to key in to anything, so I powered down. Each time I started up, the CPU found something to work on, almost immediately. I'm still waiting for the Nvidia GPU to do anything. I've looked at the forum help files, and have searched for new drivers (it was up to date) and have tried rolling back. I've reset the firewall and virus shields, but it doesn't seem to have made any difference. Obviously the GPU won't do as much processing as the CPU, but if the machine is on and running it, the GPU, might as well be doing something. I've got the computer (and hi-fi) set up in a little room under the stairs. It's amazing how much heat a processor running to capacity generates. It's the warmest room in the house.
Points per Day: these seem to go up or down with some degree of randomness. I've been as low as 650 and as high as 30,000 so far.
Passkey: from the on site blurb, this seemed the sensible thing to do. However, the points (and other things) accredited to me in the stats haven't changed, although they have been credited to 37761. At least that is what I'm being told. Looking at the stats there have been three CPUs in active recently: it may be that shows 'my' points have been counted.

Anyone in self-isolation, who needs to something to do, start folding. You will spend many a happy hour trying to get to grips with the system.
#11573
I would hope that by having this on here others would join in as it is an excellent research project, especially with the work they are doing with Covid-19. It hasn't attracted as many new Folders as I had hoped, but any and all who have joined or rejoined are thanked.

I'm not too technical on how it works but, whenever I have had a problem, I've posted in the relevant section of the Forum and someone has always come up with the solution. If you post in the wrong part of the forum the Mods will tell you and move it for you.

I'm idle at the moment, with the next poll for a new unit in 40 minutes, but have processed three work units since midnight (two Covid and one other project) with, according to the log, very little downtime.

The points are, I believe, to reflect the complexity of each work unit. I pay little heed to them save as a bit of fun.
#11576
On your final point, Roy, I did quote our old school motto on the FAH forum the other day "prodesse quam conspici", which, as you guess/know means "accomplish rather than be conspicuous". Of course, points don't matter except to chairman Humph.

I should have added, I shall get back to the FAH forum to go through what has already been written on Nvidia. If I can't find the solution I'll start a 'help me' thread.
iBozz liked this
#11655
Update from F@H about WU shortages. This doesn't mean that you shouldn't be Folding (if you aren't then why on earth not?) but seeing a 20 fold increase in Donors is heartwarming and just proves that there are altruistic people out there:
Here's a summary of current Folding@Home situation :
We know about the work unit shortage
It's happening because of an approximately 20x increase in demand
We are working on it and hope to have a solution very soon.
Keep your machines running, they will eventually fold on their own.
Every time we double our server resources, the number of Donors trying to help goes up by a factor of 4, outstripping whatever we do.
#11669
The GPU on my desktop is not compatible with FAH (Folding @ Home) work units (WUs), it would seem. Actually, I went back to my old Nvidia as my grandson had my newer card when his malfunctioned.
Getting a WU is certainly taking a good while most times. The only part of two working CPUs and one GPU that gets something to do straight away is the (laptop) GPU. I don't really quite understand why, but some chip architecture is more suited to certain types of calculation. The laptop GPU is a Radeon R5. While I believe it uses shared memory it is never-the-less quite slow in terms of processing WUs. I think it's going to run out of time on the current WU.

All this activity, iBozz, prompts me to wonder how your cooking is going these days. Remember the golden times of the old forum when there was a thread dedicated to it?

Addendum: I should have said that I found the page foe altering team information. Obviously, it needs you to do it, unless I can guess your password. I can't remember offhand exactly where the page is, but I'm sure I can find it again if you need me to.
#11673
DaveAitch wrote:
Tue Mar 24, 2020 2:17 pm
I don't really quite understand why, but some chip architecture is more suited to certain types of calculation.

They learn the capabilities of your machine as time goes on and issue WUs accordingly.
DaveAitch wrote:
Tue Mar 24, 2020 2:17 pm
All this activity, iBozz, prompts me to wonder how your cooking is going these days. Remember the golden times of the old forum when there was a thread dedicated to it?

Don't ask, I really do hate cooking and am living off cold foods at the moment.
DaveAitch wrote:
Tue Mar 24, 2020 2:17 pm
Addendum: I should have said that I found the page foe altering team information. Obviously, it needs you to do it, unless I can guess your password. I can't remember offhand exactly where the page is, but I'm sure I can find it again if you need me to.

Yes, please, I can't find it.
#11685
In time honoured tradition the system for changing team information is nicely hidden. I think it's just a case of being lucky and wording the search in a way that finds it. Oddly, searching "how to change....." doesn't seem to find it, but " starting new team....." does - https://apps.foldingathome.org/team The URL should bring up the correct page: put the team number in the relevant box and information previously entered comes up.
#11725
Work Units aplenty at the moment, they've been whizzing through non-stop all day! :)

I tried to change the URL and thought I had done so, but the change didn't take effect - unless there's a time-lag, I'll have a look again tomorrow.
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