
		Tuesday November 22, 2016 21:41:08 UTC

Folding@Home - VMWare Player 3.0 and Folding Bigadv Support

Introduction

The web page is dedicated to building a Linux-based virtual machine for folding in Windows via VMware Player and possibly other VMware products.

Make sure your system, CPU, and memory are completely stable and all temps under load are normal before trying out these bigadv units. Also make sure your operating system has enough available resources including memory. This can be checked in Windows task manager.

Features

Version 1.5.0 has been updated to use client v6.34 and core A5 which reenables bigadv support under Linux and also includes the latest version of tear's Langouste. This version also supports running SMP2 and one or more instances of the uni-processor client. This image includes 4.0.4 Virtualbox additions. Initially testing has shown frame times at 30:28 running project 6091 via a 920 @ 3.8 GHz and using -smp 8. As a comparison, the frame times in native Linux using the same configuration are at 29:53.

Image

VMware Linux Disk Image - v1.6.1

Mirror 1 (Thanks goes to Jmtyra @ Overclockers.com for providing a mirror of the image files)

VMWare-FAH-1.6.1.7z (39.1MB)

Local

VMWare-FAH-1.6.1.7z (39.1MB)

VMWare 3.0 Player Software

VMWare Player 3.0

Note: The latest 3.0.1 or 3.0.2 version supports a maximum of 4-cores. Use 3.0 instead for 8-core support.

ChangeLog

VMware Linux FAH Image ChangeLog

Installation

1) Enabled VT in BIOS and install VMWare Player 3.0 with the default options. Version 3.0.1 is limited to 4-cores.
Make sure to use version 3.0 for 8-core support.

2) Download and uncompress the image. Put the file anywhere you like as long as there is at least 8GB free storage.

3) Startup VMWare Player.

4) Click Open a Virtual Machine on the right-side of the VMware window. Here is a screenshot:

5) Go to the location where you put the image and double click on the Linux64_FAH.vmx file. In you decide to edit
the vmx file, make sure to leave the number of CPUs at 8 otherwise you will not be able to get bigadv work. Double
click on the name "Linux64_FAH" to start the virtual machine.

6) The following screenshot shows where to grab the web address from the virtual machine console highlighted in white.

Enter that web address to setup the client. The following screenshot shows a base set of options to select to get up
and running with bigadv. Enter your Username and team. Enter your passkey if you plan to run bigadv. Set either 7 or
8 cores depending on your preference. The number of penguins on the top of the window indicates how many CPU
processors the virtual machine has detected.

Get a passkey here

Setup Image 07

Click the Help button to review what the other options do. The rest of the options are optional. Click Submit and the
system will reboot automatically if you have the Reboot on Submit option checked. After reboot, the folding client will
be up and running and will begin to download a new work unit.

7) To setup folding progress monitoring via HFM.net, follow the instructions provided by the virtual machine. The
instructions are highlighted in blue. Here is a screenshot as an example based on those instructions:

8) If you plan to start the client via the console and plan not to use the web configuration, you can disable the web 
service with this command:

web disable

Bonus point requirements

1) At least 10 Core A2 work units must be completed.
2) At least 80% of Core A2 work units must be completed in time.
3) A passkey must be used.

Notes

* You can open up multiple consoles by hitting ALT+F2 through F6 (up to 6) and logging in with the same login. 

* The virtual hard disk is dynamic and grows as more storage is used. The file system size is 8GB. 

* To view the startup configuration information again, run the command info

Shutting down or rebooting

To shutdown the virtual machine, run this command:

shutdown -h now

To reboot the virtual machine, run this command:

reboot

GNU License

The Linux image software is covered under the GNU General Public License Version 2