[tbanucci]

Hi,

I want to start "folding", but don't want it up all the time when I am using the computer because of resources being taken from my other programs....

How can I activate Folding@Home to work as an actual screen saver? Just to crunch while I am away from the desk.....

Thanks!

PS- I'm using the GUI version

[Michael A. Peters]

I don't think you can.
What I would suggest is that you set up the cli version.

I have instructions here:
http://macaddict4life.dhs.org/clinstall.php

The only thing you want to do is choose Team 16 instead of 18
That way you'll fold for MacNN

-=-
If you want to control when you fold, look at Method Two- Use the Crontab.
I'm in the exact same situation as you are in.

I turn folding off in my crontab every tuesday night because on tuesday nights I use the iMac to digitally record live seminars (real time recording) and I don't want any chance of skipping in the audio file because the hard drive couldn't keep up or the analog->digital conversion didn't get processed fast enough.

So what I do is on Tuesdays before I take the iMac in for the recording, I edit my crontab and comment out the entry that starts folding.
You do that by putting a # in front of it.

-=-
As far as normal use is concerned, don't worry about it.
It runs with a nice 19 which means it will give up the cpu as soon as any other process wants cpu.
In other words, it _only_ uses what isn't be used by your regular apps.

I have heard that seti makes classic slower but I'm guessing the issue is that people aren't nicing it.
folding automagically runs at nice 19.

I don't use classic, I wouldn't know.
I have an OS 9 mac for my OS 9 needs (which are few).

-=-
If you want, I'll code a script to kill it and not start it if /tmp/stop exists.

Then you could stop the cli version at will by touching /tmp/stop and restart it by
rm /tmp/stop

I think I'll do that

//just remember that when you reboot, everything in /tmp is gone

[tbanucci]

Thanks Michael,

That's more than enough info. Hopefully they'll implement this somewhere into the GUI version somewhere down the line (maybe the final release?).

I just think that the GUI version would run as a cool screen saver as well as add the convenience of positively knowing that the Folding processes would not interfere with anything you are doing on the machine (like you said with your recorded programs).

Thanks!
Ted

[Scotttheking]

Installer page for GUI http://team.macnn.com/fold/installx.phtml
Installer page for CLI http://team.macnn.com/fold/installc.phtml

I'm not sure of any way to run it as a screensaver.
I'll look into it.

[Michael A. Peters]

Just fyi- I've updated (and tested) the shell script that I use to start folding from the crontab.

It's updated on the page I referenced.
Now you just open a terminal and type-

touch /tmp/stopfold

and within one minute it will stop (assuming the crontab is set to go every minute)

rm /tmp/stopfold

and she fires back up again.

-=-
Funny story-
Yes, I tested this on OS X.
But first I tested it on my linux box.

Initially I had kill line as such-

for a in `ps -waux |grep "$client" |grep -v grep |awk '{print $2}'`; do
kill -9 $a
done;

I touched the file.
gui froze, dead froze, top showed one minute ahead of my panel clock.
I couldn't do jack. No kbd, no mouse.

ssh'd in, that worked (as expected- this is linux)
Went to kill X11
X wasn't running!

rebooted.
In the console (no X running) I tested again.

minute came up- and it logged me out (but nothing froze)

$looked at my mail.
cron complained that it didn't have permission to kill a crapload of files.

grep "$client" wasn't such a good idea-
$client contained dots ( . ) that weren't escaped, and that affected grep.

Damn I'm glad the script wasn't running as root!
fsck takes forever on a dirty system halt

Anyway, I fixed it.
It greps for FAH2Console (and then Core_65\.exe) killing folding perfectly.
Killing folding AND ONLY folding

[Michael A. Peters]

Here's an idea!

Have a script that check for the screensaver process.
If the screensaver is running, it starts up folding@home.
If the screensaver is NOT running, it kills folding if its running.

That will start folding within one minute of the Apple screensaver, and kill it within one minute of Apple's screensaver dying.

I can code this if you want.

I don't like it, though, because Apple's screen saver is a RESOURCE HOG and will thus cause folding to take much longer.
Add that to the fact that Macs are now only getting the hairpins that get expire in 36 hours- and it *may* not be worth it.

But if you want, I can write the cron script that does that.