Configuration of SMP Client
The next few steps will ask you to input some information. Not all of it is required and generally you should be able to leave everything at its default and you will be able to run the program. I will still go through the steps and explain what each one does for your reference.
- Something to note: the values that are in brackets in the application are the default value if you skip through them.
The User Name simply asks for the name that you would like the data to be returned under. Under most circumstances, most will leave this blank, but you can input whatever you would like. This is especially helpful if you fold as part of a team, which is next. The Team Number is a number assigned to a group whose points are pooled together and tallied up, which determines the rank of each team. As said earlier, many people frequent forums that form teams and compete with each other, some of which even give away prizes for the top folders for the team. We are going to leave this at the default value of 0 at the moment. The Passkey item is a string of letters and numbers that must be obtained from here: http://fah-web.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/getpasskey.py. This is mostly used in order to keep others from posting points under your name. SMP users do gain a boost in points if they submit 10 work units while having a passkey installed, which helps in folding competitions. We are going to leave this blank however as it is not necessary to use a passkey in order to run this application.
The Ask before fetching/sending work is used if someone does not have an internet connection at all times. If a valid connection is not made, the work is stored and the next work unit begins processing. Once a connection to the Folding@Home servers has been made, then the program will ask if it can use the internet and upload the results. For now we will set this as no. Use proxy depends on if you connect to the internet through a proxy or not. If you do use a proxy connection, type yes and then enter your information. For now, we will leave this as no.
The Acceptable size of work assignment setting requires a bit of foresight on the users part. The larger or smaller a work unit is is generally what determines how quickly a work unit can be completed. This setting is usually dictated based on whether or not you are on a quick internet connection. The file sizes are still relatively small in size so it should not take too long to download or upload results. For now we will leave this value at normal. From here we have an option: we can either go into the advanced options and fine-tune the application or we can just continue and allow the program to run itself. For the purposes of this article we are going to type yes to continue on to the advanced options section.
[…] Quote: For years distributed processing projects have been running in order to speed up the research process. Distributed processing clients are programs that are run across multiple machines worldwide. This allows for the researchers to gain access to a wealth of information faster than if they were to use a supercomputer. LINK: TechwareLabs Editorial: Folding@Home Configuration Guide […]
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[…] Quote: For years distributed processing projects have been running in order to speed up the research process. Distributed processing clients are programs that are run across multiple machines worldwide. This allows for the researchers to gain access to a wealth of information faster than if they were to use a supercomputer. LINK: TechwareLabs Editorial: Folding@Home Configuration Guide […]