Folding@home when noone is logged in with Linux

[NathanD]

Can this be done? I'm having no luck finding info on how to do this. ;(

 

[MereMortal]

You can probably add a line to your rc.local file to start the client at boot time.

Something like

cd /PATH_TO_PROGRAM/ ; ./CLIENT >& /dev/null &

where PATH_TO_PROGRAM is the directory where the client is located and CLIENT is the executable name. You can also add in 'nice', if you want to guarantee lower priority. The only problem with this method is that there is no output to track progress, but it will run when no one is logged in.

 

[NathanD]

ok, that's a start. Will it continue to run when someone is logged in?

 

[kellygirlbeads]

yes, the way he described it , the client would continue to run until halted.


one way to stop this is to edit the system wide login script to execute a "killall CLIENT". This is typically a bad idea, but it would work as long as nobody had modified their own login script to avoid the system wide one.


The other option is to make sure the program runs "nice." Nice'ing a process lowers its priority in the scheduling queue, so it does not run if there is another process on the machine (ie: if there is a user who needs to use the processor, the user gets the processor). To do this, "man nice".

The third option would be a series of cron jobs. This is what I personally do. Have one cron job start the client running when you're relatively sure nobody will be on the machine (say, midnight or 2am), and have a second kill it before people start waking up (say 6 or 7 am). You'll get 6 or 7 solid hours every night.