Install & Run Folding@Home SMP Client on Linux Mint 9 or Ubuntu 9.10 x64

I recently installed Linux Mint 9 x64 and have been tinkering with it. I’ve also gotten into Folding@Home and am part of a team at W7Forums. However, installing the 64-bit SMP2 client for my triple-core turned out to be a slightly less out-of-the-box experience than it was on Windows. Some dependencies that have been upgraded for Ubuntu 9.10, or Mint 9, don’t work quite the same. Or something.

I’m not a programmer, or an engineer; I like to keep stuff like this simple. So I’m posting these instructions here as to how to install and successfully run the SMP 64-bit client on Mint 9 or Ubuntu 9.10. These instructions work at the time of writing, are intended only for FAH SMP 64-bit client version 6.29, and on Mint 9 or Ubuntu 9.10.

I gathered these instructions and scripts from various sources. I don’t know what makes them work, but they did work for me. If you hose your system, don’t come crying to me.

1. Open Terminal, and enter sudo apt-get install ia32-libs

2. Enter mkdir -p ~/folding

3. Enter cd ~/folding

4. Enter curl -O http://www.stanford.edu/group/pandegroup/folding/release/FAH6.29-Linux.tgz (the -O after curl is a dash and a capital o, and not a zero) – if you do not have curl installed, you can use wget http://www.stanford.edu/group/pandegroup/folding/release/FAH6.29-Linux.tgz instead

5. Enter tar xzf FAH6.02-Linux.tgz

6. Enter chmod +x fah6

7. Enter ./fah6 -configonly -smp and configure the client

8. Once back in Terminal, enter “LD_LIBRARY_PATH=~/lib64-fah ./fah6 -smp -verbosity 9 $* &” > fah

9. Enter chmod +x fah

10. Check that wget, bash, binutils, bc and awk are installed; if not, or if you don't know how to find out, install with sudo apt-get

11. Use sudo -k to make sure your elevated privileges are dropped; you have to be logged in as the very user you want to always launch the FAH client on, and without elevated privileges, or the following will not work right

12. Enter cd ~

13. Enter wget http://darkswarm.org/whosyerdaddy-0.6.sh (or, if server/file is unavailable, try wget http://mjs.cc/fah/whosyerdaddy-0.6.sh)

14. Enter chmod +x whosyerdaddy-0.6.sh

15. Enter cp -a /lib ~/lib64-fah (this gave me a few permission errors, but I just ignored them)

16. Enter cd ~/lib64-fah

17. Enter ~/whosyerdaddy-0.6.sh

18. You should be done.

At this point you should be able to launch the client by executing the fah script we created into the ~/folding directory:
~/folding/fah

Good luck!

These instructions were put together by combining the original guide, as to how to install a Linux SMP client, with F@H forum member Tear’s script and great instructions. The whosyerdaddy-0.6.sh script is Tear’s, and I’m only hosting a copy of it on my server in case his site goes down and someone really needs to get their hands on it in order to get these instructions to work.

Tagged as: fah, folding, folding@home, linux mint 9, mint, smp, Tech, ubuntu 9.10, x64