The Anti-Fold Server

[RPhArrow]

Still no luck getting PAM going. It's an absolute cast-iron fireproof waterproof to 50 meters stainless B!TCH to get going. I've spent literally a week trying different ideas, and all of them have failed. Either I'm missing something obvious, or there is Great Magic at work here. I may just give up and have it fold and run samba all as root. This is a potentially huge security hole, but the way it is now is a big PITA.

And yes, I'm a little discouraged. This has taken me longer to get going than SSH did. That was only 5 days.

But aren't most people (currently anyway) running this on dedicated folding boxes that are placed on a protected network ? If necessary, we tell folks that foldux MUST reside behind a protected network, or use at your own risk.... as I read this back, I don't like the cop out either... I've got no linux knowledge, but is there a way to use firewall methods to get around the problem ?
Let's find a way to make Mage a happy_mage !!

 

[RPhArrow]

Still no luck getting PAM going. It's an absolute cast-iron fireproof waterproof to 50 meters stainless B!TCH to get going. I've spent literally a week trying different ideas, and all of them have failed. Either I'm missing something obvious, or there is Great Magic at work here. I may just give up and have it fold and run samba all as root. This is a potentially huge security hole, but the way it is now is a big PITA.

And yes, I'm a little discouraged. This has taken me longer to get going than SSH did. That was only 5 days.

But aren't most people (currently anyway) running this on dedicated folding boxes that are placed on a protected network ? If necessary, we tell folks that foldux MUST reside behind a protected network, or use at your own risk.... as I read this back, I don't like the cop out either... I've got no linux knowledge, but is there a way to use firewall methods to get around the problem ?
Let's find a way to make Mage a happy_mage !!

 

[RPhArrow]

2 post, sorry

 

[unhappy_mage]

My thoughts on a huge security hole are 99% of these I'd assume would be behind a NAT device (small Linksys router or what not). Would this not provide enough basic security for all? At least against the internet. I guess a college dorm room would not fall under this and you butt would be wide open (to others in the dorm maybe?)

It *probably* would. However, if this gets popular with other teams, the last thing I want is some id10t to DMZ the whole thing to the internet, and then email me and say "WTF D00d MY COMP IZ BRKOEN WTF BBQ". I'd rather have it relatively idiot-proof than answer completely dumb questions.

RPhArrow, this is why the firewall wouldn't help:

~ # netstat -an
Active Internet connections (servers and established)
Proto Recv-Q Send-Q Local Address           Foreign Address         State
tcp        0      0 0.0.0.0:139             0.0.0.0:*               LISTEN
tcp        0      0 0.0.0.0:22              0.0.0.0:*               LISTEN
udp        0      0 172.16.178.130:137      0.0.0.0:*
udp        0      0 0.0.0.0:137             0.0.0.0:*
udp        0      0 172.16.178.130:138      0.0.0.0:*
udp        0      0 0.0.0.0:138             0.0.0.0:*

This is a list of all the ports available (open) on the machine. Here's what they are: samba and ssh. So, you can't connect to the machine on any other ports anyways; why lock down ports that aren't open anyways? It would be possible to further lock down samba so that it's restricted to the local network, however, and I will definitely do that. Iptables isn't that big.

My current plan is to get it working with FAH running as root/samba running as root/iptables and then later go on to fix pam. *shakes fist* next time, gadget! next time!

Meanwhile, all my (older) roommates are out dr1nking... hopefully they don't bring any back. I don't want to get into that with the school year just starting. But I still can't wait til I'm 21.

 

[unhappy_mage]

http://userpages.umbc.edu/~willm1/test.iso

My current plan is to get it working with FAH running as root/samba running as root/iptables

Consider the first 2/3rds of this done. Iptables can be added later, it won't do all that much anyways. If you're running an existing install, please wait til your current protein finishes, and then upgrade. I'm testing this right now by running EM3 in a VM (ugh) and folding a protein in one VM (ugh squared and cubed). When it finishes another frame I'll let you all know via edit. Or go to bed and not let you know.

Edit: I've gone with door #1; the client finished another frame, and EM3 has updated just fine. So it looks like those of you with real machines are in luck as well.

 

[RPhArrow]

Thanks Mage -- I totally follow your lines of thought... and since you are doing the work here, I agree with joo !! And I am very open to being a guinea pig (no..make that a beta tester) since I stand no chance of topping the latest contest anyway... But I think I will put the latest foldux on CDRW instead of CDR !

chown -R is now my favorite linux command !

 

[budec]

I'm getting a panic. It tries to mount the root files system, then it says "CDROM or HDC?", it hangs for about 1 minute then it kernel panics I tried 2 differant IDE hard drives in IDE 1 with them Primary and had CDROM boot as secondary on IDE 1 and also as Primary on IDE 2, no love

 

[budec]

Starting balanced_irq
RAMDISK: Compressed image found at block 0
EXT2-fs warning: mounting uncheckd fs, running e2fsck is recommeded
VFS: Mount root (ext2 filesystem).
Possiable CDROM on hdc?

 

[unhappy_mage]

Sorry, there was a problem that could *potentially* cause this (it doesn't on my machine... ?) so I fixed and reuploaded it.

Since the wonderful people at filefarmer decided that .iso files weren't good enough for them, here it is instead. Enjoy the fast connection, I know I do.

 

[budec]

Heya mage,

Thanks for the quick response, but two peices of bad news.

1) I'm [litteratly] burning though CDRs like a mo-fo, I don't think I have any left.

2) Same thing. Exact same error message and kernel panic.

Not sure how to grab the full kernel panic, it scrolls up to fast then locks the console/computer.

 

[unhappy_mage]

1) CD-RW's, although much more expensive each, are worth about 40% of their weight in gold. If you don't lose them, they should be invaluable.

2) There's really no good way to capture the kernel panic; most of the devices are shut off as fast as possible to prevent screwing them up (imagine if when Linux crashed it scrambled your hard drive, every time!). If you can give me some of the lines (probably near the bottom) about how it crashes. This may be something like one of these:
VFS: Unable to mount root fs
no init found
kernel panic - not syncing: Attempted to kill init!

or a lot of hex stuff. I don't need all that, just see if there are any interesting strings around. If you can take a picture, that'd do nicely; if not, see what Google has to say about it.

 

[budec]

The only info it prints is a bunch of hex stuff, the top part scrolls by to quickly.

 

[budec]

What linux distro is this based off? I want to check their FAQ to see if they've seen this before.

EDIT: Google turns up nothing on that error expect the fold server page

 

[RPhArrow]

What linux distro is this based off? I want to check their FAQ to see if they've seen this before.

Damn Small Linux
[size=-1]www.damnsmalllinux.org




[/size][size=-1]
[/size]

 

[budec]

thanks!

 

[RPhArrow]

Hey budec -- I was getting some similar text the first time I tried to install on one particular box. After I checked & corrected several cable (wrong ended) and jumper selectors (slave vs master) on the drives, I got it working with hard drive master on IDE1 and CDROM as master on IDE2. My profile says nOOb, but I've been doing this for 20 years and still find that double checking those basics solves SOME (but not all...) problems...

 

[budec]

GOOD CALL!

Tried switch CD-ROM/Hard drive chanels and it wouldn't even make it past the bios load (hung).

I put in a SCSI card and SCSI CD-rom (only other CD-rom I got atm) and it's not panic-ing now.

It comes up now, and linux boots, it does it's file system stuff, installes grub, but can't find the CD-ROM at /mnt/cdrom. It reboots it's self and when it comes back up on hard drive (took CD out), it goes to grub command line. I type 'boot' and says "kernel must be running before install.

So the bios is detecting it, and boots from the [the scsi cd-rom], but when it tries to install things off /mnt/cdrom it can't find it.

I'm just guessing here, but does the default install look for the cdrom at /dev/hdc (?)


So, atleast now I know something funky is going on with the [IDE] CD-ROM drive. Is there a way for it to 'auto-detect' where a SCSI cd-rom is located at?

 

[unhappy_mage]

Correction: it's not based on anything. It's all me, baby. I compiled every binary in the whole thing by hand. I lovingly (or frustratedly, as the case may be) edited every configuration. I whacked every bug.

Okay, not every bug. But you get the idea.

You might try putting the cdrom and the hard drive on the same chain as master/slave and see if that works. The secondary chain could be broken. Disable it and see how it goes. Glad to have the clarification, though; it makes me nervous when I completely screw things up. If that doesn't work, put the drives in another machine and install it there. Then move it over.

You can route VNC traffic though SSH connection (makes it more secure), I can give you info on that. The only problem would be requiring X and also some basic windows manager. If you have X though VNC, you don't have to configure it for the video card.

The build is only 10mb for two reasons. First, I don't have infinite bandwidth to host it. Second, putting together an X machine is a royal pain in the butt. Compiling X takes several hours, and is almost guaranteed not to work the first time through. I could eventually do this, and maybe I will, but there are many, many things higher on the priority list. Like getting this thing bugfree, totally. And up to my standards. That'll be a while, I imagine.

 

[budec]

If that doesn't work, put the drives in another machine and install it there. Then move it over.

You Sir are a genius!

Why didn't I think of that



Thank you much. Just added another P4 3.0 Ghz HyperThread to the [H]orde!

again, thanks!

 

[budec]

btw, the new config for Samba is working good... no need to change premissions

 

[RPhArrow]

Correction: it's not based on anything. It's all me, baby. I compiled every binary in the whole thing by hand. I lovingly (or frustratedly, as the case may be) edited every configuration. I whacked every bug.

Okay, not every bug. But you get the idea.
.....

Sorry Mage --- My apologies. I didn't mean to deny you credit... I misread something earlier in the thread I guess. And I didn't realize you had built the whole thing from scratch.

 

[unhappy_mage]

Not to worry; I'm not mad about it or anything, Just pointing out that you can't get support from the (very nice) people over at the DSL forums.

And budec: glad to hear it's all working now. It was actually somewhat a long shot that that would work. But why worry? it worked!

 

[budec]

Yea.

What I'm going to do, is I have about 17 hard drives (10 gig or under, ten of em are 2.5 gigs); I'm going to install anti-fold on them, about half single proc, other half dual proc. Then we I need to get a system online (got about 5-6 that will be ready soon), I'll just slap a hard drive in and let it go

The question I'm wondering is about the setup config script. Say I do the install on a dual pent 3 with 128 ram, if I put that hard drive into a dual 3.0 hyper threaded boxen with 1 gig of ram will it be "optimized" for that server? What about if hard drive install is for a single proc and I slap it in a quad proc box?

The second thing I noticed, is the int script (/etc/fold init) seems to have an error with it in regards to "big packets". Happens on all my servers, but still installs correctly. Haven't had time to look at it, but was just curious what it was about (it's a shell script error).

Also when does the script build the config file?

 

[unhappy_mage]

Here's how folding is started every time a boot happens. In /sbin, there's a program called "init". This program is called by the kernel when it's done setting up all the hardware, all that jazz. It looks for a file called "/etc/inittab", which has details about what to start when and where. Here's a copy of the latest:

::sysinit:/etc/rc.d/sysinit
::ctrlaltdel:/bin/reboot
::shutdown:/bin/chvt 1
::shutdown:/bin/sh /etc/fold stop
tty1::respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 tty1
tty2::respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 tty2
tty3::respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 tty3
tty4::respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 tty4

This means, roughly, that when the system starts up the script in /etc/rc.d/sysinit should be run, when it gets shut down other stuff happens, and start the thing that says "fold-box login:" on consoles 1 through 4. So, the next place that's important to look is in /etc/rc.d/sysinit. If you look at this file, there're a lot of things starting - cron, ssh, samba, syslogd, and finally "/etc/fold init" and "/etc/fold start". So basically, all the other stuff starts, and then we go to /etc/fold and call 2 functions in it. So take a look at /etc/fold. This is the master script; here's where most of the magic happens. The first thing it does is to figure out how many CPUs are present, and set a path to the FAH executable. Then it does a switch statement (if you've done programming, you've probably seen these) based on the first argument. If it's passed "init", then here's what it does:
- make directories for each cpu
- copy the client to those directories
- Write a line to the "log.cfg" file for stats viewing
- call "config.sh".
This goes through a complicated tree to figure out what kind of packets it's best to ask for from Stanford. It handles things like how many CPUs there are, so it'll use all of them. It knows how to write config files for each of the 3 types: big, normal, and timeless. It reads the user and team number from /etc/foldconfig. Then when that's done, we move on to "/etc/fold start". This is what actually makes the client start. So here's what the start routine does:
- for each cpu, change to a directory (made by /etc/fold init) and start FAH on a new console, starting at 5.
- If FAH started okay, switch to VT 5 and finish.
So, if you've got a 2 processor machine, there'll be FAH progress on VT 5 and 6 (hit alt-f5 and alt-f6); if you've got a 4 processor machine, VTs 5 through 8, and if you have an 8 processor machine, I want it. I mean, VTs 5 through 12.

So there you have it. A fairly detailed description of how this thingy boots. Enjoy, and I'll do my best to answer any questions.

 

[SmokeRngs]

Well, we have a new user of anti-fold. That would be me if you couldn't tell. Everything seems to be working just fine at this time including monitoring in EMIII. So, if you don't have it, you need to go get it.

 

[ICE_9]

Does it make toast? and how does it handle bagels?

 

[unhappy_mage]

If you are using a prescott, toast is definitely not out of the question. Simply leave a slice of bread in your computer for a day or so, and you'll have a nice piece of toast. I recommend you take it out before adding butter. Bagels are a little harder, because of the shape.

 

[Mayhem33]

Help!!!!
I got this anti fold server installed but I have no idea what to do from here.


How check to see if its working
How to set up to see it from EM3 on a windows box

Total nOOb here.....whos willing?

 

[SmokeRngs]

Help!!!!
I got this anti fold server installed but I have no idea what to do from here.


How check to see if its working
How to set up to see it from EM3 on a windows box

Total nOOb here.....whos willing?

Okay, I just got it running today with the help of mage. At what point are you at with the install?

 

[Mayhem33]

Okay, I just got it running today with the help of mage. At what point are you at with the install?

I installed it booted back up logon : root Pass Fold@on
Now its just sitting there looking at me...like are ya gonna do something dumb@ss!

 

[Mayhem33]

I just typed in /etc/getfold and the magic started to happen!
It dowloaded the client....now what?

 

[SmokeRngs]

I installed it booted back up logon : root Pass Fold@on
Now its just sitting there looking at me...like are ya gonna do something dumb@ss!

Next step is to type /etc/getfold

This should contact stanford to download the client.

Check your PM.

 

[Mayhem33]

Well its going, but I have some em3 trouble. It sees the F@H folder on the network and in em3 but it doesnt report any info...such as protien, time, all that stuff is blank yet em3 shows it is connected to the client. Any ideas?

 

[Mayhem33]

Well I got working...had EM3 pointed to the wrong folder on the share, I seem to have downloaded the client twice and mapped to the wrong one. Its working now!
Pilot error = crash & burn!!!

 

[unhappy_mage]

Yeah, it downloads the client once to /fold, and then copies the executable to subdirectories for each processor. So setting em3 to monitor /fold won't work; it has to be /fold/1.

 

[SmokeRngs]

Well I got working...had EM3 pointed to the wrong folder on the share, I seem to have downloaded the client twice and mapped to the wrong one. Its working now!
Pilot error = crash & burn!!!

Actually, it looks like there are two clients there because I made that mistake to begin with also. I then looked in the next directory and found the core and other files there so I had it linked to that directory next and everything has worked since then.

Well, everything worked until I added another boxen and my hub started throwing fits. After an hour of trial and error I finally got it all playing nice together. Too bad I can't have any more machines here. I've run out of spots on the hub, ethernet cables and power outlets. I probably have one more boxen to try and get going. Looks like I'll have to take it to my apartment after setting it up.

 

[Mayhem33]

Actually, it looks like there are two clients there because I made that mistake to begin with also. I then looked in the next directory and found the core and other files there so I had it linked to that directory next and everything has worked since then.

Well, everything worked until I added another boxen and my hub started throwing fits. After an hour of trial and error I finally got it all playing nice together. Too bad I can't have any more machines here. I've run out of spots on the hub, ethernet cables and power outlets. I probably have one more boxen to try and get going. Looks like I'll have to take it to my apartment after setting it up.

Cool, you gotta love a hub that is maxed out!
I got 1 more I could bring up but im out hard drives, I should try the fold server....Im a little hesitant since the common gripe is how difficult it is to set up.

 

[ICE_9]

Cool, you gotta love a hub that is maxed out!
I got 1 more I could bring up but im out hard drives, I should try the fold server....Im a little hesitant since the common gripe is how difficult it is to set up.

Patience is just needed. Its only difficult if you have never used linux or have absolutely no experiance with DOS. The directions are helpful and mage will be extremely helpful with any issues that arise. Just be aware that you will want to watch everything you run with fold server everyday, 365 a year. Its just that cool of a setup!

If you need help with it, I am also willing to assist on the setup. I am definately not the best tech support, but I can show you what I screwed up on.

 

[Mayhem33]

Thanks, I may take you up on that. The box I want to be the server is done with its WU.
If I understand this right I need to set this up first and every thing else will run when plugged into the servers network.

 

[Pocatello]

Okay, I've read all 16 pages of this thread... more than once.

This is not easy for a Linux Noob.

From post #40 (changed the order) and other places in this thread. {[we really need a clean thread, or sticky, with a FAQ and a set of instructions for doofus' like me]}


- WARNING it automatically wipes the primary master drive. no "should I?", it just does it. watch where you put this disk. WARNING

First time install from the CD:
"fold-box login:" enter "root"
and then "Fold@on" when it asks for a password

Next step is to type "/etc/getfold"
This should contact stanford to download the client.


*************
Things get dicey after this. I did the steps below, but was never asked about entering my own F@H user name. I don't know what it is doing, but it seems to start up okay. Earning points for someone else???

- try "/etc/fold init" and "/etc/fold start". Then check "top". FAH running? q to exit.
- try "testnet". does it report all is well?

Any installer woes, whatever, report back. You have your [H]omework!

***************************

Okay, fold init and fold start worked, but again, there was no place for me to enter my user name.

If I reboot, it starts folding again. How do I go to console?
How do I use "q" to get it to quit?

Testnet works for me.

Please help me! I've got one of my new crappers up and running. Thanks.