This distribution is fairly lenient with regard to what hardware is required.

• Fairly recent processor (Pentium-II should be okay)
• 32 MB of ram (more required if folding)
• An IDE hard drive you don't mind wiping (2gb is plenty)
• CD-ROM
• A motherboard which supports booting from CD-ROM
• Two, count 'em two network cards.

The single file you must download to run Fold-server is an ISO file. It is an image of a CD, which must be burned to CD before use. If you're running Fold-server in a virtual machine, you don't need to burn it, but I'm gonna guess you know what you're doing with respect to that.

Pop the brand new CD into the machine you're going to use as a server. It should boot okay; if not take it back to the machine you burned it on and see what's on it. It should have several files on it, not just one. Other than that, make sure it boots other CDs okay and then give up. Or email me. See the link above.

Okay, now you've got the CD booted. A bunch of stuff will scroll by; don't worry about it. This is normal. When it stops, the last few lines should look something like (except the dates):

Now type "/installer". A little secret here: Just type "/i" and hit tab. It will fill in in the rest of the filename, since this is the only file that starts with "/i". Just one of those nice things about Linux. Press enter and the installer will start. Read everything it prints, and you'll be okay.

Just hit enter.

Hit Alt-F2; you should see something like this:

This means I have one hard disk (hda) plugged in and recognized. Figure out which disk you want to install to, and remember it. Hit Alt-F1 to switch back, and then enter to continue configuring.

Enter the name of the target disk. If you forgot already, press Alt-F1 and Alt-F2 to switch back and forth.

Now switch to console 2 and partition this disk. The optimal setup for fold-server is to have 3 partitions. The first (or hda1) will be for the root, or /, filesystem. The next is the swap partition, similar to Windows' swapfile. The third is for /foldsave, where the progress of the clients goes.

So how do we get here? Here are the detailed steps to set up your disk like this. This will erase all your existing data, be warned.

• If any partitions exist, delete them all by:
• pressing "d"
• entering one of the remaining numbers
• display partition table with p to make sure it's empty (enter "p")
• make a new partition for the root of about 500 MB by typing:
• n for new partition
• p for primary
• 1 for partition #1
• 1 for start of partition
• +512M
• Similarly, make a new partition for swap with around 2*ram:
• n, p, 2, <enter>, +512M
• Make a new partition for /foldsave, with the rest of the disk:
• n, p, 3, <enter>, <enter>
• Make the first partition active
• a for set active
• 1 for partition #1
• Finally, change the type for the "swap" partition:
• t for change type
• 2 for partition #2
• 82 for partition of type "Linux Swap"
• p for display partitions

This is (more or less) what it should look like. The important parts are:

• there are 3 partitions: hda1, hda2, and hda3
• The first is 512ish MB (the size is expressed in K, so this is the 500440 one)
• The second is about twice as big as the ram in the system, 256 mb in this case AND of type Linux swap
• The third is the rest of the disk, of type Linux.
• There's a * indicating active under Boot for the first partition.

On to the next step!

Whatever partition you made type 83, enter it here. If you didn't make one, switch back to console 2 and do it before answering here.

Probably a yes, especially if you just made the partition.

Same deal as two questions ago. Change type if necessary.

Note that you'll have to manually format this partition yourself. In future installs, you won't want to format this partition, since it will contain all of your client data.

This sets the password for the web interface. This is not the password you use to log in with; you may log in with either user "dsl" and blank password, or user "root" and password "Fold@on". You will want to try this interface out; it provides a set of useful services to your whole LAN.

This is the configuration I use, in case you care; in any case, it makes a reasonably sane configuration. Next comes a bunch of output, hopefully with no errors in it. You can use Shift+Page Up and Shift+Page Down to scroll through it. Below is a nominal run (this is what's expected to happen).

This run is from version 0.8; newer versions have slightly different output.

And your system is installed. Now let's see how it works. Eject the cdrom, and type "reboot" to finish the install. After the computer comes back up, log in as "root" with password "Fold@on". The username and password are case sensitive. Then you can work on configuring your new fold-server.

When the system comes up again, log in as "dsl" (there's no password); it'll start X. If it gets this far, it probably means everything will work. First we'll set up your username and team for FAH. As usual, there's two ways to do this. First, you can run "/root/foldconfig.sh" and follow the instructions. Second, log into the web interface, and click on the "Configure Folding@Home username/team" option. Just in case you couldn't guess.

Next we'll retrieve the Folding@Home client. This will require that your internet connection is active. Below is a complete log of what is output; if you need help getting this to run, skip over the next section and go down one.

If you can't get this going from the above output, here it is step by step.

• First, get into a terminal as root. You may either log in to a console as root (press Alt+F(number) keys to change what console you're on) or, when in X, right-click on the desktop, go to "XShells", and select "Root Access".
• To make sure you start in the right place, enter "cd /root". This will make sure that you end up in the /root directory.
• Enter "./getfold.pl". Remember, tab completion is your friend!
• If you happen to be behind a proxy, you'll need to tell the script is, like this:
  http_proxy=http://proxy.IP.addres.s:PORT ./getfold.pl
• The script will run to completion. It will download about 9 megabytes (April 2005), so it may take a while. Be patient.

This script makes all the stuff it downloaded, along with the client configuration file, into a single package for easy distribution to the clients. To make sure that this worked, first let's do "ls -s /foldsave".

Okay, the file exists. Now let's see what's in that file.

Okay, we've got the FAH client, and a bunch of cores. Looks good.

Now that we've got Folding@Home ready to go, it's time to generate the client image.

The warning from rm is normal, that file doesn't exist on this first run-through. Let's see what we've got:

This is a normal listing. Some files may be added or removed based on release, but what's important is that there exist:

• bzImage.current: this is the kernel that the clients will use. It is a "symbolic link" to the real kernel.
• initrd.current: this is the root filesystem. It is a "symbolic link" to the real compressed filesystem, myroot.gz.
• fold-boot: this is for etherboot. It contains both the kernel and the root filesystem.
• pxelinux.cfg and pxelinux.0: this is for PXE. They tell PXE what files to load.

Also, the myroot.gz and bzImage files are what is used to generate fold-boot, and are used directly for PXE. Don't delete them. BUILD shows a history of when the "update" script was run and what number build that was. As you can see, there's a lot of 'em. (1.0 has 247 builds in its log!)

Now try booting one of your clients. A PXE client will probably be easier to get going, so if you have any of those try them first. If all you have is Etherboot clients which you're going to use floppies for, there are two ways to write the images to floppies so you can boot from them. If you want to write the images from the server, do the following:

This will write to the floppy in the A: drive. If you happen to have a B: drive, substitute "fd1" for "fd0".

To write the images on another machine, go to it and type in the External IP in a web browser. Then click on the "Etherboot floppy images" link and download the one you want. Get Rawrite for Windows too (it's at the top), unzip it and run it. Follow the instructions. If you have another Linux machine you'd like to write the images with, download them from fold-server and follow the same procedure as with writing them from the server.

Now it's time to try the client. If you're using PXE, make sure the BIOS is set to boot from LAN; if you're using Etherboot, boot from floppy (make sure you insert the disk, too). Try it. Good luck.

One thing people seem to be having problems with is dealing with routing. Routing is indeed a complicated thing, and since fold-server is a router, you'll have to deal with this at least a little. The problem is that everyone in the connection chain has to know how to get to the people on both sides, or data can't flow. Makes sense? Well, the effect of this is that you'll have to add something to your existing router. I have examples for a Linksys router, a Linux machine and a Windows machine, so if your router is any of these, you're all set.

Why do you need static routes? Here's why. Imagine you're sending a simple ping from one of your client machines to fold-server.sf.net. Here's the path on the way out:

So it works okay. The client knows how to get to fold-server, fold-server knows about the router, and the router knows how to talk to the internet. So the packet goes out to the destination, a response is generated, and sent back along the same path. This time, though, we hit a snag.

So the packet knows how to get back to the router fine, it's sent to your external IP. But then the router gets the packet. It sees it's bound for (for example) 10.3.1.43. "10.3.1.43? I don't know who that is!" it says, and to the great Bit Bucket in the sky that packet goes. This causes the client machine, 10.3.1.43, to never see a response and give up. So what the static route does is to let the router know that all the packets bound for the 10 network can be sent via that guy over there, the fold-server.

Adding a static route to a Linksys "blue box" is fairly easy. Log into the Linksys router, click on advanced, and enter the information as in the third screenshot. Then hit submit.