While we can act on the advice of the WHO and our governments, there’s no doubt that COVID-19 leaves many of us feeling pretty helpless. And while it might seem a small personal contribution, as a community we can lend our computing power to Folding@home, an open source project.
Percona is happy to promote this initiative and add in our guidance on how you can easily contribute to this research initiative.
What is Folding@Home? What Are They Trying to Do?
Folding@home (F@h) is simulating the dynamics of COVID-19 proteins to hunt for new therapeutic opportunities. To do this, they need a lot of CPU power. They have created an internet-based public volunteer computing project, similar in concept to SETI@Home. All outcomes of F@h are open source. If you want to learn more, take a look:
Coronavirus – What we’re doing and how you can help in simple terms
How Can You Help?
You can help by sharing part of your CPU for performing computing of their Working Units (WU).
Your computer periodically requests protein data to be analyzed, and the servers respond by assigning a Work Unit to the FAH client and securely deliver it via the internet to your computer. When the client completes its assignment, it returns its results to the Stanford servers and more work will be assigned. Your computer may complete a Work Unit in a few hours, or a few days, depending on a number of factors.
How Do You Do That?
Below, we have detailed how we set it up at Percona. You are very welcome to join the Percona group at F@h, team number 241445. Or, you can set up a new team.
Linux:
We prepared a Docker container for our users. This isolates the F@h client from the rest of the computer, so it can’t access any data outside the container (make sure that you are running the latest version of Docker).
Windows and Mac Users:
You should also use Docker if you are running on a corporate-owned computer. It’s fine, however, to install the client on any personal computer.
Corporate Computer Users:
Note: Check with your security team to confirm you are allowed to run this on your corporate computer. DO NOT RUN THIS WITHOUT THEIR EXPLICIT PERMISSION.
This example uses the Percona Team ID, 241445. Download an F@h client wrapped in a Docker container, then spawn an instance by executing:
1 | docker run -p 7396:7396 covperc/fah:7.5.1 --gpu=false --smp=true --user=your_name --passkey=your_password --team=241445 |
The user and passkey are needed only to identify you, and your account is created after fetching the first sample. If you prefer, you can omit those and be an anonymous contributor:
1 | docker run -p 7396:7396 covperc/fah:7.5.1 --gpu=false --smp=true --team=241445 |
It will also enable a web panel on 7396/tcp port.
Personal Computer Users:
Windows:
Mac:
Both Windows and Mac:
Make sure that you have selected ‘Any diseases’ which means COVID-19 (as it has the highest priority).
How Do I Know I’m Working on a COVID-19 Related Project?
If you are running one of these projects, then you are helping to fight COVID-19 :
- CPU: 14328 – 14329 – 14530 – 14531
- GPU: 11741 to 11764
Getting a Lot of Errors?
A couple of examples:
1 2 | 13:15:35:WARNING:WU00:FS00:Failed to get assignment from '18.218.241.186:80': No WUs available for this configuration 13:15:35:ERROR:WU00:FS00:Exception: Could not get an assignment |
That’s fine! It just means that currently there are no new samples for you. Just keep the process running in the background. It will eventually fetch a new WU and the process will restart.
This is an unprecedented event, and we hope it will soon get better, but in the meantime, thanks for all you do to help — even if it seems small, it all makes a difference!
This docker runs on my QNAP TS-1277 NAS
Thanks for your support! It’s amazing you can run it on QNAP device!