FAH will not connect properly

[Lingon]

Hello,

I have been a folder for many years by now, and I have been CPU folding on a 24/7 online PC running Linux Mint 17.6. However, on that machine, folding suddenly ceased to work sometime last year (it is a headless machine normally, so I did not monitor it every day). FAHControl would open but refuse to "Connect".

Either way, I left it that way until yesterday when I did a system wipe to install Mint 19 on the machine. This time, I expected FAH to work again, so I downloaded the official .deb files and installed them. It ran the installer, asked me for a couple of things (like if I want FAH to autostart, to which I said yes). In the middle of this, FAH seemed to lock up the entire system, forcing me to reboot. After rebooting, I attempted to re-launch FAH again, now the main FAHControl window opens, but is stuck on "Connecting" like in the past.

I have attempted to remove FAHControl and FAHClient, reinstall it from newly downloaded .deb files as well as attempting to use "Advanced manual installation" provided by F@H without any success.

How do I fix this? What further information do you need to help, if any?

Best regards,

[foldy]

I tried with Linux Mint 19 too and it worked. I downloaded this

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wget https://download.foldingathome.org/releases/public/release/fahclient/debian-stable-64bit/v7.5/fahclient_7.5.1_amd64.deb

and installed it with auto start

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apt-get install ./fahclient_7.5.1_amd64.deb

and it started right after setup complete with one CPU slot.
For GPU usage it needs

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sudo apt-get install ocl-icd-libopencl1
sudo apt-get install ocl-icd-opencl-dev

[Lingon]

Thanks for the reply.

Yes, I have done essentially that, but through the GUI. FAHControl sits infinitely stuck on inactive and will not connect.

[foldy]

If FAHcontrol cannot connect to FAHclient then FAHclient is not running.
What happens if you execute this in a console

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/etc/init.d/FAHClient start

I got it running calling

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sudo dpkg -i --force-depends fahclient_7.5.1_amd64.deb

[Lingon]

Hello again!

The first command simply returns this:

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Starting fahclient ... FAIL

I am not sure what you mean by the second command, but I ran it from the folder where the .deb is located.

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Job for FAHClient.service failed because the control process exited with error code.
See "systemctl status FAHClient.service" and "journalctl -xe" for details.
invoke-rc.d: initscript FAHClient, action "start" failed.
● FAHClient.service - LSB: Folding@home Client
   Loaded: loaded (/etc/init.d/FAHClient; generated)
   Active: failed (Result: exit-code) since Fri 2019-04-05 17:16:27 CEST; 11ms ago
     Docs: man:systemd-sysv-generator(8)
  Process: 20647 ExecStart=/etc/init.d/FAHClient start (code=exited, status=1/FAILURE)

apr 05 17:16:26 MintHost systemd[1]: Starting LSB: Folding@home Client...
apr 05 17:16:27 MintHost FAHClient[20647]: Starting fahclient ... FAIL
apr 05 17:16:27 MintHost systemd[1]: FAHClient.service: Control process exited, code=exited status=1
apr 05 17:16:27 MintHost systemd[1]: FAHClient.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
apr 05 17:16:27 MintHost systemd[1]: Failed to start LSB: Folding@home Client.

The Folding@home client is now installed

You can access the Web interface by going to:

  https://client.foldingathome.org/

in a browser on this computer.

For information about configuring the Folding@home client for 
remote access please see the comments in:

  /etc/fahclient/config.xml

The page on the link at https://client.foldingathome.org/ times out after 30 seconds, failing to connect. Not sure what to make of the rest of the text the Terminal spits out at me.

[bruce]

The "start" script in /etc/init.d should be examined to figure out which step is failing. (it should have a cd ... which should take you to a directory which is R/W for the user "fahclient" so it shouldn't matter where you actually start it.

[Lingon]

Oh sorry, my inexperience with GNU/Linux shines through here.

I opened the folder and file suggested; but what exactly am I looking for? There is a lot of stuff in there that looks like a programming language; but I am no programmer.

[bruce]

Yes, a script is sort of a programming language but it's primary function is to launch "real" programs. It has the ability to test certain conditions and branch (skip over some other instructions). Without some knowledge of programming, you probably will need help. Unfortunately I can't open that script since it's unique to Linux and all of the computers I have here are currently running Windows. Somebody else will come along soon and help you.

[foldy]

In my Linux Mint 19 I can start FAHClient this way in console:
/usr/bin/FAHClient

[Lingon]

In my Linux Mint 19 I can start FAHClient this way in console:
/usr/bin/FAHClient

Well look at that! Now we are getting somewhere. This indeed launched FAH Client, but (of course) inside the Terminal window. Opening either the webinterface or FAHControl now connects.

But, this is not how it worked before. I've been able to just launch FAHControl (and by extension, have folding launch automatically at system boot) and have it start folding, without the need to run a Terminal command and keep that window open. What gives, I wonder?

Oh as a side question: I assume AMD GPU folding on Linux is not a thing as of yet? I have a spare Radeon 7970 I'd love to put to good use...

[foldy]

I found one line in FAHClient script which causes the FAIL.

Maybe deleting the file /var/run/fahclient.pid helps (it then gets generated again)

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sudo rm /var/run/fahclient.pid

AMD GPU 7970 is working in Linux too
You need to have the GPU OpenCL drivers installed

[Lingon]

I found one line in FAHClient script which causes the FAIL.

Maybe deleting the file /var/run/fahclient.pid helps (it then gets generated again)

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sudo rm /var/run/fahclient.pid

AMD GPU 7970 is working in Linux too
You need to have the GPU OpenCL drivers installed

Hmm, no such file or directory exists, apparently. Which seems to be true, nothing named fahclient exists within /var/run/ when checking it myself.

[Lingon]

About GPU folding...

For GPU usage it needs

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sudo apt-get install ocl-icd-libopencl1
sudo apt-get install ocl-icd-opencl-dev

Both these are installed...

AMD GPU 7970 is working in Linux too
You need to have the GPU OpenCL drivers installed

But GPU folding won't start. The Terminal says the following on repeat

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09:07:26:WU02:FS01:Starting
09:07:26:ERROR:WU02:FS01:Failed to start core: OpenCL device matching slot 1 not found, try setting 'opencl-index' manually

And the GUI says GPU is ready.

[bruce]

Please post the top page or two of FAHlog.log showing the hardware that FAHClient detects. That will probably will help us resolve your issue.

Have you installed the proprietary GPU drivers directly from AMD? ... and rebooted after changing the drivers?

[foldy]

I just learned on Linux Ubuntu and Mint there is a new command systemctl

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sudo systemctl start FAHClient