Folding Forum

How do I remotely access FAH Control/Client?

I'm soon going on vacation, and would like to be able to check up on my server remotely; restart GPUs if need be.

The built-in method would be to create a connection through your firewall and run FAHClient on your laptop, connection to the connection you just enabled. FAH security requires you to enable a FAH password, add the necessary network connection to your config,

FAHClient also accepts telnet-like connections to port 36330, but the capabilities are much more limited and you're responsible for the security.

Do I need to get a DNS? I suppose yes...
I'm kind of new to this thing.

MeeLee wrote:Do I need to get a DNS? I suppose yes...
I'm kind of new to this thing.

The terms you’ll want to look for is a “Dynamic DNS” for the external IP of your home router and then you’ll want to “Port Forward” your Control ports for each of your Rigs to a different external Port on your router.

Alternatively you could setup a OpenVPN connection on your router and connect to an internal system but this would still require Dynamic DNS and is more challenging to do properly.

Your router functions as a DNS for addresses within your LAN. Those addresses will not be visitble outside your router except if you follow the instructions above. Your ISP will register your external IP on their DNS ... but as gordonbb said, it will (most likely) be a dynamic address so finding your router from your laptop may be a challenge, depending on how they register it. It's possible to order a fixed IP address from you ISP, but they generally cost more.

I would break it down into 2 or 3 steps. First, set up a connection from one machine on your LAN to another machine on your LAN so you can get FAHControl on your laptop to view and manage another machine where you know the internal IP address. That step can be a challenge.

Second, move your laptop outside of your LAN, determine the external IP address of your router, and open the necessary via port forwarding connections.

Third, restart your router -- which will probably change the external IP address. Figure out how to find it with information that's known externally to you laptop.

I'm kind of new to this thing.

This will be a real challenge for you.

Back in the day, my windows PC ran a program that updated the ip address every 1 to 24 hours (depending on the settings).
By connecting to the DNS website addrrss, I could access whatever I've shared online, so long I had the site and password.
I guess this won't work for FAH?

Worst case scenario, I'll have to keep it running unsupervised for 2 weeks. It's been running quite stable, though occasionally gets stuck with WUs and need someone to manually pause and restart them.

MeeLee wrote:Back in the day,,,

Back in that day, if a program running on your PC crashed or had some other kind of problem, you still needed access to your keyboard/mouse/video to reboot (or whatever). Knowing the IP address wasn't the issue. Dialing INTO your PC so you can administer it from a remote location wasn't possible ... and it still isn't ... unless you can find your router from somewhere other than at home. Allowing somebody outside your router the ability to manage programs running on your PC is still a challenge, if only because you really need security from the myriad of hackers who might do you harm.

FAH servers do publish almost real-time information about recent WU completions, but that doesn't give you the capability to manage a failure.

@MeeLee
I use a product called Teamviewer which is free for personal use. You can install it on one of your computers and access that computer by installing Teamviewer on your smartphone. I install it at home on a laptop so as to avoid problems if there are any temporary power interruptions.

I support the TeamViewer idea. It provides some nice benefits for other things you'd like to interconnect.

Thanks, I'll give it a try.

I've got 2 UPS power supplies providing power in case of a small outage.
In case of a large outage, when the power's back on, the PC should reboot, and start folding at stock speeds (non-overclocked); but it should have web access.
And since Teamviewer is Linux compatible, I'll give it a try.
To be able to adjust some values from my phone, would be very nice!