Detecting Idle

[winksaville]

I run FAH on Arch Linux and when I change the folding mode to "On Idle", by right clicking on a "Folding Slots" entry in FAHControl, it pauses but never restarts folding. Any suggestions on how I might debug this or what I've done wrong?

[davidcoton]

The act of looking to see if it's folding means the computer is not idle. Try leaving it for 15 minutes minimum and see if it makes progress while the computer is genuinely idle.

[winksaville]

After changing both the CPU and GPU to "On idle" I left the room for 30minutes
and when I came back and the computer had "locked" itself and I had to sign in.

On the FAHControl was still running, of course, and the Staus tabe said
both the CPU and GPU were "Paused:waiting for idle". So I went to the log
tab and the most recent data in the log was below. So it never started folding
and I had to press "Fold" to get it going again.

Code: Select all

...
19:25:20:FS00:Shutting core down
19:25:20:WU02:FS00:0xa7:Caught signal SIGINT(2) on PID 49974
19:25:20:WU02:FS00:0xa7:Exiting, please wait. . .
19:25:20:WU02:FS00:0xa7:Folding@home Core Shutdown: INTERRUPTED
19:25:20:WU02:FS00:FahCore returned: INTERRUPTED (102 = 0x66)
19:26:20:Removing old file 'configs/config-20200330-154644.xml'
19:26:20:Saving configuration to /home/wink/opt/fah/config.xml
19:26:20:<config>
19:26:20:  <!-- Logging -->
19:26:20:  <verbosity v='5'/>
19:26:20:
19:26:20:  <!-- Network -->
19:26:20:  <proxy v=':8080'/>
19:26:20:
19:26:20:  <!-- Slot Control -->
19:26:20:  <power v='MEDIUM'/>
19:26:20:
19:26:20:  <!-- User Information -->
19:26:20:  <passkey v='********************************'/>
19:26:20:  <user v='winksaville'/>
19:26:20:
19:26:20:  <!-- Folding Slots -->
19:26:20:  <slot id='1' type='GPU'>
19:26:20:    <idle v='true'/>
19:26:20:  </slot>
19:26:20:  <slot id='0' type='CPU'>
19:26:20:    <cpus v='4'/>
19:26:20:    <idle v='true'/>
19:26:20:  </slot>
19:26:20:</config>

[Peter Leslie Goulden]

I seem to have exactly the same problem.

My system is Linux Mint Cinnamon 19.1. Having Googled this problem and searched the forums, this appears to have been affecting Linux system for years and has never been solved.

I have tried various things, including installing xscreensaver and associated utilities, rebooting my system and fiddling with screensaver and power saving timeouts. I have been using BOINC up until a few days ago and that successfully detects when the system is idle.

I would dearly love to use FAH because I would like to think I'm doing something to contribute to the effort for Coronavirus. However, without 'On Idle' working, my system is almost unusably sluggish when running FAH.

My question is this: Is anyone running a Linux system with FAH 7.5.1, 'On Idle' set and it working properly? That is, the FAH slots change status to 'Paused:waiting for idle' when the system is being used and return to 'Running' after a certain period of inactivity. Knowing that it works properly on some Linux systems would at least be a start.

[nicholaicheck]

I seem to have exactly the same problem.

My system is Linux Mint Cinnamon 19.1. Having Googled this problem and searched the forums, this appears to have been affecting Linux system for years and has never been solved.

I have tried various things, including installing xscreensaver and associated utilities, rebooting my system and fiddling with screensaver and power saving timeouts. I have been using BOINC up until a few days ago and that successfully detects when the system is idle.

Nice to know I'm not the only one having issues. Mint 19.3 XFCE. At least Rosetta@home on BOINC works on idle with my CPU. I'll just start manually turning F@H on when I plan to leave my pc idle for a while...

[John_D]

You might try to use the Web Control. It turns its status ball to orange when the client is paused or idle because it is not getting a WU. Pressing the ball and clicking will cause it to resume folding usually. See: client.foldingathome.org if interested in trying this as a workaround.

I could not get fahcontrol to work, but the web control works a treat. At a guess folks at admin level are experimenting with web control to eventually replace fahcontrol.

[davidcoton]

It does depend a bit on your OS. Web control is intended to be simple while giving the basic information and control.
fahcontol (aka Advanced Control) is far more comprehensive.

[winksaville]

I wish the complete source code for foldingtathome.service was available, AFAICT it isn't. If it was, I'm sure the community could fix this issue quickly. I for one would like to help.

[uyaem]

I wish the complete source code for foldingtathome.service was available, AFAICT it isn't. If it was, I'm sure the community could fix this issue quickly. I for one would like to help.

WebClient sources are available here: https://github.com/FoldingAtHome/fah-web-client

[winksaville]

Thanks @Uyaem, but the problem appears to be in foldingathome.server.

[Tohya]

If you want to help

https://twitter.com/foldingathome/statu ... 3412453378

Interested in helping us develop and enhance the F@h architecture? Come join the development team at our F@h Fireside Chat on Thursday, April 9th, 4-5pm EDT! To receive a Discord invite link, fill out this form: https://tinyurl.com/firesidedev

[Peter Leslie Goulden]

It's been over two weeks since I asked if idle detection actually works on any Linux systems at all and there have been no affirmative responses. I think it's probably safe to take it that it doesn't work at this point. Does anyone know how to go about submitting a bug report?

Tohya, thanks for your suggestion. I'm not sure if this should be considered an architectural development issue. Did anybody join the chat and, if so, was there anything interesting to report in this specific area (idle detection in Linux)?

[Neil-B]

If your Linux OS system is reporting that it is idle then the FAH idle detection should work as FAH relies on the OS reporting this status. In windows that is easy as it means simply setting the screensaver to blank and a short time period (screensaver kicks in on idle and FAH folds. On Linux systems I believe it is very much more complicated by the number of desktop GUIs and screensavers and how they all work in slightly different ways … Unless the OS is reporting idle then FAH may struggle to fold "On Idle".

I believe issues can be reported via GitHub as per this thread viewtopic.php?f=106&t=34531&p=327534&hi ... ub#p327534.

[winksaville]

@Neil-B, Thanks for the information. From what I know about linux there are usually multiple ways to do any particular operation, do you know what "signal" the foldingathome.service is looking for?