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monitoring multiple headless linux clients

Posted: Tue Apr 07, 2020 5:42 pm
by fold_all_the_things
Hello,
I'm deploying the client on several (at least 10 - 15 machines each with 3x nvidia 2080s) ubuntu 18.04 servers with no GUI. I have it working just fine, machines complete their work units and all that. The problem is it is a huge pain to monitor so many machines. At the moment I just open up a firefox tab for each server on port 7396 via my main computer (it's a windows box) but that's just ridiculous.

Is there a better way to monitor so many machines?

I have tried to use the fahcontrol application on Windows but no luck. I suspect I may be missing something in the configuration of either the servers, the control app or both.

If I add one of the servers to fahcontrol it remains stuck indefinitely in "updating" status with everything greyed out.

Image

here is the configuration file, identical on every folding client:
Image

I suspect it may be the password field on fahcontrol when adding a client, which I am leaving blank since it is not configured on the clients. Does fahcontrol not work if there is no password?
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Any tips would be appreciated. If there is any config changes to do on the clients please provide the relevant xml file modifications since I can not edit the settings any other way that I am aware of on a headless server.

Thanks,

Re: monitoring multiple headless linux clients

Posted: Tue Apr 07, 2020 6:01 pm
by Jesse_V
I think there are a couple problems. The local FAHClient instance is not configured to allow connections from localhost, which is why the FAHControl front-end can't connect. To set up remote access for the headless clients, add the following lines to /etc/fahclient/config.xml to each headless client so that their configuration looks something like this:

<config>
<allow v='127.0.0.1 10.1.0.0/16'/>
<password v='MyPasswordHere'/>

<!-- all other default other configurations listed below -->
</config>

Then restart FAHClient with "sudo service FAHClient restart". Then in FAHControl on your main system, click the "Add" button in the bottom left corner, type in the IP address of a headless client and the password that you put in the configuration file, and it should connect to the client, assuming that there's no firewall blocks of course.

Re: monitoring multiple headless linux clients

Posted: Tue Apr 07, 2020 6:06 pm
by fold_all_the_things
That did it, thanks a lot.