Folding Forum

Hi! How can I stop Foleing@Home from starting when my MacBook (M1) starts up? I would much prefer to choose to start it. Thanks!

Mod - Merged two topics on same subject - j

Starting the service manually is a bit complicated. Instead, go into the Folding@Home advanced control application, go to the Expert tab. On the left side there's a list of "Extra client options". Click the "Add" button beneath the list, and add an option named "pause-on-start" and set it to "true". Now the Folding@Home service will still start on boot-up, but you won't start folding automatically. (You have to manually start folding after each boot-up.)

I am hesitant to reinstall Fah for my Mac M1, because, even when I exit the program, it keeps running in the background, and it loads up on reboot even if I tell if not to. Is there a way for me to have complete, 100% manual control on when Fat runs?

Open the advanced Control
Click Configure -> new window
Click the "Expert" tab
Click "Add" at the bottom the "Extra Client Options" frame
Name: pause-on-start
Value: true
OK

The FAHClient will load but won't run until you allow it to from either the web interface or the advanced control.

Thanks everyone!

aetch wrote:The FAHClient will load but won't run until you allow it to from either the web interface or the advanced control.

Even running FAHClient does not use much CPU, the actual processing is done in a FAH Core process initiated by FAHClient when a WU is being processed. As an example, my MacBook Pro has been running 52 days since my last restart, FAHClient has used less than 2 hours of CPU time.

Joe_H wrote:Even running FAHClient does not use much CPU, the actual processing is done in a FAH Core process initiated by FAHClient when a WU is being processed. As an example, my MacBook Pro has been running 52 days since my last restart, FAHClient has used less than 2 hours of CPU time.

...and I thought I was being pedantic at times.

So, basically, it is going to force itself to run all the time, and there is nothing I can do about it generally. Why design software like that? Surely they know that people want control over their own computers? I would absolutely dedicate tons of time to FAH, but since it insists on running basically all the time without my input, I uninstalled it. Such a waste of a great cause.

You can uninstall and re-install it as many times as you like if you object to the miniscule amount of resources used by an idle system service that just sits there and does nothing unless you ask it to. By the same token, you're free to uninstall the Bluetooth stack from your OS, but it would be inadvisable in case you want to use Bluetooth peripherals in future.

You could, for experimentation's sake, run Folding@Home in a Virtualbox virtual machine on your Mac, but the overhead from doing something like that would be a greater waste of resources (memory, disk space and CPU) than just running the client normally.

HELPMATTY wrote:So, basically, it is going to force itself to run all the time, and there is nothing I can do about it generally. Why design software like that? Surely they know that people want control over their own computers? I would absolutely dedicate tons of time to FAH, but since it insists on running basically all the time without my input, I uninstalled it. Such a waste of a great cause.

No, basically the only thing running when you are not actively processing WUs is the FAHClient process. And "running" is relative. When not in use it uses almost no resources and sits in the background like a number of other processes such as printer queueing.

As for why design it that way, it allows creation of a service that runs under its own account that has minimal privileges. FAHClient can only access files in specific folders and make network connections to a defined set of addresses. It is not running under your own account which for most Mac users is also their Admin account. In addition, having the service in the background allows the F@h processing to be done with no other app or window open. You do not need Web Control to be running in a browser or have FAHControl open.

The client for Linux is set up the same way and the one for Windows would be also except for Windows services not being able to access a GPU.

Now you can install just FAHClient and run it from the command line in a Terminal window. The security downside is that it would be running with whatever privileges belong to the account the Terminal window was logged in with

If you have an administrator account, you can use a simple shell script to start/stop the FAHClient service. You would need to enter your password each time you start or stop.

Another possibility is to change the launchd plist such that the client would start on demand and not auto restart. Start could be triggered by a file, or connection to the default command port. I believe the client could be configured to exit after completing one work unit.

This would perhaps best be an enhancement request on GitHub fah-issues.