Does this mean this architecture won’t work, or do I need to switch to unstable?
error: Package ‘folding-at-home-6.02’ in /nix/store/idkc96q3ff5snbz45b3qi1fyp6plcy6v-nixos-19.09-19.09.2255.68d2f8325c3/nixos-19.09/pkgs/misc/foldingathome/default.nix:32 is
not supported on ‘x86_64-linux’, refusing to evaluate.
Some of the builds like the qemu image require the host to have KVM installed/available (which is not the case under WSL).
By the way, the important part is to contribute towards folding@home. If it’s too much hassle with NixOS then you can also consider downloading the the official client from over there: https://foldingathome.org/iamoneinamillion/ . If you are running on Windows it will be more efficient without the VM overhead.
One thing that I didn’t know is that only GPU is contributing towards corona research. So if you are contributing only CPU, it won’t help with this project specifically. Sorry, my initial message wasn’t precise enough and misleading.
I found this repo that has more information on the subject:
It seems that the Rosetta@Home (part of BOINC) is also helping to fight COVID-19, and in that case CPU-only users can also contribute. It’s quite easy to use in NixOS as BOINC Manager is already packaged in nixpkgs.
For me, using the services.boinc.enable option was not enough, and I had to manually launch the client boinc_client, and then configure it using boincmgr.
I’ve seen a few tasks labeled COVID-19 go through.
Just out of curiosity, what is the AMD GPU situation? I got the impression it would only work for Nvidia but looks like there is an opencl-mesa implementation that works with the AMDGPU driver. Will that all work with the latest version of the package in nixpkgs?
Warning for those trying this method: the client stores some data in $PWD/work (including the work units and some configuration I think), so I’d suggest creating some permanent directory just for Folding@home and always cding to it before running the client, both to make sure you don’t lose work units in random places in your disk, and also to avoid cluttering up whatever directory you happened to be in.
Additionally, since F@H is regularly running of ouf work with such a surge of new donors in last days, I also installed rosetta@home that still has pending covid-19 related CPU work, by adding:
And then installing BOINC Manager locally on my laptop and connecting to it via SSH tunnel on port 31416. The connection password is stored in /var/lib/boinc/gui_rpc_auth.cfg .
Finally I created a NixOS team for rosetta too: NixOS (I’ll gladly defer administration of the team to a more senior nixos person)
I’ve had no luck completing GPU Work Units, the Status tab is properly detecting my GPU Slot (gpu:0:Hawaii [Radeon R9 200/300 Series]) but the System Info tab is showing OpenCL: Not detected: clGetPlatformIDs() returned -1001, plus such error logs are showing up when a WU is given to me: 14:48:38:ERROR:WU02:FS00:Failed to start core: OpenCL device matching slot 0 not found, try setting 'opencl-index' manually. I have set opencl-index to 1 but I will need to wait another WU to figure out if it works out.
Would love to hear how people got it working.
For an AMD RX580, I used the nixos-rocm overlay on nixos-unstable. Github page on nixos-rocm also covers most of this. Another solution I tried which did not work was attempting to install amdgpu-pro.
If anyone is running into issues getting assigned jobs, the Work Servers running out of jobs due to the spike in the number of F@H clients.
It seems the team is working on it. https://foldingforum.org/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=32424
In response to popular demand, we have created an update to the Folding@home software that allows you to prioritize COVID-19 projects. We encourage you to upgrade as the new software includes important bug fixes and security updates. Downloads are available here. Please also join me in thanking the Center for the Science and Engineering of Living Systems (CSELS) at Washington University in St. Louis for funding the development of this software update.
EDIT: my bad, nixpkgs already has the new version, I was still using https://github.com/zimbatm/nixpkgs/archive/foldingathome.tar.gz.
i updated it in hopes of getting remote control (connecting FAHControl to a remote FAHClient) working
it didn’t help, i still suspect this is an issue with FAHClient, has anyone been able to do this?
though with summer on the way and my old 5870’s lacking driver support, i’m in no hurry to get that working