Origami unable to connect to servers

[Draycen DeCator]

Binary package hint: origami

I have origami installed on my 64-bit Ubuntu 10.04 system. Unfortunately, I have had little luck with it working properly. I have only received, worked on, and sent back 1 or 2 units in the past few weeks. The majority of the time (and for the past week now), the FAHlog shows that a connection cannot be made to the servers. I completely uninstalled origami and reinstalled today with no success.

Here is the message from the log (which is repeated):
[06:26:07] + Attempting to get work packet
[06:26:07] - Connecting to assignment server
[06:26:08] + No appropriate work server was available; will try again in a bit.
[06:26:08] + Couldn't get work instructions.
[06:26:08] - Attempt #17 to get work failed, and no other work to do.
             Waiting before retry.

I leave my computer on 24/7 now, for the purpose of allowing it to fold overnight, but these error messages just build up over several days.

Before, when I had a unit to work on, running "origami status" caused my terminal to be filled with "|" marks. There were so many that I could not actually see any of the information normally provided (name, link to stats, etc.) but when I checked the log it would say it was ##% done, so the unit was actually being worked on.

Another common error that I was receiving before was Core Status: F7 (or something similar). Unfortunately, since I reinstalled I no longer have the message in the log, but I can add it later. This error seemed to happen whenever a connection was actually made with the servers and it was examining the core.exe files.

I am currently at school with a very good internet connection, and my school does not filter our internet at all, so I don't believe it's a network connection issue. At first I thought it was just a problem with the servers, but the fact that this has gone on so long makes me skeptical.

When I installed, here is the command I ran:
sudo origami install -t 45104 -u ddecator -p amd64

I'm not sure what the problem could be. Maybe this is not fully compatible with Lucid? Let me know if there is any debugging work I can do.

[Draycen DeCator (ddecator)]

Here's the core status error:

[15:15:42] + Processing work unit
[15:15:42] Core required: FahCore_a1.exe
[15:15:42] Core found.
[15:15:42] Working on Unit 01 [April 20 15:15:42]
[15:15:42] + Working ...
[15:15:42]
[15:15:42] *------------------------------*
[15:15:42] Folding@Home Gromacs SMP Core
[15:15:42] Version 1.74 (November 27, 2006)
[15:15:42]
[15:15:42] Preparing to commence simulation
[15:15:42] - Ensuring status. Please wait.
[15:15:43] - Starting from initial work packet
[15:15:43]
[15:15:43] Project: 5101 (Run 0, Clone 142, Gen 150)
[15:15:43]
[15:15:43] Assembly optimizations on if available.
[15:15:43] Entering M.D.
[15:15:53] CoreStatus = 7F (127)
[15:15:53] Client-core communications error: ERROR 0x7f
[15:15:53] Deleting current work unit & continuing...
[15:20:27] - Preparing to get new work unit...
[15:20:27] + Attempting to get work packet
[15:20:27] - Connecting to assignment server
[15:20:27] - Successful: assigned to (171.64.65.64).
[15:20:27] + News From Folding@Home: Welcome to Folding@Home
[15:20:27] Loaded queue successfully.
[15:20:29] + Closed connections

[Draycen DeCator (ddecator)]

Also reported here: http://github.com/zelut/origami/issues#issue/8

After reinstalling without '-p amd64' origami is now working without any issues.

If anyone else runs into this, here is what I did:

sudo origami erase
sudo origami install -u 45104 -u ddecator

You would just replace my username with your own, and everything should work fine.

[biebel (badk666)]

I'm having the exact same problem here.
-p smp and the 32 bit work just fine, but -p amd64 results in:

-Attempt #138 to get work failed, and no other work to do.
             Waiting before retry.
+ Attempting to get work packet
- Connecting to assignment server
+ No appropriate work server was available; will try again in a bit.
+ Couldn't get work instructions.

Will test if the same behaviour occurs when using the 9.10 live cd next weekend.

[HSWilson (hugh-hswilson)]

Same problem here on an amd64 distro of 10.04..

no problems on i386 or smp installs, but i only get the FaH and fah6 processes on the amd64 one.

no Cores ever get up and running under amd64, and I've been watching it for some time now.

[robinl (robin4home)]

I was able to get a WU by manually editing /var/lib/origami/foldingathome/CPU1/client.cfg so that bigpackets=normal and adding the following to the end

[clienttype]
memory=4096
type=3

That manually sets the memory it reports (may or may not do anything) and most importantly sets the -advmethods flag on, which seems essential for smp WUs. However now I get

[10:57:17] Entering M.D.
[10:57:23] Finalizing output
[10:57:27] CoreStatus = 7F (127)
[10:57:27] Client-core communications error: ERROR 0x7f

and it just keeps downloading new cores.

[robinl (robin4home)]

Also the option -p smp while installing works because it currently doesn't do anything at all - the client is run in single thread mode (see bug #595447). To get the SMP client you must use -p amd64.

[Hugo (hugo-vandenberg)]

Please add one more to the total number of people.

First I installed (on a Ubutu 10.10 box) using sudo origami -t 92 -u Hugo1962
According to system monitor this resulted in 8 fahxxxx processes having being loaded on my 2 core amd X2.
However, only 2 out of 8 did work (CPU well above 90%) and 6 did nothing (CPU 0%) but take up memory (each more dan 20 MB)

After rereading the ubuntu origami support pages I found out about the -p amd64 option.
So after
sudo origami stop
sudo origami erase
sudo origami -t 92 -u Hugo1962 -p amd64
I found out about this bug because my log file now looks the same as the one on top of this thread.

Hopefully I can rejoin the folding community soon, because for now I decided to
sudo origami stop
sudo origami erase

[Ali Al Saif (ali-m-alsaif)]

I just installed Ubuntu 11.04 64 bit on my iMac.

I'm facing the exact same problem. When installing without specifying amd64, work units are gathered normally. But, when the option is used and after invoking origami status i get:

No work units have been assigned yet. Please check status again later.

I must say it's a little frustrating seeing its been over a year since this bug was introduced with no solution yet. I still have faith though

[Ali Al Saif (ali-m-alsaif)]

SOLUTION

The problem seems not to be with origami no Ubuntu but rather with the version of F@H that origami comes with

Try this out and hopefully it will work for you :
http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-1540733.html

PS: That solution is almost a year old. They were upgrading F@H from 6.02 to 6.29. The latest version as I'm writing this is 6.34 and it did not require me to install nscd as it was suggested in the solution above.

Start your engines ;)

[Bogdan Radu (bog-radu)]

A continuation to #9 (and to help people in case the linked site dies), tested on Ubuntu 11.10 64-bit.

Step 1: Download and install Origami as you usually would (you may or may not need ia32-libs also installed, YMMV)
Step 2: Stop Origami from running (sudo origami stop)
Step 3: Download the latest Linux F@H binary from their official site (http://folding.stanford.edu/English/Download)
Step 4: Move the fah6 executable into /var/lib/origami/foldingathome/CPU1/fah6 (overwriting the original)
Step 5: Change the permissions of the file as follows: sudo chmod 711 /var/lib/origami/foldingathome/CPU1/fah6
Step 6: Change the ownership of the file as follows: sudo chown origami:nogroup /var/lib/origami/foldingathome/CPU1/fah6
Step 7: Restart the Origami Client (sudo origami start)

From looking at my log file, it goes through a few update cycles of FahCore_a3 before finally settling down and processing away, so give it ~5-10 minutes before getting worried about it not working.

You can check the log file itself at /var/lib/origami/foldingathome/CPU1/FAHlog.txt