docker-documentation/images/docker-foldingathome.md

title
foldingathome

linuxserver/foldingathome

Folding@home is a distributed computing project for simulating protein dynamics, including the process of protein folding and the movements of proteins implicated in a variety of diseases. It brings together citizen scientists who volunteer to run simulations of protein dynamics on their personal computers. Insights from this data are helping scientists to better understand biology, and providing new opportunities for developing therapeutics.

Supported Architectures

We utilise the docker manifest for multi-platform awareness. More information is available from docker here and our announcement here.

Simply pulling lscr.io/linuxserver/foldingathome:latest should retrieve the correct image for your arch, but you can also pull specific arch images via tags.

The architectures supported by this image are:

Architecture	Available	Tag
x86-64	✅	amd64-<version tag>
arm64	✅	arm64v8-<version tag>
armhf	❌

Application Setup

This image sets up the Folding@home client. The interface is available at http://your-ip:7396.

The built-in webserver provides very basic control (ie. GPUs are only active when set to Medium or higher). For more fine grained control of individual devices, you can use the FAHControl app on a different device and connect remotely via port 36330 (no password).

There are a couple of minor issues with the webgui:

• If you get an "ERR_EMPTY_RESPONSE" error when trying to access via IP, it's most likely due to a clash of cookies/cache. Try opening in an incgnito window.
• If you're getting a constant refresh of the window but no display of info, try a force refresh via shft-F5 or ctrl-F5.

GPU Hardware Acceleration

Nvidia

Hardware acceleration users for Nvidia will need to install the container runtime provided by Nvidia on their host, instructions can be found here: https://github.com/NVIDIA/nvidia-docker We automatically add the necessary environment variable that will utilise all the features available on a GPU on the host. Once nvidia-docker is installed on your host you will need to re/create the docker container with the nvidia container runtime --runtime=nvidia and add an environment variable -e NVIDIA_VISIBLE_DEVICES=all (can also be set to a specific gpu's UUID, this can be discovered by running nvidia-smi --query-gpu=gpu_name,gpu_uuid --format=csv ). NVIDIA automatically mounts the GPU and drivers from your host into the foldingathome docker container.

Usage

To help you get started creating a container from this image you can either use docker-compose or the docker cli.

docker-compose (recommended, click here for more info)

---
version: "2.1"
services:
  foldingathome:
    image: lscr.io/linuxserver/foldingathome:latest
    container_name: foldingathome
    environment:
      - PUID=1000
      - PGID=1000
      - TZ=Etc/UTC
    volumes:
      - /path/to/data:/config
    ports:
      - 7396:7396
      - 36330:36330 #optional
    restart: unless-stopped

docker cli (click here for more info)

docker run -d \
  --name=foldingathome \
  -e PUID=1000 \
  -e PGID=1000 \
  -e TZ=Etc/UTC \
  -p 7396:7396 \
  -p 36330:36330 `#optional` \
  -v /path/to/data:/config \
  --restart unless-stopped \
  lscr.io/linuxserver/foldingathome:latest

Parameters

Docker images are configured using parameters passed at runtime (such as those above). These parameters are separated by a colon and indicate <external>:<internal> respectively. For example, -p 8080:80 would expose port 80 from inside the container to be accessible from the host's IP on port 8080 outside the container.

Ports (-p)

Parameter	Function
7396	Folding@home web gui.
36330	Optional port for connecting remotely via FAHControl app (no password).

Environment Variables (-e)

Env	Function
PUID=1000	for UserID - see below for explanation
PGID=1000	for GroupID - see below for explanation
TZ=Etc/UTC	specify a timezone to use, see this list.

Volume Mappings (-v)

Volume	Function
/config	Where Folding@home should store its database and config.

Miscellaneous Options

Parameter	Function

Environment variables from files (Docker secrets)

You can set any environment variable from a file by using a special prepend FILE__.

As an example:

-e FILE__PASSWORD=/run/secrets/mysecretpassword

Will set the environment variable PASSWORD based on the contents of the /run/secrets/mysecretpassword file.

Umask for running applications

For all of our images we provide the ability to override the default umask settings for services started within the containers using the optional -e UMASK=022 setting. Keep in mind umask is not chmod it subtracts from permissions based on it's value it does not add. Please read up here before asking for support.

User / Group Identifiers

When using volumes (-v flags), permissions issues can arise between the host OS and the container, we avoid this issue by allowing you to specify the user PUID and group PGID.

Ensure any volume directories on the host are owned by the same user you specify and any permissions issues will vanish like magic.

In this instance PUID=1000 and PGID=1000, to find yours use id user as below:

  $ id username
    uid=1000(dockeruser) gid=1000(dockergroup) groups=1000(dockergroup)

Docker Mods

We publish various Docker Mods to enable additional functionality within the containers. The list of Mods available for this image (if any) as well as universal mods that can be applied to any one of our images can be accessed via the dynamic badges above.

Support Info

• Shell access whilst the container is running:
  • docker exec -it foldingathome /bin/bash
• To monitor the logs of the container in realtime:
  • docker logs -f foldingathome
• Container version number
  • docker inspect -f '{{ index .Config.Labels "build_version" }}' foldingathome
• Image version number
  • docker inspect -f '{{ index .Config.Labels "build_version" }}' lscr.io/linuxserver/foldingathome:latest

Versions

• 14.12.22: - Rebase to Ubuntu Jammy, migrate to s6v3.
• 15.01.22: - Rebase to Ubuntu Focal. Add arm64v8 builds (cpu only). Increase verbosity about gpu driver permission settings.
• 09.01.21: - Add nvidia.icd.
• 14.04.20: - Add Folding@home donation links.
• 20.03.20: - Initial release.