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 https://app.foldingathome.org.

Before setting up this container, please register for an account on https://app.foldingathome.org and retrieve the account token shown in the account settings. That value should be populated in the ACCOUNT_TOKEN env var.

Once the container is created with the token and the machine name, the instance should be listed in the web app and can be controlled there.

Afterwards, the ACCOUNT_TOKEN and the MACHINE_NAME vars can be removed as the instance will already be associated with the online account and the info stored in the config folder.

Migration from version 7.6¶

Version 8 of fah-client has been rewritten and has some breaking changes that we can't automatically mitigate in this container.

Unlike v7, v8 no longer bundles a local webgui. The web app is loaded from an online source and can only auto-detect instances that are running on the same machine (bare metal) as the browser. This is not possible in a docker container. Therefore, upgrading to v8 requires registering for an online account, retrieving the account token and setting it in the new env var ACCOUNT_TOKEN, along with a friendly name in MACHINE_NAME.

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://docs.nvidia.com/datacenter/cloud-native/container-toolkit/latest/install-guide.html We automatically add the necessary environment variable that will utilise all the features available on a GPU on the host. Once nvidia container toolkit 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.

Read-Only Operation¶

This image can be run with a read-only container filesystem. For details please read the docs.

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)¶

---
services:
  foldingathome:
    image: lscr.io/linuxserver/foldingathome:latest
    container_name: foldingathome
    environment:
      - PUID=1000
      - PGID=1000
      - TZ=Etc/UTC
      - ACCOUNT_TOKEN=
      - MACHINE_NAME=
      - CLI_ARGS= #optional
    volumes:
      - /path/to/foldingathome/data:/config
    ports:
      - 7396:7396 #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 \
  -e ACCOUNT_TOKEN= \
  -e MACHINE_NAME= \
  -e CLI_ARGS= `#optional` \
  -p 7396:7396 `#optional` \
  -v /path/to/foldingathome/data:/config \
  --restart unless-stopped \
  lscr.io/linuxserver/foldingathome:latest

Parameters¶

Containers 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 (redirects to https://app.foldingathome.org).

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.
`ACCOUNT_TOKEN=`	Register for an account on `https://app.foldingathome.org` and retrieve account token in settings. Required on first start.
`MACHINE_NAME=`	Assign a friendly name to this instance (no spaces). Required on first start.
`CLI_ARGS=`	Optionally pass additional cli arguments to `fah-client` on container start.

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__MYVAR=/run/secrets/mysecretvariable

Will set the environment variable MYVAR based on the contents of the /run/secrets/mysecretvariable 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 your_user as below:

id your_user

Example output:

uid=1000(your_user) gid=1000(your_user) groups=1000(your_user)

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

Updating Info¶

Most of our images are static, versioned, and require an image update and container recreation to update the app inside. With some exceptions (noted in the relevant readme.md), we do not recommend or support updating apps inside the container. Please consult the Application Setup section above to see if it is recommended for the image.

Below are the instructions for updating containers:

Via Docker Compose¶

Update images:

All images:
```
docker-compose pull
```
Single image:
```
docker-compose pull foldingathome
```

Update containers:

All containers:
```
docker-compose up -d
```
Single container:
```
docker-compose up -d foldingathome
```

You can also remove the old dangling images:
```
docker image prune
```

Via Docker Run¶

Update the image:

docker pull lscr.io/linuxserver/foldingathome:latest

Stop the running container:
```
docker stop foldingathome
```
Delete the container:
```
docker rm foldingathome
```
Recreate a new container with the same docker run parameters as instructed above (if mapped correctly to a host folder, your /config folder and settings will be preserved)
You can also remove the old dangling images:
```
docker image prune
```

Image Update Notifications - Diun (Docker Image Update Notifier)¶

Tip

We recommend Diun for update notifications. Other tools that automatically update containers unattended are not recommended or supported.

Building locally¶

If you want to make local modifications to these images for development purposes or just to customize the logic:

git clone https://github.com/linuxserver/docker-foldingathome.git
cd docker-foldingathome
docker build \
  --no-cache \
  --pull \
  -t lscr.io/linuxserver/foldingathome:latest .

The ARM variants can be built on x86_64 hardware and vice versa using lscr.io/linuxserver/qemu-static

docker run --rm --privileged lscr.io/linuxserver/qemu-static --reset

Once registered you can define the dockerfile to use with -f Dockerfile.aarch64.

Versions¶

10.08.24: - Add libexpat1 for Nvidia support.
25.06.24: - Breaking Changes - Please see the Application Setup section for more details. Restructure image for F@H v8.
15.06.24: - Rebase to Ubuntu Noble, add optional cli args.
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.

linuxserver/foldingathome¶