Bronish

babysitter python script
updated version by Koppa315:
It will automatically scan all the slots and pause+unpause slots that are "Waiting On: WS Assignment" and have too high "Next Attempt"
Need to set host(s) and password(only if you use a password)
If you find an issue with it, let me know via message
 
Looks like this when running:

 
It access the clients API in a similar(much simpler) way that FAHControl or HFM.NET do
It won't restart slots that are still running and trying to download a new WU at the same time.
 
original version(might not work anymore):
 
 

Introduction
This is an extension of the already existing guide written by @Metallus97 for using cloud GPUs to run folding applications. I will be referring to some steps in that guide, so it will probably be good to have it open in an other tab. That guide shows you how to set up Folding at Home for a normal google cloud instance for 1.7MPPD+ for free for almost two weeks. In this guide I will be showing you how to set up Folding at Home to run on "preemptible" google cloud instances for a little under half the cost with little/no PPD penalty, that gives us almost a month of GPU time at around 1.7MPPD for free! These instances also last at the very most 24 hours before they get shutdown, depending on time of day I have had instances up for a range between 1 and 10 hours so it required some extra setup to do constant, almost uninterrupted folding using this instance type (Don't worry about that though, I have made a Terraform project to to almost ALL of the setup for you!).
 
Lets get started!
1. Pick where you want to run your folding vms. Using this calculator, change the machine class to "Preemptible" and "Machine type" to "n1-standard-2" or whichever has at least one core per GPU that you want to have. Add the GPUs that you want and click add to estimate. Different regions have different costs so you can click "edit" to test which regions you will get the best bang for your buck, and/or which are the best places to run these vms because they are near you. I have chosen what I found to be the cheapest region to use, so if you just want to just get started you can ignore this step, and steps 8 and 9.
 
2. Next off, you will need to follow steps 1.1-1.5 on @Metallus97's guide.
3. Then, download and install Terraform as that is what we will be using to automatically set up almost everything you will need!
4. Download and unzip this file.
5. Open `terraform.tfvars` in a text editor.
6. in the `terraform.tfvars` file you should:
    - Fill in remote_access_ip and remote_access_password if you want to access BOINC or F@H Remotely(If you leave the password blank, Terraform will generate a password for you). 
    - Fill in your F@H username, passkey, and team if you want to use Folding at Home
    - Choose how many of each instance type you want to be running (F@H exclusive, BOINC exclusive, and both F@H and BOINC)
7. If you want, in `terraform.tfvars` you can also set the machine type, GPU type and count to what you chose before, or leave the defaults for a 1 GPU Tesla P100 instance for a single instance of the best $/PPD/Day configuration for F@H. (More GPUs as long as you keep 1 core per GPU will yeild more PPD and the same bang for buck, but give you less time. The default config gives you almost a month!).
 
You can ignore these steps if you didn't want to do the work of choosing regions yourself, the project is configured to use what I found to be the cheapest regions by default.
10. Open your project dashboard and add `project=` in `terraform.tfvars` to the  "Project ID" in your dashboard. e.g `project="my_project_id"`.
11. Go to the functions and scheduler web pages and wait for them to initialise, when asked to set a region for the scheduler pick what you chose for the app engine (or if you are going with the defaults, select "us-west2".
12. Go to the service accounts page and add a service account for terraform and add these rolls:
Cloud Functions Developer Cloud Scheduler Admin Compute Admin Service Account User Pub/Sub Editor Storage Admin Then create and download the account key.
13. Rename the downloaded .json file to "credentials.json" and move it into the `resources/` folder in the unzipped project folder.
14. Open the project folder in a terminal, and run:
`terraform init`
$ terraform init Initializing the backend... Initializing provider plugins... - Checking for available provider plugins... - Downloading plugin for provider "archive" (hashicorp/archive) 1.3.0... - Downloading plugin for provider "random" (hashicorp/random) 2.2.1... - Downloading plugin for provider "google" (hashicorp/google) 3.16.0... Terraform has been successfully initialized! You may now begin working with Terraform. Try running "terraform plan" to see any changes that are required for your infrastructure. All Terraform commands should now work. If you ever set or change modules or backend configuration for Terraform, rerun this command to reinitialize your working directory. If you forget, other commands will detect it and remind you to do so if necessary. Then `terraform apply`
$ terraform apply data.archive_file.start_vm_function_source: Refreshing state... An execution plan has been generated and is shown below. Resource actions are indicated with the following symbols: + create Terraform will perform the following actions: ...... Plan: 10 to add, 0 to change, 0 to destroy. Do you want to perform these actions? Terraform will perform the actions described above. Only 'yes' will be accepted to approve. Enter a value: and enter "yes".
 
15. Add your instance as a remote client (if you configured an access IP and password) (using port 36331 for F@H) and wait for it to come up. You might need to wait a while for the instance to finish installing the Nvidia drivers and F@H client and/or BOINC client. You can keep tabs on the installation progress by running:
tail -n 100 -f /var/log/cloud-init-output.log on the instance over SSH (see how below).
 
 
Notes
You can SSH (remote terminal) into the instance by clicking this on this page:
 
When you are finished (probably when you have run out of free credit), open the project folder in a terminal again and run:
terraform destroy  
EDIT:
I have been dealing with strange FAHCore interruptions (code 102) on my GCE instances (on GPU units). After looking through the system logs and resource usage it turns out that F@H was chewing up all available memory and then getting OOM killed. If you are dealing with this, try changing the machine type to `n1-standard-2`. After waiting to see stability I may change the default machine type to this even though it costs a bit more (but negligible compared to the GPU costs anyway).
 
EDIT2:
I should also note, this setup doesn't do anything special to for BOINC to handle the instances starting and stopped. I couldn't find much online and what I did find suggests that BOINC already handles this fine. Let me know if you have any problems or know otherwise.

The 6 Editors Rig is rippin'
 

LTT Folding Team's Emergency Response to Covid-19
 
Starts March, 27th (00:00 GMT)
Ends April, 9th (23:59 BST)
 
 
Sign up for the event here:
Sign ups will close March 26th, 23:30 (GMT)!
REGISTRATION IS NOW CLOSED
Thank you to all who have joined and are folding.
If you have missed the deadline to register for the event you can still fold for the LTT team (# 223518) and help fight Covid-19!
 
 
 
If you are unsure on how to fill in the form ask on the thread below. If you make a mistake filling out the form please use the thread linked below.
https://linustechtips.com/main/topic/1167867-covid-event-entry-corrections
 
 
Folding@home team LTT id#: 223518
(This event is only for folding for team LTT you will not qualify if you are folding independent or for another team, sorry.)
 
This event will NOT be eligible for F@H event badges.
 
Please read the whole of this post before asking any questions and use the links provided at the end for help and support!
 
If anyone is willing to help with data handling please PM me ASAP!
 
Please follow this thread to keep up to date!
 
Minimum Participation Requirements For Prizes
10 Days with activity* & 500,000 Points
(*activity is defined as completing at least 1WU for the 24 hour period)
This is our highest yet but should be possible for most people seeing as most modern GPUs and CPUs can hit this. These must be met DURING the event. Points produced before the start date do not count!
 
Prizes!!!
(possibly more to come)
Community donated prizes:
17x random Steam keys - Donated by @GOTSpectrum
 
31x random Steam Keys - Donated by @desert1701
 
20x random Steam keys - Donated by @Jaom
 
10x random Steam Keys - donated by @HrutkayMods
 
10x Steam keys for 'Broken Lines' - Donated by the games publisher Super.com
 
10x Steam keys for 'Biped' - Donated by the games publisher META Publishing
 
23x random Steam Keys - Donated by @ShirleyNeko
 
1x uplay key - Donated by @ShirleyNeko
 
23x random Steam Keys - Donated by @Jackz
 
70x random Steam keys - donated by @Cbwgoose
 
7x random Steam keys - Donated by @jakkuh_t
 
13x random Steam keys - Donated by @DocDv
 
x3 random Steam Keys - Donated by @MovvarK
 
25x random Steam keys - Community pool of keys
Draw - All Ranks
 
50USD Steam Gift Card - Donated by @Jawa_Juice
Draw - Ranks 1-49
 
3x 25USD Steam Gift Cards - Donated by @it4hoomanz
Draw Ranks 50-99, 100-149, 150-199
 
1x Humble Bundle Month - Donated by @Rbleattler
Draw Ranks 200-399
 
2x 50USD Steam gift Card - Donated by @Zberg
Draw Ranks - 1-499, 500-1000
 
50USD Steam key - Donated by @Zberg
Rank(undisclosed)*
 
*The rank is predetermined but remaining undisclosed to stop people from trying to target a certain rank. 
 
 
With the advent of COVID-19 WUs we have decided to launch an emergency response of our own. It's time to gear up our clocks and push again. For once more, united we stand, core to core, shoulder to shoulder. Not simply for glory,  but to take the fight to COVID-19. We will not sit by with idle GPUs. We will not go gently into that good night. We will take up arms for all of mankind. This is the oath we will all take to ourselves by signing up here.
We will be folding for 14 days, the recommended isolation period for those with suspected COVID-19.
 
 
MINI GIVEAWAY! (checked if okay with @leadeater)
I have created a Gleam.io giveaway to entice people to share the Folding Event on twitter!
 
5x random Steam Keys - Donated by @GOTSpectrum
 
This giveaway is not endorsed or affiliated with LMG in anyway and it 100% run by me.
 
https://gleam.io/competitions/SwdyW-steam-key-giveaway
 
Please feel free to enter!!!!
 
Folding@home is a network of volunteer computers distributed around the world that aims to perform biomedical research with the single intent of helping to further understand and develop cures for a range of diseases such as; Alzheimer's, cancer, and Parkinson's. The exact research that is done is simulating the 'folding' of proteins in the body, this is important because the function of a protein id directly related to its physical shape. And this, when the protein is created in the body it needs to reshuffle its shape to get into the correct structure to perform its task. Many illnesses can be linked to faulty proteins in the body such as many cancers and neurological issues, along with a wide number of other general health concerns. This network if compared with the TOP500 list of supercomputers would fall into 2nd, Folding@home is one of the world's fastest computing systems, with a speed of approximately 98.7petaFLOPS. It would be 50% faster than the fastest x86 computer currently listed on the top500. 
 
COVID-19
But this is not why we are here, we are here to join the legion of other folders from around the globe who have taken up the fight against COVID-19.
 
Coronaviruses are a large family of viruses that are common across the world.  These viruses can cause mild symptoms ranging from a fever and cough to more serious conditions such as severe pneumonia, shortness of breath and breathing difficulties. 
In December 2019, a new strain of coronavirus (COVID-19) was first identified in Wuhan City, China.  This virus has now spread to other countries.  The UK Chief Medical Officers have declared the risk to the public to be moderate. But the risk to individuals remains low.
 
 
PASSKEYS! (they're really important)
 
Don't forget to get yourself a passkey from the link below to ensure that you hit the points requirement, the passkey is a feature that was added a while ago to the Folding Client that helps to authenticate each user on the network, an added bonus of this is the fact that it allows you to qualify for QRB(Quick Return Bonus) Points, QRBs are extra points you earn for submitting work units more quickly, such as if you have faster hardware or let the client fold full time, rather than on idle. QRB credit is awarded after 10 WUs have been submitted. You can get your passkey from the link below.
https://apps.foldingathome.org/getpasskey
 
This is just a PSA for the new guys here, the folding team is a small close knit community, so here's a few things I'd like you all to keep in mind. It doesn't hurt to say thank you, if someone has genuinely helped you out don't forget to drop a reaction on their posts, help others where ever you can and finally we are a team first and always. 
 
Check your stats out here! Bare in mind it can take some time for your first WUs to appear so leave it a day or two.
https://folding.extremeoverclocking.com/search.php
 
Please follow the guides below to help with set-up and troubleshooting. These are mostly older guides but are still quite useful for most things, we are working on an improved guide and are hoping to have it ready for prime time withing the next month but in meantime these will have to do. Big Thanks to @Metallus97 for giving me a hand with the FAQ for the event and taking some of the load from me. 
 
Read the Event blog to keep up to date With any announcements!!!