[VMware] NotFred's Folding w/USB stick

Guide: Running notfred's in VMWare Player, with a USB flash drive, that saves and restores.

Introduction: This guide may look technical or complicated. But it's really just a matter of downloading your personal ISO. Downloading and installing VMWare Player. Getting your USB flash drive info from the registry. And copying and pasting my text file, "fold64.vmx", and putting in your flash drive info. Then double click the "fold.vmx" and your virtual machine fires up and begins folding.

This guide is divided into two parts (A & B). Please make sure that you meet the requirements below.

Requirements:

• Windows XP
• Dual Core CPU
• USB Flash Drive

Part A:

Procedure:

1. Get a USB flash drive (+256MB), plug it in, and make sure Windows recognizes it.
2. We need to format it to FAT. Make sure all important info has been copied from the USB stick before doing so.
3. Go to "Start" -> "My Computer" -> and right click on the drive letter that has the USB stick. Choose "format" -> change FAT32 to FAT -> then click start. Don't use quick format. We want a thorough FAT format. Once finished formatting, close the window, and pull the stick out, and plug it back in. Once again, make sure Windows recognizes it.
4. Make a folder on the hard drive and call it whatever you like. We'll call it -> "notfreds"
5. Go to notfred's CD generator http://reilly.homeip.net/folding/cd.html
   (Make sure to put in your Name and Team(37726) and generate an ISO and download it to that folder.)
6. Download VMWare Player (currently 2.0.4) and install it. http://www.vmware.com/download/player/
7. In order for VMPlayer to recognize the USB stick, we need to get the VID (Vendor ID) and the PID (Product ID). This is why I said to make sure Windows recognized the stick. That info is now in the registry. Let's go grab it!!
8. Go to "Start" -> "Run" -> type in "regedit" and click ok. Now we are in the registry editor. Be careful not to change anything. We are only looking for the VID and PID info.
9. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\\SYSTEM\\CurrentControlSet\\Enu m\\USB\\
10. In the USB directory search for something similar to "Vid_0c76&Pid_0005". You may have several of them.
11. Click the + sign to navigate 1 lower to "like" 2841074133B01BE5 and check the description. Look for the one that has your USB flash drive's name.
    I found mine in the right pane under "LocationInformation". Above that it has the "HardwareID". Look for the VID and PID numbers.
    Mine says USB\\Vid_0c76&Pid_0005&Rev_0100 USB.etc,etc. So my VID is 0c76 and the PID is 0005.
    This is product specific, so yours will be different. Drop the 0 from the VID. It's now c76 and the PID is still 0005. These will need to be in hex format. So we prefix the VID&PID with 0x. My VID and PID are now 0xc76:0x0005. This is what will help your VMPlayer to recognize your specific flash drive.

(*)This method was posted by Scott Burish at http://outwardtruth.com/tutorials_pc...dongle_fix.htm
All credit and thanks goes to Scott for his USB detection in vmware.

Conclusion:

You have now downloaded the fold.iso. Downloaded and installed VMWare Player. Have a fresh formatted USB stick. And know your VID and PID.

You are now ready for part B. Creating the vmx text file and firing up your virtual machine!
Edited by JadeMiner - 6/18/08 at 1:03am

Part B:

Just copy the following text below and paste it into wordpad. Now save this as a text document in the notfreds folder and name it "fold64.vmx". Make sure it's text format and not .rtf or .doc. You may get a warning about it being text only and removing formatting. Click yes.

******************BEGIN COPY AND PASTE for fold64.vmx *************************
#!/usr/bin/vmplayer
config.version = "8"
virtualHW.version = "4"
usb.present = "TRUE"
usb.autoConnect.device0 = "0xc76:0x0005"
numvcpus = "2"
# Memory
memsize = "512"
ide1:0.present = "TRUE"
ide1:0.deviceType = "cdrom-image"
ide1:0.startConnected = "TRUE"
ide1:0.fileName = "fold.iso"
# Selected operating system for your virtual machine
guestOS = "other26xlinux-64"
# displayName is your own name for the virtual machine
displayName = "Making USB Work"
# First serial port, physical COM1 is not available
serial0.present = "FALSE"
# Optional second serial port, physical COM2 is not available
serial1.present = "FALSE"
# First parallel port, physical LPT1 is not available
parallel0.present = "FALSE"
# Settings for physical floppy drive
floppy0.present = "FALSE"
# Logging
logging = "TRUE"
# These settings decides interaction between your
# computer and the virtual machine
isolation.tools.hgfs.disable = "FALSE"
isolation.tools.dnd.disable = "FALSE"
isolation.tools.copy.enable = "FALSE"
isolation.tools.paste.enabled = "FALSE"
# First network interface card
ethernet0.present = "TRUE"
ethernet0.virtualDev = "e1000"
ethernet0.connectionType = "nat"
ethernet0.addressType = "generated"
ethernet0.generatedAddressOffset = "0"

******************END COPY AND PASTE for fold64.vmx *************************


Procedure:

1. Now we have the only TWO files needed for this to fire up the VMWare Player -> "fold.iso" and "fold64.vmx"
2. The last step is to modify the "fold64.vmx" file for your personal setup.
3. Go the the notfreds folder and right click on "fold64.vmx" and choose open with wordpad.

-> Change the line - usb.autoConnect.device0 = "0xc76:0x0005" to your VID and PID from Part A
Example: Your VID was d42 and the PID was 0001 --> usb.autoConnect.device0 = "0xd42:0x0001"

-> Change the line - displayName = "Making USB Work" to whatever you want between the quotes.
This will be the display name of your Player. Example - displayName = "My Folding Monster"

-> Now just click "file" -> "save". You now have your personally modified fold64.vmx

OK, LET'S FIRE THIS ENGINE UP!

-> Inside the notfreds folder just double click the fold64.vmx file, and your Virtual Machine will start up and download the Linux SMP from Stanford and begin folding.

Everything should fire up and work automatically. It will pause at "USB Hub Found"
and give an error message. That's fine, let it continue. It will get towards the end
and say "Waiting 10 seconds for any USB drives to start". This is where it SHOULD, detect the USB Drive. Watch the screen to make sure the USB it detects is your version.
Next it will say "Setting up instance 1" (that means everything is working perfectly!)
Ignore any error messages. When it says "Setting up instance 1". You are FOLDING!

To see the folding progress, just write down the IP address above "setting up instance 1"
Open your browser and put in that IP address. You'll see the "diskless" webpage. Scroll down and on the left side you'll see "Folding Log File". That will have all of your folding info. You can also click on "Unit Info". Be sure to press "refresh" each time to check the folding progress.

Thank you Mega_Option101 for helping with revisions to this guide.

And big thanks to notfred (Linux) and to Scott Burish (USB detection) for their contributions.

And a really big thanks to all of you that have dedicated yourselves to folding for OCN.

Good luck! Have fun folding in Linux, on a Virtual Machine
Edited by JadeMiner - 6/18/08 at 1:10am

lol! I leave one word out "in". And they jump all over me. I'll tell ya...one of these days...

Thanks. I appreciate the proof reading. Every time I read it, I just added the word "in" - IN my head.

Oh brudder. A spell checker. A proof reader. And a design artist! This was supposed to be a guide to help people get set up quickly! Don't be expecting a lot of guides from me in the future.

I just hope it helps people get set up quickly. It's really fun actually. Just double click and you are off to the races, folding in Linux.

*double and triple checks all spelling before I post this*
Edited by JadeMiner - 6/13/08 at 7:33pm