Folding At Home: Install/Config

With the recent outbreak of COVID-19, Folding@Home is now sending out work units to help understand and combat this new virus. It is easy to install, configure, and run in both GUI and CLI Linux installs. The only issue I’ve seen is that I need to set it to run on idle only when playing games like ESO or framerates will drop. Also note that these instructions do not include running simulations on the graphics card; I have not yet figured out how to do that with an AMD card.

The following instructions can be followed to install and run the client — instructions are based on Fedora/CentOS but it can give you an idea how to run it on your own distro.

Terminal: list colors

If you want to change the color of parts of your prompt, you can using the following commands and color values inside the prompt definition.

Flatpak: sandbox permissions

If you need to grant a flatpak application access to parts of your filesystem, you can override the sandbox permissions using the following command:

sudo flatpak override <package_name_here> --filesystem=<path_here>

RTL8723DE WiFi Driver install

The Realtek 8723DE Wifi driver is not supported natively in the Linux kernel. The Bluetooth functionality for this chipset is supported but for some reason it does not work on newer kernels. But here are the instructions to get the WiFi working.

Grub – Emergency Boot

If Grub fails to boot your operating system, you can take steps to find and boot your system then reinstall grub to fix the problem. The following example shows you how to use commands in the emergency grub command line to find your operating system and boot it. Lines that start with the comment character ‘//’ is a description of what the command is doing.

Problems booting Linux on HP G7 laptops

There is a major problem running Linux on HP laptops; during the boot process, the screen will go black and never display anything. This issue is due to the LCD backlighting.

You can fix the issue by appending the text

acpi_osi=Linux acpi_backlight=vendor

to the linux boot line. You can do this manually in the Grub menu by editing the commands before booting; you highlight the boot entry and press either the “e” key or the “tab” key, depending on the version of Grub you are running.

Reinstalling Grub

When Microsoft Windows is reinstalled on a multiboot computer, it will overwrite the MBR wiping out the existing Grub install. To reinstall Grub do the following:

1. Boot to the most recent ArchLinux install CD and select the correct architecture (on dual ISOs).
2. Mount your existing ArchLinux install on /mnt: mount /dev/sda# /mnt
3. If necessary, mount your boot partition: mount /dev/sda# /mnt/boot
4. Reinstall grub: grub-install –root-directory=/mnt /dev/sda

Older instructions

To install the grub bootloader from a LiveCD:

• Mount the root filesystem
  • mkdir /mnt/root
  • mount -t ext2 /dev/?da? /mnt/root
• Populate the dev and proc filesystems
  • mount -o bind /dev /mnt/root/dev
  • mount -t proc none /mnt/root/proc
• Change to the mounted root filesystem
  • chroot /mnt/root
• Install grub in MBR
  • grub
  • find /boot/grub/stage1
  • root (hd0,0) # Use the info from the above find command
  • setup (hd0) # Use the info from the above find command
  • quit
• Reboot!