Does Boinc have a screensaver option for Cinnamon Ubuntu 12.04?

I tried to find some way of activating the screensaver, but could find nothing obvious. Does the screensaver only exist for Windows?

There's an X11 screen saver for the Unix variations.
From screensaver_x11.cpp:

// This is a XScreenSaver compatible BOINC screensaver for Unix/X11.
//
// To use this screensaver, please add the following to the 'programs'
// preference in your .xscreensaver file:
//
// GL: boincscr -root \n\
//
// If your BOINC directory differs from /var/lib/boinc, you can use
// the -boinc_dir command line argument.
//
// When run, this screensaver connects to the BOINC client via RPC, asks for
// graphics providing tasks and starts a random graphics application. The window
// created by the graphics appliacation is then searched for using X11 window
// properties, such as "WM_COMMAND". Not every graphics application seems to
// support this, but this method has been successfully tested with Einstein@Home
// and climateprediction.net. When the graphics application window
// has been found, it will be embedded into the XScreenSaver-provided
// fullscreen-window, the root window, the preview window or a newly created
// window, depending on the environment, using the XEMBED method.

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It looks like I found my answer.

There is currently no screensaver for Linux.

http://boinc.berkeley.edu/wiki/BOINC_screensaver


Oh well. At least I have bouncing cows with xscreensaver.

Well, that's wrong. Probably right in 2008 when that page was written, but wrong in that context. There is an X11 screen saver for the Unix derivations, including for Linux. Did you follow the link I gave you, did you read the text I posted from the link I gave you, or what?

The Wiki page now says exactly the same as I gave you in my answer. The wonders of editing.

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Did you follow the link I gave you, did you read the text I posted from the link I gave you, or what?

Yes, I read what you posted, but I couldn't get it to work because I couldn't find any .xscreensaver file in my file system.

Is there an unspoken assumption here? Keep in mind that I've been using Linux for less than a week and am still on the learning curve.

This makes more sense now. In order to find and edit the file I needed to precede the command with "sudo". None of the example pages for "find file" mentioned that fact.

Anyway, this is what I did in sequence in Terminal:

1. To find the file, I typed

sudo find -name '.xscreensaver'

2. To edit the file, I typed

sudo gedit ./.xscreensaver

. (Because that's where the file is located.)
3. A gedit window appeared, at which point I scrolled down until I saw
programs: and addded -GL: boincscr -root \n\ to the list. I noticed that the list of GL lines were preceded by a dash, so I made sure the GL line I added had the same preceding dash.
4. I saved and closed the file and started the screensaver gui. I could see boincscr in the list of screensavers, but I got the error: "boincscr" could not be found.
5. I took "you can use the -boinc_dir command line argument" literally and changed -root to -boinc_dir.
6. Using both argument variations, I restarted the screensaver daemon through the screensaver gui and ran

sudo apt-get update

in case that would make any difference.

So I'm a little bit further along now but have made no true progress.

If this helps, Synaptic says I have the following boinc components installed:

* boinc
* boinc-manager
* boinc-client
* boinc-cgi-stripchart
* boinc-nvidia-cuda

Should I have another boinc component installed for this to work?

The procedure that you posted above has given me some threads to follow, but it hasn't succeeded yet.

I did a search for "boincscr not installed" and "boincscr not found" and didn't get anywhere.

So I tried to see if there was a boincscr file anywhere on my system:

sudo find -name 'boincscr'

sudo find -name 'boinc.scr'

sudo find -name 'boinc-screensaver'

No luck with any of them.

I'm a Windows person, my knowledge of Linux lies somewhere between being able to spell it correctly and knowing what the ldd command does.

I knew that BOINC has a screen saver for Linux, as I chat with the developers on a regular basis, and they told me. I also know that it's an external screen saver, I think it's a port over of the xscreensaver and made specifically for BOINC, but done so by a volunteer developer.

Other than the help in the source code file, I can't be of help in this matter. You need a Linux guru for that, and those that we had are now temporarily off line (Kath) and incognito (Trog Dog). Sorry, but I know my limitations.

Perhaps that you can check through the Xscreensaver FAQ first, or otherwise contact Nils Brause, who made th BOINC Xscreensaver. You can find contact information here. Or ask him to come explain here, so we have some form of documentation for it.

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Thank you for the follow up. I'll definitely follow those threads and post any usable results on this page -- or at least document what I did and why it didn't work.