I have a 4-core, 64-bit Celeron machine running Gentoo with SELinux. It has plenty of spare time but no GUI, and I'd like to run a BOINC client on it. I'd use boincmgr on another machine when necessary.

Is a command-line client still available? And is this idea sensible anyway?

With Debian/Ubuntu flavours of Linux you would just install the boinc-client package. The manager is usually in the boinc-manager package. I have a bunch of Raspberry Pi’s that are all headless so that’s how I installed them. Just remember to setup gui_rpc_auth.cfg and remote_hosts.cfg so another manager or BOINCtasks can access it. There is also boinctui that runs from the command line.

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MarkJ

Hello Mark,

I should have thought of this myself, but it took your help to get me on the right track. All I had to do was to set USE="-X" on the "emerge boinc" command and it all went like a charm (that's how Gentoo installs only the command-line version; there isn't a separate package). I've used remote access before, so I knew about gui_rpc_auth.cfg, but I can't find a remote_hosts.cfg anywhere on the system. Still, it seems to be working.

Many thanks for the hint.

In Debian there is a boinc meta package that has both boinc-client and boinc-manager. I expect it installed both but no matter you don't have to use the manager that's on the machine if it installed it.

Again in Debian (I haven't used Gentoo sorry) the remote_hosts.cfg and the gui_rpc_auth.cfg files live in the boinc data folder (\var\lib\boinc-client). The remote_hosts.cfg lists the other computers that are allowed to control your boinc-client. It contains a list of names or IP addresses, each one on a separate line, so you can restrict access.

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MarkJ

Interesting. It seems that, in Gentoo, remote access either is allowed or is not; I can't see an equivalent of Debian's remote_hosts.cfg, neither in the client nor in the full GUI version. This is a surprise, as Gentoo prides itself on flexibility and customisability. Perhaps I should raise a feature request some time.

Although Gentoo does use meta-packages elsewhere, boinc doesn't have one; if you specify USE=-X to the package manager you get just the CLI client, or if you say USE=X you get the full package. By saying USE=-X I got only six packages: four perl modules, a package to convert docbook to man and info, and the boinc client itself. Nothing else is present. Very economical.

Thanks again Mark. I'm a happy bunny today.

I can't see an equivalent of Debian's remote_hosts.cfg ...

remote_hosts.cfg is an optional file that you would create yourself, if needed. It is part of the generic BOINC file-set, and not limited to any one distribution or even operating system.

Details are in Controlling BOINC remotely: you also need to ensure that the data traffic (requests and replies) doesn't fall foul of any generic security traps like firewalls.

SekeRob's <allow_remote_gui_rpc> is a perfectly acceptably alternative route, provided you can trust everybody with access to your local LAN.

I wanted to run some BOINC project on my mostly idle router Turris Omnia (CPU: Marvell Armada 385, dual-core 1.6 GHz; open source Turris OS, based on OpenWrt - for more see https://doc.turris.cz/doc/_media/omnia/omnia_datasheet_1gb_rgb.pdf).

I installed Ubuntu Xenial in container and BOINC there. SFSG.

Because I encountered repeated errors "Authorization failure: -155" issuing many boinccmd
commands, I removed BOINC installation from the container and reinstalled it. But this error persisted even after purging and reinstalling BOINC!

In last attempt first boinccmd was OK, but next ended again with the same error - even though this command was OK,

boinccmd --lookup_account https://lhcathome.cern.ch/lhcathome/ `mail` `password`

following commands were not:

boinccmd --project_attach https://lhcathome.cern.ch/lhcathome/ `account`
Authorization failure: -155
boinccmd --get_state
Authorization failure: -155

Could anybody please advice?