I am running Ubuntu Linux and Windows Vista dual boot. I installed Boinc on Windows and on Ubuntu. Is there a way to get the linux version to use the same data directory that my windows boinc uses? Right now I have separate work units to work on for each OS.

The reason I would like to get Linux to use the Windows partition and project folder is 1: Linux can see the files while Windows cannot see Linux partition. 2: Windows partition is much larger and can handle it.

Thanks,
Stoney

BTW I am very Linux dumb so please be easy on me. Very new to Linux.

No, this isn't possible.

BOINC makes a hostID decided on CPU and Operating System. Windows is not equal to Linux, thus you have two separate hostIDs, one for each operating system, even though it is the same computer.

Yet another problem is, that any work downloaded by a hostID is registered to that hostID. This means that that hostID must upload the work as well. Not necessarily crunch it, but the only way to get around that is by moving the complete BOINC directory with all sub-directories between machines of the same operating system... so it still wouldn't work, as Windows is not equal to Linux.

So no, not possible. Just switch between OSes in time for the various deadlines.

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Additionally, there is no guarantee the intermediate files generated by the application will be read correctly by the other platform.

Your only solution would be running BOINC inside a virtual machine. That way BOINC would always run under the same OS, regardless of which OS you are using.

Bummer. Guess whenever I use Linux I won't be able to run BOINC. Don't use it very much so not worth having its own work units.

And even added to all that, not all projects have and a Windows application and a Linux application. Most do, but just not all.

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Bummer. Guess whenever I use Linux I won't be able to run BOINC. Don't use it very much so not worth having its own work units.

What Nicolas refers to is known as 'Homogeneous Redundancy'. While work like ABC on any platform will have the identical result, other sciences do not produce identical results hence a number of projects make use HR distributions so results of the same OS are comparable. Some projects do this at OS level, others go as far as CPU families.

Well, not quite. Even projects not using homogeneous redundancy could have different *intermediate* files, ie. checkpoints. For example, I'm absolutely sure Renderfarm@Home checkpoints aren't compatible between computers with different endianness (that is, between Intel and PPC processors), so you can't transfer mid-running workunits to another computer or share data. Yet the output files are the same.

Talking about it here, what if:

I would point Wine to the BOINC directory under Windows, tell it to run BOINC there. Would that work, or would that still make a new hostID? And additionally, would it need to be a FAT32 directory, or can Wine write to an NTFS directory?

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Talking about it here, what if:

I would point Wine to the BOINC directory under Windows, tell it to run BOINC there. Would that work, or would that still make a new hostID? And additionally, would it need to be a FAT32 directory, or can Wine write to an NTFS directory?

According to wine appdb
( http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=application&iId=3910 )
Boinc 5.8.8 has been tested in Feb 2007. There aren't many details though, such as whether or not he successfully processed workunits. I suggest we try to run it independently at first, then consider the wisdom of sharing the work with real windows later. I would suggest that to share work, adding a new partition with the fat32 file system would be safer.

I would like to hear feedback on this. If the idea is not likely to be detrimental to projects, I may try it, probably with extremelab or test projects at first. I will probably not try sharing workloads with real Windows, but might run some of the windows-only projects with it. Each application would need to be independently tested, as each depend on wine for all OS calls.

I experimented with Boinc under wine. I did get the manager working. It apparently saw the client that was already active. It showed all the messages and projects, and might have been able to control them also.

I do NOT recommend anyone try it the way I did, unless your system is well backed up. I messed up some configuration settings, in Linux, not just in wine, but fortunately only until I rebooted. Nevertheless, here are my notes on what I did:

An experiment in running Boinc windows client with Linux, using WINE.

* Used IE 6.0 to fetch Boinc; the download page offered me version 5.10.20

-- got stuck because it needs ie installed. I use ie4linux, which hides it.

Ran the ies4linux installer, using the .wine directory
-- I do not recommend this. I had major problems, which rebooting may have alleviated.

Unable to save the downloaded installer in a known location then find it again.

* Opened the program (saving to temp), and the install started
chose single-user installation (walk before we run)
-- hey, later I might give each of them one cpu
Chose no default screensaver, and no auto-start

It came up in simple view, which I've never seen before.
All views worked. It has my projects all listed!

This needs to be tested on a machine with no Boinc installed, I think.

Apparently it sees the Linux Boinc client installed. Probably I could view and update things without creating a problem, but have not tested the client nor any apps.

Conclusions: The network design probably could allow Win manager to control Linux client, or vice versa, if it could be set up. Possibly the remote management feature could be used to set up two independent hosts on the same physical machine. I would suggest investigating how to set up independent Boinc accounts using a VM first, find procedural problems and degree of slowdown in that environment, then maybe think about using wine again.

I just tested it with Wine. Pointed Wine Configuration to the BOINC Test directory where I test my self-compiled BOINC versions, naming it D:\
That BOINC is only attached to BOINC Alpha, so I can't mess up too much.

I opened a terminal window, told it to just do Wine d:\boincmgr.exe
Lots of error messages came by. I was missing all Dynamic Linked Libraries that BOINC depends upon.

So I tried to add them in the Wine Configuration editor. Now, the BOINC default DLL files are in the BOINc directory, so all I have to do is point to them. That's boinc.dll, libcurl.dll, libeay32.dll, ssleay32.dll, zlib1.dll

That diminished the amount of errors. Now it couldn't find msvcr80.dll, msvcp80.dll, msvcm80.dll .. So I now rebooted to Windows to find all of them and copy them into the test directory.

I'll continue this test tomorrow. :-)

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That diminished the amount of errors. Now it couldn't find msvcr80.dll, msvcp80.dll, msvcm80.dll .. So I now rebooted to Windows to find all of them and copy them into the test directory.

Wine doesn't include those?! It's the C++ standard library (vcr=visual C runtime), I would have expected Wine needed its own custom msvcrt... Let us know if the ones taken from Windows actually work.

Wine doesn't include those?!

You'd think it did, but finding things through Wine is difficult as it only reacts to executables. So searching for a DLL file on the emulated C:\Windows drive is a no-go. Or at least, I couldn't do it. Which says as much as nothing as I am only a beginner. ;)

But I've got all the DLLs it last needed in the Test directory. As said, I'll continue testing tonight. It'll probably want yet another DLL at that time. ;-)

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