Here is my situation: I have a always-on low powered Ubuntu file-web-mythTV server that generally runs boinc when I'm not using the CPU intensively for some other task. I also have a number of other Linux & Windows computers in various parts of my house, basement, attic, living-room stereo rack, bedroom, etc. I tried setting up boinc on them but it really doesn't make sense, some of them are only on a couple of hours a week, if that, and by the time they would finish a work unit it would have been re-assigned or obsoleted. In the mean time BOINC projects can take a substantial amount of hard drive space and bandwidth getting the work units.

What I'd like to do is run boincmgr on my always-on server and somehow log in to that machine from my other machines and use their CPU power to run work units on that server. I've added my client machines' IP addresses to the server's "/etc/boinc-client/remote_hosts.cfg" file and set up a password on the server's /etc/boinc-client/gui_rpc_auth.cfg, so I can log in to the server from my clients using BOINC Manager, but a quick look at "top" on the client shows I'm not using that computer's processors to actually churn out work, I just seem to be able to control the boinc activity on my server.

Is there some way to do what I envision? If not, are there some projects that I could attach to that can complete discrete work units in very small chunks and upload them, say something an X2 Athlon could complete in a few hours?

Is there some way to do what I envision?

Not yet. A future addition for this is still being looked at. It's called BOINC Superhost. But as said, it's not available yet.

If not, are there some projects that I could attach to that can complete discrete work units in very small chunks and upload them, say something an X2 Athlon could complete in a few hours?

Or mere minutes? Yep.

Primegrid has a choice of applications to crunch with. Some taking hours, but the Twin prime search usually takes minutes.

Malariacontrol.net has a mixed bunch of small and long tasks.

Rosetta allows you to set the run time of the tasks yourself. Minimum 1 hour.

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Thanks for the prompt response, Ageless, I joined Rosetta and it seems to have me working on a unit that should only take 6.5 hours to complete. The report deadline is not for 10 days, so that should be no problem.

Superhost seems like an even better idea, but I won't hold my breath, it sounds like it would be hard to implement.

One other unrelated question, if I may, it doesn't seem like BOINC Manager gives the 'nix user much of an option about where to place BOINC data. In Windows that isn't a big deal since most people use 1 big partition, but in Linux I'm used to a fairly small "/" partition and assigning most of my drive to "/home" and I find BOINC will really gobble up the real estate if I don't limit it with BOINC manager. These days I am making much larger "/" partitions (40-50 GB), but most of my systems have smaller ones, 8-20 GB and I find I have to cramp BOINC's slice of the pie. Is there an easy way to tell BOINC to store its data files in some other place?

... I joined Rosetta and it seems to have me working on a unit that should only take 6.5 hours to complete. ...

Check out your Rosetta project settings, you can even adjust the target run time there. The application respects this setting quite well, it reduces or increases the number of simulations in order to end a result in time.

Especially interesting : even already running results can be influenced through this setting (after a project contact, that transfers the preferences to your host of course).

Is there an easy way to tell BOINC to store its data files in some other place?

As far as I know, if you use the install script, you just start it from where you want to install it to. I'm not a Linux person though. See http://boinc.berkeley.edu/wiki/Installing_on_Linux for more help.

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Thanks for the pointers, all. I found the preferences for Rosetta on the boincmgr Tasks tab, that will come in handy.

I always install BOINC through my distro's repository (generally Debian or Ubuntu, though I have boxes that run opensuse and Mandriva). The next time I'm on a machine that has a severely limited "/" directory I'll try moving the data directory and modifying the daemon script. Like you say, Dagorath, if it doesn't fly it shouldn't be too hard to undo. In any case, Rosetta doesn't seem nearly as hungry for large swarths of real estate as my previous project (and the one that I run on my server), climateprediction.net. Right now Rosetta is only using a paltry 112 MB, though I expect that will climb over time.