Some of my machines are running behind a proxy and McAfee Web Gateway (MAWG). Configuration of the proxy is no problem, and BOINC generally works. However, whenever a project needs to download a new executable or similar file, I get unending failures.

This is because MAWG intervenes. When using a Web browser, whenever I need to download an executable (including .bat, Linux .sh files, etc.), MAWG intervenes and displays a special web page asking me to confirm my choice by clicking a button. If the executable is large, a further special window appears which displays the download and scan by MAWG, followed by a further click-to-download-to-disk intervention on my part.

Obviously, if a BOINC project runs afoul of this, it'll receive an unexpected Web page and remain stuck there. I see two possible solutions:

a) BOINC should display the problematic web page in the default browser so I can intervene as required --this probably requires serious recoding of BOINC management APIs

b) A procedure should be documented on the FAQ or BOINC Wiki explaining how to run BOINC projects on an unconnected machine (way back before BOINC, I used to do something like that for SETI@Home; shuttling files around on a USB stick). Right now this does not seem possible (or at least I couldn't find how).

Please help!

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It's actually fairly easy to code option a: if the web page contents are not as expected (obviously BOINC is looking for some specific tags), then it should open a web browser on that page and receive the benefit of any changes to that window occurring as a result of user intervention through the browser.

I agree with you that MAWG should be configurable, but it clearly is not, at least at the user level as deployed here.

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You could put this request in a Trac ticket and tag it as a feature request...

Wherefore TRAC ?

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