[*] service boinc-client stop to stop the client(might be different on your system)
[*] mv /var/lib/boinc-client/* /path/to/new/dir/boinc-client/ move the data to the destination
[*] mount --bind /path/to/new/dir/boinc-client /var/lib/boinc-client bind the new directory to the old one
[*] now test it with service boinc-client start or your OS’s equivalent
[*] it will work, so add /path/to/new/dir/boinc-client /var/lib/boinc-client none bind 0 0 to your /etc/fstab so that the bind is created on system start

asking is not really an option... How is it possible that it works on my other computer at work? It's behind the same firewall!?

We are in the same boat, I can fetch the master file but as far as work goes I cannot retrieve any. I get the error 500 here too, very frustrating. BTW where did you download 4.71 at?

You can download all versions here:

http://boinc.berkeley.edu/dl/

Boinc 5.4.0 - no progress

*********************************************************************
11.4.2006 6:34:47|SETI@home|Sending scheduler request to http://setiboinc.ssl.berkeley.edu/sah_cgi/cgi
11.4.2006 6:34:47|SETI@home|Reason: Requested by user
11.4.2006 6:34:47|SETI@home|Requesting 522964 seconds of new work
11.4.2006 6:34:52|SETI@home|Scheduler request to http://setiboinc.ssl.berkeley.edu/sah_cgi/cgi failed: Error 400
11.4.2006 6:34:52|SETI@home|No schedulers responded
11.4.2006 6:34:52|SETI@home|Deferring scheduler requests for 1 minutes and 0 seconds
*********************************************************************

Greetings.
I am a complete newcomer to distributed computing, never mind BOINC, so I'm on a learning curve here. I'm running v4.49 as a single user on WinME and I can't get the "network activity using preferences" option to stick. After around ten seconds it reverts either to "always available" or to "suspended" - whichever was used last. Internet access is via a LAN to a dial up connection, so I really do need to manage net access. What am I doing wrong?

To me, %nice sounds like the amount of time the kernel is spending attending to the niceness of each process, rather than doing something useful, like crunching numbers for boinc.

I suppose my question is - why is the %nice value so high, why isn't boinc showing up in %user?

Ah. No, you have the wrong definition of %nice. The kernal is in "system" priority. Programs you run are in "user" priority. BOINC does not want to compete against your web browser and such, so it is in "nice" priority. The thing that top is measuring is how much time is given to the processes that are running at each priority.

Example: We'll take one single CPU second, and divide it up into 100 parts, and look at what is happening in each of those little time slices.

During 6 of these little slices, the OS is doing it's "housekeeping", moving packets across the network, refreshing your screen, updating your clock, seeing where the mouse is, and deciding which of the _other_ slices to give to which program.

During 14 of these slices, your web browser was redrawing that animated GIF, your email program went out and checked for new mail, and your MP3 player sent some music to the speakers.

During the remaining 80 slices, there was nothing to do. If BOINC was not running, the CPU would just fall into an "idle" state and literally do nothing. But, BOINC is running, so the CPU crunched another 1/100000 of a SETI result instead.

In the _next_ second, we ask "what is my computer doing", and we get "6% system, 14% user, 80% nice".

Hope that helps...