Running BOINC (using Science United) on Linux appliances

From BOINC

You'll need to get 3 files (explained below)

  • The BOINC client for Linux/x64
  • Two "account info" files that identify a Science United account

Then, on each appliance:

  • create a "data directory" somewhere, say /usr/boinc/
  • put the 3 files in the data directory
  • arrange to run the BOINC client on boot (e.g. using /etc/init.d). The client will create files only in the data directory.

For security, you should create a new user, with access only to the data directory, and run BOINC under that account.

Getting the BOINC client for Linux/x64

Instructions are here.

Get the Linux/x64 executable from the client_release/7/7.20 branch.

Getting the account info files

  • Go to Science United (https://scienceunited.org) on a Windows computer. Create an account, named whatever you want. You can choose what science areas to support if you want.
  • This will ask you to download and install BOINC. Follow these directions. You'll end up running BOINC on your computer, attached to the Science United account.
  • Go to the BOINC data directory, c:\Program Data\BOINC
    • The first file is acct_mgr_url.xml.
    • The second file is acct_mgr_login.xml. Delete lines so that it looks like:
   <acct_mgr_login>
       <authenticator>e7ac870ab4597f5a2e7f627566b12d83</authenticator>
       <dynamic>1</dynamic>
   </acct_mgr_login>

Computing preferences

BOINC lets you limit computing in various ways: how much RAM and storage to use, how many cores, what time of day, etc. You can set all these on the Science United web site. The settings will automatically propagate to all the appliances.

Updating the BOINC client

New versions of the BOINC client are released every year or so. The client doesn't automatically update itself, so if you want to update the clients you'll need your own mechanism for that.

Debugging

The BOINC client will write log files "stdoutdae" and "stderrdae" in the data directory. These will tell you what it's doing and if there are any problems.

You can interact with the client, while it's running, using a command-line program called boinccmd. You can get this executable from Github, as with the client.