BOINC installation walk through

Gilthanis

Gilthanis

[H]ard|DCer of the Year - 2014
Joined
Jan 29, 2006
Messages
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** If you want updated instructions with newer OS's, skip to post 21 below. **
*If you want to install BOINC on Ubuntu Linux, skip down to post 11 below.*

There are two important ways to install the standard BOINC client within Windows. Installing as a user and installing as a service.

To install as a user, it is pretty straight forward. Download and run the installer for the BOINC client.

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Click Next

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Click “I accept the terms in the license agreement” and then click Next.

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Verify that the only box checked is the bottom one. If any others are checked, click the Advanced button and deselect the other options. You can always turn on the BOINC screen saver if you want, but you can also activate it under Windows Screen savers. If you plan on using the GPU for crunching, it is advisable to not use a screen saver at all. If you choose BOINC to run as a service, you will NOT be able to use the GPU to crunch any work. Running as a service disables the function. However, running as a service does not require a user to be logged in for BOINC to run it's CPU work.

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Click Install

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Click Finish and BOINC should load. If it asks for a reboot, do so because you wont be able to attach to projects until you do.

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Here you can choose to either Add a project or attach to an account manager.

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If you choose an Account Manager, you have a few options listed. There may be others, but you would need to know the credentials for setting it up. I use BAM! So, I select it and hit Next.

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I enter my BOINCStats BAM information which is the same as your login for BOINCStats.



Click Finish and it should attach to any projects that you have designated BOINCStats to automatically attach to. If you have not set this up yet, you can do so from the website www.boincstats.com. Otherwise, you can manually add projects.

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Click on View at the top and select Advanced View

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Click on Tools Add Project… Note, that if you have BOINCStats setup to attach projects for you, this step is not necessary. Choose Add project.

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Click Next

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Choose the project you want from the list on the left, or if your preferred project is not listed, you can manually type the Project URL and click Next.

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If you already have an account with that project, choose Yes, existing user. Otherwise, choose No, new user and you can create an account without ever visiting their website. (Make sure to use the same email and password for all BOINC projects and with BOINCStats BAM!.) Click Next

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Click Finish

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You should now see your client attaching to the projects you have added. You now will want to configure your client.

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Click on Tools. Click on Computing preferences.

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Here is where you will decide how BOINC will behave. If you wish for the client to always run, make sure to check the box While computer is in use. You will want to also pay attention to a few other settings. While processor usage is less than should be set to 0 if you don’t want BOINC to ever pause. Otherwise, by changing the percentage setting will determine how much non-BOINC load the processor can reach before it automatically pauses BOINC. You can determine what hours of the day BOINC is scheduled to run as well as what days. On multiprocessor systems, use at most should be changed to how much of the total cores/threads you want BOINC to use. If you want them all, change this to 100%. BOINC will round down when calculating threads. So, an 8 threaded i7 920 will only run 7 threads if you change it to anything between 87.5 and 99%. Use at most means that it will pause BOINC a portion of the time. Some use this to control heat or to leave processing cycles free.

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Here you can limit your bandwidth and cache settings. You can also determine when your BOINC client can access the network. This is handy if you have tiered usage or do not have unlimited data.

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This tab allows you to decide how much space to set aside for BOINC as well how much memory to allow BOINC access to. I highly recommend checking the box Leave applications in memory while suspended. That way when BOINC pauses, you do not lose your progress. If LAIM is left unchecked, your work units will start over from the start or from the last check point. The downside to having LAIM checked is if you have many RAM hungry apps in memory and your system doesn’t have enough for other processes. This can bog your system down a great deal if not properly managed.

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This last tab is very handy because you can designate BOINC to automatically pause if a specific program is running. Especially if you are running that app for more than an hour. Many gamers find this option to be a blessing.
 
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For those looking for a walk through on nativeBOINC, you can find it here: http://www.nativeboinc.org/site/for_users/install

nativeBOINC is the Android + Arm (non-Berkeley) version of BOINC that you can run on phones and tablets. There are only a hand full of projects currently supporting the ARM chips and some of them don't support Android.
 
I have just realized that I didn't include any information on how to join our team at any of the projects. This actually requires you to log into that projects page and actually join a team from there. Unfortunately this is one area that BOINC fails in when it comes to simplicity. Here is an example:



Go to the projects page and click the "Your account" link



Login using your account information you used to set up your account for this project.



Most projects have the same setup and in the top right corner you will see this. However, some projects have it located slightly different. Click on "find a team"



Search for our team. In most cases it is [H]ard|OCP . However, we have a handful of projects where HardOCP is the correct team name. If you are unsure which to use, drop in the forums and we can let you know.



Click on the Team name.



Click "Join this team"



Your account page should now show you attached.
 
When installing BOINC on a Windows 8 PC, make sure you are installing with a local account and not a MS account.
 
I wasn't part of the team when [H] Commandos decided to create teams at the various projects. So, I can't explain the chaos and or confusion that led to having more then one team name. So, depending on which BOINC project you join, you will find a couple choices. However, there is only one official team to choose.

For the following BOINC projects, you need to use HardOCP:


WCG

For all other BOINC projects, use [H]ard|OCP
 
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Honestly, I just use the version that is in the repository. Perhaps the next time I decide to play with a virtual machine I will put one together.

Edit: If I get time tomorrow before the holiday dinner we are having, I may put one together.
 
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I'm downloading a 64bit ISO of Ubuntu 13.10 and will try and find some time to do an installation walk through this evening or possibly the next day.
 
OK, so here is the walk through using Ubuntu 13.10 x64.

Go to the Ubuntu Repository and search for BOINC



Select BOINC



Click Install and then put in your password you created for your Ubuntu account



You should see the BOINC Manager on the left once installed.



Click on the BOINC Manager to bring it up. On the first run it will ask you to attach to a project or an account manager. This process is the same as above shown in the Windows walk through.



Here I chose to use an account manager and went with BAM!



I typed in my user name and password



Click Finish



Now click on View and select Advanced



Then click on tools and select Computing Preferences.



The next 3 screen shots are for changing your preferences. These settings are a bit aggressive, but it is up to you on how you like them.







And last, I typically click on Activity and change my network usage to always run. That way I can download new work and report work even if the client is suspended.

 
Awesome. Set up one of my rig ... running WCG .. team HardOCP .....
 
I prefer to have a single host with BOINC Manager installed and only install boinc-client on my dedicated nodes. I used the [H] Ubuntu 12.04 v9 image and followed tear's instructions to grab the NUMA-aware affinity-setting BOINC client. I added my BOINC Manager IP to /var/lib/boinc-client/remote-hosts.cfg, then used only "boinccmd" to configure the node as follows:

Code: 
   sudo -u boinc boinccmd --join_acct_mgr http://bam.boincstats.com USER PASSWORD
   sudo -u boinc boinccmd --get_cc_status
   sudo -u boinc boinccmd --set_run_mode always
   sudo -u boinc boinccmd --set_network_mode always
   sudo -u boinc boinccmd --set_gpu_mode never
   sudo -u boinc boinccmd --get_cc_status

EDIT: I found out which files I can copy to each Linux host in order to avoid running boinccmd and/or using BOINC Manager. Set up one Linux host as required. Save a copy of the following files:
Code: 
  /etc/boinc-client/remote_hosts.cfg
  /var/lib/boinc-client/acct_mgr_login.xml
  /var/lib/boinc-client/get_project_config.xml
  /var/lib/boinc-client/acct_mgr_url.xml

Open acct_mgr_login.xml in your favorite editor and remove all the lines except the following ones:
Code: 
<acct_mgr_login>
    <login>USERNAME</login>
    <password_hash>PASSWORD_HASH</password_hash>
</acct_mgr_login>

Copy these files to your newly-installed host after installing tear's NUMA-aware boinc client. Restart the boinc client and it should login to your BAM account manager, download the projects, perform CPU benchmarks, etc.
 
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I would like to upgrade my BOINC client on my Linux machine. I've been putting it off because I'm a real Linux noob. I usually only do stuff in Linux if someone provides code I can copy and paste into a terminal window. It's easy to upgrade in Windows just by installing over the older version. Is that true in Linux? Ubuntu specifically. Will Linux complain it's already installed if I follow the installation instructions above?
 
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For the record I'm using tear's folding appliance. He had BOINC already installed.

My eyes started glazing over half way through that thread. I downloaded Ubuntu 14.04 LTS the other night. I may just do a fresh OS install of my own and then install the latest Boinc client from the repository.
 
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ChelseaOilman said:
For the record I'm using tear's folding appliance. He had BOINC already installed.

My eyes started glazing over half way through that thread. I downloaded Ubuntu 14.04 LTS the other night. I may just do a fresh OS install of my own and then install the latest Boinc client from the repository.
Click to expand...

The boinc client in tear's Ubuntu 12.02 image has special patches to make it NUMA-aware. These patches have not been accepted upstream (boinc developers). These patches are very useful on multi-core machines since it ties each boinc task to a CPU core (CPU affinity) and this seriously increases throughput.

If you install Ubuntu 14.04 and use the boinc client from their repo, you will not have a NUMA-aware version and your performance on a multi-core system can suffer. I do not have the numbers off the top of my head, but I believe it's a double-digit percentage improvement (i.e. not just 2%).

I have 35 or more clients running the [H] Ubuntu image with tear's NUMA-aware client and it's running fine. What is the primary motivator behind running the newer boinc client?
 
brilong said:
What is the primary motivator behind running the newer boinc client?
Click to expand...
Nothing other than there's been quite a few updates to the BOINC client since the client version in the appliance. On Windows anyways. They didn't seem to update the Linux client until recently, which makes me wonder if they found something worth fixing. Thanks for the NUMA info. I'll leave things alone on that machine for now. My other 2 computers are running Windows and the latest BOINC client.
 
I set this up on one OS on the same HD of another I made a link from the other drive and copied my bionc files in the apdata folder but when I start up bionc it shows I have to re setup am I missing something or do I actually have to resetup this from scratch.
 
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