User:Mjakubicek/HowToUseBoinc

This page intends to describe the usage of BOINC on Fedora 7 and higher.

= What is BOINC =

The Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC) is an open- source software platform which supports distributed computing, primarily in the form of "volunteer" computing and "desktop Grid" computing. It is well suited for problems which are often described as "trivially parallel". BOINC is the underlying software used by projects such as SETI@home, Einstein@Home, ClimatePrediciton.net, the World Community Grid, and many other distributed computing projects.

= Related packages =

As far only the client side of BOINC is packaged.


 * boinc-client Core client needed for running BOINC
 * boinc-manager GUI for managing BOINC
 * boinc-client-devel Development subpackage
 * boinc-client-debuginfo Debuginfo subpackage

= Using BOINC on Fedora =

1. Install the package boinc-client and also boinc-manager if you want to control BOINC via the GUI.

2. Start the boinc daemon: service boinc-client start
 * You should see the following output:

 The BOINC client requires initialization. [WARNING] Starting BOINC client as a daemon:                        [  OK  ]
 * The WARNING is displayed because BOINC is not attached to any project.

3. Choose a project to attach:


 * 3.1. Using GUI - BOINC Manager: Choose Advanced -> Select computer from the menu. Type "localhost" as host name and password which is stored in /var/lib/boinc/gui_rpc_auth.cfg.


 * 3.2. Using CLI: type man boinc_cmd for details.

4. Consider starting BOINC automatically. To achieve this, either type: /sbin/chkconfig boinc-client on as root or setup the same using the GUI (system-config-services). For more details, please refer to the manual pages: boinc, boinc_client, boincmgr, boinc_cmd.

= Troubleshooting =

Most probably this is caused by the fact that BOINC starts before NetworkManager is ready. This shouldn't normally occur but can be caused by e.g. slow DHCP response. Currently BOINC cannot use network connections which appear after its start. Its a know bug and it will be hopefully fixed in BOINC 6.4
 * BOINC doesn't find a network connection after bootup although it is available

As a workaround, you can try adding "NETWORKWAIT=yes" to /etc/sysconfig/network and startup will block for 10 seconds or until a network connection is up, whichever is sooner.