BOINC for TC

[thane]

I had an earlier thread here for SETI@home, but belatedly realized that BOINC is what I really needed to know about.

Has anyone downloaded BOINC to run under TC? What did you have to do to get it to work?

[travcav]

Had to install the sql lite libraries first but otherwise it runs just fine.  Just download it from the boinc download page.

[Jason W]

I have run BOINC as well, just gtk2.tcz and perhaps one or two other deps, I can't remember which, but it was a  simple setup.

[thane]

Thanks, I'll try it.

[thane]

<bump>

I finally downloaded the BOINC shell script and ran it.

BOINC was installed as /home/tc/BOINC. Is this how everyone else's install worked? It appears to be working but I got a lot of errors with not being able to find some slideshow[?] files.  Also I tried adding the command to start BOINC to /opt/bootlocal.sh (/home/tc/BOINC/run_manager). However this doesn't appear to work. I don't reboot often so for now I've started BOINC manually.

edit: Poking around on the BOINC website, users of other Linux distros have had file error messages like I got, so apparently that's a BOINC/SETI@home problem rather than a TCL problem.

[thane]

<bump>

BOINC seems to work fine in TC despite what appear to be minor error messages on startup (slideshow files not found).

One problem though: BOINC and its project files are installed in directory home/tc/BOINC. A project that I recently added has some fairly large files and this makes the backup slow. Simply excluding the BOINC directory from the backup is not an option since there are files that should be saved on shutdown, and restored on boot. As a solution I'm thinking of creating commands to run on shutdown and boot that would copy the BOINC directory to my USB and back to home/tc respectively. I could then exclude BOINC from the ordinary backup process.

Is this reasonable? Any show stoppers? I've seen there are scripts that run automatically on shutdown and boot so would it be simply a matter of adding the appropriate copy commands to these?

[combo3]

According to the install instructions:

"The BOINC working directory can be moved elsewhere as you like, and can even be renamed. One common choice is ~/.boinc, since files and directories with names that begin with "dot" do not show up by default in Unix directory listings. Whatever the name, everything related to the BOINC client is contained within that directory, and you should always run the client and the manager from that working directory."

[thane]

Thanks for the reply.

I actually don't have a problem with the directory being installed in /home/tc/ since I'm not using persistent home (no hard drive, only USB). I'd just like to save it somewhere other than my regular backup.

I'll try copying it to my USB and back though and if that works add the commands to the appropriate scripts.

edit: Seems to work. Will do until I think of something else anyway.

[thane]

<bump>

FYI for any BOINC users, the latest Linux version of BOINC appears to have issues with Tiny Core and a number of other Linux distros. It can't find some needed libraries. Several users have resorted to reinstalling an earlier BOINC version, although an alternative fix is presented here also:

http://boinc.berkeley.edu/dev/forum_thread.php?id=6554&nowrap=true#37872

Unfortunately, I downloaded the latest version and reinstalled after deleting the old one, so I'm SOL (not for the first time...).

edit: I reloaded the previous version of BOINC and it works. Meanwhile the developers have rolled back the latest release and are working on fixes:

http://boinc.berkeley.edu/dev/forum_thread.php?id=6554&nowrap=true#37905

[Jason W]

I downloaded the version available on the project page 6.10.58, and it is working here.  There may be some more library dependencies than with the previous version, but it appears I have them installed. 

[thane]

Yes, the BOINC developers have rolled back to 6.10.58 (the old version), which works on TC. But previously they'd released version 6.12.26, which had problems with TC and a number of other distros. Sorry, I should have been more specific in my post.

[Jason W]

Oops, I missed that and overlooked it in your post.  Just did the usual download from site - install - run thing.  My bad.  

[thane]

<bump> FYI, I tried downloading the current version of BOINC for Linux (6.12.34) and once again got the problem with TCL not having the necessary libraries. Possibly the missing libraries are available in extensions that I don't happen to have.

The older 6.10.58 version works though.

[thane]

<bump>

FYI, the older version of BOINC (6.10.58) that worked with TCL appears to be no longer available. The only Linux version I could find on the BOINC website today is 6.12.34, which requires libraries that don't seem to be readily available on TCL. Possibly there are extensions that have them that I didn't find though.

edit: My bad. Looking at the BOINC message boards there's a link to other BOINC versions. 6.10.58 is available there.

http://boinc.berkeley.edu/download_all.php

[Jason W]

I had the current boinc running about a month ago, but the binary version has it's path hardcoded to /opt if I remember.   I may give a go at compiling it soon.