Official LTT BOINC FAQ & Guide

alpenwasser · May 12, 2014

Official LTT BOINC FAQ & Guide

NOTE: Still a work in progress for now.

As the old BOINC FAQ was a bit of a mess, we have decided to replace it with a new one.

Massive thanks to @tobben, as well as @Liquidus, @Brainiac777 and @Patramix for their contributions. Also thanks to @Me1z for notifying me of some broken links.

Unlike the old thread, this one will not serve for discussion, if you have a question or issue, just create a new thread in this forum section, that's what it's for after all. Also, the target audience for this, at least for the time being, will mostly be beginners.

What is BOINC?

Boinc is a collection of various distributed computing projects, it gives you the opportunity to lend your unused processing power to do calculations in the name of science and progress! This can be to help medical science, physics, mathematics, better understand nature, or pretty much anything you can find a corresponding project to, it's up to you to decide what you want your computing horsepower to be used for, this gives scientists the chance to gather big ammounts of data by giving them access to hundreds or thousands of computers, all of this is achieved by running some software on your computer, there is also software avaliable for smartphones.

Getting Started

Well, first you need the program, don't you? The BOINC binaries can be downloaded from BOINC's website here. Alternatively, if you're running GNU/Linux, you probably already have BOINC available in your repositories and can it install from there. If your distro has a wiki/help page on it, I recommend reading that, since there can be some slight differences between distros with regards to setting everything up.

Account Managers Vs. Local Configuration

BOINC has something called account managers, for instance BAM! Their primary purpose is to consolidate administration over multiple projects and computers into one central location. It allows you to join projects from one single place, attach and detach computers to specific projects and set all kinds of different configurations from one without needing to go to every computer and configure it separately. You can read more about it on their website (see link above). For now, we'll be sticking to the other variant, which is configuring stuff locally, as it is a bit simpler for beginners.

Joining Projects and a Team

For each project in which you take part, you will have an account on the project website itself as well. Alternatively, if you're not running multiple machines or are a bit confused by account managers, you can also administer BOINC for each PC locally, which is what we'll cover here for the sake of beginner friendliness.

Open the boinc manager, it should be the basic viewer by default, click "Add a project" (screenshots are from tobben, hence why not English, but it should still be understandable):

If you wish to use an account manager, you can click "Use account manager" here, then enter the URL of your account manager of choice, your PC should then sync with the account manager. Alternatively, for not using an account manager, click "Add project"

You will then be presented with a list of all available projects. This is probably where you'll spend quite a bit of time, figuring out what kind of research you wish to support. You can join multiple projects and have them active on your machine at the same time, BOINC will just distribute computing power and time among them.

Pick the project you want, click "Next" and proceed to make an account. This will create an account for you on the home page for the project you choose. You will have to make a

account for each of the different projects you want to join, if you already have an account on the corresponding poject click "Existing user" and log in.

After you have done this it should take you to the web browser and give you some options to join a team and configure your settings.

Joining Teams can be a bit tricky. You can join a different team for each project, so you need to join the team of your choice for each project separately.

For some teams this can be done from within the BOINC manager program, but sometimes that doesn't really work correctly, and in those cases you need to go to the project's website, log in to your accout and set your team membership there.

To join a team in the BOINC Manager Program, click on "View" and set it to "Advanced view". In the advanced view, click on the "Projects" tab, here, you will find a list of your projects.

Click on one of your projects that you want to join the LinusTechTips_Team and on the left side under "Project web pages", click "Your account".

If that doesn't work, you need to go via your account on the project website: Go to the community section on the right and find the field that says "Find a team" and click on it.

Search for the LinusTechTips team and click on the result that is our team, LinusTechTips_Team from Canada, then click "Join this team"

To confirm you're on the team, go back into the BOINC Manager, go to the projects tab in advanced view and see if it says "LinusTechTips_Team" under the Team header. If it doesn't, update the project. If it still doesn't work after that, something has gone wrong and you need to start troubleshooting.

Some More BOINC Manager Info

Most configuration in the BOINC manager as well as more detailed information will be done through the advanced view. For some configuration in the basic view, go to "Tools" -> "Settings".

From the advanced viewer you can see your point statistics, see uploads/downloads the current projects you are working on etc. In the projects tab you can stop and start receiving work units

for each individual project you are working on among other things, Something particularly useful in case of trouble is the event log, located in the "Advanced" menu at the bottom.

Why isn't boinc doing anything?

Often that is because BOINC by default is set to only work when your computer is in idle. You can change this in the "Activity" tab in the advanced viewer, select the options you wish.

Alternatively, you can go to "Tools"->"Computing Preferences" in the advanced viewer, which will give you much more fine-grained control over when BOINC should do what.

Using GPU and CPU for different Projects/

Editing Project Preferences To edit the project preferences you need to go to your account on the specific project you wish to configure. In the "preferences" section, select preferences for the project.

Click "Edit preferences", from there you can set if you want to use a GPU or CPU if not both for the projects, how many resources you want to dedicate to the project and so on.

Badges

In order to be rewarded with the Boinc Team badge, please note the following requirements. (subject to change)

Contributor - When you have contributed more than 25,000 credits, your will qualify for this badge, to show your commitment to LTT and the team.

Bronze Contributor - When you have contributed more than 1 Million credits, your will qualify for this badge. This reflects your serious and continued support of the team.

Silver Contributor - When you have contributed more than 25 Million credits, your will qualify for this badge. This reflects your serious and continued support of the team and your very generous donation of resources.

Gold Contributor - When you have contributed more than 100 Million credits, your will qualify for this badge.. This reflects your dedication and continued support of the team and your very generous donation of resources. You are now a legend!

That's it. Once you hit one of the milestones, PM your Boinc ID to one of the moderators, preferably Whiskers, who will update it in due time.

Links

Boinc home page

http://boinc.berkeley.edu/

Stats Link:

http://boincstats.com/en/stats/-1/team/detail/b85bbff1c6df413a4b44cfb82854273f/

GPU Project Lists:

https://boinc.berkeley.edu/wiki/GPU_computing

DC-Vault Link (site that links numerous project teams into one global score)

http://www.dc-vault.com/showteam.php?team=547

The Old FAQ