BOINC: Power science projects
Alex Campbell covers how to use your PC’s spare CPU and GPU resources to do things like looking for little green men and finding a cure for cancer.
One of the great things about Linux is the fact that people contribute their time, passion and money to different projects. That’s what makes free and opensource software so strong. The spirit of contribution to causes bigger than yourself is at the heart of Linux and free software.
Unfortunately, not everyone can donate to software projects with money and not everyone can code, while others have different projects they’d like to donate their resources to. Luckily, those with philanthropic tendencies can donate something while doing absolutely nothing. Well, almost.
The Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC) is a piece of software that enables users to donate their CPU and GPU power to projects, such as the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). We’ll walk you through the steps so you too can help answer the biggest questions in science while you sleep. Yes, really. For this tutorial, we’re going to be using Ubuntu GNOME 14.04. BOINC is available in the Ubuntu repository so there’s no need to add a PPA.
BOINC’s graphical user interface runs on GTK2, so if you’re running a pure KDE setup, you’ll have to grab the GTK libraries. You can use BOINC without a GUI, if you want to run it on a server that doesn’t need X (such as the ubiquitous Raspberry Pi). You’ll also want to check in with how much power you’re willing to use, and how much your electricity is costing you. You can limit BOINC’s CPU (and GPU) usage, and schedule when it runs. You can set this from within the BOINC project website ( https://boinc.berkeley.edu), or you will find that if you’ve got a high-end CPU powering your Linux box, power consumption and cooling will become an issue.
Finally, some projects have more demanding requirements than BOINC itself does. Some may require OpenGL-capable video processing or other software.
BOINC on Linux
The first thing to do is grab the two BOINC packages from Ubuntu’s repo. Simply type in sudo apt-get install boincclient boinc-manager . From there, Ubuntu will grab the dependencies and install the client and GUI. Easy peasy.
If for some reason you can’t or don’t want to go the package manager route, you can download a shell script from the website ( http://boinc.berkeley.edu/download.php) that will install BOINC for you. The project does state the script installer can’t use Linux’s built-in security features, uses more memory, and can’t install BOINC as a daemon. Basically, unless you have a really good reason to do otherwise, just use your package manager.
To start the BOINC manager, just hit the Super key and search for ‘boinc’. If you need to start from the command line, simply use the command boincmgr . This will generate a
pop-up window prompting you to add a new project or use the account manager.
The quick route is to use the ‘Add Project’ option. If you choose this road, the next screen will prompt you to choose a project to work on. Once you choose a project, BOINC will talk to the project server to see what to do next. Some projects will show a terms of use screen, listing requirements or other information. When we tried adding the ATLAS experiment from the Large Hadron Collider (ATLAS@home), the terms of use warned us that we needed VirtualBox to participate.
If you agree to terms of use, or the project doesn’t present any, you’ll see a login screen for the project. Each project requires its own login and password. Once you enter your credentials, BOINC will download some data and get to work.
It can get tedious adding each project manually. Using an account manager, you can use a single login when you start BOINC, and keep track of progress on different projects.
To choose an account manager, simply click one of the options on the dialog or enter a URL. BOINC ships with two account manager sites, BAM! (BOINC Account Manager) and GridRepublic. You can visit either of the URLs in a browser to see what service strikes your fancy. For this example, we’ll continue on with BAM!