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SETI BOINC on Ubuntu Server

5/4/2007 10:41:58 AM

Silverfox

29 posts

SETI BOINC on Ubuntu Server
(Canada)

Howdy again folks. Been a bit, but as usual, when I run into something I can't figure out myself, I come a runnin back here to get some expert help. I've got a smallish home web and game server running under my desk, and now that I've got all the forums/web/voice/game applications running and debugged to my satisfaction, I've realized that it sits idle for more than 95% of the time it's running. I'm running Ubuntu Server 6.06.1 LTS, in a vanilla (mostly) LAMP configuration. I've had a look through the Aptitude package manager for Seti and/or Boinc packages without any luck. Anything I've found is for the KDE desktop. I'm new to linux (but learning quickly), and I was wondering if anyone here could point me to a walkthrough for how to set this box up to crunch WU when it's not busy. Could be I'm just not looking in the right repository, but I thought I might save myself some aggravation and ask here first. Any of you Linux Guru's care to lend an old fart who's trying to learn some new licks a hand? :)

Proud Member:

IAFF, TSWB
"With reasonable men I will reason; with humane men I will plea;
but to tyrants I will give no quarter, nor waste arguments where they will certainly be lost."

5/4/2007 11:19:14 AM

Silverfox

29 posts

Re: SETI BOINC on Ubuntu Server
(Canada)

Ok, I did some more digging, and found the BOINC-client (5.4.9-1) for 6.06 on the universe repository, downloaded and installed it using Aptitude (one assumes it got the correct architecture - AMD-64). Now what? I need to tell it what projects and which user to connect with, I've no idea how to accomplish that. I hate being such an utter noob. sigh.

Proud Member:

IAFF, TSWB
"With reasonable men I will reason; with humane men I will plea;
but to tyrants I will give no quarter, nor waste arguments where they will certainly be lost."

5/4/2007 11:24:54 AM

Silverfox

29 posts

Re: SETI BOINC on Ubuntu Server
(Canada) Modified By Silverfox on 5/4/2007 1:26:15 PM)

Oops. I guess I should have looked harder before bothering you fine folks. I think I've found what I need here: http://boinc.berkeley.edu/trac/wiki/BoincCmd. I'll let you know how I make out connecting to SETI and Einstein (since SETI getting "Berk'd" again). Thanks for the help! :) Ok, I helped myself, but typing it out made me think of solutions, so, in a convoluted and twisted sense, you actually did help!

Proud Member:

IAFF, TSWB
"With reasonable men I will reason; with humane men I will plea;
but to tyrants I will give no quarter, nor waste arguments where they will certainly be lost."

5/4/2007 11:31:03 AM

Kinguni

2157 posts

Re: SETI BOINC on Ubuntu Server
(Canada)

Glad to help!

5/4/2007 12:01:57 PM

L0GiX

117 posts

Website

Re: SETI BOINC on Ubuntu Server
(United States)

Let us know what the solution was so that others that come along or want to try Ubuntu BOINC Sandwich they know the right place to go for directions.

5/4/2007 12:22:54 PM

Silverfox

29 posts

Re: SETI BOINC on Ubuntu Server
(Canada)

I may have spoken to soon. I can attach to SETI with apparently no problems, although I can't tell for certain because Berkeley isn't giving anything out at the moment. The client doesn't seem to be getting any information from SETI though (like account, name, etc.), so I'm really not sure if I'm actually getting it to attach. When I try to attach to Einstein, it seems to attach ok, but doesn't get any work, and when I do the "boinc_cmd --get_state" query the project disappears from the list after a couple of minutes. Any ideas? Am I not doing something I should be before attaching to my projects?

Proud Member:

IAFF, TSWB
"With reasonable men I will reason; with humane men I will plea;
but to tyrants I will give no quarter, nor waste arguments where they will certainly be lost."

5/4/2007 4:10:14 PM

skildude

247 posts

Re: SETI BOINC on Ubuntu Server
(N/A)

the BOINC process comes with a halfway decent GUI. instead of trying to run seti in konsole right away. Try using the GUI since the boincmgr runs from the konsole anyway. if you've installed it correctly typing ./boincmgr in the proper file will start the GUI. If after you get the projects connected and want to just use the commands the close the GUI and just type ./boinc which will start boinc without the GUI

5/5/2007 11:27:35 PM

Silverfox

29 posts

Re: SETI BOINC on Ubuntu Server
(Canada)

Sorry I've been busy at work, and to swamped to think about this. Now correct me if I'm wrong (I probably am), but doesn't the GUI require one of the desktop environments (KDE or X11)? I'm not running with a desktop environment, strictly command line. I haven't bothered to install a manager because I'd assumed they were for graphic desktops. Was I incorrect in that assumption? I'm still having the same issue. I've used "boinc_cmd --project_attach URL auth", followed with "boinc_cmd --get_project_status", which give me this ....


======== Projects ========
1) -----------
   name:
   master URL: http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/
   user_name:
   team_name:
   resource share: 100.000000
   user_total_credit: 0.000000
   user_expavg_credit: 0.000000
   host_total_credit: 0.000000
   host_expavg_credit: 0.000000
   nrpc_failures: 0
   master_fetch_failures: 0
   master fetch pending: no
   scheduler RPC pending: yes
   attached via Account Manager: no
   tentative: no
   suspended via GUI: no
   don't request more work: no
   disk usage: 0.000000

I haven't taken anything out, I'd assumed that the missing info (name, user, team, etc) was due to the project being down, but after some further reading, I think I should still be able to connect, just not get any new work. I think I'm missing something important. After about 2 minutes, if I repeat "boinc_cmd --get_project_status", I get nothing under the projects heading. Any hints?

Proud Member:

IAFF, TSWB
"With reasonable men I will reason; with humane men I will plea;
but to tyrants I will give no quarter, nor waste arguments where they will certainly be lost."

5/6/2007 1:27:20 AM

Kinguni

2157 posts

Re: SETI BOINC on Ubuntu Server
(Canada)

What if you connect to BOINC in that server remotely? Is that a possibility? Then you can monitor it and attach to projects etc. from another machine. I use boincview for that purpose, but the standard BOINC gui will work too. Just a thought as I know nothing about Ubuntu other than that Dell is going to ship computers with it.

5/6/2007 6:44:16 AM

Sparky Jim

164 posts

Re: SETI BOINC on Ubuntu Server
(N/A)

OOOOOOHHHHHHHH...Silverfox..your a bloody star fella..I have just downloaded Ubuntu for Desktop 7.04 and will be installing it in the next couple of days on several machines I have, reading this may be of help to me..in avoiding some pitfals by the looks of it..as I am a total NOOOOOB when it comes to anything beyond winblows these days..

Silverfox, keep asking the questions and posting here..it'll help me, but as Ron says, it will be an invaluable resource for others..I think I will do the same when I run mine..

Blooming Sig broke..will repair when able!!

5/6/2007 8:06:20 AM

boog

214 posts

Re: SETI BOINC on Ubuntu Server
(United States) Modified By boog on 5/6/2007 10:12:04 AM)

you can use the command:

boinc -attach_project <URL> <key>

to attach to a project you can also copy the keys from another install (aka windows or mac) and paste them in the boinc directory.

use the: -dir </path/to/directory> to specify a directory (I would suggest in a user path and not as root).

I use the command: boinc -dir /home/boog/boinc -allow_remote_gui_rpc >> /dev/null &

to start my boinc

hope this helps!

BTW I think ubuntu uses a different name for the boinc from the repository, so just substitute that name for boinc.

EDIT: You can also use boinc -h to see the entire help list and all the different commands.

5/6/2007 9:22:46 AM

Silverfox

29 posts

Re: SETI BOINC on Ubuntu Server
(Canada) Modified By Silverfox on 5/6/2007 11:28:50 AM)

Kinguni wrote
What if you connect to BOINC in that server remotely? Is that a possibility? Then you can monitor it and attach to projects etc. from another machine. I use boincview for that purpose, but the standard BOINC gui will work too. Just a thought as I know nothing about Ubuntu other than that Dell is going to ship computers with it.

Hmm. Thats an interesting idea King. I actually usually connect to the box from my main windoze machine with PuTTY (I also have it on a KVM from this keyboard, but the PuTTY window make it easy to cut and paste stuff that would take these firefighter digits FOREVER to type). So connecting with a windoze app might actually be a better idea. Any idea on what ports BOINC might be listening on? I'll have a look at BOINCview and see if I can make it connect with the defaults. Also, Boog, the boinc_cmd -h doesn't return a -dir command in the list for this distro. And trying to use it get's me an "Unknown Command" return value. I'm behind a residential gateway/router. Does BOINC need any specific ports opened? I'm not using iptables (way beyond me at this point) so I'm using the NAT router to forward ports instead of putting the whole machine outside the router.

Proud Member:

IAFF, TSWB
"With reasonable men I will reason; with humane men I will plea;
but to tyrants I will give no quarter, nor waste arguments where they will certainly be lost."

5/6/2007 9:53:54 AM

boog

214 posts

Re: SETI BOINC on Ubuntu Server
(United States)

You shouldn't need any ports forewarded, I would suggest using the regular boinc executeable, because I believe the boinc_cmd executable if actually intended for controlling a boinc client, but I have never used it, and I'm going off of memory (which is possible it could fail).

5/18/2007 8:08:32 PM

Silverfox

29 posts

Re: SETI BOINC on Ubuntu Server
(Canada)

Ok, some further information. First off, after much digging, head scratching, reading, crying (but no broken keyboards), I've deciphered what the hell was going on. First off, the BOINC distro installed correctly using the Aptitude package manager. The boinc package for Ubuntu can be found on the Universe Repository under boinc-client. Aptitude downloaded, installed and set up Boinc without a hitch. The "boinc_cmd --get_state" command showed BOINC ready and waiting to connect to my chosen projects. In this case SETI and Einstein. I tried using the commandline again (boinc_cmd --project_attach ), saw BOINC attempt to connect then.....nothing. The state command showed BOINC sitting there quietly waiting for me to tell it what to do. I checked my auth info, checked my network connection, checked anything else I could think of, it all looked good. Kinguni suggested using BoincView from my XP machine to manage Boinc on the Linux box, which was great advice. I could see the logs easily, and suffered a revelation. You see, I'm running the 64 bit flavour of Ubuntu Server Linux 6.07.1 LTS, and neither SETI nor Einstein currently have 64 bit apps for BOINC to use. I was getting "message from server: platform 'x86_64-pc-linux-gnu' not found" errors when BOINC tried to connect to my projets. Now, those of you familiar with Linux will be shaking your heads about now, saying "Why didn't you look in the logs in the first place, dummy". I have no excuses, except that I'm a Linux noob, and I'm apparently too used to Windoze spoon feeding me error info. For those of you reading this looking for info, don't forget to check the BOINC error log (stdoutdae.txt is the file you want to read, located in the BOINC client directory). Ok, so I've figured out why it wouldn't go, now what to do about it? A bit more reading, and since both SETI and Einstein have thriving communities, they both have user created and compiled 64 bit apps for us to use. My thanks to KWSN (I should have known this one, I use the KWSN optimized apps on my Windoze boxes), and the Einstein community for pointing me to the 64 bit beta app. Both are easy to install (just follow the included instructions, basically put the files in the boinc/projects/project name/ directory and restart BOINC) and voila, BOINC connects, stays connected, and begins downloading WU. SUCCESS! So, perseverance pays. Learning curves are sexy, and old guys can learn new stuff! Thanks for the hints fellas. They got me thinking in the right direction.

Proud Member:

IAFF, TSWB
"With reasonable men I will reason; with humane men I will plea;
but to tyrants I will give no quarter, nor waste arguments where they will certainly be lost."

5/18/2007 8:33:53 PM

Kinguni

2157 posts

Re: SETI BOINC on Ubuntu Server
(Canada)

Thanks for the update Cowboy!

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