Ready To Run *nix .ISO with BOINC

I don't imagine it would be trivial to update that work if the original author isn't maintaining it.

If I were you, I'd bite the bullet and pick a distro and then install it. Nothing like jumping in the deep end to learn how to swim! :-). If you're interested, here's a summary of basically what I did after initially running BOINC solely on Windows and then deciding Linux would be better. I did have the advantage of using UNIX on a SUN SparcStation back in the days (late 70s early 80s) before the original IBM PC XT came on the scene. Eventually, I was forced to use Windows and was still doing so when BOINC first arrived (2004/2005).

Eventually, in 2007, I started using PCLinuxOS (KDE) and have used it ever since. I've used both OSes until last year when I switched most of my hosts to Linux. There are still some which run Milkyway on HD4850 GPUs (that can't be used here) that still run Windows. At the time I set them up around 4 years ago, I think Windows was the only option. They run almost completely unattended and it's too much effort to bother converting them at this stage.

One of the issues with some Linux distros will be the frequency with which the repository maintainers update their repositories with new versions of BOINC. The one I use is particularly woeful - I think their version is 6.10.x and not even 6.12. However this really doesn't matter to me because I don't use BOINC from a repository. I download the version I want straight from boinc.berkeley.edu (as a shell archive) and feed it to the shell to unpack it. I keep quite a few versions already unpacked and sitting on a network share on my LAN.

So, if I want to install BOINC on a new machine, here's a pretty complete summary of what I do. I'm sure others would do things differently and if so, they could post the details in a message here. If we get some good information, I'd be happy to move it all into a new sticky thread, perhaps in a more appropriate location.

• * Download the .iso image of your chosen distro. Burn it to a CD/DVD or better still, if you have a USB HD or stick, make a live USB out of the .iso. Google for instructions on how to do this. You will need to choose which DE you prefer. I'm particularly fond of KDE. A good DE makes setup much less painful and time consuming when you are first learning.
  * When the basic installation of the OS completes, I update everything from a local repository. PCLinuxOS is a 'rolling release' so I never have to install new versions of the OS as they come out. I actually keep a local copy of the repository on a USB HD which I update (with rsync) from an official mirror. So I download new stuff once and deploy to many (around 60 machines at present). I update from this local repo whenever I need to and the process is very, very fast, compared to updating over the internet.
  * Once a new machine is updated (usually including a new kernel) I add those packages that I know from experience I will need. There are a fairly small number of things and this will depend largely on your hardware and the distro you choose. In my case, I've added a number of new hosts with nvidia GPUs. As well as the nvidia driver (which is already installed), the CUDA compute capability (which isn't there by default) needs to be added. Package management like this is quite simple and straight forward.
  * Assuming the machine is just being used for crunching, I have just one user account (gary) and everything is installed under /home/gary/. So I create /home/gary/BOINC and populate this with the contents of the shell archive of the BOINC version I want to use (minus a couple of unnecessary things). Of course, there is nothing in that archive to do with the science projects you might want to run. You can launch BOINC as a daemon and then launch the manager to handle things and add projects, or you can do it differently, as I do. I didn't relish the prospect of downloading everything for each individual installation, so I set up 'templates' containing all the fixed stuff that's needed. For a project like E@H, a 'template' contains a number of files for the BOINC directory (including an 'account' file and a state file with host ID) and also the complete projects/einstein.phys.uwm.edu/ subtree. This contains all the fixed apps, libs, data files, etc, that would otherwise have to be downloaded for each new installation. It saves a lot of time and unnecessary downloading and allows me to 'reuse' old hostIDs from decommissioned hosts. Doing things like this may sound complicated (and it probably is the first time you do it) but it's very easy and logical once you have done it once. I can provide a lot more detail if you want to try it out.
  * One of the things to be aware of if you are trying out BOINC versions later than what is in the official repository, is that the executable may require additional shared libs that are not installed. Before launching a new boinc, I always do a 'ldd boinc' and 'ldd boincmgr' in a terminal session. The output is a list of all shared libs expected by the executables and any that are 'not found' are highlighted. An example of a missing lib with BOINC 6.12.x on PCLinuxOS from about 6 months ago was 'libwxgtku2.8'. It was in the repo and could easily be installed to solve that problem. It's in by default in the current version of PCLinuxOS.
  

The version of BOINC I use for all my hosts with nvidia GPUs is 6.12.43. I can't use BOINC 7 because there is a missing later version of a shared lib that is required that hasn't (yet) made it into the repo. You only really need BOINC 7 if you want to run AMD GPUs. I have a HD7770 so on that machine I installed openSUSE 12.3 which has the lib. I think openSUSE 12.3 is very high quality but it's probably not for me. It contains too much stuff I'll never need, multiple repos to keep track of, and updates come thick and fast. I find PCLinuxOS is much simpler for me to manage over my fleet.

As a final comment, please be aware that many of the distros out there are becoming quite bloated from the perspective of a pure crunching box. If you want a fully loaded workststion that's fine, but if you just want to crunch, you need something reasonably light weight. KDE doesn't really fit that description but I can't really measure a difference with crunching on PCLinuxOS with KDE running as opposed to no DE at all. Consequently, I tend to leave KDE running at all times. PCLinuxOS does have a version called 'MiniMe' which has KDE but otherwise is very much stripped down compared to the standard version (quite bloated these days). For me, the MiniMe version fills my requirements very well.

http://boinc.berkeley.edu/wiki/Installing_BOINC#Linux