Everyone who wants to know whether his appilication works with BOINC distributed computing must ask this question. In addition, I need a working pilot project for myself to test the changes I make to the website. There are plenty of documentations and manuals available already, but most of them are outdated and won’t be updated anymore. Therefore I had to dig into this on my own. At this point I documented the steps necessary to set-up a BOINC server. As a base distribution, I chose Debian 4.0. I’m going to tell you about its differences towards other distributions later.

I’m using a virtual machine (aka: image) to be able to do set it up right on my desktop without any additional hardware. That’s sufficient for testing purposes. You’ll need 4GB of available hdd-memory and a broadband internet connection.

If you want to install BOINC on dedicated hardware, you have to start at step 2c!

1. Installation of the virtual machine software
   Download and install VMware Player (for free).
   You can use VMware Workstation ($189,-) as well, but the Player version is sufficient for local testing.
2. Download the Debian4.0-netinst image
   a) using VMware Player: Download the pre-build image here. (The Player can’t create images!)
   b) using VMware Workstation: It’s possible to create a new image with the CD or DVD version from here.
   c) using dedicated hardware: Download and burn the CD or DVD version from here.
3. Start the image / the installation
   This list contains all necessary packages for the BOINC server and the client components. At first startup, these packages should be installed with aptitude. The graphical desktop manager ist optional, but makes the configuration of the server a bit easier.
   The list contains no security packages to secure your server! Please ask your system administrator or read a good linux book on how to secure your server against attacks.

   Hint: You can search packages within aptitude by pressing the ‘/’ key.

4. Create a new BOINC user account
   Login as user ‘notroot’ with the password: ‘thoughtpolice’ (downloaded image only)
   Go to ‘K-Menu’ -> ‘Settings’ -> ‘System Administration’ -> ‘User Management’, claim administrative privileges with password: ‘thoughtpolice’ (downloaded image only)
   Create a new user, for example: boincadm
   After that go to the ‘Groups’ tab and add the user ‘www-data’ to the group ‘boincadm’. (see here for details)
   Logout and login again as user boincadm if this is done.
5. Configuration of the MySQL server
   Open a new console window (‘K-menu’ -> ‘Debian’ -> ‘XShells’ -> ‘Konsole’).
   Define a new MySQL root password.
   $ mysqladmin -h localhost -u root password mysqlrootpw {or own}
   Create a new MySQL database user account.
   $ mysql -h localhost -u root -p
> GRANT ALL ON *.* TO 'boincadm'@'localhost'; {can be limited to project database only, later}
> SET PASSWORD FOR 'boincadm'@'localhost'=''; {defining an empty password simplifies the installation, can be changed later}
6. Install the wxWidget library
   Download the latest wxGTK version here.
   Extract the contents of the file into ~/wxGTK-2.8.3
   At this point you should check the obstacles I encountered.
   After this enter the following commands into the console window in this order:
   $ cd ~/wxGTK-2.8.3
$ mkdir gtkbuild
$ cd gtkbuild
$ ../configure --with-gtk --disable-shared
$ make
$ su root
# make install
# ldconfig
# exit
   The commands configure and make could take a while, so you can fetch some coffee.
7. Download the BOINC sourcecode
   The latest development version can be obtained with:
   $ cd ~
$ svn co http://boinc.berkeley.edu/svn/trunk/boinc boinc_trunk
   To update the source code just go into the main directory and enter:
   $ cd ~/boinc_trunk
$ svn update
   A stable client version can be obtained with the following commands:
   $ cd ~
$ svn co http://boinc.berkeley.edu/svn/tags/boinc_core_release_5_9_5/boinc boinc_595

   Hint: Normally you won’t need a self-compiled client, you can always get the latest one from here.

8. Compiling BOINC source code
   Enter the following commands into the console window:
   $ cd ~/boinc_trunk
$ ./_autosetup
$ ./configure
$ make

That’s everything you need to know about compiling the BOINC software. Now you you are able to create your own BOINC project. I’m going to explain this in my next entry.