open-source Notes

Things to have in mind while installing a BOINC server on any linux distribution:

After adding a new user you have to check if the home-folder was created. Sometimes it won’t, so you have to manually create it.
$ mkdir /home/{username}
$ chown {username}:{username} /home/{username}
The link /usr/bin/gcc that points to the currently used compiler could be missing. This could lead to errors when running the make command. So you have to create the symbolic links, depending on your gcc and g++ version, first.
$ ln -s /usr/bin/gcc-4.11 /usr/bin/gcc
$ ln -s /usr/bin/g++-4.11 /usr/bin/g++
At newer linux distributions you can’t login as user root. Instead there is a user notroot with whom you can login, but you won’t have root privileges. If an application or script needs root privileges, you are forced to enter the password you entered during the installation. In the console window you can get root privileges with the su (Debian) or sudo (Ubuntu, Fedora) command also. Note the inverted commas around the command when using su -c !
$ su -c {'command'}
$ sudo {command}
If you have problems executing the sudo command, you have to add the user to the /etc/sudoers file. To edit this file just use this command:
$ sudo visudo
In this file you have to add another line after the line for notroot. You can use this:
{username} ALL=(ALL) ALL
The Ubuntu and FedoraCore6 libcurl3-dev package is not recent enough for BOINC. So you have to install the latest version manually. The best way is to get the latest debian packages from the website and install with the dpkg command after downloading to your homefolder.
$ sudo dpkg -i libcurl3_7.15.5-1_i386.deb
$ sudo dpkg -i libcurl3-openssl-dev_7.15.5-1_i386.deb

The default MIME type of the apache webserver must be changed to prevent file upload signature verification errors. Search for DefaultType in your /etc/apache2/apache2.conf and change the line into he following:

DefaultType application/octet-stream

I’m going to add more obstacles as soon as I find them.