BOINC and seti@home on AMD64

[tmavr]

I am trying to get BOINC and the new Seti@home client to work under gentoo x86_64.
Currentlly there seems to be no ebuild for BOINC so the only way to do so is by compiling the sources of BOINC and seti@home.
Following I describe how I managed to compile BOINC, but failed to compile SETI.
Perhaps someone can help me to compile seti.

***Step 1 - compile BOINC:
I downloaded the latest tarball " boinc-4.11.tar.gz " extracted it and then
./configure
cd client
make
make install

I also changed gcc options from -02 to -03 in the Makefile
Everything went fine and now I can run the boinc client. When I first executed boinc_client I was asked for my account info and project URL (fine!).

[Corona688]

Any particular reason you can't emerge seti@home normally? I understand you need to compile/install BOINC manually, but why seti?
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[chchoque]

For step 1, you must create the app_info.xml file as explained in http://boinc.berkeley.edu/anonymous_platform.php.

For step 2, I grab boinc-4.11.tar.gz and seti_boinc-client-cvs-2004-10-16.tar.gz and it works fine. You have to grab the cvs version that have the missing files.

I won't compile under gcc4.2, unless you adapt the code. It need some class templates changes especially in static field init.
For example:
const int db_type<coordinate_t>::_nfields=3;
should be transformed to:
template <> const int db_type<coordinate_t>::_nfields=3;

The big change is in sqlblob.h where you need to inline the friend xml_encode string and >> operator members. This is required to mach the new gcc 4.2 syntax.

By recompiling it myself and using gcc4.2 optimisation opteron flags, I have improved seti by 30%.
C.

[tmavr]

Ok, I just managed to make everything work (boinc and seti compiled and running).

After some hours of research on the internet I found the following tips and tricks for compiling and configuring boinc and seti.

Special thanks to chchoque and Corona688 for paying attention to my post! And thanks to Ted Mittelstaedt for his excelent post: http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-questions/2004-September/058947.html

1. Tips and Tricks - Seti Client
Just after compiling boinc (compiling is easy see the first post for quick info), download the latest seti cvs and extract it somewere (perhaps /tmp)

[cryos]

You could also take a look at this bug where there are some experimental ebuilds. I haven't had chance to try them yet, but it would be helpful if interested people tried the ebuild and suggested any improvements.

[eonbluelance]

I was wondering if someone could explain how to get BOINC and SETI working with the BOINC ebuild that currently exists. All the forum threads I've found seem out of date, as they are not using the BOINC ebuild.

[Trevoke]

You see, when you compile boinc, you get a message telling you that you need to run

/etc/init.d/boinc attach

This asks you for a project URL (for Seti : http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/ )
And an account key. transfer your old account or create a new account and you'll get an account key you can use.
See, I forgot my old email address so I had to register a new account. over a thousand units, gone from my stats. boohoo.

Clear?
And then of course, rc-update add boinc default
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[eonbluelance]

Yeah I got that far. But do I need a app_info.xml file or something? I got the boinc client to start it's just not doing anything...

[eonbluelance]

So maybe I'm going down the wrong road here, and maybe not...

I figured I need some sort of SETI client in order for this to work.

I notice a package in portage called lin-seti. Maybe this will work... After adding it to /etc/portage/package.unmask, I get the following:

[Voyageur]

I have it working here with the boinc ebuild from portage (just bumped to 4.72.20050813), and the seti binary from bug report #70303 (you're right on that you need both boinc and setiathome binaries to get going).

The binary from setiathome web site did not want to run on my computer
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[Trevoke]

You need setiathome binaries? I'll be damned.

My boinc.log in /var/log says...

[Voyageur]

Maybe something has changed in the boinc ebuilds:
when I first installed it, it did try to get the setiathome binary. However the name for the file was and so it could not find and download it.

There were some threads running on binaries performance (between standard one and compiled one), not sure if it is still true but the compiled one works much faster
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[IamtheOne]

eonbluelance, it appears from your post that boinc is indeed working correctly. It has just deferred retrieval of data units for some reason or another.

Try using "/etc/init.d/boinc start" instead of starting boinc_client directly...

Then you can run "boinc_gui" to get a nice gui if you have emerged boinc with the X flag. If it is a server then you can run boinc_gui on a different computer and go to File->Select Computer... and type in the address of the computer to control it. It all works rather well.

After you get the gui up and running, click on the seti@home project then click the update button. That will force the boinc client to update immediatly (unless of course the project is down, seti@home is down tonight 8/23). The same will work for einstein@home, etc.

[cryos]

AFAIK you need binaries on all archs but amd64, and in my tests recently this was still true for me on amd64. I have committed a setiathome-4.18 ebuild to portage now. That should build a suitable binary for any arch but it does need testing. As time permits I will keep an eye on this thread, please point any other relevant threads out to me if you spot them It seems to be working pretty welll now, but I am not sure the attach sequence is working correctly just yet.

Detailed reports are welcome - there are open bugs in bugzilla, or you can file new ones or let me know on here.

[Desti²]

btw. I'm missing kboincspy in portage http://kboincspy.sourceforge.net/
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[cryos]

[cryos]

Just to let you guys know that I have added kbioncspy to portage now - the new 0.9.0 version is in ~amd64 and ~x86. Let me know how you get on with it

[urcindalo]

I'm trying to get it work. However, I find the migration from SETI classic to the BOINC account very confusing.

I emerged kboincspy, and to my surprise it didn't claim boinc as a dependency. So, I had to emerge boinc manually afterwards.
Then, to get setiathome working through boinc I did the following:
1) I stopped and quitted KSetiSpy, stopped setiathome, and removed it from default run level.
2) I ran "/etc/init.d/boinc attach" and entered my info. In fact, I had to run it twice in a row for it to "attach" my new setiathome account, since the first time it didn't take it.
3) I then added boinc to the default run level, modified /etc/conf.d/boinc to ALLOW_REMOTE_RPC="yes" and rebooted.
4) I launched kboincspy and tried to configure it.

However, kboincspy's help is almost non-existent and the options are very cryptic for a new-to-boinc person to decipher. I asumed I had to add a new location. So, as URL I entered "/var/lib/boinc/client_state.xml", as Host I left localhost untouched and as Port I chose Auto. With this info, I get this when I select KBoincSpy -> Client -> Show Messages or when I run boinc_gui to see the messages:

[urcindalo]

New messages:

[6D7474]

becouse your arch is x86_64 boinc can't find and download the setiathome binaries...
you have to compile setiathome:

[urcindalo]

Well, I solved it (sort of...). After visiting the official setiathome forums and noticing a lot of people were having my problem, I ended up visiting Optimized BOINC and SETI Clients for Linux and downloading this file. I then uncompressed it inside /var/lib/boinc/projects/setiathome.berkeley.edu, made sure the file setiathome_4.07.3a_amd64-fftw3-static-pc-linux-gnu had exec permissions, and set up KBoincSpy this way:
1) In General preferences, I chose /var/lib/boinc as log location
2) In SETI@home preferences, I set up /var/lib/boinc/projects/setiathome.berkeley.edu as the working directory in the three corresponding fields.

After these changes, KBoincSpy started to show progress on SETI@home units. I hope this info is useful to anyone with the same problem.

BTW, is there any way of emerging a SETI@home _boinc_ client through portage? I don't think the current sci-astronomy/setiathome package is suitable, since it is the classic client, isn't it?

[Voyageur]

[urcindalo]

[cryos]

[cryos]

Just emerge setiathome and it will emerge the boinc setiathome client for >=4. It is working just fine here, although you may get better results with some of the highly optimised binaries people are playing with. The ebuild compiles the standard source as provided by the official SETI@Home project. The old program is being phased out, and so the 3.* versions will be masked and removed shortly anyway.