Yes, then use boinccmd to get the bearings on progress or pass the instructions... OR, use a remote machine with GUI and then connect from there. Requires some reading of the ''famous'' manual.

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Yes, it works fine. I have two headless Ubuntu boxes that have been running WCG for a while.

The software comes in two parts: boinc-client is the one you want - it does the computation and can be controlled from the command line.
boinc-manager is the desktop/GUI wrapper.

I got mine through the Ubuntu package system:

sudo apt-get install boinc-client

Alternatively you could get it from the Boinc site.

Once installed, you need to attach the client to the WCG project:

boinccmd --project_attach http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/ <account key>

where the account key is a hexadecimal number you can find on this website under "My Profile".

On Ubuntu, apt installs boinc-client as a service, so it can be controlled using

sudo service boinc-client start|stop|status

To keep track of what is happening, use boinccmd.

Ubuntu apt puts configuration files under /etc/boinc-client and logs under /var/lib/boinc-client, depending on Linux distribution and installation method you may find them elsewhere.

That's about it, I think. Good luck

24-Feb-2011 12:58:34 [---] Processor: 4 GenuineIntel Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU L5520 @ 2.27GHz [Family 6 Model 26 Stepping 5]
24-Feb-2011 12:58:34 [---] Processor: 8.00 MB cache
24-Feb-2011 12:58:34 [---] Processor features: fpu de tsc msr pae cx8 apic cmov pat clflush acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht nx constant_tsc pni
24-Feb-2011 12:58:34 [---] OS: Linux: 2.6.18.8
24-Feb-2011 12:58:34 [---] Memory: 512.22 MB physical, 511.99 MB virtual
24-Feb-2011 12:58:34 [---] Disk: 15.26 GB total, 2.30 GB free
24-Feb-2011 12:58:34 [---] Local time is UTC -5 hours
24-Feb-2011 12:58:34 [---] No usable GPUs found
24-Feb-2011 12:58:34 [World Community Grid] URL http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/; Computer ID not assigned yet; resource share 100
24-Feb-2011 12:58:34 [---] No general preferences found - using BOINC defaults
24-Feb-2011 12:58:34 [---] Preferences:
24-Feb-2011 12:58:34 [---] max memory usage when active: 256.11MB
24-Feb-2011 12:58:34 [---] max memory usage when idle: 461.00MB
24-Feb-2011 12:58:34 [---] max disk usage: 2.21GB
24-Feb-2011 12:58:34 [---] don't use GPU while active
24-Feb-2011 12:58:34 [---] suspend work if non-BOINC CPU load exceeds 25 %
24-Feb-2011 12:58:34 [---] (to change preferences, visit the web site of an attached project, or select Preferences in the Manager)
24-Feb-2011 12:58:34 [---] Not using a proxy
Initialization completed

It isn't doing anything yet: "Hasn't assigned computer ID"? I suppose I'll just wait a while and see what happens.. 0.00 load though

Yep it's going now thanks