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Linux Headless Mode

Hello,
I have a few Ubuntu Servers that go mostly unused. The servers process a task every 30 minutes and spend the rest of the time dormant. I would like to donate the unused CPU cycles to something worthwhile. The servers are fairly powerful (Dual Quad Core CPUs with 24+ GB of RAM).

I was wondering if there is a way to run the application in headless mode (bonus if there is a WebUI so I can peek at the progress)
[Jul 24, 2013 3:19:37 PM]   Link   Report threatening or abusive post: please login first  Go to top 
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Re: Linux Headless Mode

Yes, and you can control BOINC from console with the boinccmd tool that comes with BOINC. Also there is the great BOINCTUI [Text User Interface] for console which allows to watch and control all your running hosts on a (W)LAN, Linux, Windows, does not matter.
[Jul 24, 2013 3:24:16 PM]   Link   Report threatening or abusive post: please login first  Go to top 
Thargor
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Re: Linux Headless Mode

I have quite a few headless servers running WCG, a mixture of physical servers and virtual. They are all running debian, rather than Ubuntu, but since both use the same base, that shouldn't be an issue.

I use the standard GUI-based BOINC-manager to connect to the servers from my laptop, so I can view their progress remotely. I needed to edit the following files to allow remote-connection (the files are in /etc/boinc-client/ on my servers but might be slightly different for yours):

- gui_rpc_auth.cfg = this contains the password used to connect to this server
- remote_hosts.cfg = this contains the list of IPs allowed to connect to this server

Just those two, that I can think of at the moment...
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[Edit 1 times, last edit by Thargor at Jul 24, 2013 4:09:01 PM]
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Re: Linux Headless Mode

Thanks for that, Thargor.

Yes those are the 2 critical files to connect remotely. Ideally all your hosts have the same copy of those 2 files which makes connecting and maintenance simple, all with the same password, or no password as my Ubuntu Repo copy comes with.

Mind you, there's the issue of DHCP and variable IPs. I've overcome that by pre-assigning IPs from the router switch to each known MAC [No guests can connect to hotspot without my intervention even if they could make out the router password].

You could tell BOINC to allow connect from any device [If you feel save and behind a good NAS/Firewall structure that's the simplest]. That requires to put <allow_remote_gui_rpc>1</allow_remote_gui_rpc> in a third file named cc_config.xml.
[Jul 24, 2013 4:28:46 PM]   Link   Report threatening or abusive post: please login first  Go to top 
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Re: Linux Headless Mode

Yes, and you can control BOINC from console with the boinccmd tool that comes with BOINC. Also there is the great BOINCTUI [Text User Interface] for console which allows to watch and control all your running hosts on a (W)LAN, Linux, Windows, does not matter.

Thanks a ton, I will add one of the boxes on my cluster tonight to test it out.
[Jul 24, 2013 8:12:18 PM]   Link   Report threatening or abusive post: please login first  Go to top 
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Re: Linux Headless Mode

Just wanted to post an update, your guy's steps worked perfectly. I now have a pretty beefy server running this. It was pretty much idol for 22 hours a day so I am happy to know that it is being put to good use.
[Jul 25, 2013 3:56:18 PM]   Link   Report threatening or abusive post: please login first  Go to top 
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