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World Community Grid Forums
Category: Support
Forum: BOINC Agent Support
Thread: Simple Bulletproof Linux Distro for BOINC |
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Thread Status: Active Total posts in this thread: 10
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jmcgaw
Advanced Cruncher US Joined: Feb 2, 2007 Post Count: 54 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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The subject line says it all. I need to find a Linux distro that will run the BOINC client with the fewest headaches. I have an old lame WinXP system I7-920 2gB that sits in the basement grinding out WUs but it is probably the time to retire XP on this last system and change over to something better (and free). The box isn't used for anything else so what I really want is simple and reliable over any other consideration. For example, I don't really give a rat's what the desktop design looks like or what style icons are used as long as it can run for months on end without burping. TIA
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Coleslaw
Veteran Cruncher USA Joined: Mar 29, 2007 Post Count: 1343 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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Ubuntu is pretty simple to install and BOINC is in the repository. Use the 64bit version and it will out perform Windows on the VINA apps. Since the i7 has 8 threads, I also recommend upping the Ram if you got the spare parts or money for them. 2GB just isn't that much when it comes to running up to 8 work units at a time.
----------------------------------------I have an BOINC installation walk through for Ubuntu with pictures at my teams forum. Feel free to stop in and take a look. http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1768558     [Edit 2 times, last edit by Coleslaw at Feb 5, 2014 1:21:33 AM] |
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jmcgaw
Advanced Cruncher US Joined: Feb 2, 2007 Post Count: 54 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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Sadly, I'm unable to upgrade the RAM readily, if at all. The i7 I'm using is defective in that two of the three RAM interface circuits are damaged. I can still run a single channel memory, which I've been doing for a few years now (when was it that the first i7s came out -- that is when I got mine) but 2gB will have to be it. That is one reason I'm looking for a simple Linux setup that doesn't have to run anything else well, or at all for that matter. I'll take a look at the Ubuntu distributions to see what is available. Thanks.
----------------------------------------[Edit 1 times, last edit by jmcgaw at Feb 5, 2014 1:27:10 AM] |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
Ubuntu, aside from being a very poorly regarded linux distro among the general linux community, is also probably more resource intensive than you need if its just going to be crunching in the basement.
I would recommend heading over to here http://www.dotsch.de/boinc/Dotsch_UX.html Dotsch is pretty lightweight and had the boinc client already in it, i have several old laptops running off of flash drives or SD cards with dotsch on it,the site has clear guides for various ways to get it up and running. shame that you cant get another stick of ram in there, perhaps a since 4gb stick might come up for cheeps for you at some point in the future. |
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cowtipperbs
Advanced Cruncher Joined: Aug 24, 2009 Post Count: 78 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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This is how I installed BOINC on Ubuntu
----------------------------------------From prompt - sudo apt-get install boinc-client Once installed - boinccmd --project_attach http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/ <weak account reference>  |
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Coleslaw
Veteran Cruncher USA Joined: Mar 29, 2007 Post Count: 1343 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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Keep in mind that Dotsh comes with BOINC 6.10.17 if that matters to you. Some projects now require v7+ of BOINC. However, it should work fine here. Dotsh is also Ubuntu based.
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Falconet
Master Cruncher Portugal Joined: Mar 9, 2009 Post Count: 3315 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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You could try Lubuntu which is based in Ubuntu but much lighter (even read a while ago that it saves a few watts)
---------------------------------------- - AMD Ryzen 5 1600AF 6C/12T 3.2 GHz - 85W - AMD Ryzen 5 2500U 4C/8T 2.0 GHz - 28W - AMD Ryzen 7 7730U 8C/16T 3.0 GHz |
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jmcgaw
Advanced Cruncher US Joined: Feb 2, 2007 Post Count: 54 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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Lubuntu sounds interesting. I'm going to download the install and docs and see what develops. Thanks.
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Falconet
Master Cruncher Portugal Joined: Mar 9, 2009 Post Count: 3315 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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Don't forget to install a 64-bit version of Lubuntu to get crunching performance gains, if your CPU supports 64-bits that is. MCM seems faster in Linux as well. My T2350 1.86 GHZ (laptop CPU, 32 bits) seems to take almost 4 hours to reach 8% of MCM WU's in Windows 7 32 bits while in Linux 32 bits they reach 10% after 10-15 minutes but this huge difference is most likely due to different batches.
----------------------------------------- AMD Ryzen 5 1600AF 6C/12T 3.2 GHz - 85W - AMD Ryzen 5 2500U 4C/8T 2.0 GHz - 28W - AMD Ryzen 7 7730U 8C/16T 3.0 GHz [Edit 1 times, last edit by Falconet at Feb 5, 2014 8:07:43 PM] |
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Mgruben
Advanced Cruncher Joined: May 26, 2013 Post Count: 94 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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Also, I'd recommend turning off any project which is memory-intensive (i.e., at this moment, CEP2) and turning off opt-in to new projects as they become available, on the off-chance that whatever new WCG projects get added in the future are also memory intensive, then adding them manually as you think your system can handle.
----------------------------------------I'm running a headless Arch Linux distribution and with 8 threads of MCM and FAAH (vina and AutoDock) I'm barely at 1GiB used (that is, excluding cached), but keep in mind that that may change over the course of the projects, as they're allowed to wander up to the max resources they claim to use on the system requirements page (250MiB for FAAH, 400MiB for MCM)  |
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