A good idea however, surely this question should be directed to the creators of BOINC software at Berkley. boinc.berkeley.edu/ If they can build the software to allow for NAS then in due course World Community Grid will be able to make modifications as necessary.

domonijo - if you look at the last post on the Nas4free thread you will see that a BOINC forums post has already been created:

I've created a BOINC project thread on this topic here: http://boinc.berkeley.edu/dev/forum_thread.php?id=9961

SekeRob - the fact that there are FreeBSD contributors here is exactly why I posted here. Nas4free is running on top of FreeBSD, so anyone who knows how to get the BOINC client running on FreeBSD can solve this problem by explaining exactly how to do it. It is difficult, as the Nas4free thread illustrates. As you say, "a client port is the key effort needed" and apparently WCG's FreeBSD contributors have managed to pull that off already. But how? And as for the processors, probably 90%+ of Nas4free's FreeBSD installations are x86 or x64. And they typically run 24 / 7 / 365, with super low CPU usage!! Nas4free mainly exercises the hard drives and the network connection, leaving vast amounts of CPU available for BOINC - if only the BOINC client could be installed!!

However, as shown here http://forums.nas4free.org/viewtopic.php?t=7755 there are big problems with getting the BOINC client to work on Nas4free file servers according to those instructions, even for people who are experienced Linux users.

The instructions you reference basically amount to "Try to compile it yourself. Good luck..." and as shown above they don't actually work as a practical matter. That's on top of being very difficult to follow for a person who doesn't know Linux at all (e.g., most Nas4free users who are only there to create a home fileserver and neither know nor care about Linux). These people are used to "find the .msi or .exe, run antivirus, click through all the install GUI buttons, done!" That's exactly how they approached installing BOINC on Windows.

Those instructions are a total failure, both from the perspective of completeness and clarity (to people who do have Linux experience) and from the perspective of knowing your audience (mainly nontechnical Windows users). What's needed is a clear, complete, fully debugged installation process that's communicated so clearly that even the average computer user can follow along. The BOINC Windows client meets that standard. On FreeBSD, BOINC is nowhere near that. Thus vast numbers of wasted Nas4free CPU cycles remain far away from WCG/BOINC's reach.

Right, and it looks like WCG may have 650 or so experts, since about that number of WCG contributors are (somehow) running the BOINC client successfully on FreeBSD.

Papa3,

ooops, should have got brain in gear before typing my response. I know next to nothing about FreeBSD, although have had experience with SUSE, Ubuntu and getting them to run WCG sciences under other usernames.