Getting BOINC setup without drives

[m&m's]

This is a guide to setup a computer so it can run BOINC without an HDD or an SSD.
Everything will be stored on the computer's RAM. A USB key will be used to boot and only boot, it can be ejected once the computer is booted.

Minimum requirement: 1GB of RAM and a 256MB USB key.

1- Download Porteus: http://build.porteus.org/
Select 64BIT and LXDE. Why LXDE? Because it's lightweight.

You don't need the development tools, so save ~70MB of RAM by not clicking on it.

Select your timezone and your keyboard layout.

I would suggest to pick a web browser, even if not needed, a web browser is always useful.

2- Download Rufus: http://rufus.akeo.ie/

3- Open Rufus, select your USB key, select your Porteus ISO and start.

4- Download BOINC, a package that is needed by BOINC and the zip attached to this thread:

http://boinc.berkeley.edu/dl/boinc_7.2.42_x86_64-pc-linux-gnu.sh and

www.slackware.com/~alien/slackbuilds/wxGTK/pkg64/13.0/wxGTK-2.8.10-x86_64-1alien.tgz.

5- Extract the zip file to the USB key, you should now have a boinc folder, copy the 2 other files to that folder, you should now have 4 files in the folder.

6- Boot from your USB key and select "Copy to RAM". It should boot in less than a 1 minute.

7- Open Home, click on your USB key (on the left under Places), copy the folder boinc to your desktop, eject the USB key and follow the instructions in Help.txt.

What is in the Help.txt file?

Spoiler: Help.txt

#Copy the folder "boinc" to your desktop and open it (If you copy it
somewhere else, you'll have to modify the lines below).
#The USB key can be ejected at this point.
#Activate "libjpeg62_6b-15ubuntu1.1_amd64.xzm" (Right click, Activate).
#By default the password is "toor".
#Install "wxGTK-2.8.10-x86_64-1alien.tgz" (Right click,
Install slackware package).
#Execute "boinc_7.2.42_x86_64-pc-linux-gnu.sh" (Right click, Properties,
Permissions tab, change Execute scroll box to Only owner, OK, Right
click, Open, Execute).


#Open LXTerminal
#Paste the following 2 lines:
cd /home/guest/Desktop/boinc/BOINC
sh run_client
#Press enter
#Boinc is running if the last line finishes with "Initialization
completed".
#Do not close the terminal or BOINC will stop running.

#Open a second LXTerminal
#Paste the following 2 lines:
cd /home/guest/Desktop/boinc/BOINC
sh run_manager
#Do not close the terminal or BOINC Manager will stop running.
#Et voilà! You can now add your project!

The other file in the zip folder is a conversion of a Ubuntu package (.deb) to Slackware (.xzm).
The original file is available here:

http://packages.ubuntu.com/lucid/amd64/libjpeg62/download

Every time that you will restart the computer, you'll need to do the steps that are in Help.txt, which takes less than 2 minutes.

Porteus with Firefox installed takes ~168MB and BOINC ~42MB, Porteus uses ~157MB to run and BOINC (without tasks) ~10MB so it takes ~377MB of RAM! If you have 1GB of RAM, it leaves you ~647MB of RAM to RUN and STORE tasks! So with only 1GB of RAM, you are good to go!

Performance using a Phenom II X4 965@3.4GHz

Windows 7 64Bit
2798 floating point MIPS (Whetstone) per CPU
8469 integer MIPS (Dhrystone) per CPU

Porteus on RAM 64BIT
1805 floating point MIPS (Whetstone) per CPU
15306 integer MIPS (Dhrystone) per CPU

Questions?

 

[Nordic]

Lets get this stickied.

As ion has pointed out, UGM keys might be the best bet for this because of their low memory footprint.

Bonus points for using the same boot usb stick on multiple systems...

@thebluebumblebee, I wonder if this might work with a few tweaks for folding machines also.

 

[[Ion]]

Well this is cool!
I'll add it to the Essentials in the morning

Do you know if there's a way to set it to backup to a USB drive on certain intervals? I know if it writes to the USB key continuously it'll burn it up quickly, but just doing a backup once an hour or so ought to be safe.

 

[thebluebumblebee]

@thebluebumblebee, I wonder if this might work with a few tweaks for folding machines also.

The problem I see is the graphics setup. I would not want to go through that every time the computer gets rebooted. Would be sweet though.
@[Ion] , @Jstn7477 , ideas?
Hmmm, looks at system in the corner with 16GB RAM. Must play.

 

[m&m's]

Well this is cool!
I'll add it to the Essentials in the morning

Do you know if there's a way to set it to backup to a USB drive on certain intervals? I know if it writes to the USB key continuously it'll burn it up quickly, but just doing a backup once an hour or so ought to be safe.

It is possible to do a backup once an hour with crontab.

Open a terminal, type "su", enter your root password, type "crontab -e", press the letter "a" (it will let you add stuff), type "0 * * * * rsync --delete -r /home/guest/Desktop/boinc/BOINC /mnt/sda1", press esc, type ":wq" (to save and quit) and you're good to go. What the code is doing is syncing the folder "BOINC" to your USB key every hour at x:00. Rsync only copies the portions of files that have changed so the amount of data written to your USB key is lowered. Your USB key might not be sda1, so you might need to change this value, but it most likely will be sda1.

The problem I see is the graphics setup. I would not want to go through that every time the computer gets rebooted. Would be sweet though.
@[Ion] , @Jstn7477 , ideas?
Hmmm, looks at system in the corner with 16GB RAM. Must play.

I don't know if it can help you, but you can add video drivers to the ISO.

 

[thebluebumblebee]

I don't know if it can help you, but you can add video drivers to the ISO.

What we have seen is that the installation of CUDA also downloads the latest video driver. I'd save the space, or at least I will on my first try.