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boinc - Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing

Even armV6 / armV7 systems with a single core can contribute significantly.

Run boinc persistently on a Pi / whatever without affecting latency of other service.

boinc is in both Raspbian and Arch Linux.

Install boinc:

# raspbian
$ apt-get install boinc

# arch
$ pacman -S boinc-nox

Run the service:

# raspbian
$ /etc/init.d/boinc start

# arch
$ systemctl enable boinc

You can use boincmgr if you're running X, or boinccmd from the shell.

Create an account on Seti@Home (or SkyNet):

$ boinccmd --create_account http://setiathome.berkeley.edu email password name

Get your account key:

$ boinccmd --lookup_account http://setiathome.berkeley.edu email_address password

Attach the project to boinc:

$ boinccmd --project_attach http://setiathome.berkeley.edu account_key

systemd service can be configured to have a high nice value:

[Unit]
Description=BOINC Daemon
 
[Service]
User=boinc
Nice=19
ExecStart=/usr/bin/boinc_client --dir /var/lib/boinc --redirectio
 
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Can alternatively be resource-limited with CPUShares which limits the service's share of the CPU using cgroups:

# /etc/systemd/system/boinc.service
.include /usr/lib/systemd/system/boinc.service
 
[Service]
CPUShares=1500

(see man systemd.service or http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/resources.html)

Other BOINC projects:

• Rosetta@Home: Determine the 3-dimensional shapes of proteins in research that may ultimately lead to finding cures for some major human disease
• Hydrogen@Home: To enhance clean energy technology by improving hydrogen production and storage
• MilkyWay@Home: Research in modeling and determining the evolution of the Milkyway galaxy
• SETI@Home: searches through data from the radio telescope at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico
• MindModelling@Home: computational cognitive process modeling to better understand the human mind and to improve on the scientific foundations that explain the mechanisms and processes that enable and moderate human performance and learning