Apologies to anyone who has already read this on LHC. I hope it bears repetition here.

There is a misconception, which I suffered from at one time that linux BOINC commits you to working in command line mode. If doesn't, though you do need a little command line Unix to get things running when you download the official distro. But after that it can be just as 'graphical' as on Windoze.

For example, over on LHC Alex recently said:

besides, their pc is a linux box, so they'd have to run command line stuff instead of clicking buttons in a gui.

I was glad to discover some time ago that I was wrong in this, and am making this posting to help anyone else who is wondering about this. There are a number of options

1. Run the official BoincManager from KDE or Gnome. The official download of the client includes a BM that works with both those desktops. My suggestion if you use this approach is to put a link ('shortcut') to the BM on your desktop.

2. Run BoincView under Wine as Alex suggested

3. Run BoincView from a nearby Windows box (ideal if you are already running a mixed network)

4. Run the windows BoincManager on a nearby windows box and connect remotely. (ever wonder why you can load multiple instances of the BM? It is for the very few users who have one BM running for each of their other machines. I used to do this myself till I discovered option 3)

5. Run the linux BoincManager on a nearby graphics-enabled linux box.

6. Run BoincView under Wine on a nearby linux box.

Option 1 would be my favoured solution if you only have one BOINC box and it already has KDE or GNome. Option 2 would be my favoured solution if you have two or more linux boxes and no windows. Option 3 is my own current choice, as I run a mixed netwrok anyway.

Solutions 3 - 6 all work even with a command-line only linux box - you don't even need an X-server on the box running BOINC as all the gfx happens on the 'viewing' box.

'Nearby' means that the box running BM or BV has to be able to address the box running the client. The viewer can be inside a firewall compared to the client, but not the other way round. In principle a BOINC client on a box with a public IP address (or with port forwarding) could be controlled from the other side of the world.

Solutions 1, 3, and 4 have been used by me on a long term basis and work well. Alex uses option 2.

Finally, suggestions 3-6 will all control windoze boxes as well.

BV is available from http://boincview.amanheis.de/. For some people the fact that it is not open source is an issue, and certainly means there will never be a native Linux BV :(

The BV binaries for windows are freeware and in my opinion if you have more than one box you'd be better off with BV than BM. I have no idea if BV is Vista-ready.

River~~

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There are also quite a few other options, one of them being KBoinc Manager, so no need to use another Windows box or WINE (or similar WINE clones) to get BOincView capabilities

http://kde-apps.org/content/show.php?content=44237
Description:
The BOINC team release a cross-platform GUI to control the BOINC clients. And, as always, one size doesn't fit all. The operation of the standard BOINC manager software lacks the ease of use one comes to expect when used to KDE applications. Additionally, the standard manager software is lacking in some areas.

To overcome these actual and perceived deficiencies, KBoincMgr was born into this world. The advantages of KBoincMgr are too few to mention, but if they weren't, they would include the following gems.

* The one instance of KBoincMgr can manage multiple BOINC clients. This prevents the Taskbar from becoming cluttered with many instances of boincmgr with the subsequent confusion inflicted upon the long suffering user, ie, you.

Not only is KBoincMgr imbued with this startling feature, but on startup KBoincMgr will attempt to connect to all configured clients.

How can sliced bread compete with that?

* Access to the Internet is sometimes controlled by some authorisation / authentication server. It the author's case, this is a Cisco PIX server. If the authentication lapses, completed results queue until the user authenticates with the server again. As with most things to do with security, it is a great idea and would be even better if it didn't make things harder to use.

In a futile attempt to make life easer, KBoincMgr contains a facility whereby an authorisation script can be specified for each managed BOINC client. This script can be run manually or automatically whenever a result is completed.

Since such scripts will probably contain password and other sensitive data, the user can specify which items are to be secured and KBoincMgr will store that information in the KDE KWallet facility.

* From time to time, it is also necessary to log onto the BOINC client machine. To assist in this, each managed BOINC client can have its own embedded "Konsole" window.

Now if that's not enough to get you using KBoincMgr you must be a few kangaroos short in the top paddock!

AND it is under the GPL license unlike BoincView which is closed source, so that keep the linux open source people happy.

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Team mauisun.org

There are also quite a few other options, one of them being KBoinc Manager, so no need to use another Windows box or WINE (or similar WINE clones) to get BOincView capabilities

[...]

AND it is under the GPL license unlike BoincView which is closed source, so that keep the linux open source people happy.

wow! I didn't know any of that - thanks FC

Do you know if it runs under Gnome or is it strictly KDE? (sometimes I think we need a KINK - as in KINK Is Not KDE)

Politically this would be my favoured option (due to open source issue, and being a K-fan myself). And it would be more pleasing, aesthetically, to have a Linux app controlling a Winoze one than the other way round ;-)

But realistically, it will be a long time till I can be bothered to migrate on the lines 'if it ain't brok don't fix it'. And laziness.

R~~

Apologies to anyone who has already read this on LHC. I hope it bears repetition here.

There is a misconception, which I suffered from at one time that linux BOINC commits you to working in command line mode. If doesn't, though you do need a little command line Unix to get things running when you download the official distro. But after that it can be just as 'graphical' as on Windoze.

For example, over on LHC Alex recently said:

besides, their pc is a linux box, so they'd have to run command line stuff instead of clicking buttons in a gui.

I was glad to discover some time ago that I was wrong in this, and am making this posting to help anyone else who is wondering about this. There are a number of options

1. Run the official BoincManager from KDE or Gnome. The official download of the client includes a BM that works with both those desktops. My suggestion if you use this approach is to put a link ('shortcut') to the BM on your desktop.

2. Run BoincView under Wine as Alex suggested

3. Run BoincView from a nearby Windows box (ideal if you are already running a mixed network)

4. Run the windows BoincManager on a nearby windows box and connect remotely. (ever wonder why you can load multiple instances of the BM? It is for the very few users who have one BM running for each of their other machines. I used to do this myself till I discovered option 3)

5. Run the linux BoincManager on a nearby graphics-enabled linux box.

6. Run BoincView under Wine on a nearby linux box.

Option 1 would be my favoured solution if you only have one BOINC box and it already has KDE or GNome. Option 2 would be my favoured solution if you have two or more linux boxes and no windows. Option 3 is my own current choice, as I run a mixed netwrok anyway.

Solutions 3 - 6 all work even with a command-line only linux box - you don't even need an X-server on the box running BOINC as all the gfx happens on the 'viewing' box.

'Nearby' means that the box running BM or BV has to be able to address the box running the client. The viewer can be inside a firewall compared to the client, but not the other way round. In principle a BOINC client on a box with a public IP address (or with port forwarding) could be controlled from the other side of the world.

Solutions 1, 3, and 4 have been used by me on a long term basis and work well. Alex uses option 2.

Finally, suggestions 3-6 will all control windoze boxes as well.

BV is available from http://boincview.amanheis.de/. For some people the fact that it is not open source is an issue, and certainly means there will never be a native Linux BV :(

The BV binaries for windows are freeware and in my opinion if you have more than one box you'd be better off with BV than BM. I have no idea if BV is Vista-ready.

River~~

How does one shut down BOINC on a Linux box from BV on a Windows machine?

My problem isn't managing BOINC from GUI (I use BV), but rather running the Linux box under GUI.

Don't quite get what your last sentence is trying to say... Under which/what/where GUI.. BoincView only works under Windows?

But as for stopping BOINC in BoincView, the nearest you have is to suspend it. Since if you stop it then there is no way for boinc to get commands to start it again.

You could send the RPC command manually, it is quit(), but you would need to request that feature to the BoincView developer.

---

Team mauisun.org

Don't quite get what your last sentence is trying to say... Under which/what/where GUI.. BoincView only works under Windows?

But as for stopping BOINC in BoincView, the nearest you have is to suspend it. Since if you stop it then there is no way for boinc to get commands to start it again.

You could send the RPC command manually, it is quit(), but you would need to request that feature to the BoincView developer.

I don't have a problem with the functions that BV provides on my Windows machines to control BOINC on the Linux machines.

I need to work with Linux in GUI.......without BV. I need to be able to "update" the Linux (Ubuntu) or stop/start the Linux machines from one of the Windows machines.

Starting the boinc client remotely on a linux box needs to be done (as far as I have discovered so far) from the shell (unix command line). What I do is to log in via ssh and type the name of a script I wrote to do that. To ssh into a linux box from windows use a free program called Putty (google it to find it).

Stopping the boinc client can be done with boinc_command from the same or another linux box, or with boinccmd.exe from a win box. Use like this

from linux, having navigated to the BOINC directory

./boinc_command --host 192.168.1.2 --password foobar --quit

from win command prompt, having navigated to the BOINC folder

boinccmd --host 192.168.1.2 --password foobar --quit

from the windows desktop, using a shortcut loaded with the above command adjusted for the correct folder for boinccmd.exe. Don't forget double quotes around the filename due to the space in Program Files. So the target of the shortcut looks something like

"c:program filesBOINCboinccmd" --host 192.168.1.2 --password foobar --quit

Clicking on such a shortcut is about as close as it gets to a gui button to stop a remote boinc client.

You could also load a shortcut with the putty command line in order to make a shortcut that loggged in and started BOINC for you, if you did not mind the security risk that the login password for that unix account would be held on a windows box in cleartext. For that reason I've never done that.

hope that helps,

and better ideas welcome as starting/stopping remotely is the one part of the setup I am not totally satisfied with myself.

River~~

Paul Sands of LHC adds:

There is a nice manager fo Linux called KBoincSpy. I like it better than the manager that comes with Boinc.

http://kboincspy.sourceforge.net/

Starting the boinc client remotely on a linux box needs to be done (as far as I have discovered so far) from the shell (unix command line). What I do is to log in via ssh and type the name of a script I wrote to do that. To ssh into a linux box from windows use a free program called Putty (google it to find it).

Stopping the boinc client can be done with boinc_command from the same or another linux box, or with boinccmd.exe from a win box. Use like this

from linux, having navigated to the BOINC directory

./boinc_command --host 192.168.1.2 --password foobar --quit

from win command prompt, having navigated to the BOINC folder

boinccmd --host 192.168.1.2 --password foobar --quit

from the windows desktop, using a shortcut loaded with the above command adjusted for the correct folder for boinccmd.exe. Don't forget double quotes around the filename due to the space in Program Files. So the target of the shortcut looks something like

"c:program filesBOINCboinccmd" --host 192.168.1.2 --password foobar --quit

Clicking on such a shortcut is about as close as it gets to a gui button to stop a remote boinc client.

You could also load a shortcut with the putty command line in order to make a shortcut that loggged in and started BOINC for you, if you did not mind the security risk that the login password for that unix account would be held on a windows box in cleartext. For that reason I've never done that.

hope that helps,

and better ideas welcome as starting/stopping remotely is the one part of the setup I am not totally satisfied with myself.

River~~

I use PuTTY, but I'm not "UX" Guru enough to handily work with it. I just want a GUI to run from a Windows computer that makes it look like I'm sitting in front of the Linux boxes. It isn't just a matter of managing BOINC, but managing the Linux box and every thing running on it and being able to shut the box down with a "restart".

Haven't found any VNC that really works well. pcAnywhere Version 12 and up are supposed to work with Linux, but I can't make it happen.

Stuck using KVMs for the moment, but really would like a good "remote" solution.

Thanks to everyone that gave me input.

... I just want a GUI to run from a Windows computer that makes it look like I'm sitting in front of the Linux boxes. ...

Do you mean you want to have a Gnome/KDE window to your Linux machine open up from a Windows machine?

I think this is possible with some added software on the winbox and some specific settings on the Linux end.

I will do some experimenting, as this is something I've been meaning to look at for a while. Which desktop do you use on Linux, Gnome or KDE? Which Linux distribution do you have?

Anyone with direct experience of doing this, do please chip in now... I am thinking of CygWin, CygWinX, & Putty. Any better ideas?

River~~

... I just want a GUI to run from a Windows computer that makes it look like I'm sitting in front of the Linux boxes. ...

Do you mean you want to have a Gnome/KDE window to your Linux machine open up from a Windows machine?

I think this is possible with some added software on the winbox and some specific settings on the Linux end.

I will do some experimenting, as this is something I've been meaning to look at for a while. Which desktop do you use on Linux, Gnome or KDE? Which Linux distribution do you have?

Anyone with direct experience of doing this, do please chip in now... I am thinking of CygWin, CygWinX, & Putty. Any better ideas?

River~~

That's exactly what I mean....use a GUI from a Windows machine to open a GUI on a Linux machine.

Using Ubuntu 6.10. That particular version uses Gnome. Kubuntu uses KDE and Xubuntu uses XFCE or something like that.

I use WinSCP to move files back and forth to get BOINC upgraded and use cc_config to control some of the BOINC parameters.

Right now I get in the Linux boxes by switching to their port on one of my KVMs. I use the Gnome GUI to start BOINC and then I manage BOINC from a Windows box using BV. I can't do this from my office in the house (or a remote location), I have to physically be in the computer room where the boxes and KVMs are.

I appreciate your interest and dialog.

I have a Ubuntu 6.10 system, and as soon as I enabled Remote Desktop (or whatever it was called) on it and set a password, I could VNC to it fine. I didn't have to install any other software on the Ubuntu system to achieve this.

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I have a Ubuntu 6.10 system, and as soon as I enabled Remote Desktop (or whatever it was called) on it and set a password, I could VNC to it fine. I didn't have to install any other software on the Ubuntu system to achieve this.

VNC has been implemnented by several different groups, some commercial, some free, and at least one is available in a paid for ('enterprise') version as well as a free version

Which version of VNC were you using at the windows end?

That's exactly what I mean....use a GUI from a Windows machine to open a GUI on a Linux machine.

OK, I have tested Cygwin with both KDE and Gnome, and both seem to work (with a few minor cosmetic bugs).

The install will take a while as there are three sets of software that need to work together, Cygwin, Putty, and your Linux box. I have therefore put the details in a new thread.

Please keep on discussing VNC and other solutions here, as I'd prefer to keep the new thread for that one specific solution.

R~~

VNC has been implemnented by several different groups, some commercial, some free, and at least one is available in a paid for ('enterprise') version as well as a free version

Which version of VNC were you using at the windows end?

I was using the free UltraVNC client, but I'd expect the free RealVNC client to work too (I can try that later if someone wants me to check).

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I have a Ubuntu 6.10 system, and as soon as I enabled Remote Desktop (or whatever it was called) on it and set a password, I could VNC to it fine. I didn't have to install any other software on the Ubuntu system to achieve this.

I can't believe that I was connected by GUI in less that two minutes after downloading the UltraVNC. I already had the remote desktop set up on my Linux boxes.

The "full screen" doesn't want to cooperate. What size screens are you using on the Linux and on the Ubuntu?

Many thanks for the information.