Archive for boinc
goinc 1.2 – minor tweaks
May 2nd, 2007 boinc
so i have had some interest lately about adding certain features to goinc. and as a result, i am making some time to actually following through with the requests. among the features to be added is displaying information from the team stats pages, as well as support for a larger list of boinc projects out there. if there are any other requests before this next round of upgrades, please let me know.
this minor release puts some shameless self-promotion on the gadget, as well as the ability to donate money to me via paypal. if you like the gadget, donate a few bucks to me to keep me motivated and to keep me updating GOINC with new features.
oh. and i also changed the font.
goinc 1.1 — host info added
November 26th, 2006 boinc
tweaked a few minor things, but the biggest change is the ability to monitor hosts by user if you enter the account key (authentication token) instead of the integer user id. the account key is a 32 character hexadecimal number that the project provides to you. if you’ve lost or forgotten your key, you can have the project send you a copy to your email. check the permanent goinc info and help page too, for more information.
this is now goinc 1.1; url has not changed. please add a new module/gadget to your google homepage, if you are still using the old version – prior to 1.0, including 0.1 and 0.2.
the gadget url is
as always, talk to me if you have any questions or concerns!
GOINC XML – 1.0
November 19th, 2006 boinc
just finished updating goinc. major new enhancements:
- faster: true, asynchronous client-side data retrieval.
- smaller: updated css to allow more data on screen, less clutter.
- by user project selection: monitor users from different projects, not just one project at a time.
i’m labelling this 1.0, a jump from 0.2 – the functionality for goinc is pretty complete. i would like to add host per user information, but i might not get to that for a while. so, 1.0 it is.
the url of 1.0 is http://stegic.net/gm/goinc-xml/goinc.xml and is available immediately.
here’s a screenshot of what it looks like:
added BBC CPDN to supported projects
April 9th, 2006 boinc
someone in wales requested support for the BBC CPDN project on GOINC… and hey presto! support for BBC CPDN enjoy!
goinc on googlemodules.com
March 15th, 2006 boinc
just listed GOINC on googlemodules.com, here’s the link
new functionality for goinc? what to add?
March 12th, 2006 boinc
so i’ve been thinking about new functionality for goinc. after looking at my web logs i’ve discovered that people are using goinc to keep track of themselves on more than one project, instead of the same project across different user id’s. every userid that you are monitoring should be associated with its own project. i think i’ll put this in the next version.
any other suggestions?
(sorry, you’ll have to register to comment: spam is *killing* me.)
GOINC Ver. 0.2 – Notes
February 11th, 2006 boinc
GOINC has only been out for a few days, and no one really knows about it (which is probably a good thing right now!) so releasing an update to it is probably not a big deal. But, there are some major improvements:
- List of supported BOINC projects now stored in a database and not hard-coded.
- Addition of trend charts (sparkline!) to the module using sparkline.org
- User preferences in module can now
- switch trend lines on or off
- select the number of previous bars (history) to display in the trend chart
- select the color of trend chart bars
- Added the date/time the page was generated
- Added a link to project’s homepage on the project’s name on top
- Data is now being stored to a database as users view the module, creating history per user, per project — being used for the trending.
- Added Version number to footer.
- Added trend line footer text.
The module is available in Google’s Base (because it’s fassstt!) at
with the supported projects still being
- ClimatePrediction.net
- Einstein@Home
- LHC@Home
- Predictor@Home
- Rosetta@Home
- SETI@Home
Here’s a screenshot of the latest UI
GOINC 0.1
February 8th, 2006 boinc
GOINC: For keeping tabs on BOINC.
google personalized home is a great tool to keep all your things in one place with. granted, i’ve been using my.yahoo.com for the longest time, but i needed something new to play with and i think this is it! this little module can be used to keep track of how your BOINC average and total credits are going compared to your friends, colleagues and competitors. i wrote it mainly because i wanted to keep track of how i was doing compared to dreeZ and fnirt and it’s easier to use the personalized home than to keep checking the website.
it supports the following projects, although i can be convinced to support additional ones if the “show_user.php” URL is provided to me:
- ClimatePrediction.net
- Einstein@Home
- LHC@Home
- Predictor@Home
- Rosetta@Home
- SETI@Home
it allows you to enter up to five user id’s corresponding to the project you’re interested in, and then shows the summary results of each user for the selected project. im hoping to add history tracking and graphs at some point in the future too! it’s an xml module that makes a call to a PHP page which in turn calls the relevant project’s xml feed to get live data on the user’s id that was entered. all of this is then packaged as a well-behaved html table, and rendered for the module. easy. and sometimes, sllloooowww.
the module is in google’s base at:
so just add the module to your google homepage using the url above, and you’re set! this is how it looks when you publish it on your page:
boinc as a system service on mac os x
December 11th, 2005 boinc
here’s how to setup boinc to start up automatically on mac os x, without a user being logged in — this takes advantage of the /library/statupitems/ folder. you’ll have to be comfortable with using the terminal, and will also need to have know the system administrator/root user’s password.
- start up a terminal: use your finder and go to applications > utilities > terminal
- create the folder that will contain the boinc command line application. i like to install it directly in the root folder, so doing ‘mkdir /boinc’ should be sufficient. you may have to become the super user at this point to create the folder. do this by typing ’sudo mkdir /boinc’ and then enter the sys admin’s password. (i’ll preface all the remaining commands with sudo so that there is no confusion).
- get a copy of the boinc command line client and save it in /boinc. you’ll be using the file “boinc” to start things up at boot time.
- make sure the “boinc” program is executable. it should have permissions “-rwxr-xr-x” so that it executes correctly. run the command “sudo chmod +x boinc” if you are having trouble.
- attach any projects that you are involved with. you want to do this first so that when the app starts up at boot time, it knows what work to do. something like “sudo ./boinc -attach_project [url] [key]” where [url] is the project’s url and [key] is your account key. it’ll do the benchmarks. if you need to add another project, stop boinc, attach the other project, and continue.
- now the trick: create the actual startup item. change to the directory /library/startupitems: “cd /Library/StartupItems/”
- create a folder called boinc, and change to it: “sudo mkdir boinc” followed by “sudo cd boinc”. you should now be in the folder “/Library/StartupItems/boinc”.
- create a text file called “boinc” — the same as the folder you just created. this is where you’ll give the commands to start boinc up at boot time. here’s the file i’ve used successfully. make sure that this file can execute as well: change mode if necesary, “sudo chmod +x boinc” as before.
- you’ll also need to create another text file in “/Library/StartupItems/boinc/” called “StartupParameters.plist” with these contents
- that’s it! if you were able to start up boinc earlier, and you create the files listed, you should be all done. reboot your system, and check the “/boinc/boinc.log” file for boinc’s log. any errors will show up there.
oh, and if you’ve stumbled on this by accident, do checkout the boinc distributed computing projects, especially climateprediction.net — put your computers to good use… it’s fun!
(this post was originally published on a previous server with notes that you had to be root user to accomplish the task. i have since updated the post, taking in to account the comments that were made. thanks to those that did!)
