goinc on googlemodules.com
March 15th, 2006
boinc
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just listed GOINC on googlemodules.com, here’s the link
new functionality for goinc? what to add?
March 12th, 2006
boinc
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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
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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
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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
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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!)
