Any suggestions how one could script the process of attaching/detaching projects?

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The simple way is to set up a BOINC installation that is going to be copied to the other computers; attach to whatever projects you like, set "no new work" and run "dry"; then instead of downloading a new BOINC installer for each remote machine, install a copy of the one with everything already set up.

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sounds nice and simple.
don't forget to set up the gui_rpc_auth.cfg and remote_hosts.cfg files as detailed on the setup Wiki so you can access / control the remote machines once they're running

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Random Thoughts

Thank you for the response. Out of curiosity, is there a “complex” way?

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Thank you for the response. Out of curiosity, is there a "complex" way?

Sure - use the installer on all the machines, then copy in just the necessary xml files for each project...

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Cool. So I should be able to copy the necessary xml files to a folder somewhere, then have the script on the remote machines download the xml files periodically.

I'm assuming this process wouldn't destroy (for lack of a better phrase) the work being processed by the remote machines?

I'm also assuming I can figure out what the necessary xml files are by poking around the messageboards here and/or at the project sites?

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You only download the files once. After that the machines maintain their own copies.

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I'm also assuming I can figure out what the necessary xml files are by poking around the messageboards here and/or at the project sites?

No - you'll need to look at the xml files in the already-attached working folder. My guess is that you'll need _all_ of them, but only the one time. You DO NOT want to have any work on the computer that you copy the files from, it is these files that hold the list of work to be done; if you copy them from a system that has work, the new host will error out trying to find the missing work.

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Cool. So I should be able to copy the necessary xml files to a folder somewhere, then have the script on the remote machines download the xml files periodically.

I'm assuming this process wouldn't destroy (for lack of a better phrase) the work being processed by the remote machines?

I'm also assuming I can figure out what the necessary xml files are by poking around the messageboards here and/or at the project sites?

You want the account*.xml files. There should be no damage copying these files to a host that is already running the project, although it does make some interesting stats if they are from a different user. These files only store your project specific preferences and account id, no work is associated with them.

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BOINC WIKI

BOINCing since 2002/12/8

When running many PCs under the same account, the account key for every project is in the account-*.xml files in each PC's ~/BOINC directory.

But one would need to "protect" that account key, as knowing the account key of just one project, one can change BOINC defaults across all PCs and projects, right? (as long as some PCs have projects in common, for those defaults to "propagate")

So, when all my PCs are in my home, no problem. How do people deal with this issue when considering to setup BOINC on 30-40-100 PCs at work ? Or if I want to quickly setup a BOINC project on a friends PC, without him going through all the trouble of setting up a separate account?

Is there a way to attach a PC to an account, without storing the account key on that PC's .xml files in plaintext for everyone to see? Could BOINC be told to keep account keys in hashed form and just compare the hashed ones with project's server? (but still require plaintext account-key or password for changes of settings in /home.php)

Or am I missing something?

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How-To: Join Distributed Computing projects that benefit humanity

Is there a way to attach a PC to an account, without storing the account key on that PC's .xml files in plaintext for everyone to see? Could BOINC be told to keep account keys in hashed form and just compare the hashed ones with project's server? (but still require plaintext account-key or password for changes of settings in /home.php)

Or am I missing something?

Short of adding code to the core client to encrypt the files (ok, since it is open source, it wouldn't take much to write a program to decrypt, but it would keep out the casual file browser type person).

For "public" machines, you pretty much have to use file permissions to keep people out of the account_*.xml files.

James

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