Setting up a single-host server

BOINC provides a set of scripts for setting up and controlling a BOINC server complex. These scripts require all the server components to run on a single host. This has been tested only on Linux and Solaris hosts; it may work with small modifications on Windows also.

The scripts can be used to create multiple BOINC projects on the same host. This can be handy for creating separate projects for testing and debugging. In fact, the scripts are part of a general testing framework that allows multiple developers to work independently on a single host, with each developer able to create multiple projects.

Install the following software on the server host:

• MySQL, version 3.23 or later
• PHP, version 4.2.3 or later
• Apache, linked with the PHP module, POST enabled

Directory structure

boinc_projects/
    proj1/
        cgi/
        download/
        html_ops/
        html_user/
        keys/
        upload/
    proj2/
    ...

• cgi: copies of the BOINC server programs, and a configuration file.
• download: storage for data server downloads.
• html_ops: copies of PHP files for project management.
• html_user: copies of PHP files for the public web site.
• keys: encryption keys used by the project.
• upload: storage for data server uploads.

Web server configuration

Create two directories, used to store symbolic links to project-specific HTML and CGI directories. You might call these boinc_html and boinc_cgi. Then edit your Apache configuration file httpd.conf, adding something like the following:

Alias /david/ "/users/david/boinc_html/"
<Directory "/users/david/boinc_html">
    Options Indexes FollowSymlinks MultiViews
    AllowOverride None
    Order allow,deny
    Allow from all
</Directory>

ScriptAlias /david_cgi/ "/users/david/boinc_cgi/"
<Directory "/users/david/boinc_cgi">
    AllowOverride None
    Options FollowSymLinks
    Order allow,deny
    Allow from all
</Directory>

Make sure the following is included (failure to do so will create a major security loophole, namely your .htconfig.xml files will be readable via HTTP):

<Files ~ "^\.ht">
    Order allow,deny
    Deny from all
    Satisfy All
</Files>

You should also set the default MIME type as follows:

DefaultType application/octet-stream

Environment variabless

BOINC_PROJECTS_DIR
BOINC_USER_NAME	This is used as a component of database names, and is prepended to web error log entries. Relevant if multiple developers share one host. /td>
BOINC_SRC_DIR	Path of directory where BOINC source code is
BOINC_CGI_DIR	Path of the CGI symbolic-link directory (see above).
BOINC_CGI_URL	URL of the CGI symbolic-link directory.
BOINC_HTML_DIR	path of a HTML symbolic-link directory (see above)
BOINC_HTML_URL	URL of the HTML symbolic-link directory
BOINC_SHMEM_KEY	Identifier for shared-memory segment (use any 31-bit number that doesn't conflict with current segments)

For example, you might execute the following shell script:

setenv BOINC_PROJECTS_DIR   /home/david/boinc_projects
setenv BOINC_USER_NAME      david
setenv BOINC_SRC_DIR        /home/david/boinc_cvs/boinc
setenv BOINC_CGI_DIR        /home/david/cgi-bin
setenv BOINC_CGI_URL        http://localhost/cgi-bin
setenv BOINC_HTML_DIR       /home/david/html
setenv BOINC_HTML_URL       http://localhost
setenv BOINC_SHMEM_KEY      0x3abc1234

Creating the server

Once you've done all the above steps, edit the script make_project.php in the test directory of the BOINC source tree, adding your application name. Then execute this script. This does the following:

• Create the project directory and its subdirectories.
• Create the project's encryption keys. NOTE: before making the project publicly visible, you must move the code-signing private key to a highly secure (preferably non-networked) host, and delete it from the server host.
• Create a MySQL database for this project, named (BOINC_USER_NAME)_(project-name).
• Insert initial records in the project, platform, user, and app tables.
• Copy the server programs (cgi, feeder, file_upload_handler) from the source directory to the project/cgi directory.
• Generate the configuration file (config.xml) used by the server programs.
• Copy the user and administrative PHP files to the project directories html_user and html_ops.
• Create a file "db_name" in project/html_user and project/html_ops so that the project web sites access the right database.
• Macro-process html_user/index.html to insert the correct scheduler URL.
• Create symbolic links (with the project name) from the main HTML and CGI directories to the project directory.

At this point you hopefully have a functioning BOINC server, but it has no applications or work to distribute. The remaining steps to make a public project include:

• Develop, debug and test your application.
• Develop back-end systems for generating work and processing results.
• Using the "add" utility, add application versions to the BOINC database.
• Develop your web site.