MikeL's FreeBSD howto

MikeL's FreeBSD howto - seti/boinc

[20200514]
Ok, started over. Now installed linux emulation. Doesn't seem to have helped. Am now following: https://people.freebsd.org/~pav/boinc.html
Note that this has you install PORTS - up 'til now I've been installing PACKAGES.
Nope, 'boinc-setiathome-enhanced' does not exist.
'boinc-einsteinathome' does not exist.
'boinc-simap' does not exist.
'boinc-milkyway' does not exist.
'astro/boinc-setiathome' leads me to install net/boinc-client.
net/boinc-client pukes on some module (p5-Locale-gettext-1.07?) missing the perl program.
It needed perl5.30.0 in /usr/bin so I put a link there to the current perl which is 5.30.2. Seems to be compiling now...
Done successfully, still no promised gui version of mgr.
Did make deinstall of 'astro/boinc-setiathopme'.
Now make deinstall clean install in 'net/boinc-client'.
HAH! Got it! Don't know exactly what thing I've done that fixed it. I do have to install it on another system, if I manage to get a more direct route, I'll note it here.

[20200514]
I spent a bunch of time creating accounts and trying to hook them up, but it was all a waste. I was unable to find any boinc project that would run on FreeBSD. If you find one, please let me know...

[20200402]
I just struggled through getting boinc running...
Note that setiathome just retired from sending out datasets, but now we're all excited to work on covid-19.

FreeBSD boinc installation
pkg install boinc-client
(I don't think this is needed, the mgr seems to be loaded but is broken just the same whether or not you installed this.)
pkg install boinc-curses

Edit /etc/rc.conf
and add boinc_client_enable="YES"
Oh, all this stuff seems to get loaded into the /var/db/boinc dir.

I created and app_config.xml by copy-n-pasting from website below. I don't know if they're needed, I did get a warning when I put them in place but empty. [20200403] The second time I did an install, I did not do this.
client config from boinc

service boinc-client start

Note the all the directions I've found called for boinc_mgr and such - nope. On FreeBSD it seems to be no underscores: boincmgr, boinccmd, etc.
boincmgr just gives some error about GPU. Simply do a manual add as follows:

NOTE! boinccmd MUST be run from the /var/db/boinc/ directory. If you try to run it from somewhere else, you will get "Operation failed: authentication error". This is true even though the installer added this dir to your path...

I've already had various boinc projects running on my windows computers for a bazillion years, so I already have accounts. I did try the account create command line below for one new project, and it did seem to work, though the log showed a "project down for maintanance" message instead of getting work units.

boinccmd --lookup_account http://worldcommunitygrid.org/ [your email at their site] [your password at their site]
This will croak up an arbitrary internal account ID. Highlight and copy it.
boinccmd --project_attach http://worldcommunitygrid.org/ [account ID]
Note that if you get back a msg like

no database rows found in
lookup/enumerate

, this just means "user not found". You are talking to a boinc server, you just need to go to that website and create yourself as a user.

The tough part is finding projects that you can connect up. So far I've managed:
http://setiathmoe.berkeley.edu/ project complete, no more work units
http://worldcommunitygrid.org/ does not support freebsd
http://einstein.phys.uwm.edu/ ok
http://foldingathome.org/ no url
http://asteroidsathome.net/boinc does not support freebsd
http://climateprediction.net does not support freebsd
http://enigmaathome.net I couldn't seem to create an account
http://boinc.bakerlab.org/ (Rosetta) does not support freebsd
http://milkyway.cs.rpi.edu/milkyway/ does not support freebsd
http://lhcathome.cern.ch I couldn't seem to create an account-captcha error no matter what or via boinccmd
http://universathome.pl I couldn't create acct thru website-captcha error, created via boinccmd - does not support FreeBSD
http://cosmologyathome.org I couldn't create acct thru website-captcha error, created via boinccmd - does not support FreeBSD
http://denis.usj.es/denis/ I couldn't create acct thru website-captcha error, created via boinccmd - does not support FreeBSD
http://www.rnaworld.de/rnaworld/ cannot find a create account at website or via boinccmd
http://www.csgrid.org/csg/ does not support freebsd

man page for boinccmd
boinccmd --get_messages will list all your install errors amongst other stuff
While working on this stuff, I'd recommend stopping boinc as a service, then invoking directly from the command line and leaving that window open - this allows you to see your actions and responses immediately. When done, ctrl-c the program and do a service start again.
After attaching to a project like climateprediction.net, upon doing a --messages, I see an error in the log "27: 02-Apr-2020 19:55:54 (user notification) [climateprediction.net] Message from server: This project doesn't support computers of type i386-pc-freebsd". Oh well, must figure out remove...
boinccmd --project [project URL] detach