Creating a BOINC project

What is a BOINC project?

At a low level, a BOINC project consists of

• A MySQL database

• A project directory

• A project configuration file, which specifies options daemons, and periodic tasks.

• A master URL; the web server must be configured so that this points to the project's html/user/ directory.

The components of a BOINC project can reside on a single computer or on multiple computers. A single computer can host multiple BOINC projects.

Server hardware and software

The BOINC server must run Linux, preferably a recent version. It can run on bare hardware, in a VM on your computer, or in a VM in a cloud node.

Configure the server

You must:

• Install various packages with yum or apt.
• Configure MySQL.
• Configure Apache.
• Download and build the BOINC server software.
• Create a project using the make_project script.

These steps are detailed in Create a BOINC server (cookbook). and there's a video showing the process:

In the above cookbooks, the server's URL is based on its IP address. At some point you should get a domain name to use as your project URL. You should also configure your server to use Secure Socket Layer (SSL)