BoincView Installation and Set-Up Guide
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[edit] General
To make following the guide easier, you may want to view an older version, at least untill the current version has been fully re-vamped, as the original at least flowed correctly and was understandable.
This guide is written for Microsoft Windows® XP using BoincView v1.2.2 (the latest recommended version at the time). However, it should work with all Versions of Microsoft Windows® 2000 and later.
If anyone is interested, the original version of this guide, from which this Wiki article was created, is a post on the SETI forum.
This guide is in the process of being improved and brought up to "Wiki-Standard". As stated previously, it was initially just copied from a post on the SETI forum in it's original state, which was written on-the-fly, so this document should be considered a work-in-progress until such time as it's removed from the Incomplete category.
[edit] Preconditions
In order to complete the procedure outlined in this guide, you must meet the following preconditions:
- You must have an operational computer.
- You must have successfully installed the BOINC Client Software and have it running/working on all the computers you want to monitor.
- All of the computers to be monitored must be on the same local network segment (within the same subnet; don't need to go through a router to reach each other).
[edit] Suggestions & Recommendations
Firstly, because it allows for easier management of remote hosts, it is suggested to install the BOINC Client Software using the service installation type, for instructions see the Installing The BOINC Client Software on Microsoft Windows® guide.
The advantages of a service type installation are that the BOINC Client Software runs constantly, regardless of who's logged in (or if nobody is logged in), but if you decide to do this, the please read the solution Enabling The Graphics Capability of the BOINC Client Software for a Service Type Installation guide if you want to see the screensaver (but the BOINC Client Software will work fine without the screensaver).
Make sure all your installations of the BOINC Client Software are functioning correctly, you must do this before continuing as from now on i assume that the BOINC Client Software is working fully as it should.
[edit] Downloading BoincView
Firstly, before you can install and use it, you'll need to download BoincView. I strongly suggest choosing the latest recommended version, just as you did with the BOINC Client Software. Download it to your Desktop.
Once it's finished downloading, decide which computer you want to install and use BoincView on, once you've decided, follow the installation instructions.
[edit] Installing BoincView
To install BoincView you'll need to "unzip" the file you downloaded. How this is done depends on what software you have installed on your computer, but usually there's an "extract" type option, or if you have WinZip installed then look on the "WinZip" menu of the right-click context menu, and choose "extract to...".
I suggest extracting the contents to "C:\Program Files\BoincView" (copy and paste this if you wish) That essentially is all that's needed for the "installation" (there's no "setup" program that you need to run, BoincView doesn't need "installing" in the traditional way, it just runs from the folder).
To make things easier we're going to add a shortcut to BoincView in the Programs folder on your Start menu: Click the "Start" button, then right-click "Programs" or "All Programs" on the Start Menu and choose "Open". This will display a window showing the contents of your "Programs" menu. Right-click some white-space and choose "New", then "Folder". Name it "BoincView".
When you've created a new "BoincView" folder, double-click it. Now you should see the contents of the BoincView folder, which is currently empty. Right-click some white-space, and choose "New" again, but this time choose "Shortcut". A wizard should appear, click "Browse". Navigate to the location you extracted the BoincView files to (should be C:\Program Files\BoincView), and double-click the boincview.exe file to select it. In the New Shortcut Wizard, click "Next". Type a name for the shortcut, something appropriate like "BoincView".
You can now close the window displaying the new BoincView shortcut, and if you click the Start button and view the Programs menu, you'll see your new BoincView item (usually down the bottom, right-click and "sort by name" to sort the icons and folders alphabetically)
Now before we continue, if English isn't your first language, and you're more comfortable with a different one... (how to install additional languages)
[edit] Configuration Planning
Now that you've got BoincView installed, we can move onto configuration, but before you run BoincView, we need to go through some decisions
This is where it becomes more complicated and requires some brain-power, but it'll pay off in the long-term.
Decide on which computer(s) you want to use BoincView, because you'll need to tell all your boinc clients to allow remote control from the computer(s) you'll be running BoincView on.
This is done by creating a remote_hosts.cfg file in the boinc installation directory of every host you want to control remotely, that's the host you want to control, not the host that boincview is running on (but if you have a boinc client on the same host as boincview, you'll need to do the same for that host as well).
If you click the link you'll be taken to a guide in the Wiki about the file. Basically you need either an IP address or a hostname, each on a seperate line, of any host you want to control boinc from (the computer(s) that will be allowed remote control, eg, the one(s) running boincview) that's the host(s) boincview is running on, not the host(s) the boinc client(s) run on
it's best to use the "hostname" for a computer, but if this causes problems then the IP address will be fine. If you don't know what these terms mean i suggest you do some backgroud reading on networking, because you'll have to at least know about the basic stuff to be able to do this but in short, to find the hostname of a particular computer, at that computer, click "start", then "run", enter "cmd" then click OK, at the command prompt, type "hostname" then press enter on the keyboard to see the hostname of that computer.
For the IP address, at the command prompt, type "ipconfig" followed by enter
as i said, hostnames are preferable (because IP addresses can change) but if you have tight security and various file-sharing features turned off (don't know why you'd want them disabled on an internal network, but anyway) then you may have trouble using hostnames, in which case you'll need to use IP addresses, but in order to do so you'll need to have static IPs on the hosts you wish to control remotely (again this is basic networking stuff)
assuming you're running BOINC v5.2.2 or later, you'll also need a gui_rpc_auth.cfg file (for the password) in the BOINC installation directory of each host (don't worry BoincView will save the password for each host)
i'd recommend having the same password for all your hosts just to make life easier
i'll give a word of caution here to save you some hastle later on... if you have file extensions hidden then you may have trouble with creating these files, because windows hides the extension at the end, so you may end up with something like gui_rpc_auth.cfg.txt and/or remote_hosts.cfg.txt, which won't work, because BOINC is expecting .cfg files, and those are text files
to check, for each file in turn right click the file, and click "properties", on the "general" tab next to type it should say "Configuration File" by default, and the icon should include a yellow cog by default
if this isn't the case, and you have "text file" or "text document" or something else, you'll need to tell windows to show the true extensions so that you can correct them, there are many ways of doing this, but the most universal is in a windows explorer window (one that shows files, such as a "my computer" window) click "tools" at the top, then "folder options", on the "view" tab, about halfway down there should be an option similar to "hide extensions for known file types", make sure this is unticked, click "OK" and you should now see the full name of your configuration files for BOINC, they should be exactly named "remote_hosts.cfg" and "gui_rpc_auth.cfg", if they're not in any way then they won't have any effect on the boinc clients, because boinc looks for files with those specific names, and no other if you see something like "gui_rpc_auth.cfg.txt" and/or "remote_hosts.cfg.txt" then, rename the file (right click on it, and click "rename") and just remove the .txt from the end so that the filename is correct, if windows asks you "are you sure you want to change the extension/file name" click "yes" do this for both files, so that both end with ".cfg"
if you wish you can hide extensions again by going back to "tools" "folder options" "view" and ticking "hide extensions for known file types", and clicking "OK"
once you've created both these files correctly, copy them to the BOINC folder of each host you want to control remotely (copy over your network or using a floppy disk/USB memory stick, and walking to each computer). As you do this on each host, after you copy the files, restart the boinc client so that boinc detects the changes, if you're running boinc as a service, open a command prompt (start, run, type "cmd", click "OK") and type "net stop boinc" to stop boinc, then "net start boinc" to restart it
just to make sure everything is working, as you're doing this to each host, after you restart boinc, open the boinc manager on each host (so you're using it locally, viewing the local boinc client on that host), and check for the line "Remote control allowed" in the messages tab to confirm that boinc is allowing remote control from the hosts listed in the remote_hosts.cfg file, if not, retrace your steps (or if you've done this a few time, post here with a complaint ;)
after restarting boinc, you may get a prompt asking you if the boinc client should be allowed to access "the internet" using port 1043, if you are prompted, allow or unblock the boinc client, don't worry, nobody on the internet can access boinc on your computer, and besides, they'd need the password anyway, this is just to allow network access to the boinc client so that it can be controlled from your boincview computer
if you're not prompted, you'll need to manaully check that boinc is allowed, and add an "exception" rule for boinc if there isn't one already
the way to do this is different for every firewall, so you'll need to look in the manual/help, but for the windows firewall: open it up from control panel, go to the "exceptions" tab, click "add program", click "browse", navigate you the boinc installation directory on that host and select "boinc.exe" (or just "boinc" if you have file extensions hidden) and click "open", click "OK", then "OK" again boinc is now added as an exception to the windows firewall, and boincview should be allowed to control it
you'll need to do this for every host that has a boinc client you want to control (all the hosts that you copied the .cfg files to)
now you'll need to configure BoincView to connect to each of your hosts. to do this, go to the computer that will be running BoincView, and start it up. click "Options" then "locations"
if you have existing hosts using file mode, select each host (which i assume has a meaningful name, such as the actual hostname of that computer), under "update method" choose "via network access (using GUI RPC)" and enter the corresponding hostname or IP address for that host
make sure you know which host is which and match them up properly otherwise things will get confusing, i personally name my hosts with meaningful names like WS-01 for my web server, and PC-01 for one of my PCs and just use the hostname as the "location" name in BoincView
If you want to start from scratch or rename/reorganise your hosts that's fine, just as long as you have a seperate "location" entry for each host you want to monitor with a meaningful name
...so enter the hostname for a host, and the password you chose for it as well, leave the port as it is, that's the correct number to use (it should be: 1043 ) next choose the update interval to determine how often boincview will check and update the info for that host (works the same as for file mode), after entering all the info, click "apply" do this for each host you want to monitor, creating a new location with the "add" button (now you see why using the same password is much easier ;) )
right, incase any of that didn't make sense, lets have an example...
i have a group of computers i want to monitor: PC1 PC2 PC3 BVPC4
every host is running a boinc client, and the BVPC4 host is the one i'm going to be using boincview on
for each of PC1, PC2, PC3 and BVPC4 i'll need to make a remote_hosts.cfg file, and a gui_rpc_auth.cfg file
the remote_hosts.cfg file needs to contain at least the hostname or IP address of BVPC4 (the one running boincview) (each entry must be on a seperate line, see the link) and the gui_rpc_auth.cfg file needs to contain a password of my choosing, i'm going to choose "password" as my password (to keep it simple for the example)
i'll need to copy both the gui_rpc_auth.cfg and remote_hosts.cfg to the BOINC installation folder (typically C:\Program Files\BOINC ) of each host (PC1 PC2 PC3 and BVPC4) and restart boinc on each host (making sure i see the "remote control allowed" message in the manager for each host to make sure it's working)
i'll also need to make sure boinc is allowed network access
now i need to go to BVPC4 to configure boincview, i open the "locations" settings and click the "add" button (down the bottom) to create a new entry, i'm going to use the hostname for the location name, so i'll enter "PC1" as the name, and choose "GUI RPC" as the access mode next i'll enter PC1 as the hostname, i'll enter my password of "password" i'll set the update interval to 15 secondsm then i'll click the "apply" button
i'll do the same for each of my other hosts: PC2, PC3 and BVPC4, creating a seperate entry for each, and making sure i click the apply button after i enter the info so that BoincView saves it
when i'm done, i'll click "close"
if everything is working, all the host information will appear in BoincView, and i can now issues commands such as "update" and "suspend"
if it's not working, or you're having trouble using BoincView then post back with your problem and i'll walk through the troubleshooting steps with you
tips: to make things easier, only run boincview on one computer, to enable it to reliably monitor from different ones, you can't use "localhost" as the name or "127.0.0.1" as the IP address (the loopback address that localhost points to), because "localhost" will be different depending on which computer you're at, as in, localhost on BVPC4 will be BVPC4, but localhost on PC1 will be PC1, this makes things confusing and can mess up your result log (feature of boincview) the best thing to do is the the true hostname, or IP of each host to avoid these issues, and don't use location names in boincview such as "this computer" or "boincview computer" because that won't be true either.
if you want BoincView to log all your results (after you enable result logging) stay logged in on the computer boincview is on, leaving BoincView running in the system tray on the taskbar. It'll work in the background catching all your results from all monitored hosts as they finish
use the same password for each host, and use something easy to remember as well, it'll make life easier
if you have boinc running as a service on a remote host, and need to restart boinc, then in the "run" box (used before with "cmd" to get a command prompt) enter "services.msc", right click "Services (Local)" at the top left, and click "connect to another computer ..." enter the hostname or IP of the computer you wish to restart boinc on (or use "browse") after entering the name click "OK" after it connects to the other computer, you'l be viewing the services on the other host, to restart boinc, click "BOINC" int eh list, then right-click and choose "restart" the service will be restarted on the remote host check that it starts up again (in that window, and with boincview), then you can close the services.msc window
