how do people run boinc remotely?

[NeoGen]

Hey guys

Often times I've wondered how do people with a lot of crunchers manage them, especially if remotely, away from the home / datacenter?
I've read bits and pieces about BoincTasks but it looks like it's able to give you an overview of what you have running but not really change anything about it. (Am I wrong? I only read about it, never tried it)

So, for a use case scenario, imagine there's an awesome boinc challenge at a specific date but you will be out of town and can't be near your machines to switch them over to the project near the challenge start. Is there a good software to control BOINC remotely? Capable for example of connecting remotely to your machines and adding/removing projects remotely so you can enjoy your vacation in a tropical island (that has Wi-Fi ) and be able to switch over your machines to the challenge project while you sip a drink with a little umbrella?

For this particular case I'm not talking about remote desktop applications like TeamViewer, LogMeIn, etc. I'm really wondering if there's something specific only to BOINC out there, like the BOINC manager but that is easy and efficient at managing a small (or large) group of BOINC crunchers. I'm thinking the common BOINC Manager client probably can do it, as it can connect to PCs one-to-one, but to set up every machine, set up routing of network ports, manage the external IP address, and etc to make it work remotely would probably not make it so easy.

Is there any good solution out there I haven't seen?

[vaughan]

I used to use LogMeIn and even paid for the iPhone app until that company got too greedy and changed the access fee to a per computer per annum basis. That change would've cost me thousands of dollars a year.
I switched to using TeamViewer but have stopped using it as my son freaked out citing security issues.
Now I use BOINC manager when at home to adjust settings, enable disable projects etc across our home network.
When I'm away from home I'm stuck and cannot manage the farm - really annoyed with LogMeIn as that system LMI Ignition, worked perfectly (for windows PCs only). Absolutely gobsmackingly stupid decision by LMI to ruin a good system a couple of years ago thru corporate greed. I had paid for the app, about $100, and had a licensed version of Ignition to cover all the computers in my farm. I forget now how much that license cost.

On the occasions where I use Amazon Web Service I let my son configure and manage the instance(s) as it is way too technical and Linuxy for me
I just pay the not insubstantial invoices.

I tried BOINC Tasks too but it wasn't really what I was looking for.

I'd love an application that I could use on my iPad Pro when I'm travelling so I could manage the individual computers and their projects. Something like Radmin would be useful.

[Dirk Broer]

Most of my Linux systems can be set to "set and forget", they do not suffer the Windows update nastyness that makes you discover that one of your systems has done nothing for the last x hours due to yet another upgrade. My BeagleBone Black runs for weeks unattended. Theoretically I could use BAM! for some of the tasks you describe, but I found out some nasty misbehaviour (for my taste) in BAM!

[NeoGen]

If you guys were to manage the crunchers remotely, do you think you really need a full blown remote desktop solution or would a well crafted BOINC specific task manager do the trick?
I could see myself being on vacation somewhere, pulling out the iPad for a few minutes, opening a sort of BOINC manager app that would have an interface capable of showing all the machines in a list and I just tap tap tap (check boxes for selecting machines), select project, tap, and done! All machines switching over to the project I set them to instantly. For BOINC management only I don't see the need for a full remote desktop, it would consume alot of bandwidth.

I'm starting to think this is a market untapped... we might have to patent the idea

[Dirk Broer]

Could be done with BAM!, but you'll have sores from the tapping. It it not just selecting one project, but also disabling all others. And if you want to run it right you'll have your fleet organised into groups per OS/Architecture (A group x86 PCs with CUDA under Windows, a group x86 PCs with CUDA under Linux, a group x86 PCs with AMD/OpenCL under Windows, a group x86 PCs with AMD/OpenCL under Linux, a group x86 PCs without GPU support under Windows, a group x86 PCs without GPU support under Linux, a group ARM PCs under Linux, a group ARM PCs under Android).

You also carefully have to choose which applications go with what group(s). If you have older machines (e.g. without SSE2) you might even have to make yet another group for them.
And plan all this ahead, or see BAM! f**k up your systems.

[AMDave]

I just enable RPC omn each client so that one BOINC manager (usually on my workstation) can connect to the BOINC client on all of the other hosts I have.
If you search for BOINC + RPC in this forum you should find details on how to do this as I remember explaining this in detail several years ago.
Tempus fugit. [Virgil]

Alternatively you can script the BOINC client start up and termination AND the target project URLs and deploy the scripts across an entire server farm (Win/Lin) as I know some people do.
If you had a lot of boxes, or a VMWare cluster or a Docker cloud this would be the most efficient approach.

[Dirk Broer]

You only have linux boxen, I have both windows and linux boxen. Some projects use Linux exclusively, other windows. Yet other projects use CUDA exclusively, or need the GPU to be Double Precision capable.
There are but few projects that actually run using Linux/ARM and/or Android (Android wins here), let alone Android/x86.
These are things to take into consideration when running your farm remote. It is not so simple as 'one rule for all' when there is a challenge for a given project.

[NeoGen]

So, as much as BOINC as advanced over the years we don't yet have a good "BOINC Manager like" solution that would be able to easily control a variable number of machines simultaneously, and be accessible remotely.

Indeed, with the increasing amount of operating systems (Windows, MacOS, Android, Linux, etc), architectures (x86, x64, ARM variants, etc), and "coprocessor options" (Nvidia CUDA, OpenCL-Nvidia, OpenCL-AMD, OpenCL-Intel, and the older ATI Stream), and even very specific requirements (double precision GPU only for example), it becomes very difficult to have a one solution to fit all needs.

But I'm sure if we all put our heads together we could probably develop something that could cover most of the situations. I'll be thinking about it.

[Dirk Broer]

I think all that you want could be done through BAM!, but be in for some nasty surprises every now and then.

I do not agree on 'the increasing amount of operating systems (Windows, MacOS, Android, Linux, etc), architectures (x86, x64, ARM variants, etc)'.
This page used to be far longer (7 years ago)

AFAIK there's no BOINC on iPads, or new IBM Power8 or Power9 server hardware (AIX support stopped a few versions ago, as did OS/400) and most of the 'other clients' only crunch Seti@Home.

P.S. I plan to revive an OS/2 machine and found that OS/2 support for boinc has dwindled away too...

[NeoGen]

I see, there's a long list of bugs going on there on BAM!, but if the premise is good it should be a matter of correcting them. (Hoping development on it is still active)

The list of available ports and architectures did go through some changes there, I can't tell how many differences or how many removed at a glance but seems more streamlined. It's basically just the BOINC clients and SETI applications now. Even if we find an exotic OS and architecture that has a BOINC client compiled for it, without project support its of no use.

Anybody still runs GridRepublic? I remember that was the other account manager in existence but haven't heard of it in a long time, I think development stalled for a while. The website is still up though.