Computing with BOINC

Overview documents (read these first)

• Volunteer computing and grid computing
• BOINC in a nutshell
• Why use BOINC?
• Tutorial #1: Quick start
• Basic concepts
• Adapting applications
• Jobs and data
• Validation
• Security issues
• Tutorial #2: Project creation cookbook

Distributed computation with BOINC

• Computing model
  • Platforms
  • Applications and versions
  • Jobs
  • Redundancy and errors
  • Work distribution
  • Locality scheduling
  • Trickle messages
• Data management
  • Files and file references
  • File compression
  • Explicit client file management

Developing BOINC applications

• Overview
  • The BOINC wrapper
  • Example applications
• Basic APIs
  • API for main apps
  • API for graphics apps
  • Cross-platform utility functions
• Specialized APIs
  • Runtime system options
  • Startup and status data
  • Diagnostics
  • Trickle messages
  • Intermediate upload
  • Apps that do network communication
• Customized scheduling
  • Plan classes
    • Specifying plan classes in XML
    • Specifying plan classes in C++
  • Job-level scheduler customization
• Special types of applications
  • Multicore applications
    • OpenCL CPU applications
  • Applications that use GPUs
    • CUDA applications
    • OpenCL applications
  • Non-CPU-intensive applications
  • Apps that run in VirtualBox virtual machines
  • MPI applications
• Languages other than C/C++
  • FORTRAN
  • Java
  • Python
  • PyMW: Python master/worker system
• Dynamic library naming issues
• Building applications
  • Windows
  • Mac OS X
  • Linux
  • Android
  • CUDA and OpenCL
• Debugging applications
  • Windows
  • Android
• Testing applications

Creating a BOINC project

• What is a project?
  • The project URL
  • Directory structure
• Setting up a BOINC server
  • The make_project script
• The project configuration file
  • Project options
  • Daemons
  • Periodic tasks
• Adding applications/platforms
• Adding application versions
• Administrative web interface
• Project control
• Project security
  • Encryption utility program
  • Code signing
• Launching your project
• Using Secure Socket Layer (SSL)
• Internals
  • The BOINC database
  • Other job-processing daemons
  • Server-side file deletion
  • Database purging utility

Submitting and handling jobs

• Introduction
• Input and output templates
• Local job submission
  • Staging input files
  • Submitting jobs locally
  • Work generators
• Web-based job submission
  • Per-user file sandbox
  • Example: LAMMPS
• Remote job submission
  • Remote management of input files
  • Remote access to output files
  • Job submission
  • Example: treeThreader
• Managing multiple job submitters
  • Access control and quotas
  • Prioritizing jobs
• Validating results
  • Custom validators
  • Homogeneous redundancy
  • Homogeneous App Version
  • Adaptive replication
• Handling completed jobs
• Canceling jobs
• APIs for job-processing programs
• Broadcast and targeted jobs
• The status of completed jobs
• Single job submission
• Multi-size applications

Maintaining a BOINC project

• Trouble-shooting server components
• Upgrading a project's server software
  • Server software change log
• Increasing server capacity
• Log rotation
• Watchdogs
• Stripcharts

Project web site

• Customize web site content
• Customize web site appearance with CSS
• Protection from spam
• Creating and managing message boards
• Project news
• Web site translation
• Badges
• Server status page
• Profile screening
• Caching
• Adding a wiki
• Integration with WordPress
• Integration with Drupal

Communicating with volunteers

• Recruiting and retaining volunteers
• GUI URLs
• Notices
• Requiring that volunteers accept Terms of Use
• Adding project graphics to the manager's simple view

Miscellaneous

• Accepting donations through PayPal
• Alternative ways to grant credit
• Blacklisting hosts
• Campus-level BOINC projects
• Code signing using X509 certificates
• Configuring MySQL for BOINC
• Controlling account creation
• Export credit data as XML
• Importing BOINC-wide teams
• Including opaque data in scheduler request messages
• Combining BOINC with Grids and clusters
• Per-app credit
• Project-specific preferences
• User app selection
• Volunteer storage
• What to do when you run out of database IDs

Unsupported software

• Boinc remote job submission
• Leiden remote job submission