Fold For Covid

I have upgraded the BOINC Node to a Raspberry Pi 4 Model B (2GB). This is a nice upgrade from the old Raspberry Pi Model B (256MB) that I had previously been running.

I have kept SETI@home setup just in case it starts sending out jobs again. However, the primary purpose of the BOINC node for now is to run Rosetta@home to help with COVID-19 research.

Checkout Pi Lab's BOINC Node progress.

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Here are the basic steps that I used to setup Rosetta@home on the BOINC node.

Step 1:

Download Ubuntu Server for Raspberry Pi (64-bit)

Step 2:

Flash image to SD card

The easiest way to do this is to use balenaEtcher. It is super simple and they have great instructions.

Step 3:

SSH into the Pi

ssh ubuntu@<the_ip_assigned_to_the_pi>

Note: The default password is ubuntu. You will be prompted to change it.

Step 4:

Make sure everything is up to date

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

Step 5:

Install the BOINC Client

sudo apt-get install boinc-client

Step 6:

Get Account Key

boinccmd --lookup_account boinccmd --lookup_account https://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta <your_email> <your_password>

Note: I already had a Rosetta@home account. If you don't have one you can create one here.

Step 7:

Attach the BOINC Client program to your Rosetta@home account

boinccmd --project_attach https://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta <your_account_key>

That's it. You should now be up and running!

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Consider joining the Fold for Covid team.

Note: There is a simpler setup available at Fold for Covid. I decided to go with this setup since I am very familiar with Ubuntu.

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Do more with BOINC:

Check your tasks:

boinccmd --get_tasks

Install boinctui:

sudo apt-get install boinctui

Run boinctui:

This will give you a nice text interface for BOINC.

boinctui

Configure BOINC Client:

sudo nano /var/lib/boinc-client/cc_config.xml

Note: If you make changes to the configuration be sure to run the following command. Configuration options can be found here.

boinccmd --read_cc_config

Updates:

I have upgraded the BOINC Node to a Raspberry Pi 4 Model B (4GB).

I have decided to shutdown the BOINC Node. It had not been getting tasks in quite some time. I have re-purposed it into a new more powerful Pi-hole setup. Check it out here.