BOINC on the plug?

[jdkullmann]

I'm wondering if anyone has ported BOINC to the plug yet? I have it running on several systems here all the time in the background and I think it would be in interesting exercise to port it to the plug.

[egrep]

Wouldn't the linux version just install? I used to run it command line all the time. I will check to see what is available at Berkley's site.

[jdkullmann]

No because the linux version is for x86, this thing has an ARM(like) cpu in it.  I'd need to build from source.

[focusedbit]

Code: ("/var/log/boinc.log")

15-Apr-2009 21:23:23 [---] Starting BOINC client version 6.4.5 for armv5tel-softfloat-linux-gnueabi
15-Apr-2009 21:23:23 [---] log flags: task, file_xfer, sched_ops
15-Apr-2009 21:23:23 [---] Libraries: libcurl/7.19.4 OpenSSL/0.9.8k zlib/1.2.3
15-Apr-2009 21:23:23 [---] Data directory: /var/lib/boinc
15-Apr-2009 21:23:23 [---] Processor: 1 
15-Apr-2009 21:23:23 [---] Processor features:
15-Apr-2009 21:23:23 [---] OS: Linux: 2.6.30-rc1
15-Apr-2009 21:23:23 [---] Memory: 503.17 MB physical, 520.12 MB virtual
15-Apr-2009 21:23:23 [---] Disk: 6.81 GB total, 4.56 GB free
15-Apr-2009 21:23:23 [---] Local time is UTC -7 hours
15-Apr-2009 21:23:23 [---] Not using a proxy
15-Apr-2009 21:23:23 [---] Can't load library libcudart
15-Apr-2009 21:23:23 [---] No coprocessors
15-Apr-2009 21:23:23 [---] No general preferences found - using BOINC defaults
15-Apr-2009 21:23:23 [---] Preferences limit memory usage when active to 251.58MB
15-Apr-2009 21:23:23 [---] Preferences limit memory usage when idle to 452.85MB
15-Apr-2009 21:23:23 [---] Preferences limit disk usage to 3.41GB
15-Apr-2009 21:23:23 [---] This computer is not attached to any projects
15-Apr-2009 21:23:23 [---] Visit http://boinc.berkeley.edu for instructions
15-Apr-2009 21:23:42 [---] Running CPU benchmarks
15-Apr-2009 21:23:43 [---] Suspending computation - running CPU benchmarks
15-Apr-2009 21:24:13 [---] Benchmark results:
15-Apr-2009 21:24:13 [---]    Number of CPUs: 1
15-Apr-2009 21:24:13 [---]    41 floating point MIPS (Whetstone) per CPU
15-Apr-2009 21:24:13 [---]    976 integer MIPS (Dhrystone) per CPU
15-Apr-2009 21:24:14 [---] Resuming computation

I suppose it could be used for something that is not FP intensive?

Kernel compiled with: NWFPE + extendded precision.

[jdkullmann]

nice.  Did you have to build BOINC from source or is there in fact an ARM version I just can't find? And you had to rebuild the kernel, is that right???

Thanks

[focusedbit]

It was a source build of sorts, my plug is running Gentoo.  As for the kernel, I am using 2.6.30-rc1, and I am not sure if Floating Point Emulation is enabled by default; however, it probably is as some programs do a little more than fixed point arithmetic.  Currently working on building seti@home app, baby steps.

[Ueland]

Hmm, it souldn`t be that hard to get SETI up and running?

Are considering to buy a couple of them (for a starter) and get a Sheevaplug SETI-cluster up and running.

[pushbx]

Getting seti to work on BOINC is just:

sudo apt-get install boinc-client boinc-manager boinc-app-seti

Unfortunately no other projects have an ARM port of their app, so the only thing you can run is seti.  I have it running on my plug right now.  This is one of the things where it "works" but not very useful I don't think.

[jdkullmann]

So that apt-get install of the boinc components did in fact work (I've also built it from scratch). However, I want to run Rosetta not Seti so I'll see if I can get that built.

It might be moot because my 4 way Q8600 shows boinc benchmarks of
2082 floating point MIPS
6452 integer MIPS

and my plug shows

35 floating point MIPS
986 integer MIPS

Granted it's 1 cpu vs 4 but comparing 1-1 it's still about 15 times slower for floating point and (not bad) twice as slow for integer.

I'm going to try to get it up and running anyway