HOW-TO: Installing BOINC on Slackware 14.2: Dependencies and configure options
There have been a few posts on LQ and elsewhere on getting BOINC running on Slackware. The Linux binaries at https://boinc.berkeley.edu are 2+ years old and have always had issues running on Slackware, especially BOINC Manager, the graphical interface (GUI).
These brief instructions will generate the BOINC Manager binaries and associated files for newer BOINC git branches so they will run using only dependencies available on Slackbuilds.org and a full, stock Slackware installation. SOURCE First, we must download a release branch from the BOINC git repository: https://github.com/BOINC/boinc/releases I find github a bit non-intuitive to find releases, in a proper format, so here is a script that will clone a branch and create a SBo script compliant tarball: Code:
#!/bin/sh DEPENDENCIES All of these are available at Slackbuilds.org. All other dependencies are part of Slackware.
For Boinc Manager, the wxGTK3 SBo script's configure stanza must be modified: Code:
# disable-shared; enable-webview; enable-webkit required for BOINC With wxGTK/wxGTK3 (and wxPython[3]) varieties on SBo as dependencies for a number of packages, you must make sure this symlink points to the correct one for BOINC. Please read the SBo package READMEs carefully if mixing different wxWidgets versions. BOINC Now we are ready to compile BOINC. This SlackBuild script generates all the GUI and CLI client binaries (no server). Since I am only interested in running the GUI as needed and as the currently logged in user, I run it via a small shell script to point boincmgr to the user's $HOME/.boinc_data for data storage. The $DATDIR is blank by default and must be specified when running the script. In the future I will add an /etc/rc.d/rc.boinc startup script for unattended operation. Code:
#!/bin/bash RUNNING My Boinc slackbuild package will include a boincgui.sh startup script for boincmgr so that boincmgr knows where to find everything. This script is also used in a customized Boinc.desktop file for your WM/DE of choice. I hope to add an rc.boinc, for example, in the future. For those you want to try it out, for Slackware64-14.2, my scripts and packages are here: http://www.koenigcomputers.com/files/utils/ http://www.koenigcomputers.com/files/sbo-testing/ Packages were compiled in a clean qemu VM. I won't post the Boinc package, since DATADIR points to my $HOME. It doesn't take too long to compile, though. libwebp, webkitgtk scripts can be obtained from SBo, as well as links to the source code. I will host only Boinc-7.6.33.tar.bz source. Remember to use my wxGTK3 archive and not the one on SBo Comments, improvements are welcome. If worthy, let me know if this is useful information for inclusion on http://docs.slackware.com |
Thank you for this!! I'll get to trying it out in a few days.
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Okay, question...should I make a BOINC directory and move the git tarball I now have to it and then move the build file into the same directory and proceed to build from there?
If I already have an old version of BOINC running on my system, should I stop using that and this new 'build' you have for us here will take the place of the old build? Hopefully you'll understand what I'm trying to get at and ask, since there isn't any Slackbuild for BOINC and all one does (or at least what I've always done) is download the tarball from the berkeley place, extract it and just start from that. Is this going to be pretty much the same thing, except that I have to have the tarball and bash file in their own directory? I have no .boinc_data directory that I can find anywhere - hidden or not. |
The file from BIONC is a script that extracts a pre-built binary. You do NOT want to use that. My HOW-TO is for building your own BOINC client binaries directly from BOINC git source.
The simplest process is to download my boinc.tar.gz, untar that, and put get.boinc.sh script into that boinc directory, run it to create the source Boinc-7.6.33.tar.bz2, then, assuming you have the 3 dependencies built and installed (a 4-6+ hr process depending on your CPU), just run Code:
DATADIR=/home/<user>/.boinc_data ./Boinc.SlackBuild You will need to remove your old BOINC build as some files will conflict, depending on how you installed your version (global or in $HOME, etc). Your data directory must not contain any BOINC client binary files or libraries. And yes you do have a .boinc_data directory (it might tbe called something else): it is whatever directory BOINC sticks the project files and data. My slackbuild follows Slackbuild.org guidelines as I expect to submit to SBo once I work out a few kinks. You do NOT want to move the slackbuild and source tarball into any existing BOINC directory. |
webgitgtk-2.4.11 should be webkitgtk-2.4.11
This has kind of irritated me, I have slackware64 14.2 I upgraded from 14.1 running boinc 7.2.42 (x64) but could not get boinc to install on new install of slackware64 14.2. Thanks for the howto, working on it now, will post back results. |
what happened for me
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@kingbeowulf
Everything worked as you documented. I started up boinc, assigned it to seti, laptop sounds like a wind tunnel. Clicked on prefs and found attached:BOINC_Computing_preferences-7.6.33.jpg BOINC_Computing_preferences-7.2.42.jpg is from other computer. I'm not able to get at the values in the preferences except the ones that can be seen, any ideas? What's your computing preferences look like. |
Got it built and installed, but starting it in konsole says:
Code:
me@FTF:~$ /usr/bin/boincmgr |
Okay...got libwebp.so.5 installed by having to downgrade to libwebp-4.4.tar.gz., which got this 7.6.33 working, or I should say at least starting up. It doesn't give me the choice though of switching to the advanced view but that might be because of what's in the following paragraph.
Unfortunately, using the 7.2.25 nor this 7.6.33 is able to get anything from anywhere. It just sits there and eventually times out and disconnects from trying to do anything with the core or local system. The old one won't even do anything when I place my account.xml file back in the BOINC directory and start it in hopes of it finding all it needs. |
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@FTIO
You did something out of order or you used the wrong slackbuilds or you are not running the correct binaries. Simple and advanced view works. Make sure you read through everything. You can NOT just start boincmgr or use any of the files from the Boinc precompiled package. You MUST use the boincgui.sh shell script I provide in the boinc package, as well as the customized Boinc.desktop file. The command line binaries all need options to tell them were to look for the binaries and your BOINC directory. In other words, boincmgr needs to know where the actual boinc client is, and where to find or put the data (I don't recall what the default is ATM). Code:
$ set DATADIR="/path/to/find/the/files" Code:
$ ldd /usr/bin/boincmgr |grep libwebp |
Aww....crud. Yes, I'm on a multi-lib x86_64 system. sigh...loks like that'll screw things up.
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@kingbeowulf
Attached says I am using local preferences. I cannot get at options that are not visible, there's no slider, I can't expand the window. Even though you are using web preferences, what does your Computing Preferences panel look like? Why is the Computing Preferences panel being display in this way? |
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@kingbeowulf
Thank you for following up. This computer is freshly installed Slackware 64 14.2 everything up to date, using KDE. Yes I figured some GTK/QT issue but I'm not programmer type to figure out whatever issue that way, I'll check on the other things next chance I get. |
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