Update 21st Dec 2022 - Most of the changes below have now been incorporated into suleman1971's upstream repo, so I would definitely advise that you download that project instead. I will not be maintaining this anymore, and I don't even do any distributed computed work these days.

boinctui-extended

Original code by Sergey Suslov (suleman1971@gmail.com)
Improved build by Mark Pentler (https://github.com/mpentler/)

Introduction

boinctui-extended is an curses-based terminal BOINC client manager for Linux. Features include:

• Fullscreen curses-based text user interface
• Switch between several hosts running the BOINC client via a hot key
• View a host's task list (including each task's state)
• View the BOINC log file in a separate window
• Suspend/Resume/Abort control of all tasks
• Update/Suspend/Resume/Reset/No New Task/Allow New Task for attached projects
• Toggle activity state (Always suspend/Always resume/Run based on preferences)
• Manage BOINC client on remote hosts via boinc_gui RPC protocol

Additionally other changes by me and from around GitHub have been merged into this fork:

• Added an optional ID name field for each host - never lose track again!
• Added a host counter
• Transparent backgrounds supported
• Added a hot key to go backwards in the server list
• Added another hot key to bring up the menu in case of double-assignment
• Increased precision of time displays
• Code comments are being translated into English to assist in working with the codebase
• Typos and some UI strings corrected
• & other code improvements (addressed some cppcheck warnings & some build environment stuff)

Dependencies and Compiling

Dead easy, but you'll need to install a few libraries first. Here's some instructions for Raspbian, which is what I'm doing this on. I have no idea if the package names are different on other distributions.

If you don't have git installed, install it now:

sudo apt-get install git

Clone this repo:

git clone https://github.com/mpentler/boinctui-extended.git

now install the dependencies:

sudo apt-get install libssl-dev libexpat1-dev libncursesw5-dev libgnutls-openssl27 autoconf make boinc-client

When complete, enter the boinctui-extended folder:

cd boinctui-extended

Then to compile:

autoconf

./configure

make

Finally, to install:

sudo make install

and you're done!

Configuration

After starting the application you can do a few things:

• Connect to an account manager in the project menu
• Attach to projects manually
• Control individual tasks on hosts
• Add other BOINC hosts to control
• Configure displayed columns and sort order
• Configure BOINC network and run modes

All of these options are in the menus (M key or F9) and are self-explanatory.

Useful hot keys

• M/F9 - Open menus
• N - Show next host in the list
• P - Show previous host in the list
• C - Configure host list
• V - View statistics
• Arrow keys - Navigate task list and menus (mouse also supported!)
• S - Suspend selected task
• R - Resume (or queue) selected task
• A - Abort selected task (requires confirmation)
• Enter - View extended info for a task
• Q - Quit boinctui-extended (hit Escape to close windows first)

Issues

Nothing specific, but I've had a few segmentation faults with the original codebase so it needs a good pruning by someone who actually knows C++ - maybe that's you!?

Acknowledgments

Additions to the original codebase that aren't mine are from the following GitHub users:

• DerVerruckteFuchs - transparent backgrounds
• zeekec - improved time display, menu hot key, and some code & build improvements
• vorot93 - code improvements
• rustyshackleford36 - rewrite of readme.md