Generally, your workstations will happily crunch their BOINC work units without any interference from you. However there are a couple of bits of housekeeping that you may have to do from time to time.
General Maintenance
As a vague rule, I try and check that my workstations are running BOINC OK on a daily basis. To do this, I have installed BoincView (a version of BOINC Manager that allows you to connect to multiple workstation at the same time.) on my server and looking to see if
- The workstations are running BOINC
- Check for errors in the work units that have been processed.
The checks should only take a few minutes to do even with a large number of workstations, as the display is simply colour coded.
If you find that one of you workstations is not executing BOINC, and you deployed it as a 'Service Install', you can restart it remotely using the instructions on the Troubleshooting page. If that fails, check the Event Viewer logs. (You can remotely connect to the workstation using eventvwr.msc in the same manner as you do for the services.) These should hopefully give you more information to decide whether
- you need to remove BOINC and redeploy it. (See How do I remove BOINC from a single workstation)
- that there is a bug you should check out on the BOINC Message Boards
- there is a problem with the work units for your projects, which you should look up on the forum for that project.
If you think that BoincView maybe useful and you want to give it a go, these instructions should help you get up and running.
Updating BOINC
From time to time the BOINC software will be updated to fix bugs, increase efficiency and introduce new features. So that you are aware of when these updates are released, I would suggest checking the news column on the main BOINC website, join their boinc_annnounce email list or subscribe to the BOINC RSS News feed.
The compatibility of MST file created by the BOINC_MST_Creator and the boinc.msi file depends on the scale of update. A build update, indicated by the last of the three numbers in the MSI version and a minor update, where the middle number of the version number changes, should work without any problems. Only where there is a major version update (Yes, you guessed it, when the first digit changes.) will you need to recreate the MST. The script was designed with all of these changes in mind and should handle a major upgrade, however, I am second guessing what will happen in the future, so I would recommend that you subscript to my BOINC news feed so you know if there is a problem, or that a new version works OK.
Whether you have had to build a new MST or not, the upgrading scenario is the same. Extract the BOINC installation files and build the MST file too if you need to, but do not put them in the shared folder on the server yet.
- On your server, click Start > All Programs > Administrative Tools > Group Policy Management.
- In the left panel of Group Policy Management,
expand Your_Domain and right click the
BOINC policy previously created, and click Edit...
- When the editor opens, expand Computer Configuration
> Software Settings > Software installation.
In the right panel, right click your
BOINC package and from the pop-up menu select
Remove...
- Select the Immediately uninstall the software
from users and computers option in the Software
Removal window and click OK.
- BOINC will now disappear from the list of software.
- Now you can move all of your BOINC installation
files, including the MST to your
shared folder on the server. If you are installing
on a Windows Small Business Server, don't forget to
use the folder
\\YOUR_SERVER_NAME\ClientApps\BOINC.
- In the Group Policy Object Editor that opens, expand
Computer Configuration > Software Settings
and right click Software installation. From the
pop-up menu select New > Package....
- Locate the BOINC.msi file that you put into
the shared folder. As the path selected here must be
available to your workstations, browse to the msi file
using My Network Places. If you are using SBS
the location will be
\\YOUR_SERVER_NAME\ClientApps\BOINC.
When you have found the file, click Open.
(If you do not select the file correctly via its network
location you will receive a warning. Click No
and try again.
- Next, select the Advanced option in the
Deploy Software window and click OK.
- In the BOINC Properties window, click the
Modifications tab and then the Add...
button.
- Locate the BOINC.mst file that was previously
created by the script. (you should have it in the same
folder as the BOINC.msi). Again, browse to the file
using My Network Places, if necessary. When you
have selected it, click Open.
- Back in the BOINC Properties window, you
should see the mst file listed. Click OK to complete
the deployment
and close the Group Policy Object Editor window.
- Restart all of your BOINC workstations to remove the previous version and install the new one. (The uninstallation leaves the data files untouched, so your workstations will continue crunching where they left off.)
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