How to setup BT talking to a Raspberry Pi

[MarkJ]

Setting up BoincTasks talking to a Raspberry Pi

BoincTasks is designed to monitor a number of machines. Unfortunately its a Windows app and so getting it talking to the Raspberry Pi's is not the simplest of things to do. I assume that you've managed to get BOINC running on the Pi and BoincTasks (BT) is also running on your Windows PC. I also assume they are on the same router.

1. On the Pi you'll need to put the IP address and host name of the BT machine into /etc/hosts

2. On the Pi you'll need to put a password into /var/lib/boinc-client/gui_rpc_auth.cfg

3. On the Pi you'll need to put the host name of the BT machine into /var/lib/boinc-client/remote_hosts.cfg

4. Restart the Pi to pick up the above changes

5. In BT (on your PC) you need to add the Pi. Click on the Computers tab and then on the Menu Bar Computers -> Add Computer. You need to use the IP address (not the host name) of the Pi and the password from point 2.


Points to note:
• If you installed the boinc-manager on the Pi it will no longer be able to connect to the boinc-client. This is because it doesn't know the password. You can execute it manually and supply the password from a command prompt if you still want to use it, but you now have BT working so why would you need it?

• The Pi is invisible to the windows PC's on the network. The router will usually be able to see all of them but the windows machines only show other windows machines. The Pi's don't seem to have visibility of anything else on the network.

• Due to the 2nd point the Pi needs to have the IP address and host name of the BT machine in the hosts file. This is not good practice as IP addresses can and do frequently change.

[MarkJ]

It seems (after a bit of experimenting) that you can skip step 2 and leave gui_rpc_auth.cfg blank. That way you don't need a password.

[KenSharp]

Unfortunately its a Windows app and so getting it talking to the Raspberry Pi's is not the simplest of things to do.

That's utter crap. The RPC is OS-agnostic. Setting up a Pi for remote access is identical on all platforms.

Anyone wanting to buy a Pi should know the first thing about computers, or what's the point?

[fred]

That's utter crap. The RPC is OS-agnostic. Setting up a Pi for remote access is identical on all platforms.

Always stay friendly to your fellow forum users.
What is utterly simple for some may be complicated for others.

And indeed it's mostly the same, but the locations differ, the file format is slightly different.  CR/LR wise.

Sometimes a bit of help is very helpful, for Windows users Linux is sometimes going back in time