Accessing BOINCTasks outside the LAN

[Jim1348]

I have BOINCTasks set up to monitor my Linux machines on the LAN using a Windows machine on the same LAN (192.168.0.1), and everything works fine.  But when away from home, I would like to monitor the machines from the WAN side of my router.  I have tried forwarding the port 31416 to various other ports, one for each machine, but I can not access them over the Internet, where I use my WAN IP address and the appropriate port number in BOINCTasks running on my notebook PC.

The problem may be my ISP, but how should I check it?

[fred]

First Boinc isn't safe to acces over the internet, nothing is encrypted.
I personally use teamviewer to access BoincTasks over the Internet.
Another option would be to set up a VPN connection.

An alternative is https://efmer.com/boinctasks-cloud/ if you have a Windows computer running on your local net.

[Jim1348]

Thanks.  By using an "gui_rpc_auth.cfg" file and setting a strong password, it should be good enough for me.

I did get it to work.  For some reason, I had to delete the old PC entry and use the "Add computer" one to create it again with the password.  But the ports forward properly, and it works outside the LAN now.

[Don922]

I agree with Fred. Using a VPN would be far more secure. As he stated the communications is not encrypted, which probably includes the password.

[Jim1348]

Even if they could catch the password in transmission (unlikely), all they could do is change your BOINC settings.  That is not a security risk, only a nuisance risk.

[fred]

Even if they could catch the password in transmission (unlikely), all they could do is change your BOINC settings.  That is not a security risk, only a nuisance risk.

You would have total control, removing projects adding projects.
But who would be interested in doing, that's the question.
Adding a project that could take over you computer could be an issue.

[Jim1348]

Yes, that is what they could do.  But I have 9 machines, and 8 of them run Ubuntu and are dedicated to BOINC, so they are taken over anyway.  There would not be much point to just changing the projects, though they could.

The other machine runs Windows, and I use it for other purposes than BOINC.  If I get worried about it, I could exclude that one from port forwarding.  It just runs one project, and I don't really need to change anything about it normally.

It is a trade-off, but it would be nice to be able to monitor and change projects myself, since on long trips there is usually something going wrong on some project that needs attention.