Running BOINC command line client on a Mac
Until I get time to write up a real web page on this, here is a summary
from the boinc_dev e-mail list.
Last modified: 18 November 2004
From myers Thu Nov 18 08:24:21 2004
From: myers (Eric Myers)
Date: Thu, 18 Nov 2004 08:24:21 -0500
Reply-to: myers@noether.vassar.edu
To: David Anderson
Subject: Re: [boinc_dev] Mac OS X status
Cc: boinc_dev@ssl.berkeley.edu
Status: RO
[On Nov 17 2004, 21:05, David Anderson wrote:]
>
> The major missing ingredients for Mac include:
> - screensaver support
> - installer
> If anyone has expertise in these areas or knows someone
> who does, please let me know.
David,
I have a pretty good understanding of the Mac installers. Just as
with the new Windows installation, you have to make a choice as to
whether it will be a "personal" installation or a "system"
installation.
If personal, then the user can download a compresses disk image (.dmg)
file. Opening it "mounts" it on the desktop and the user can then
just drag a folder from the mounted virtual volume to their Library.
The finder background can include instructions to the user do do this.
I've done this on Pirates, though rather crudely. Try downloading the
Mac 4.13 core client from Pirates to see it.
For this to work update_versions has to allow .dmg as a suffix, which
is easy to do by changing the RE in that script.
The user can also make BOINC start at login time. I've written some
crude instructions for this in the README file in the 4.13 .dmg on
Pirates. There is also a Terminal.app file which runs a shell script
to run boinc. It's rather crude, but it shows how it can be done.
This is probably the easiest way to get people to install BOINC on
their machines. Maybe not the best, but it's an example to start from.
For a "system" installation you need the Apple system installer which
comes with the Developer tools. You'll want to write some
documentation in rtf format for the various steps during the
installation. You put the files in a tree that mimics where they will
live on the installed system and then run the application to make the
installer package file (.pkg - also needs to be added to the RE in
update_versions).
Some good instructions for this are at http://www.osxgnu.org/info/osxpackages.html
To make boinc start at boot time (not login) you can put a start/stop
script (similar to most Unix start/stop but not quite) in a folder of
the same name under /Library/StarupItems. So you would put a script
called boinc in the folder /Library/StartupItems/boinc. You also put
a StartupParameters.plist file in the same folder to specify
dependencies and a description. I have an example of this that starts
rwhod at boot (just starts what is already installed).
Apple documentation says there is another "better" way to do startup
items as of 10.3, but it didn't work for me, and the older method did
work under 10.3 and earlier.
This method of installation requires that the user have the Admin
password and it puts one copy on the system and starts it at boot. It
would run as a daemon in the background. I don't know how that would
work if the graphics thread is included in the single executable. A
separate graphics screensaver/monitor might be better for this kind
of installation.
Kim and I played with all this in the summer and I've been meaning to
write it down but been busy with other things. Now that you are
looking at Mac I hope this can be some help.
Regards,
Eric
Please send corrections or suggestions for improvement to
myers@vassar.edu
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Last modified: 18 November 2004
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