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Moving the BOINC working directory on Linux

BOINC does all of its work under a working directory. These instructions tell you how you can move this working directory on Linux.
Last modified: 3 October 2009
The Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC) is an open-source software platform to support distributed computing, primarily for volunteer computing and desktop Grid computing. The BOINC client software runs on Windows, MacOS X, and Unix, including Linux.

If you already have BOINC installed on Linux, you may find that you want to move the working directory. One reason could be that you want to prepare to upgrade a 'manual' installation (as described here) to an RPM package installation (as described here). In that case you would likely move the working directory from /home/boinc to /var/lib/boinc.

Another reason could be that BOINC takes up too much space on the partition it was installed on, so you would like to move the working directory to a partition with more space. In that case you would likely be moving the directory from /var/lib/boinc to /home/boinc or /opt/boinc.

Here are the steps required to move the working directory from /home/boinc to /var/lib/boinc. They must be performed as the 'root' user.

  1. Stop the running core client. For example:
    /etc/init.d/boinc stop
    (Or you can use the service command, if it is available.)
  2. Move the working directory. For example:
    mv /home/boinc /var/lib
  3. Change the 'boinc' user's home directory to be this new directory. (This assumes that you already have a 'boinc' user on your system. If not, skip this step.) One simple way is
    usermod -d /var/lib/boinc boinc
    Or more directly, you can edit the file /etc/passwd to change the user's home directory. To do so you should use the `vipw` rather than editing the file directly, or use the graphical administrative tool from your Linux distribution to do this.
  4. Change the setting for BOINCDIR, or add it, to the file /etc/sysconfig/boinc. The entry should look like
    BOINCDIR=/var/lib/boinc
  5. Test it by starting the core client. For example:
    /etc/init.d/boinc start
To move the working directory from /var/lib/boinc to /home/boinc or /opt/boinc or to some other directory, follow the same steps above but with the source and destination adjusted accordingly.
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