I have had trouble getting boinc to work after many years of 24/7 crunching of data. One program, Rosetta@home, no longer works or even downloads any work units. It gives the error message that VirtualBox is not installed. I searched the forum for info on how to best install and run Virtualbox but the main info page seems to be out of date. Several of the links are dead.
I want to learn how to set up and run Virtualbox on TW to see if I can get crunching again. I would also like to hear opinions on other uses for Virtualbox, including advantages and pitfalls. What are some of the things people are using Virtualbox for? I have not considered using competing programs. Should I?
I am many year boinc user on openSUSE linux. Many millions of points. I run boinc on openSUSE Leap 15.4 with mate desktop 24/7 and have for years. In fact I was running rosetta@home as a contribution to anti-covid research but recently I have been running a few other projects. But I don’t run boinc in a vm. I re-activitated rosetta@home to see if it downloads any tasks. So far it took a signin and connected but did not install anything.
Per your queary, I am not sure whether you want to run boinc or whether boinc is an app you chose to use to learn about vms. But vm is not necessary to run boinc.
In mate, I put boinc into a separate workspace where it runs 24/7 just to get it out of the way.
If you’ve issues getting boinc going perhaps I can assist there.
I , too, have been a many year user of boinc. I work mostly on cancer research projects. Recently, I got Rosetta to download a few files. It ran them, uploaded and stop working. No more downloads. I am willing to install Virtualbox just to get Rosetta or some other World Community Grid projects working.
I know my ignorance is laughable, I can install VirtualBox but then what? Reinstall boinc or just call it up from the VM? I was hoping to see what else people are doing with VirtualBox.
There is even an official explanation from BOINC for it why/how they use virtualbox. It is not BOINC itself which is running in the virtualbox but some tasks/jobs/apps (however you want to call them): https://boinc.berkeley.edu/wiki/VirtualBox
Thank you for this info. But, I have to report that you people have frightened boinc. Immediately after my last post, I restarted boinc. It downloaded WorldCommunityGrid files that haven’t downloaded in months. I haven’t changed anything. However, I have updated Tumbleweed frequently. A recent update must have brought in files that allowed boinc to work. Still, I will follow up on this new information.
I have a “backup” computer sitting in a closet. I updated TW (3,000 files!) and installed Virtualbox. I’m embarrassed to say I don’t understand what I have to do next. Install a guest OS? I can’t figure that out. I have Kali, Mint, Tumbleweed and Tails on usb. I see no way to get to a prompt to install any of these in the VM. Help pages are about important topics but I don’t see this basic one. Please direct me.
Following these steps, I got Virtualbox to work. I had a DVD of Mint 19.3 and got it running. But, “running” is an exaggeration. It was so slow, it seemed to have crashed. I see no way to run a guest OS from a usb drive. I wonder if that would speed up the running. I did not install it to my hard drive, but I would expect it to run faster if I did.