@ Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing

Pirates@Home Help

QUICK HELP

BOINC on-line help via Skype

Pirates@Home Help Desk

Pirates@Home Message Boards

BOINC FAQ Service

BOINC Wiki

Message Search

There are many ways you can get help or find useful information for both Pirates@Home and for BOINC in general.

Getting Started...

It is very easy to start using BOINC. The quickest way to join Pirates@Home is:

1. Download the BOINC software from UC Berkeley here. and launch the downloaded Installer (double-click on it).

2. The BOINC Connection Wizard will help you connect to the project and create a new account:
   • The Project URL is: http://pirates.spy-hill.net/
   • Select 'create new account' and enter your e-mail address and a new password (twice).

It's that easy! You can also get more detailed installation instructions for your particular platform (Windows, Mac, or Unix) from the BOINC download page

Asking for Help...

You can interact with other Pirates@Home participants, or with BOINC volunteers from other projects, in one of several ways:

BOINC On-line Help (using Skype)

Knowledgeable BOINC volunteers can talk to you via Skype, an internet telephony program which is free for computer to computer calls. You'll need to download and install the Skype program (which is relatively easy), and you'll need a broadband connection. If you don't want to talk directly to a volunteer it is also possible to chat via text. Volunteers are available in several languages.

Help Desks ('Questions and answers')

The Help Desks, also called the 'Question and Answers' area, lets you post a question to a Pirates@Home discussion board and receive an answer from other project volunteers. There is a rating system, which is used to try to get the most useful information to 'bubble' to the top.

Message Boards (the 'forums')

The Pirates@Home message boards, also called the 'forums', allow participants to interact with each in a more free-form format. If you have a question or problem, you may find your answer by reading the forums (there is a search facility), If not, you can 'create a new thread' to discuss your problem.

Joining other BOINC projects...

Once you are using BOINC, it is very easy to join other projects. You get to decide how much of your computer time to allocate to each project. To join another project all you need to do is bring up the BOINC Manager and :

1. Pull down the 'Projects' tab and select 'Attach to Project'.
2. Follow the directions of the BOINC Connection Wizard and fill in the relevant information:
   • The Project URL
   • Select 'create new account' and enter your e-mail address and a password (twice) for your new account.

A large number of BOINC-based projects have sprung up in the past year or so. An up-to-date list can be found on the BOINC home page.

More information about BOINC...

BOINC FAQ Service

A collection of the most common questions new users have about BOINC, along with answers and useful tips. Also contains an explaination of error codes returned by BOINC Workunits.

Search

You can search all Pirates@Home discussion and help desk areas, either by title or by message body, or you can search from the Pirates@Home message board index page.

BOINC Wiki

The BOINC wiki is a collaborative projet to assemble as much knowledge as possible about BOINC in an easy to search site. The softwarwe used for the BOINC wiki is the same software used to run the intenet's famous Wikipedia.

BOINC website

The main BOINC website has quite a bit of information about BOINC, for both beginners and advanced users. Each page has a search box which can quickly help you find what you might be looking for.

Behind the scenes...

If you don't care how BOINC works, and you just want to run BOINC and contribute your cycles to a project, or contribute your insights to the message boards, then you don't need to read any further.

If you do want to find out more about how BOINC works, or even create your own BOINC project or BOINC application, then there are a number of resources available:

BOINC website

The main BOINC website has a number of useful pages to guide you through creating and running a distributed computing project using BOINC.

BOINC Wiki

The BOINC wiki also has some useful information on creating a BOINC project.

BOINC developer's notes

Notes primarily for those who want to set up a BOINC project and/or create BOINC applications. Includes an instructional suite of example applications.

Search the BOINC website with Google:

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