How do I install and run BOINC from an external USB flash or hard drive?

I want to be able to continue and finish one set of projects when moving to/from computers and without having a ton of crap installed on the machines, just on the flash drive.

Thanks

See http://boinc.berkeley.edu/dev/forum_thread.php?id=3359

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The download link is not working.

Even if I just use a single machine. How do I install and run BOINC on a USB flash?

The flash drive will have a drive letter. Install to this drive.

Note:
1) Flash drives have a limited read/write life, and both BOINC and the applications write to various files quite frequently.
2) With BOINC version 6, even using Advanced to select the 2 separate locations for data and programs, these MUST be separate; it's no longer "allowed" to put the data folders under the program folder.

I created a small and handy Linux tailored for DC nodes, and I think it is something that you are looking for. It will allow you to boot your DC node directly from a 512MB USB stick, so you don't need any harddrives, etherboot configurations, NFS servers etc. And it is also much faster than installing new operating system on your DC machine.

I have been using it myself for the last week or so, and it works pretty well. I even use it to boot my x86_64 machine that has 32bit WinXP installed to crunch faster at night :)

You can grab it here: http://obfusc.at/ed/dclinux.html

I will try to keep it up to date with new versions.
I'm willing to spend some time improving this, so if you have any feedback, comments, propositions or wishes - please do let me know.

Here is a copy&paste of the advantages of using this special linux version, taken from my website:
- Easy to install. There is no hustle with configuration files, network set-up, or any hardware changes to your DC box.
- Requires only 512MB of disk space, so you can reuse your old USB stick or buy a cheap new one (2GB costs less than $10 these days).
- Has BOINC client installed on it and configured to run out-of-the-box.
- Provides SSH daemon (by default turned off)
- Completely secure. By default, there are no daemons running, except BOINC.
- During system startup /var directory is copied to ramdisk, and then synchronized between ramdisk and filesystem every 6 hours and on system shutdown. This saves USB write cycles which is important as most USB flash drives have limited write operations.
- Has x86_64 kernel. It comes handy for those systems where main OS is 32 bit, but you want to use the machine for crunching at night and take advantage of 64-bit CPU.
- It can spin down your hard drives to lower power consumption, heat and noise.
- It is Debian-based so you can apt-get anything you want and fine-tune the system according to your needs.

Cheers.

There is also:

A USB/Diskless/Harddisk BOINC Linux Distribution

There's an active thread about that over on s@h - Number Crunching.

Happy crunchin',
Martin