Installing BOINC on Debian or Ubuntu

There is a new recommended way of installing BOINC on Debian/Ubuntu.

Please read the instructions here.

If BOINC is already installed, remove it and the PPA:

sudo apt purge boinc* sudo add-apt-repository --remove ppa:costamagnagianfranco/boinc

Enable the universe repo if it not already enabled:

add-apt-repository universe

Install the BOINC client and manager:

sudo apt update sudo apt install boinc

To enable NVIDIA GPU support:

sudo apt install boinc-client-nvidia-cuda

To enable NVIDIA AMD support:

sudo apt install boinc-client-opencl (AMD)

Add your account to the BOINC group:

sudo usermod -aG boinc your_username_here

Restart the machine.

Start BOINC:

sudo systemctl enable --now boinc-client

To check the installation:

ps aux | grep boinc

You should see boinc_client --daemon in the process list.

If you have a "headless" computer with no graphics then you don't need the BOINC Manager.

To install just the client:

sudo apt-get install boinc-client

Creates the daemon script at /etc/default/boinc-client.
Puts the BOINC binaries (boinc_client, boinccmd and boincmgr) in /etc/boinc-client/.
Creates /var/lib/boinc-client/ for BOINC data files and the slots and projects directories.
Names the daemon boinc-client.
Creates a user named boinc. For security, boinc owns the BOINC data directory (/var/lib/boinc-client/) and all the data files and sub-directories it creates in the data directory.