Linux BOINC Server CentOS-4 Installation

This explains the process that was used to install CentOS 4 onto the workstation that is used as a BOINC server for SciLINC development. There may be subtle differences in the installation as described here and the installation as it may be seen if run again later. This may be due to differences in a pristine install and a re-install, it may also be due to the slightly modified installation procedure that was required to obtain the screen shots for this document. The most up to date version of this document is published online.

The original plan was to install Fedora Core because it is sponsored by Red Hat and ultimately its content feeds into the next official Red Hat Enterprise Linux, RHEL. The (possibly incomplete) document covering that is "Linux BOINC Server Fedora Core 6 Installation." These plans were changed for two reasons. One, the rate of change on the recently released Fedora Core 6 is too high to make it worth tracking for a test server deployment. And two, we discovered CentOS 4, the Community ENTerprise Operating System. This is a distribution that is built directly from the publicly available source RPMs for RHEL 4. The project's web site describes it this way:

CentOS is an Enterprise-class Linux Distribution derived from sources freely provided to the public by a prominent North American Enterprise Linux vendor. CentOS conforms fully with the upstream vendors [sic] redistribution policy and aims to be 100% binary compatible. (CentOS mainly changes packages to remove upstream vendor branding and artwork.) CentOS is free.

In essence CentOS is a synthesis of Red Hat Enterprise Linux WS, ES and AS. The administrator is free to pick and choose from among the components offered by these various versions. In that sense it is suitable for desktop, workstation, and server usage.

Since it is really too long for a blog post, read the rest of this document online at Google Documents and Spreadsheets.