linuxserver/boinc¶

BOINC is a platform for high-throughput computing on a large scale (thousands or millions of computers). It can be used for volunteer computing (using consumer devices) or grid computing (using organizational resources). It supports virtualized, parallel, and GPU-based applications.

Supported Architectures¶

We utilise the docker manifest for multi-platform awareness. More information is available from docker here and our announcement here.

Simply pulling lscr.io/linuxserver/boinc:latest should retrieve the correct image for your arch, but you can also pull specific arch images via tags.

The architectures supported by this image are:

Application Setup¶

The container can be accessed at:

• http://yourhost:8080/
• https://yourhost:8181/

Strict reverse proxies¶

This image uses a self-signed certificate by default. This naturally means the scheme is https. If you are using a reverse proxy which validates certificates, you need to disable this check for the container.

Hardware Acceleration¶

Many desktop applications need access to a GPU to function properly and even some Desktop Environments have compositor effects that will not function without a GPU. However this is not a hard requirement and all base images will function without a video device mounted into the container.

Intel/ATI/AMD¶

To leverage hardware acceleration you will need to mount /dev/dri video device inside of the container.

--device=/dev/dri:/dev/dri

We will automatically ensure the abc user inside of the container has the proper permissions to access this device.

Nvidia¶

Hardware acceleration users for Nvidia will need to install the container runtime provided by Nvidia on their host, instructions can be found here: https://github.com/NVIDIA/nvidia-container-toolkit

We automatically add the necessary environment variable that will utilise all the features available on a GPU on the host. Once nvidia-container-toolkit is installed on your host you will need to re/create the docker container with the nvidia container runtime --runtime=nvidia and add an environment variable -e NVIDIA_VISIBLE_DEVICES=all (can also be set to a specific gpu's UUID, this can be discovered by running nvidia-smi --query-gpu=gpu_name,gpu_uuid --format=csv ). NVIDIA automatically mounts the GPU and drivers from your host into the container.

Arm Devices¶

Best effort is made to install tools to allow mounting in /dev/dri on Arm devices. In most cases if /dev/dri exists on the host it should just work. If running a Raspberry Pi 4 be sure to enable dtoverlay=vc4-fkms-v3d in your usercfg.txt.

Modern GUI desktop apps may have compatibility issues with the latest Docker syscall restrictions. You can use Docker with the --security-opt seccomp=unconfined setting to allow these syscalls on hosts with older Kernels or libseccomp versions.

Security¶

HTTPS is required for full functionality. Modern browser features such as WebCodecs, used for video and audio, will not function over an insecure HTTP connection.

By default, this container has no authentication. The optional CUSTOM_USER and PASSWORD environment variables enable basic HTTP auth, which is suitable only for securing the container on a trusted local network. For internet exposure, we strongly recommend placing the container behind a reverse proxy, such as SWAG, with a robust authentication mechanism.

The web interface includes a terminal with passwordless sudo access. Any user with access to the GUI can gain root control within the container, install arbitrary software, and probe your local network.

Options in all Selkies-based GUI containers¶

This container is based on Docker Baseimage Selkies, which provides the following environment variables and run configurations to customize its functionality.

Optional Environment Variables¶

Optional Run Configurations¶

Language Support - Internationalization¶

To launch the desktop session in a different language, set the LC_ALL environment variable. For example:

• -e LC_ALL=zh_CN.UTF-8 - Chinese
• -e LC_ALL=ja_JP.UTF-8 - Japanese
• -e LC_ALL=ko_KR.UTF-8 - Korean
• -e LC_ALL=ar_AE.UTF-8 - Arabic
• -e LC_ALL=ru_RU.UTF-8 - Russian
• -e LC_ALL=es_MX.UTF-8 - Spanish (Latin America)
• -e LC_ALL=de_DE.UTF-8 - German
• -e LC_ALL=fr_FR.UTF-8 - French
• -e LC_ALL=nl_NL.UTF-8 - Netherlands
• -e LC_ALL=it_IT.UTF-8 - Italian

DRI3 GPU Acceleration¶

For accelerated apps or games, render devices can be mounted into the container and leveraged by applications using:

--device /dev/dri:/dev/dri

This feature only supports Open Source GPU drivers:

The DRINODE environment variable can be used to point to a specific GPU.

DRI3 will work on aarch64 given the correct drivers are installed inside the container for your chipset.

Nvidia GPU Support¶

Note: Nvidia support is not available for Alpine-based images.

Nvidia GPU support is available by leveraging Zink for OpenGL. When a compatible Nvidia GPU is passed through, it will also be automatically utilized for hardware-accelerated video stream encoding (using the x264enc full-frame profile), significantly reducing CPU load.

Enable Nvidia support with the following runtime flags:

For Docker Compose, you must first configure the Nvidia runtime as the default on the host:

sudo nvidia-ctk runtime configure --runtime=docker --set-as-default
sudo systemctl restart docker

Then, assign the GPU to the service in your compose.yaml:

services:
  boinc:
    image: lscr.io/linuxserver/boinc:latest
    deploy:
      resources:
        reservations:
          devices:
            - driver: nvidia
              count: 1
              capabilities: [compute,video,graphics,utility]

Application Management¶

There are two methods for installing applications inside the container: PRoot Apps (recommended for persistence) and Native Apps.

PRoot Apps (Persistent)¶

Natively installed packages (e.g., via apt-get install) will not persist if the container is recreated. To retain applications and their settings across container updates, we recommend using proot-apps. These are portable applications installed to the user's persistent $HOME directory.

To install an application, use the command line inside the container:

proot-apps install filezilla

A list of supported applications is available here.

Native Apps (Non-Persistent)¶

You can install packages from the system's native repository using the universal-package-install mod. This method will increase the container's start time and is not persistent. Add the following to your compose.yaml:

  environment:
    - DOCKER_MODS=linuxserver/mods:universal-package-install
    - INSTALL_PACKAGES=libfuse2|git|gdb

Usage¶

To help you get started creating a container from this image you can either use docker-compose or the docker cli.

docker-compose (recommended, click here for more info)¶

---
services:
  boinc:
    image: lscr.io/linuxserver/boinc:latest
    container_name: boinc
    security_opt:
      - seccomp:unconfined #optional
    environment:
      - PUID=1000
      - PGID=1000
      - TZ=Etc/UTC
      - PASSWORD= #optional
    volumes:
      - /path/to/boinc/config:/config
    ports:
      - 8080:8080
      - 8181:8181
    devices:
      - /dev/dri:/dev/dri #optional
    restart: unless-stopped

docker cli (click here for more info)¶

docker run -d \
  --name=boinc \
  --security-opt seccomp=unconfined `#optional` \
  -e PUID=1000 \
  -e PGID=1000 \
  -e TZ=Etc/UTC \
  -e PASSWORD= `#optional` \
  -p 8080:8080 \
  -p 8181:8181 \
  -v /path/to/boinc/config:/config \
  --device /dev/dri:/dev/dri `#optional` \
  --restart unless-stopped \
  lscr.io/linuxserver/boinc:latest

Parameters¶

Containers are configured using parameters passed at runtime (such as those above). These parameters are separated by a colon and indicate <external>:<internal> respectively. For example, -p 8080:80 would expose port 80 from inside the container to be accessible from the host's IP on port 8080 outside the container.

Ports (-p)¶

Environment Variables (-e)¶

Volume Mappings (-v)¶

Device Mappings (--device)¶

Miscellaneous Options¶

Environment variables from files (Docker secrets)¶

You can set any environment variable from a file by using a special prepend FILE__.

As an example:

-e FILE__MYVAR=/run/secrets/mysecretvariable

Will set the environment variable MYVAR based on the contents of the /run/secrets/mysecretvariable file.

Umask for running applications¶

For all of our images we provide the ability to override the default umask settings for services started within the containers using the optional -e UMASK=022 setting. Keep in mind umask is not chmod it subtracts from permissions based on it's value it does not add. Please read up here before asking for support.

User / Group Identifiers¶

When using volumes (-v flags), permissions issues can arise between the host OS and the container, we avoid this issue by allowing you to specify the user PUID and group PGID.

Ensure any volume directories on the host are owned by the same user you specify and any permissions issues will vanish like magic.

In this instance PUID=1000 and PGID=1000, to find yours use id your_user as below:

id your_user

Example output:

uid=1000(your_user) gid=1000(your_user) groups=1000(your_user)

Docker Mods¶

We publish various Docker Mods to enable additional functionality within the containers. The list of Mods available for this image (if any) as well as universal mods that can be applied to any one of our images can be accessed via the dynamic badges above.

Support Info¶

• Shell access whilst the container is running:

  docker exec -it boinc /bin/bash
  

• To monitor the logs of the container in realtime:

  docker logs -f boinc
  

• Container version number:

  docker inspect -f '{{ index .Config.Labels "build_version" }}' boinc
  

• Image version number:

  docker inspect -f '{{ index .Config.Labels "build_version" }}' lscr.io/linuxserver/boinc:latest
  

Updating Info¶

Most of our images are static, versioned, and require an image update and container recreation to update the app inside. With some exceptions (noted in the relevant readme.md), we do not recommend or support updating apps inside the container. Please consult the Application Setup section above to see if it is recommended for the image.

Below are the instructions for updating containers:

Via Docker Compose¶

• Update images:

  • All images:

    docker-compose pull
    

  • Single image:

    docker-compose pull boinc
    

• Update containers:

  • All containers:

    docker-compose up -d
    

  • Single container:

    docker-compose up -d boinc
    

• You can also remove the old dangling images:

  docker image prune
  

Via Docker Run¶

• Update the image:

  docker pull lscr.io/linuxserver/boinc:latest
  

• Stop the running container:

  docker stop boinc
  

• Delete the container:

  docker rm boinc
  

• Recreate a new container with the same docker run parameters as instructed above (if mapped correctly to a host folder, your /config folder and settings will be preserved)

• You can also remove the old dangling images:

  docker image prune
  

Image Update Notifications - Diun (Docker Image Update Notifier)¶

Building locally¶

If you want to make local modifications to these images for development purposes or just to customize the logic:

git clone https://github.com/linuxserver/docker-boinc.git
cd docker-boinc
docker build \
  --no-cache \
  --pull \
  -t lscr.io/linuxserver/boinc:latest .

The ARM variants can be built on x86_64 hardware and vice versa using lscr.io/linuxserver/qemu-static

docker run --rm --privileged lscr.io/linuxserver/qemu-static --reset

Once registered you can define the dockerfile to use with -f Dockerfile.aarch64.

To help with development, we generate this dependency graph.

Versions¶

• 07.07.25: - Rebase to selkies. Breaking change: HTTPS is now required. Use port 8181 with HTTPS for direct access. Reverse proxies can connect to 8080 over http as long as it's served over HTTPS to the user.
• 19.08.24: - Rebase to noble.
• 10.02.24: - Update Readme with new env vars and ingest proper PWA icon.
• 03.04.23: - Rebase to KasmVNC base image. Deprecate armhf build as the new base does not support it. Add bzip2 and xz-utils.
• 14.11.22: - Fix opencl driver.
• 18.09.22: - Rebase to jammy.
• 24.02.22: - Rebase to focal.
• 31.01.22: - Improve device permissions setting verbosity.
• 23.03.21: - Rebase to rdesktop-web baseimage. Deprecate GUAC_USER and GUAC_PASS env vars. Existing users can set the new var PASSWORD for the user abc.
• 01.04.20: - Install boinc from ppa.
• 17.03.20: - Add armhf and aarch64 builds and switch to multi-arch image.
• 16.03.20: - Clean up old pid files.
• 15.03.20: - Initial release.