Weak account key

Each account has an associated weak account key. Someone who has your weak account key can attach computers to your account, but can't log in to your account or to change it in any way. This is useful if you need to install BOINC on public computers, or if you want to let someone compute on your behalf without giving them access to your account.

This mechanism works only with projects that have upgraded their server software to version 14367 or later.

To find your weak account key on a given project, visit the page weak_auth.php on its web site.

To use a weak account key on a given host, find or create the 'account file' for the project. This file has a name of the form account_PROJECT_URL.xml; for example the account file for SETI@home is account_setiathome.berkeley.edu.xml.

Create this file if needed. Set its contents to:

<master_url>PROJECT_URL</master_url>
<authenticator>WEAK_ACCOUNT_KEY</authenticator>

Your weak account key is a function of your password. If you change your password, your weak account key changes, and the previous weak account key becomes invalid.

Rather than creating this file, the procedure requiring to restart the client, you can also execute a command from terminal/console, navigate to the client program location and enter the information obtained for above method in the below order

''boinccmd --project_attach project_url your_weak_account_key''

e.g.

''boinccmd --project_attach www.worldcommunitygrid.org 123456_f5gh67bf54d5dfgthgh12fgh''

If the client is already attached to the project of choice you want to help out on for someone else, first a detach needs to be executed:

''boinccmd --project www.worldcommunitygrid.org detach''