Step by step guide for free GRC

In this guide I will show you how you can get about 2 GRC/day completely for free for about two months! This makes 120 GRC completly for free! For this we will use Google Compute Engine.

Please note that you need a credit card to prevent abuse of this method! Your credit card won't be charged!

What is Google Compute Engine

Google Compute Engine is a service from google that allows you to host virtual machines (VMs) on the same infrastructure that google uses for its own services such as Youtube and Google Search. You may ask yourself now what a virtual machine is. That's actually a really good question and I will quickly explain it here. If you already know that you can skip that.

What is a virtual machine

A virtual machine is an emulation of a computer system. With the help of virtual machines one can run multpile operating systems on one computer that run completly independent and at the same time. So when you get access to a VM you can think of it as you get access to a remote computer.

Step 1

Google offers a $300 or 1 year (depends on what arrives first) trial of its Compute Engine.

Go to http://www.cloud.google.com, press try it for free and login with your Google account. If you don't have one you can creat an account for free.



Step 2



You will see this site now. Make sure that the first radio button is No and the other two should be Yes.

Step 3

The next step is to type in your address and your credit card information. You won't pay anything! This is just to prevent abuse!.



Step 4

Now you have to create a new project.



You can name it as you want. It doesn't matter.

Step 5

You can now create a virtual machine. Just click on vm instances.



Step 6

Here you can configure your VM. I suggest you to select the vm with 8 vCores.

Select a destination in the US it's cheaper!

The price you see will be paid from your free credit and you have to pay nothing even if your free credits run out.

I quote here from Google:

No, the trial is free and you will not be billed. When your trial ends, your account will be paused and you'll have the option to upgrade to a paid account.



Step 7

Select SSH via web browser to connect to your vm.



Step 8

You will see a console window in the browser like on the image below.



In there type one after another the following commands:

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install boinc

boinccmd --join_acct_mgr https://www.grcpool.com username password

Step 9

Configure your new host on grcpool.com as always :)

Step 10

Go back to console and type:

boinccmd --join_acct_mgr https://www.grcpool.com username password

this should sync your client with the pool.

Step 11

Wait a few minutes and then type:

boinccmd --get_simple_gui_info

You will something like on the image that shows that your instance is running a boinc task. From now on you will build up your RAC. At the moment I get about 2GRC/day just from this instance. And it's completly free :)

End

I hope this guide is useful to some of you. If you have any trouble or need further assistance do not hesitate to ask me :)