Greetings,

I am trying to view the graphics for the SETI@Home project and I am having an issue where you click show graphics but nothing happens.

What debugging/troubleshooting information could I get that could be helpful in tracking down why this isn't working?

Thanks!

Greetings,

I am trying to view the graphics for the SETI@Home project and I am having an issue where you click show graphics but nothing happens.

What debugging/troubleshooting information could I get that could be helpful in tracking down why this isn't working?

Thanks!

I cannot seem to edit my original post, so I am creating a new one.

I have installed http://packages.ubuntu.com/wily/boinc-app-seti-graphics and http://packages.ubuntu.com/wily/boinc-app-seti and I am still having issues. First I only installed the seti-graphics and restarted my boinc. When clicking graphics with just that one installed it would pop open a box that was just black and then it would close. Installing the boinc-app-seti uninstall the boinc-app-seti-graphics and now it is just greyed out.

Edit: Essentially the issue I am getting with the graphics-app installed is this: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/linux.debian.bugs.dist/sXKwlF9QOWo

Thanks[/url]

Hi Electro

When the experienced people show up there's something that they'll need to know.
And that's which of the SETI apps you're running.

A lot of projects don't have graphics for all apps, and I think that SETI is the same.

Two other matters:
You only get one hour in which to edit your posts.
It's usually best to ask at the project causing problems when it seems to only be with one project. And this site ISN'T SETI. it's the BOINC support site.
SETI is here.

But stick around. Your question is probably generic enough for some one here.

It seems that boinc/seti-graphics-app has some weird permissions stuff going on. All the folders in /var/lib/boinc-client/slots/ are owned by boinc:boinc. However the boinc mgr runs as my local user and not the boinc. So when trying to kick off the graphics which need rw access to files in the slots directory it crashes. I fixed this by adding my local user to the boinc group and changing the file permissions to 664.

I'm having the same problem using Ubuntu 15.10 with boinc-client 7.6.6 64-bit. When I click on a task running with the seti@home v8 app, the show graphics button lights up, but when I click on it nothing happens. I already added my local user to the boinc group and set g+rw permissions for the entire /var/lib/boinc-client/ folder but nothing changed.

I'm not very experienced in debugging something like this but also want to see those fancy graphics. Any suggestions?

Probably a missing library. Open terminal and run

ldd /var/lib/boinc-client/projects/setiathome.berkeley.edu/setigraphics_8*

Anything that says 'not found' (or something like that) needs to be installed. freeglut3 and libglu1-mesa might be two packages you need.

I installed the freeglut3 package. After that all libraries are present for setigraphics_8.00_x86_64-pc-linux-gnu. But the problem remains. Is there some form of log file for the BOINC client that I could check for errors?

Depending on how far it got, there may be stderrgfx.txt file in the slot directory for the task.

Then there's $HOME/.BOINC/std{err,out}gui.txt . Some Manager versions spew tons of debugging info in them. I don't know if yours is one but if it is just delete the files, start Manager and quickly try to show graphics and exit Manager. Makes finding useful information so much easier.

Notice that Seti sends both 64-bit and 32-bit apps. When checking the required libraries make sure you check both versions. Older Managers don't always show the right app name.

Everytime I try to open a graphics window the following error message is added to stderrgui.txt:

setigraphics_8.00_i686-pc-linux-gnu: error while loading shared libraries: libglut.so.3: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

So it seems like the problem is the missing libglut.so.3 in its 32-bit version. Judging from the slot directories, the tasks are indeed run using the i686 app. Problem is, I'm using Ubuntu 64-bit and when I installed the freeglut3 package, only the x86_64 libglut.so.3 was added. I noticed that when checking with the ldd command before and after installing the package.

Does that mean my chances of ever seeing graphics for my SETI tasks are very bad? And why is BOINC not using the app corresponding to my system architecture? Anyway, thank you very much for your help so far.

You can add packages for non-default architecture like so:

sudo apt-get install freeglut3:i386

And why is BOINC not using the app corresponding to my system architecture?

BOINC server likes send work with all app versions the host can run (32/64 bits, SSE2/3/4, or for GPU apps CUDA/OpenCL, etc) until it believes it has found the best version. If there is only a small difference it may keep using more than one app version. For some hosts and some apps 32-bit version may be faster than 64-bit one.

Installing the 32-bit library solved the problem and I can now enjoy those fancy graphics. ;-)

Thank you very much for your help.

Fixed this by adding my local user to the boinc group and changing the file permissions to 664.

please tell me how you do this
thank you

My manager allows me to click and it TRIES hard to open a small window - but it closes immediately

If you are on Ubuntu or Mint, open Users and Groups application/control panel thingy, select your user name, click the groups listed for your account, tick boinc group and click ok. Other distros should have something similar available. You need to logout & back in for the change to take effect.

I think adding your user account to boinc group should be enough. Give it a try, if it doesn't work then we'll figure out the permissions.