I am running Lubuntu 16.04 LTS 64-bit (4.4.0-53-generic kernel)on my old PC and to better use it I installed BOINC on it using the apt-get method and it gave me the 7.6.31 boinc version. I also wanted to run VM applications on it and hence I downloaded and installed virtualbox from the oracle's site ver#5.1.10 with extension pack. Now when I add VM projects such as vLHC@home, ATLAS@home, Cosmology@home i receive an error stating that virtualbox is not installed.
I don't know how to resolve this as I have tried every method posted on troubleshooting forums.

Note: This error did not come when I was running 32bit version of the same OS on the same PC

Have you restarted BOINC client (not Manager) after installing VirtualBox? If you have then what you get if you run "vboxmanage --version" in terminal?

Yes I restarted the client after installing VirtualBox, and the output of vboxmanage --version is this - 5.1.10r112026

Do you have a line like this in BOINC's Event Log:

26/08/2015 8:44:37 AM | | VirtualBox version: 4.3.12

Have you checked points 4 and 5 of the Atlas checklist?

Checked the Event Log and can't find any entry related to virtualbox.
I have checked the checklist, I am aware that I don't have a Vt-x enabled CPU (Core 2 Duo E7300) and have checked that thing in client_state.xml and it is set to zero.
The issue is that I was running 32bit Lubuntu 16.04 prior to my current installation and I received a task from vLHC@home and was able to run it.
Anyhow Vt-x capability of a CPU should not affect boinc's ability to scan for VirtualBox installation as I did not receive any error messages on the 32-bit installation.

VirtualBox requires VM extensions to run 64-bit VMs. Now that you have 64-bit OS the server may be only considering 64-bit VM versions which your machine can't run. The message you get from server could be just misleading in this case. So that puts Atlas out of the picture.

Edited after reading your message fully. How about reboot?

edit2: Try adding 'boinc' to 'vboxusers' group. I don't think you should have to do that but doesn't hurt to try.

Maybe I should install 32-bit versions of boinc and virtualbox if that's possible? So that I may atleast run vLHC@home tasks.
Rebooting and user thing didn't work.

Okay an update on the issue: From your post I gathered that installing 32-bit versions of the apps would solve my issues and after doing that it seems to have solved the issue of the error message virtualbox not installed.

Now when I add vLHC@home (as only they have 32bit vbox applications) I don't receive any tasks.Here's the event log:

Sun 18 Dec 2016 09:53:26 AM IST | | Starting BOINC client version 7.6.31 for x86_64-pc-linux-gnu
Sun 18 Dec 2016 09:53:26 AM IST | | log flags: file_xfer, sched_ops, task
Sun 18 Dec 2016 09:53:26 AM IST | | Libraries: libcurl/7.47.0 OpenSSL/1.0.2g zlib/1.2.8 libidn/1.32 librtmp/2.3
Sun 18 Dec 2016 09:53:26 AM IST | | Data directory: /var/lib/boinc-client
Sun 18 Dec 2016 09:53:26 AM IST | | No usable GPUs found
Sun 18 Dec 2016 09:53:32 AM IST | | Host name: DC
Sun 18 Dec 2016 09:53:32 AM IST | | Processor: 2 GenuineIntel Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU E7300 @ 2.66GHz [Family 6 Model 23 Stepping 6]
Sun 18 Dec 2016 09:53:32 AM IST | | Processor features: fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe syscall nx lm constant_tsc arch_perfmon pebs bts rep_good nopl aperfmperf pni dtes64 monitor ds_cpl est tm2 ssse3 cx16 xtpr pdcm sse4_1 lahf_lm dtherm
Sun 18 Dec 2016 09:53:32 AM IST | | OS: Linux: 4.4.0-53-generic
Sun 18 Dec 2016 09:53:32 AM IST | | Memory: 1.94 GB physical, 3.72 GB virtual
Sun 18 Dec 2016 09:53:32 AM IST | | Disk: 32.89 GB total, 27.24 GB free
Sun 18 Dec 2016 09:53:32 AM IST | | Local time is UTC +5 hours
Sun 18 Dec 2016 09:53:32 AM IST | | VirtualBox version: 5.1.10r112026
Sun 18 Dec 2016 09:53:32 AM IST | | Config: GUI RPCs allowed from:
Sun 18 Dec 2016 09:53:32 AM IST | | No general preferences found - using defaults
Sun 18 Dec 2016 09:53:32 AM IST | | Reading preferences override file
Sun 18 Dec 2016 09:53:32 AM IST | | Preferences:
Sun 18 Dec 2016 09:53:32 AM IST | | max memory usage when active: 995.33MB
Sun 18 Dec 2016 09:53:32 AM IST | | max memory usage when idle: 1791.59MB
Sun 18 Dec 2016 09:53:32 AM IST | | max disk usage: 25.00GB
Sun 18 Dec 2016 09:53:32 AM IST | | (to change preferences, visit a project web site or select Preferences in the Manager)
Sun 18 Dec 2016 09:53:32 AM IST | | gui_rpc_auth.cfg is empty - no GUI RPC password protection
Sun 18 Dec 2016 09:53:32 AM IST | | This computer is not attached to any projects
Sun 18 Dec 2016 09:53:32 AM IST | | Visit http://boinc.berkeley.edu for instructions
Sun 18 Dec 2016 09:55:41 AM IST | | Fetching configuration file from http://lhcathome2.cern.ch/vLHCathome/get_project_config.php
Sun 18 Dec 2016 09:56:03 AM IST | | Running CPU benchmarks
Sun 18 Dec 2016 09:56:03 AM IST | | Suspending computation - CPU benchmarks in progress
Sun 18 Dec 2016 09:56:34 AM IST | | Benchmark results:
Sun 18 Dec 2016 09:56:34 AM IST | | Number of CPUs: 2
Sun 18 Dec 2016 09:56:34 AM IST | | 2252 floating point MIPS (Whetstone) per CPU
Sun 18 Dec 2016 09:56:34 AM IST | | 5944 integer MIPS (Dhrystone) per CPU
Sun 18 Dec 2016 09:56:34 AM IST | | Resuming computation
Sun 18 Dec 2016 09:56:35 AM IST | VirtualLHC@home | Master file download succeeded
Sun 18 Dec 2016 09:56:40 AM IST | VirtualLHC@home | Sending scheduler request: Project initialization.
Sun 18 Dec 2016 09:56:40 AM IST | VirtualLHC@home | Requesting new tasks for CPU
Sun 18 Dec 2016 09:56:42 AM IST | VirtualLHC@home | Scheduler request completed: got 0 new tasks
Sun 18 Dec 2016 09:56:42 AM IST | VirtualLHC@home | No tasks sent
Sun 18 Dec 2016 09:56:42 AM IST | | (to change preferences, visit a project web site or select Preferences in the Manager)
Sun 18 Dec 2016 09:56:52 AM IST | VirtualLHC@home | Sending scheduler request: To fetch work.
Sun 18 Dec 2016 09:56:52 AM IST | VirtualLHC@home | Requesting new tasks for CPU
Sun 18 Dec 2016 09:56:54 AM IST | VirtualLHC@home | Scheduler request completed: got 0 new tasks
Sun 18 Dec 2016 09:56:54 AM IST | VirtualLHC@home | No tasks sent
Sun 18 Dec 2016 10:00:14 AM IST | | Fetching configuration file from http://climateprediction.net/get_project_config.php
Sun 18 Dec 2016 10:03:06 AM IST | climateprediction.net | Master file download succeeded
Sun 18 Dec 2016 10:03:11 AM IST | climateprediction.net | Sending scheduler request: Project initialization.
Sun 18 Dec 2016 10:03:11 AM IST | climateprediction.net | Requesting new tasks for CPU
Sun 18 Dec 2016 10:03:13 AM IST | climateprediction.net | Scheduler request completed: got 0 new tasks
Sun 18 Dec 2016 10:03:13 AM IST | climateprediction.net | Project has no tasks available


If vLHC@home did not have any tasks available I should have got a message similar to the climateprediction.net i.e."Project has no tasks available". Instead I get "no tasks sent". Seems like an issue to me, please help!

I don't know why installing 32-bit BOINC and VirtualBox made any difference for detecting VirtualBox. All the client does is run "/usr/bin/VBoxManage --version" or if that fails "/usr/local/bin/VBoxManage --version".

32-bit client isn't helping getting 32-bit VM tasks. At startup the client checks what binaries the host OS can run. In your case it's both 64-bit and 32-bit with the 64-bit being primary platform. The server then checks what platforms the client supports and for VM tasks gives you only tasks that match the primary platform. VM tasks having to match primary platform is apparently some Windows limitation but it's applied for all operating systems. So the server is willing to give you only 64-bit tasks which your host can't run therefore you get no work.

Now there are some options to make things work but before we go into those maybe it would be best if you explained what you want to do with the host. What BOINC projects you want to run, what motivated the change to 64-bit OS and so forth.

I don't know why installing 32-bit BOINC and VirtualBox made any difference for detecting VirtualBox.

Lack of 32bit compatibility libraries, perhaps? http://boinc.berkeley.edu/wiki/Installing_BOINC#64_Bit_Considerations
If you are running 64 bit Linux, you might have a problem with projects that issue 32 bit applications rather than 64 bit applications. To allow 32 bit applications to run on 64 bit Linux you must install 32 bit versions of certain shared libraries. The names of the packages containing the 32 bit libraries is different for each distro.

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Are you connecting using the old address or are you connecting using the new one for the newly combined LHC?

The newly combined LHC uses https://lhcathome.cern.ch/lhcathome/

Just checking in case they didn't shut off the old servers yet. I haven't kept up recently. May check more on it later.

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I really would like to run a VM project on my machine (vLHC@home) and for the 64-bit OS I never gave a thought to it the only thing I wanted was to run latest software on my old PC to get the most of it.

If you could help me to get 32-bit tasks from the vLHC@home server on my current installation it would be great, also just for your information I recently got a 32-bit task from SETI@home, don't know if it helps but thought of mentioning it.


P.S. I have activated the 32-bit libraries in my 64-bit Lubuntu. It seems newer versions of ubuntu are multiarch and don't need to specifically install 32-bit libraries which is I think proved by the fact that I got a 32-bit task from SETI.

But what link are you using to attach to LHC? They recently merged all of the projects into one and are slowly phasing out their servers at the other projects. You may not be getting work if you are still attached to the old server. Please verify that you are using the new combined project link above. They are sending out work for each of the LHC projects now. You may have to go into your preferences and check which apps you want to run if you already had an account at Six Track.

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Ok. Since you run other projects too you'll want to keep the 64-bit OS. At least on my old host 64-bit apps have a small but noticeable performance advantage.

I think you have two choices. You can use Anonymous platform mechanism. Instead of asking the server for an application you'd tell server what application you already have. To set things up you need to know and have all the files that the 32-bit app version needs. If you have a backup of the 32-bit OS installation the files and info should be there. Otherwise you need to ask someone who runs the 32-bit app version to tell you what files you need and their download location. Downside is that the app wouldn't be automatically updated any more. After setting up anon platform you are responsible for updates.

The other option is to use a modified BOINC client. I think all that needs to be done is swap the platforms. This way the vLHC server would think 32-bit is primary platform and other servers would still see 64-bit platform as well. Downside to this is that the tweaked client isn't automatically updated when new versions are released.

Notice that vLHC is/has merging with the original LHC. While the old site still has 32-bit app versions they have not been copied to LHC.

Ageless wrote:

I don't know why installing 32-bit BOINC and VirtualBox made any difference for detecting VirtualBox.

Lack of 32bit compatibility libraries, perhaps?

No. 32-bit client and VirtualBox worked. It was 64-bit that didn't.

Coleslaw wrote:

Are you connecting using the old address or are you connecting using the new one for the newly combined LHC?

From the log he's still connecting to the old vLHC. According to their server status page vLHC still works and has work available. Since the 32-bit app versions have not been copied to the combined LHC Clark shouldn't connect to it.

The other option is to use a modified BOINC client. I think all that needs to be done is swap the platforms.

How to do this? What I did was that I changed paltform in the sched_request for vLHC@home from x86_64 to i686 and still didn't make any difference.

I tried to follow this thread loosely and I'm now kind of confused what you did and what you expect. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

You are running Lubuntu 16.04 LTS 64-bit and installed BOINC via package manager (which usually gives you the 64-bit version). You then downloaded VirtualBox from the website and installed in manually. Why didn't you install it also via apt? The version in 16.04 should be recent enough.

installing 32-bit versions of the apps would solve my issues and after doing that

I don't understand what you mean by "apps". Do you mean BOINC? Do you mean VBox? You should use the 64bit Version for both.

In your latest log snippet BOINC was detecting the correct VirtualBox version which may have been a simple client restart issue which fixed itself by whatever you did to "install 32-bit versions of the apps". The BOINC client is still 64 bit as is stated in the logfile.

Juha: Can you point me to where this Vbox pinning to the primary platform happens?

Clark: you could try to swap platforms in your client_state.xml (stop boinc-client before changing the file!) For me the config is at the bottom of the file and looks like this:

<platform_name>x86_64-pc-linux-gnu</platform_name>
<alt_platform>i686-pc-linux-gnu</alt_platform>

Just swap the content of those tags and start boinc-client again. It's possible that info is regenerated at startup and this won't work but I think it's worth a try.

An interesting thing happened today. I received a kernel update - it's now 4.4.0.57 I guess - and after the reboot I get the same old error from BOINC: Virtual Box not installed so now what should I do??

P.S. Nothing was changed by me only the kernel was upgraded.

Juha: Can you point me to where this Vbox pinning to the primary platform happens?

plan_class_spec.cpp and sched_customize.cpp. I suppose the code could be changed to make this Windows only. Check if primary platform != *windows* and maybe check that CPU features don't include vmx or svm so that 32-bit VM is sent only to hosts that really can't run 64-bit VMs. But I'm somewhat reluctant to actually propose that change. The only project that has 32-bit VMs is vLHC and now that they are consolidating with LHC they don't take new volunteers any more making testing the change a bit challenging and I don't participate in any other VM project so I wouldn't see if there are any unintended side effects. I'm not entirely sure but I think they are planning on dropping the 32-bit VMs so this problem is going away anyway.

Clark: you could try to swap platforms in your client_state.xml (stop boinc-client before changing the file!) -- It's possible that info is regenerated at startup and this won't work but I think it's worth a try.

I didn't actually check if they are read from client_state.xml but there is code that checks the platforms at startup. I thought about swapping those two if()s. Here's client (and boinccmd and mgr) with that change. Tested only that it starts. It was compiled on Mint 17 (=Ubuntu 14.04), might not work on 16.04 Copy boinc-7.6.33-x to /usr/bin/boinc and restart the client with "sudo service boinc-client restart".

a kernel update - it's now 4.4.0.57 I guess - and after the reboot I get the same old error from BOINC: Virtual Box not installed

Copy+paste output of "sudo -u boinc VBoxManage --version". Anticipating it will complain about kernel modules do both of these:

1. Make sure you have dkms, linux-headers, gcc, make and binutils installed. So basically what the VirtualBox package recommends.
2. Follow the instructions in the message.