I am having trouble getting BOINC to obey the Exclusive Applications setting. I have one entry in this field, the new Blizzard game Heroes of the Storm, and BOINC keeps running work units when I am playing this game forcing me to stop and restart it manually. The GPU is set not to run when computer is in use and it does respect this setting.

BOINC v7.6.2 (the current “stable” version was giving me a problem that I have now forgotten but 7.6.2 fixed it)
Installed as admin and then ran Charlie Fenton's script dated 01/06/2008 Make_BOINC_Service.sh
Mid 2010 Mac Pro, quad core Xeon @ 2.4 GHz
8 GB RAM
OS X v10.9.5
Heros of the Storm v1.11.6.2439 (latest version)

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Make sure you have your CPU Activity set to run based on preferences, as when set to run always, that will ignore any exclusive applications.

Also make sure you used the right executable name for the game. Some games use launchers that launch the actual game's binary and then exit.

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Thank you Ageless. BOINC is set to run based on preferences. I have tried to select the binary, Heroes of the Storm.app/Versions/Base36144/Heroes.app but the folder is grayed out in the Exclusive Applications window so I can’t select anything in it, even when logged it as admin (GUI, not cl). To view it in Finder I have to right click/Show Package Contents just to see inside it, and I can’t drag & drop the binary into the BOINC Exclusive Applications window either, even when logged in as Admin.

For what it’s worth, Heroes of the Storm.app/Versions/Base36144/Heroes.app is owned by me so I have full read/write permissions.

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Thank you Ageless. BOINC is set to run based on preferences. I have tried to select the binary, Heroes of the Storm.app/Versions/Base36144/Heroes.app but the folder is grayed out in the Exclusive Applications window so I can’t select anything in it, even when logged it as admin (GUI, not cl). To view it in Finder I have to right click/Show Package Contents just to see inside it, and I can’t drag & drop the binary into the BOINC Exclusive Applications window either, even when logged in as Admin.

For what it’s worth, Heroes of the Storm.app/Versions/Base36144/Heroes.app is owned by me so I have full read/write permissions.

Ouch. This may be an issue for the Mac user interface team. I know what part of the issue here is and it is Mac O/S security. The rest is that an application on a Mac may have numerous executables inside a folder like bundle. BOINC may be looking for an exact match on the path/executable name but the GUI add window can not look inside a bundle due to Mac O/S security.

As a possible work around see if you type in the executable name. Remember it may be case sensitive.

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Thank you for the suggestion Gary. The Exclusive applications interface in BOINCManager.app is strictly Add… or Remove. When you click Add… it brings up a small Finder window where you can select the app to add to the Exclusive Applications list. On a whim I tried using this Finder window to search for Heroes.app, which is what it shows up as in Little Snitch, and Finder found it (I never knew Finder would search a quasi-folder directory package thing). However after adding Heroes.app to the Exclusive applications list from Finder search BOINCManager.app still does not respect the setting.

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Thank you for the suggestion Gary. The Exclusive applications interface in BOINCManager.app is strictly Add… or Remove. When you click Add… it brings up a small Finder window where you can select the app to add to the Exclusive Applications list. On a whim I tried using this Finder window to search for Heroes.app, which is what it shows up as in Little Snitch, and Finder found it (I never knew Finder would search a quasi-folder directory package thing). However after adding Heroes.app to the Exclusive applications list from Finder search BOINCManager.app still does not respect the setting.

FYI, this is what Boinc Manager.app contains (an old version)

In the Finder, right click on the .app and select show package contents. BOINC may be looking for the name of the Unix Executable file and not the name of the application. As you see BOINC has 4, but only 2 are real programs (BOINCManger and boinc)

To use this see http://boinc.berkeley.edu/wiki/Client_configuration and set up your cc_config.xml file. Oh, as to what is running in your game, Activity Monitor, or use terminal and top or ps to figure out what the executable is named.

Good Luck

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Ageless asked me to look into this. I found an easy way here to drill down into an application bundle when using the Mac's file picker (Open) dialog.

Outside of BOINC Manager, browse to the containing application (in this case Heroes of the Storm.app) in the Finder, and control-click on it. Then from the contextual menu which appears, select Show Package Contents to allow you to drill deeper inside. Browse until you get to the file you want (in this case Heroes.app.)

Next, in BOINC Manager's Exclusive Applications dialog, click on Add to open the file picker (Open) dialog. Finally, drag the desired file from the first Finder window onto the file picker dialog. With any luck, this will avoid the need to edit your cc_config.xml file by hand.

You may be able to determine the name of the UNIX executable by drilling down into the contents/MacOSX directory inside Heroes.app. Or, using the methods suggested by Gary, you may find that a completely different executable is ultimately being run by the game.

A word of caution: if you do edit your cc_config.xml file by hand, you may need to run the BOINC Manager Installer again to fix up its ownership and file permissions to those expected by BOINC. And if you edit your cc_config.xml file by hand, you will need to have BOINC re-read it either by selecting Read config files from the Options menu or by quitting and relaunching BOINC Manager.

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Charlie Fenton
BOINC / SETI@home Macintosh & Windows Programmer

Thank you all for your help. I had to set the issue aside for a few days, when I came back to it I found that Heroes.app was no longer in the exclusive apps list so I added it again along with another app I found, HeroesSwitcher.app, and Exclusive Apps is now working as it should.

Again, thank you for your help. I appreciate it very much.

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