David Anderson wrote:

New versions of the BOINC client (7.16.5 for Win, 7.16.6 for Mac) have been released to the public. Release notes: https://boinc.berkeley.edu/wiki/Release_Notes_for_BOINC_7.16

Thanks to everyone who contributed to this, in particular Charlie Fenton who got things working on the latest Mac OS.

Thanks also to alpha testers GPV67 and Ralfy, who were the only ones to submit test results. I encourage other alpha testers to test and report the results.

Also: I made a Linux self-extracting archive version of 7.16.6. You can get it here: https://boinc.berkeley.edu/download_all.php
I built this on Ubuntu 18.04.4, and it may not work on other Linux versions. It includes a screensaver. If you have an appropriate Linux system please test it. You can report results on the Alpha test site.

-- David

Change Log:

• If output file is missing on startup, flag task as error.
  
• Let project specify directories in logical file names.
  
• Fix security vulnerability involving logical file names.
  
• Make "reread config files" work for ncpus.
  
• Support fetch of files over GUI RPC; allow projects to supply their own web-based GUI.
  
• FreeBSD: check for AVX
  
• Support GUI RPCs as HTTP Post requests.
  
• Register user consent to terms of use.
  
• Enable "Other options" in simple view if no client connected.
  
• Clear "vm_extensions_disabled" flag on startup.
  
• Fix work fetch bug when max_concurrent used.
  
• Unsuspend jobs before telling them to quit.
  
• Sanity-check job runtime limits.
  
• Fix overflow in OpenCL GPU FLOPS calculation.
  
• Windows: show processor group info at startup
  
• Fix stall if --skip_cpu_benchmarks
  
• Fix crash in RSS feed fetch
  
• Windows: fix GUI RPC password generation when running in a VM
  
• Windows: make --dir work
  
• "finish file present too long" fix
  

Thank you Jord for the modern Linux version. Very welcome to point Linux users here to the official BOINC distribution.

After an hour of googling - how the heck do you update the BOINC Client?

What operating system are you on?

Win10 - Manager prompts me to download the new client when I check for updates.

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Go to https://boinc.berkeley.edu/download.php
if you don't use VirtualBox for anything, just download the version on the right (https://boinc.berkeley.edu/dl/boinc_7.16.5_windows_x86_64.exe)
Save it locally, remember where.
When it has downloaded, navigate to where you downloaded it and (double-)click the installer.
That will start installation, it will install over the previous version.

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Go to https://boinc.berkeley.edu/download.php
if you don't use VirtualBox for anything, just download the version on the right (https://boinc.berkeley.edu/dl/boinc_7.16.5_windows_x86_64.exe)
Save it locally, remember where.
When it has downloaded, navigate to where you downloaded it and (double-)click the installer.
That will start installation, it will install over the previous version.

Thanks so much - I tried googling, and only found Linux install guides, which made me want to doublecheck before downloading. Thanks so much.

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David Anderson wrote:

New versions of the BOINC client (7.16.5 for Win, 7.16.6 for Mac) have been released to the public. Release notes: https://boinc.berkeley.edu/wiki/Release_Notes_for_BOINC_7.16

Thanks to everyone who contributed to this, in particular Charlie Fenton who got things working on the latest Mac OS.

Thanks also to alpha testers GPV67 and Ralfy, who were the only ones to submit test results. I encourage other alpha testers to test and report the results.

Also: I made a Linux self-extracting archive version of 7.16.6. You can get it here: https://boinc.berkeley.edu/download_all.php
I built this on Ubuntu 18.04.4, and it may not work on other Linux versions. It includes a screensaver. If you have an appropriate Linux system please test it. You can report results on the Alpha test site.

-- David

Will download and report anything I notice. Is a report saying everything is working as expected useful? That being my experience so far with the7.17.0 which I compiled here?

Is a report saying everything is working as expected useful? That being my experience so far with the7.17.0 which I compiled here?

Yup. Positive or negative, anything to report is fine.

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How does one install the Linux (Ubuntu) version? Clicking the download link results in garble.

How does one install the Linux (Ubuntu) version? Clicking the download link results in garble.

First change permissions of downloaded file to allow run as program, then it will extract and install in the location you have the file. So far nothing abnormal to report.

How does one install the Linux (Ubuntu) version? Clicking the download link results in garble.

Being very much a newbie in Linux myself, I had a bit of a play.

The file downloaded is boinc_ubuntu_7.16.6_x86_64-pc-linux-gnu.sh, which seems to be a 27.6 MB shell script. Us Windows types are used to simple scripts which operate on data stored in a separate file: this one appears to have a very minimal script at the top

#!/bin/sh
( read l; read l; read l; exec cat ) < "$0" | gunzip | tar xf - && /bin/sh BOINC/binstall.sh sea.tar boinc_7.16.6_x86_64-pc-linux-gnu.sh BOINC/binstall.sh
exit

and then contains its own data.

By analogy with the NVidia driver installer, I typed

sh boinc_ubuntu_7.16.6_x86_64-pc-linux-gnu.sh --info

in terminal, having first done a CD into the download directory. That failed - folder names are case-sensitive in Linux. And I don't think the --info switch is implemented.

I ended up with a BOINC folder (looks complete) one level lower down, and the instruction in terminal "use /home/richard/Downloads/BOINC/run_manager to start BOINC".

Which I'm not going to do, because I've already got a fully configured and operational copy of BOINC running as a service from the PPA. But there may be something useful in there.

By default, Linux downloaded scripts are not executable. In GUI you can right click on the file, select properties and then click the box to enable it to run as a program. At least it forces people to think about whether they want something to run or not.

And having done some more tinkering, I've now got BOINC Manager to open, and display my running service client. It says it's a pre-release copy, but it appears to work - and it's got the standard File menu and the exit options dialog straight from the BOINC code, whereas the repo Manager has had useful bits stripped out. That's enough for today.

And having done some more tinkering, I've now got BOINC Manager to open, and display my running service client. It says it's a pre-release copy, but it appears to work - and it's got the standard File menu and the exit options dialog straight from the BOINC code, whereas the repo Manager has had useful bits stripped out. That's enough for today.

Is the manager extracted from the shell archive describing itself as pre-release or it it telling you it is connected to a pre-release client? Or perhaps even both situations are happening? The file menu of the manager will show you what the manager is. The "connected to ..." message in the bottom RH corner should tell you about the client.

If the manager is pre-release, then DA hasn't quite built it properly :-). If the client is pre-release, the repo you got it from hasn't built it properly.

If both the client and manager belong to a proper release (eg 7.16.5) and the latest source has been cloned from github, then there is a script that needs to be run in the subsequent procedure in order to set the proper version string rather than have the product identify itself as pre-release stuff. These are the steps I use on my build machine, starting from the top of the source tree (/home/gary/src/) and with the cloned code in the subdir boinc :-

[gary@host src]$ cd boinc
[gary@host boinc]$ git tag --list '*/7.16/*'                                  (lists all the 7.16.x versions available)
[gary@host boinc]$ git checkout client_release/7.16/7.16.5                     (specify the specific version to checkout)
[gary@host boinc]$ ./set-version 7.16.5                                       (step to avoid "pre-release" - also runs ./_autosetup)
[gary@host boinc]$ ./configure --disable-server --enable-client CXXFLAGS="-O3 "
[gary@host boinc]$ make
[gary@host boinc]$ cd packages/generic/sea                          (sea stands for self extracting archive - the .sh file you mentioned)
[gary@host sea]$ make                                               (you don't need to build this unless you need it)
[gary@host sea]$                                                    (I always do to keep as a single backup of everything in case needed)

And that all there is to it. Of course, there's lots of terminal output at various stages but as long as it goes to completion without errors (warnings are fine) the binaries produced will run. The biggest problem would be if all the required development packages aren't installed on the build machine. For my distro (pclinuxos) that amounted to something like 150 extra packages on top of the standard build tools (latest gcc, autoconf, automake, libtool, git, etc). I discovered that the majority of the devel pkgs get pulled in automatically by specifying just one - lib64wxgtku3.1-devel. The pkg manager I use can install from a list kept in an external text file. On an earlier build, I just saved the full list so if I choose a different machine, the setup is trivial.

Different distros use different packaging systems and different naming conventions so you have to create your own list. Many are probably fairly similarly named though. Sometimes, a single package in one distro might be represented by several in another - or vice versa. It's usually not too hard to work that out :-).

So, when are you going to start building on Linux ;-) :-).

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Cheers,
Gary.

And having done some more tinkering, I've now got BOINC Manager to open, and display my running service client. It says it's a pre-release copy, but it appears to work - and it's got the standard File menu and the exit options dialog straight from the BOINC code, whereas the repo Manager has had useful bits stripped out. That's enough for today.

Is the manager extracted from the shell archive describing itself as pre-release or it it telling you it is connected to a pre-release client? Or perhaps even both situations are happening? The file menu of the manager will show you what the manager is. The "connected to ..." message in the bottom RH corner should tell you about the client.

If the manager is pre-release, then DA hasn't quite built it properly :-). If the client is pre-release, the repo you got it from hasn't built it properly.

It's definitely David's sea Manager which is pre-release:


That's actually correct, because it's also labelled as pre-release on https://boinc.berkeley.edu/download_all.php - he's consistent.

The pre-release flag is controlled by https://github.com/BOINC/boinc/blob/master/version.h#L24 - that, plus the 7.17.0 version number, means he must have built this package from master, rather than the release branch tag.

I have actually built a client from sources, but I failed with the Manager - I don't think I've got all the dependencies properly installed yet.

That's actually correct, because it's also labelled as pre-release on https://boinc.berkeley.edu/download_all.php - he's consistent.

I built my 7.16.5 when it was announced that 7.16.5/7.16.6 were released. I noticed DA's actual words specified version 7.16.6 for the shell archive which was what drew my attention when you posted about your "pre-release" description. I didn't look at the download_all page - I just assumed the new archive would be an official release version and not something on the way towards an eventual 7.18 release.

After I had seen that DA called his 7.16.6, I wondered (for a microsecond) if I should rebuild mine as 7.16.6. I decided that was crazy since the only likely difference between the two would be specific to MacOS - so a bit pointless. Your descriptions of your experience made me a bit curious so I decided to answer your post.

I know you are more than capable of working things out for yourself - far more capable than me. My main reason for documenting what I had done was to encourage Linux users in general to 'build their own' since it's actually a trivial exercise once the build environment is set up. The mantra of "... for Linux, get the new version from your package manager ..." always annoyed me because, believe it or not, there are distros out there that don't package BOINC. My distro used to (a long time ago) but they decided that the dozens and dozens of alpha quality versions on the way to a final release effectively disqualified it from serious consideration. I was quite happy to use the shell archives - until they stopped. That eventually forced me to become self reliant - for which I'm eternally grateful :-).

I have actually built a client from sources, but I failed with the Manager - I don't think I've got all the dependencies properly installed yet.

I did build 7.16.3 when it first came out and used it quite a bit. It identified itself as 7.15.0-pre-release which caused me to investigate and find the set-version script. It was either that build or perhaps the aborted 7.16.4 version (built but never used) where I found a new dependency on wayland-protocols-devel, if I remember correctly. I could easily send you a full list of packages I install, if that is of any use to you. The names won't be quite the same but something might stand out as a likely candidate.

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Cheers,
Gary.

Can someone explain what kind of security issue this fix in 7.16.X really deals with, and what it means. In layman terms please:

Fix security vulnerability involving logical file names.

I don't upgrade my clients unless there's a really need for it. I'm still on 7.6.22.
Is that security fix something I need to be bothered about?

Replied by PM.