I recently switched to Ubuntu from a different Linux distro. Upon reinstalling Boinc from apt with

apt install boinc boinc-manager

, I obtained both programs without issue. When attempting to add projects, however, I get the following error:

I click "Existing User", and add my username and password. (I am reasonably confident I remember my password for each job, but not certain. In any case, the following behavior is not sensible for a correct or incorrect password).

I get the "Connecting to [Project] window with the ball bouncing between two machines, and then the window turns to a gray box with nothing present at all. I cannot click "back" or "next" as they are grayed out, and "cancel" gives no response. I also notice a temperature spike from my CPU according to my temperature monitor. I am unable to coax a response except by killing the boinc processes, at which point my CPU temperature returns to normal.

When launching boinc from the command line, I see that it stalls on this command:

22-Jul-2025 17:27:36 [---] Fetching configuration file from https://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/get_project_config.php 

You may swap in the World Community Grid project for any other project, as I have tried several and had no luck.

Boinc Version: 8.0.4

OS: Ubuntu 25.0

CPU: Intel i7-14700KF(28)

GPU: AMD ATI Radeon RX 7700 XT / 7800

Driver versions: Uncertain, but should be standard Intel/Mesa drivers obtainable from Apt, nothing fancy

Check your firewall settings for a block on port 31416 which the client needs for communication.

There should be some hints in the event log.

As I have not deliberately enabled any firewall, I do not believe this could be the problem. I checked and Ubuntu's default firewall is indeed disabled by default.

Update: Doing a bit more looking, I was able to use the command lsof to check the port 31416, and can now confirm that Boinc is indeed able to use this connection.

The event log states the following:

"Checking presence of 0 project files"
"This computer is not attached to any projects"
"Fetching configuration file from https://www.worldcommun..."

This was followed by a couple lines about the CPU being busy, and then no further information.

I restarted BOINC at this point, opening the event log from the start. This time, the log was completely empty, without even that information. In both cases, upon attempting to communicate with WCG, the window froze up, failing to redraw if I resized it indicating that the program is either completely busy or flatly crashed.

you could try removing BOINC using apt and then install from the snap store. I wouldn't use SNAP on a machine where space was very limited as I think (open to correction if wrong) it installs everything the package might need even if another snap has already installed it.

So far for me on fresh installs of 25.04 and 25.10 nightly build it has just worked as expected which leaves me a little baffled. Might be worth trying event log options and enabling http_debug and http_xfer_debug to see if that yields any useful information. more generally, don't leave extra event log options enabled once you have checked to see if they are useful as they can very quickly fill up the event log.

Could be just WCG which is known for being very flaky. Try adding another project like Einstein and see if it succesful adding the project. http_debug logging flag would show the issues why it can't connect successfully to WCG.

Could be just WCG which is known for being very flaky.

The OP mentions trying several other projects.

As space is no great concern for me, I went ahead and tried with Snap. On Snap I get issues even sooner - as soon as it opens the "Choose a project" tab, I am unable to select a project, with all buttons doing nothing and me being able to get no response except by forcefully closing Boinc. Upon experimenting a bit I found that both the main Boinc Manager window and the Choose a Project tab are failing to redraw, suggesting that the program hard crashed in the background. No useful information can be seen when calling it from a terminal. This is consistent and replicable even after a reboot, and occurs immediately - I don't even get to try and select a project, WCG or otherwise.

I find it humorous that switching to Ubuntu immediately solved one significant issue with my desktop, but opened a totally different one.

Update: I decided to reinstall from Apt and reset the password on a relevant project. Upon doing so, I was able to successfully log in without issue. That means I can do some crunching, hooray! But it still indicates a reasonably significant bug, as simply entering an incorrect password shouldn't cause the application to forcefully crash in such a fashion as this.