Hello everybody,

I am using BOINC manager 6.2.12 in linux and computed the first batch of Einstein successfully. During the second unit I filled my harddrive (maybe it has nothing to do with the problem itself) and now Conky shows the process of Einstein running, but manager shows "Unable to connect to core client" error message.

I can stop the process via command line /etc/init.d/boinc-client stop. If I remove client and manager, the process will stop as well. If I install manager and client, the process in conky appears again running, but the error in manager persists as well.

I am little bit stuck - I can remove the soft, but when installing again, I cannot use it properly. I did not find any directory which I could delete so that the process can be showed in manager properly.

Thanks in advance for any help.

Jose

"Unable to connect to core client" means what it says. The client is running, but the GUI cannot make a connection with the client. Most probably because you didn't allow both the client and the manager through your firewall. These two need to be able to communicate with each other on TCP port 31416.

Also make sure nothing else uses this port.
Also make sure both the client and the manager start from the same directory.

---

Jord,

thanks for your reply.

The strange thing is that my firewall is switched off and I have not done anything with ports recently neither. I checked with netstat -nap ports but 31416 is not in the list. So as far as I understand there is no application listening on it.

How do I ensure that both applications start from the same directory? In Linux Mint I installed it from repositories and had no chance to influence the installation directories.

What is Mint based on? Ubuntu? Debian? Red Hat? Something else all together?

---

Kathryn :o)

Mint is based on Ubuntu.

How are you starting the manager?

---

Kathryn :o)

Untill now via fluxbox menu. Today I tried it via terminal (boincmgr) and I get the following text:

/home/jose/.gtkrc-2.0:8: Unable to find include file: "~/.gtkrc-2.0.mine"
connect: Operation now in progress

I looked into the file .gtkrc-2.0 and it contains this:

# DO NOT EDIT! This file will be overwritten by LXAppearance.
# Any customization should be done in ~/.gtkrc-2.0.mine

gtk-theme-name="Glossy"
gtk-icon-theme-name="gnome"
gtk-font-name="Sans 10"
gtk-toolbar-style=2
include "~/.gtkrc-2.0.mine"

.gtkrc-2.0.mine is not in my home directory. Could this be the cause of my problem?

I was also wondering - is there any way how to reset the client? So that I would delete the job which client is now computing, after that I would run manager and download a new job. I dont know if this is at all possible.

I was also wondering - is there any way how to reset the client? So that I would delete the job which client is now computing, after that I would run manager and download a new job. I dont know if this is at all possible.

Why would you want to delete the running task?

Because the manager cannot connect to the client, so if I reset the client, I assume the manager could connect to it again. But I know very little about whole system and dont know whether this is a solution.

This has been posted lots of times already, but here it is again:

BOINC is in 2 parts:
A) a hidden "worker" or "daemon", which does the actual BOINC stuff, and
B) a gui (the manager), which allows the user to see what the "worker" is doing.

These 2 parts communicate over a port, 31416 (Think PI)

If, for some reason, this port is blocked, then the gui can't show you what is happening. Deleting the work units won't change this; you have to work out WHY the 2 parts can't talk to each other.
It's possible that your firewall is blocking it, perhaps due to an automatic update.

There IS, however, the possibility that the client (worker) just isn't running. You can check this in Windows OS by using Task Manager to see the running processes. I've no idea what the equivalent is in Linux.

The best way to "reset" as you put it, is to re-boot the computer.

From the command line, do `ps aux | grep boinc`. Or you can use top. The science apps should be at the top. It sounds like the client is running, but the manager can't connect.

I couldn't find the page in the Wiki that I was looking for. But the gist is that there's a file call gui_rpc_auth.cfg

A copy of it should be in boinc's home directory. I don't know where Mint would have put it. And it's probably owned by boinc:boinc (assuming the package manager made a user called boinc).

I'm not sure how you'd get into that account because I'm a Fedora person. Personally, I'd do `su` and once I'm in as root, I'd do `su boinc`.

When you find that file and are able to edit it, open it up and see what the password is. At this point you can change it to something memorable for you.

You have three options then.

1. Make an identically named file in your home directory and copy over the contents of the other one.

[kathryn@Nova ~]$ ls -l gui_rpc_auth.cfg
-rw-rw-r-- 1 kathryn kathryn 8 2009-04-14 20:43 gui_rpc_auth.cfg

Now you can start the manager from the terminal. When I open the shell, I'm automatically in ~/kathryn. Because that file in in there, the manager should connect to the client.

2. Make a soft link to the file that's owned by boinc to your home directory. This is generally a pain. You'll probably have to `chmod +x` boinc's home directory (in my case it would be `chmod +x /var/lib/boinc). I'm still not 100% clear on why that's the case, but I can find an explanation if you'd like.

3. Take note of the password in gui_rpc_auth.cfg and after you start the manager, go under the advanced menu -> select computer. Put in localhost for the name and the password from gui_rpc_auth.cfg for the password.



I hope this helps some. There used to be a page in the Wiki that explained all this, but I could not find it for the life of me. Like I said, I'm definitely not a Debian person, so I'm translating from RH to Deb speak the best I can.

---

Kathryn :o)

...I couldn't find the page in the Wiki that I was looking for. But the gist is that there's a file call gui_rpc_auth.cfg...

Would that be this page?

Gruß,
Gundolf

---

Computer sind nicht alles im Leben. (Kleiner Scherz)

...I couldn't find the page in the Wiki that I was looking for. But the gist is that there's a file call gui_rpc_auth.cfg...

Would that be this page?

Nope. It was a Linux specific page. Dagorath worked on a lot of it.

---

Kathryn :o)

These Optional setup hints then?

---

These Optional setup hints then?

Yes!!! I couldn't find it to save my life. You're awesome.

---

Kathryn :o)

Kathryn and all,

thanks a lot for your help. I found the file you mentioned and copyied it as root to my home directory, which solved the problem. Thanks a lot again to all people involved.

Glad to hear you got it working. This is a short coming of using the package manager. But I understand not everyone wants to manager their own install.

---

Kathryn :o)