Greetings. I have used boinc for years in conjunction with worldcommunitygrid. On my Fedora Core 17 system (boinc v7.0.29), it will download work, but won't do it. Right now I have it set to Run Always, and the log will say "Resuming computation". However, the status for all the tasks is "Waiting to run".

If I restart boinc after a day, it will start working on one task. The others all say "waiting to run", even though I have 8 processors and the system is idle. When that one task is finished, the system won't do any more work.

Help!

Can you please post the contents of the global_prefs.xml and if it exists the global_prefs_override.xml files?
Where did you get this BOINC from, Berkeley or FC repositories?

We had reports back in the day that BOINC 6.12 and 7.0 did not work with FC14 and FC15, due to a problem with incompatible wxWidget build options. This may still be the case, although I haven't heard from it since.

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I figured out part of my problem. I had configured it to use no memory when the computer is in use, thinking that "in use" had the same meaning as processor usage while computer is "in use". It seems that for processor, "in use" means "in use by me"....and for memory, it means "in use by boinc".

So now processes will run, but only when I set boinc to "run always". When I set it to "run based on preferences", it should resume after one minute of idleness...but it does not.

I got boinc from the FC repositories. I will be glad to try the Berkeley version.

Here are the files you requested. Thanks for taking a look at this.

global_prefs.xml:
-----------------

<global_preferences>
    <source_project>http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/</source_project>
    <source_scheduler>https://scheduler.worldcommunitygrid.org/boinc/wcg_cgi/fcgi</source_scheduler>

    <mod_time>1348744158</mod_time>
    <cpu_scheduling_period_minutes>120</cpu_scheduling_period_minutes>
    <disk_interval>60.0</disk_interval>
    <disk_max_used_gb>10.0</disk_max_used_gb>
    <disk_max_used_pct>50.0</disk_max_used_pct>
    <disk_min_free_gb>0.5</disk_min_free_gb>
    <end_hour>0</end_hour>
    <idle_time_to_run>3.0</idle_time_to_run>
    <max_bytes_sec_down>0.0</max_bytes_sec_down>
    <max_bytes_sec_up>0.0</max_bytes_sec_up>
    <max_cpus>16</max_cpus>
    <net_end_hour>0</net_end_hour>
    <net_start_hour>0</net_start_hour>
    <run_if_user_active/>
    <start_hour>0</start_hour>
    <cpu_usage_limit>60.0</cpu_usage_limit>
    <ram_max_used_busy_pct>0.0</ram_max_used_busy_pct>
    <ram_max_used_idle_pct>75.0</ram_max_used_idle_pct>
    <vm_max_used_pct>50.0</vm_max_used_pct>
    <work_buf_min_days>0.2</work_buf_min_days>
    <work_buf_additional_days>0.3</work_buf_additional_days>
    <suspend_if_no_recent_input>0.0</suspend_if_no_recent_input>
    <daily_xfer_period_days>0</daily_xfer_period_days>
    <daily_xfer_limit_mb>0.0</daily_xfer_limit_mb>
    <max_ncpus_pct>100.0</max_ncpus_pct>
    <suspend_cpu_usage>25.0</suspend_cpu_usage>
</global_preferences>

-------------

global_prefs_override.xml:
-------------------

<global_preferences>
   <run_on_batteries>0</run_on_batteries>
   <run_if_user_active>0</run_if_user_active>
   <run_gpu_if_user_active>1</run_gpu_if_user_active>
   <idle_time_to_run>1.000000</idle_time_to_run>
   <suspend_cpu_usage>0.000000</suspend_cpu_usage>
   <start_hour>0.000000</start_hour>
   <end_hour>0.000000</end_hour>
   <net_start_hour>0.000000</net_start_hour>
   <net_end_hour>0.000000</net_end_hour>
   <leave_apps_in_memory>0</leave_apps_in_memory>
   <confirm_before_connecting>0</confirm_before_connecting>
   <hangup_if_dialed>0</hangup_if_dialed>
   <dont_verify_images>0</dont_verify_images>
   <work_buf_min_days>0.200000</work_buf_min_days>
   <work_buf_additional_days>0.300000</work_buf_additional_days>
   <max_ncpus_pct>95.000000</max_ncpus_pct>
   <cpu_scheduling_period_minutes>120.000000</cpu_scheduling_period_minutes>
   <disk_interval>60.000000</disk_interval>
   <disk_max_used_gb>1.000000</disk_max_used_gb>
   <disk_max_used_pct>50.000000</disk_max_used_pct>
   <disk_min_free_gb>0.500000</disk_min_free_gb>
   <vm_max_used_pct>50.000000</vm_max_used_pct>
   <ram_max_used_busy_pct>90.000000</ram_max_used_busy_pct>
   <ram_max_used_idle_pct>0.010000</ram_max_used_idle_pct>
   <max_bytes_sec_up>0.000000</max_bytes_sec_up>
   <max_bytes_sec_down>0.000000</max_bytes_sec_down>
   <cpu_usage_limit>99.000000</cpu_usage_limit>
   <daily_xfer_limit_mb>0.000000</daily_xfer_limit_mb>
   <daily_xfer_period_days>0</daily_xfer_period_days>
</global_preferences>

--------------

Hi. The version from this site made no difference. Boinc will not recognize when I'm not using the computer, and will never run unless I tell it to ignore preferences.

Any thoughts?

I honestly don't have a clue. Now, you say 'the version from this site', but which version is that then? What if you try 7.0.39?

Linux
- boinc_7.0.39_x86_64-pc-linux-gnu.sh
- boinc_7.0.39_i686-pc-linux-gnu.sh

---

I downloaded the link you provided. I received the following error:

[skipper@skipper boinc]$ ./boinc_7.0.39_x86_64-pc-linux-gnu.sh
use /download/boinc/BOINC/run_manager to start BOINC
[skipper@skipper boinc]$ ./BOINC/run_manager
./boincmgr: Symbol `_ZTV12wxBufferedDC' has different size in shared object, consider re-linking
./boincmgr: Symbol `_ZTV10wxClientDC' has different size in shared object, consider re-linking
./boincmgr: Symbol `_ZTV10wxMemoryDC' has different size in shared object, consider re-linking
./boincmgr: Symbol `_ZTV9wxPaintDC' has different size in shared object, consider re-linking
Fatal Error: Mismatch between the program and library build versions detected.
The library used 2.8 (no debug,Unicode,compiler with C++ ABI 1002,wx containers,compatible with 2.4,compatible with 2.6),
and your program used 2.8 (no debug,Unicode,compiler with C++ ABI 1002,wx containers,compatible with 2.6).
Aborted (core dumped)


I'm on kernel 3.6.9-2.fc17.x86_64.

I will poke around to try to get it running.

Your original problem seems to be merely that idle detection does not work for you. The idle detection is based on usage of mouse or keyboard. If either of those devices get used then BOINC thinks you are using the machine. Apparently idle detection does not work for you and for some reason BOINC thinks you are always using the machine.

Idle detection has been fixed, broken, fixed rebroken fixed, rebroken numerous times. It seems to work differently from one distro to another and from one kernel version to another. This may be an issue the package maintainers for each distro need to address rather than the BOINC devs who have stated they are committed to making BOINC on Ubuntu LTS and only Ubuntu LTS. That's why I am not surprised the 7.0.39 Berkeley installer does not provide a working installation for you.

The error you pointed to for 7.0.39 is an error from BOINC manager not BOINC client. Remember BOINC client does most of the work, BOINC manager is merely the tool for monitoring and controlling BOINC client. There is a possibility BOINC client works for you and if so there is a possibility the idle detection in it works for you as well. If so then the thing to do wouild be run the 7.0.39 client and and some other version of the manager that works. The client and manager versions do not have to match.

Start the client in a terminal with a simple ./boinc to cause it to log output to the terminal. If it runs you'll know it. If it's missing a library, the usual reason for the Berkeley version to not run on non-Ubuntu distros, it will tell you.

Your other option is to go back to the version you were running and either suspend BOINC manually or use some of the other options to cause BOINC to suspend when you are using the machine. You can set the "suspend when CPU usage greater than _ %" to a number that will suspend when you using the machine. You would have to experiment with different percentages to find the right one.

You can also use the exclusive app option which causes BOINC to suspend when certain apps you name are running. For example you could name your browser or games as an exclusive apps. Whenever you start one of those BOINC will suspend. Presumably you would be using one of those whenever you are using the computer and if none of those are running then you are not using the computer.

Also, you have one of the memory settings set ridiculously low. I would suggest putting both memory settings to 90% and see if that doesn't help. Yes, I know it might not seem like the right thing to do but you don't have to leave it that high forever. Try it, it might help the other problem it might not, it's just that I don't think anybody uses such a ridiculously low setting and I can see where such a low setting might be causing BOINC to not run the tasks. You can always switch it back if it doesn't help.

You could try allowing BOINC more than 1 GB of disk space too. Try 2 or 3 GB. Again, you don't have to leave it that high forever, it would be just an experiment to see if you can discover what's causing the problem, it might have nothing to do with idle detection at all and everything to do with you being too restrictive with your resources. Also, when BOINC client starts it tells how much free disk space you have at the top of the Event Log messages. Look that up and report here how much free space you have, please.