1) Message boards : Questions and problems : Linux Suspend when computer is in use bug. (Message 101515) Posted 7 Nov 2020 by Marc Chamberlin Post: Um did anyone find a resolution to my complaint? To my eyes it doesn't appear so and looks like the thread got a bit sidetracked? Just wondering what the status is and what if anything I should do? Thanks... Marc C....

2) Message boards : Questions and problems : Linux Suspend when computer is in use bug. (Message 101174) Posted 20 Oct 2020 by Marc Chamberlin Post: Thanks everyone for all your responses and efforts at looking into this bug. So far as I grok this thread, I understand/summarize 4 responses - 1. It works for me on Mint. (Interesting but not helpful for OpenSuSE.) 2. I got it working on Debian using a xhost command to add user boinc. ( I tried that, on a command line but no joy. I don't have the Xsession file that was referenced, on a Debian distro, not even the Xsession dir, so dunno how to to persist this on OpenSuSE.) 3. A finger pointing back at my distro saying the problem lies there. (I will post a question on their forums about this issue.) 4. Workarounds including using the exclusive applications option (as long as a certain application is detected in memory, BOINC suspends work), or the "non-boinc usage is above n%" option. (Helpful but not good solutions for me. Dunno what I could use for an exclusive app, I often use most applications for days at a time and simply leave them running where I left off. (I don't log off) As for non-boinc usage I am already setting it but dunno what I should set it to to differentiate between when I am using it and background apps are running (such as a backup process) So not sure what to do next, will report back if the OpenSuSE forums provide any help. Is there any way to know how BOINC is detecting the idle state on my systems? i.e. using X11/Xscreensaver or systemD? What would be good info to supply the developers/users on their forums? Thanks again in advance for taking the time to respond and looking forward to any more helpful suggestions. Marc...

3) Message boards : Questions and problems : Linux Suspend when computer is in use bug. (Message 101130) Posted 17 Oct 2020 by Marc Chamberlin Post: I am running BOINC Manager Version 7.16.6 (x64) with wxWidgets Version 3.0.3 on several OpenSuSE 15.2 linux systems and I am wondering when, if ever, the bug for detecting when the computer is in use will be fixed. This bug has been around for about 13 years now (see Ticket #463) and I posted a query about this bug back in 2011. My workaround has been to manually suspend BOINC when I want to work on the computer (BOINC can seriously degrade performance at times) but the problem is that I forget to restart BOINC after working for several hours on other tasks. If there is a serious reason why this bug can't get fixed, perhaps a good interim solution would be to present an additional option to suspend BOINC for a user specified length of time, and then automatically restart it when the specified time expires. Incidentally FYI The link under the Help menu to report an issue is broken sometimes. Sometimes it points the the BOINC site and sometimes it points to some unrelated website. DNS issue?

4) Message boards : Questions and problems : Running clients on a dual boot system (Message 45789) Posted 25 Sep 2012 by Marc Chamberlin Post: Thanks Jord, that's too bad, I keep losing a lot of work because of my switching OS's and I tend to use each for a length of time that exceeds the project expiration(s) on the other OS... Sigh, Oh well.. Marc..

5) Message boards : Questions and problems : Running clients on a dual boot system (Message 45786) Posted 25 Sep 2012 by Marc Chamberlin Post: I have several systems/laptops which are dual boot between Linux and Windows. I also partition the disks such that I can share/access a FAT32 partition from either system. My question is - Is it possible to set up the client software such that I am effectively using the same data/projects on each system? What I want to be able to do is to switch between the OS's and have BOINC and all my projects keep running from where they left off, regardless of which OS was used last. If this is doable, pointers on how to set up the file system and any underlying files would be appreciated. I will go poke at it myself, but just thought I might save myself some time by asking first, in case anyone has done it already. Marc..

6) Message boards : BOINC Manager : Boinc keeps running even when computer is in use. (Message 36992) Posted 23 Feb 2011 by Marc Chamberlin Post: That's odd, I looked under Help again for the About Boinc menu and it was not there. But I restarted the Boinc manager and there it was! Must be gremlins in my puter! Anywise version is 6.4.5 As for the preferences, yes I am referring to the local preferences menu, not the web based ones. I followed your suggestion and cleared/reset the preferences so that Boinc processes won't run while I am using the computer. It appears that Boinc will honor those setting immediately after I updated those preferences, but if I go away for awhile, then come back to using my computer, Boinc does not appear to notice that I am again using the computer. TOP will report that the Boinc processes are still running. But if I relaunch, or reopen the Boinc manager and again update the preferences, then it honors the settings and shuts off the Boinc processes. So it appears that once Boinc starts running processes again, it no longer notices things like mouse and window activities going on elsewhere. If this was operating correctly, then asking TOP to report what processes are running and what CPU percentages are in use, should NEVER show me Boinc processes, since the very act to opening up a shell window and running TOP means I am again active on the computer! And because of my preferences settings, Boinc should therefore be suspending it's activities and not allowing them to continue. I don't expect an immediate suspension to occur, once I am active again, either. Shortly after I am active though, it should reach a point where it is safe to suspend and do so.. But as I said earlier, these processes keep running until I open the Boinc manager again and reset the preferences... And I have experimented doing all kinds of activities like reading mail and browsing the web, running other programs etc... Boinc simply doesn't notice... Marc...

7) Message boards : BOINC Manager : Boinc keeps running even when computer is in use. (Message 36983) Posted 23 Feb 2011 by Marc Chamberlin Post: Even though I have told the BOINC manager to run based on my preferences, and not checked the preference box that allows Boinc projects to keep running while the computer is in use, it appears that the Boinc manager is not always honoring this setting. Running Boinc on a SuSE 11.2 Linux system, and top will show me that BOINC projects are active, while I am using the computer. Why? This is NOT polite and it makes my system sluggish in responding to my commands.... Marc... P.S. Apparently no version info to pass along about the BOINC manager I am using....

8) Message boards : Questions and problems : Need better control over disk space usage (Message 29362) Posted 11 Dec 2009 by Marc Chamberlin Post: Still, you can fill out a Trac ticket feature request or put your sugestion in the wish list thread. Hmmmm I am not able to figure out how to supply a Trac ticket, or where the wish list thread is. Can you provide me with links? Thanks... Marc...

9) Message boards : Questions and problems : Need better control over disk space usage (Message 29346) Posted 10 Dec 2009 by Marc Chamberlin Post: Ok Thanks! I see how to set up a separate data directory for BOINC now. Apparently one must create a separate user "boinc" and attach it to a "home" or working directory for data. The executables can then be installed in the usual places where application binaries generally go. This also requires some manual editing of the daemon script. (and no, SuSE Linux does not supply BOINC as part of it's distro packages...) You are correct in stating that this approach just kicked the problem of separating data from code down the road to the Linux distro installers. And Linux is a mess in this regards since there is no real "established" way of installing stuff and/or purpose behind many of the "standard" directories. And the poor user does not have a clue, for all the various applications and system services, as to how directories should be mounted and partitions created so as to make Linux more robust and reliable. In other words, an installer cannot guarantee that the user will mount /home or /var or /var/lib/boinc for that matter on a separate partition so as to separate data from code. IMHO a better approach would have been to design the BOINC manager/client in such a way as to easily allow the user to define (and even change/move) where data is to be placed, after installation, not during the installation and setup of BOINC itself. (default data location(s) could be pre-set up for really naive users) Perhaps even on a per project basis. That would have given both installers and users a great deal more flexibility in managing their own systems. Marc..

10) Message boards : Questions and problems : Need better control over disk space usage (Message 29332) Posted 10 Dec 2009 by Marc Chamberlin Post: Well I guess I am not making myself clear on this issue... and yes I am working with a Linux installation, NOT Windows so there is no GUI installer, just a shell script to install BOINC. And yes I understand that the way the install script works, is that it sets up the BOINC architecture/environment so that both the executable code and the data code reside in the same directory. And that is just my point and the issue! For most users this is probably fine and they would not care so much, but this is dangerous from the perspective of reliability. One should be able to separate the data space from the code space and place these on separate partitions and/or on separate disk drives. This minimizes the possibility that data corruption, running out of data space, a drive failure, etc will impact either the BOINC service itself or other services, and/or stop the the OS itself. Architecting software so as to be able to separate data from code, in a file system, has always been taught as a means of making a system more reliable, in all the computer science classes I have ever had. If this is not possible for the Linux installation, then why has this "best practice" been abandoned? Marc..

11) Message boards : Questions and problems : Need better control over disk space usage (Message 29325) Posted 9 Dec 2009 by Marc Chamberlin Post: BOINC seems to make a rather dumb assumption that it should use disk space, for data, in the same partition in which it was installed. This can be a particularly nasty problem when running BOINC as a service, in Linux, where the code is installed in a small partition so as to limit possible corruption to other services or the OS itself. The user should be able to explicitly set where BOINC data should reside, i.e. what mount point or partition to use for data. If such a setting exists, I was unable to find it using the BOINC manager. Is there some other way to control where BOINC data should reside?

12) Message boards : Questions and problems : Trouble starting client daemon on openSuSE11.0 (Message 28974) Posted 24 Nov 2009 by Marc Chamberlin Post: HA! Found the problem, and fixed it! Nasty little bug, and the error message about "Another instance of BOINC is running" is bogus and very misleading. This should be addressed in the client code and fixed... I decided to get even more serious about debugging this problem and did a system trace (strace) call on the boinc client program to see if that would revel anything. It did! I had created the boinc working directory - /var/lib/boinc - as root (since only root has write permissions in the /var/lib directory. This gave only root write permissions on the boinc directory. strace revealed that the user boinc was trying to open a file called lockfile in the working directory. And since boinc did not have permission, it fails. I would assume that the boinc client code is written in such a way, as to assume that any failure on accessing this particular lockfile, results in generating a fall through error message, which assumes the failure was caused by another instance of BOINC already running. THIS IS WRONG and the code should be rewritten so as to produce a more informative message about the failure to open the lockfile. Changing the ownership and permissions of the boinc working directory corrected this problem, but IMHO the real fix lies in a better informative error message and that must be done in the code itself. Something I as a user cannot do. If there is a bugzilla or bug tracking system for BOINC, let me know and I will report this there... Thanks again Eric for your help, you made me think hard! LOL Marc...

13) Message boards : Questions and problems : Trouble starting client daemon on openSuSE11.0 (Message 28973) Posted 24 Nov 2009 by Marc Chamberlin Post: Thanks Eric for your quick reply again. HeHe I had to smile after reading your first thought about copying files from another system. I had actually done that initially (on another computer, trying to save time of course) and then discovered it did not work because I had copied files from an x64 bit architecture to a x32 bit system. Oops! Not a good idea! So after that I have been downloading the install shell script for each system, including the one I am having troubles with. (it is an x64 bit architecture also) So no, this is from an install done from scratch. As for doing a stop and start of the daemon process, I have not been doing it the way you said, i.e. explicitly, but via the restart command which effectively should be the same as doing a stop then a start. And yes, I have discovered from reading the scripts, that the stop command should be clearing all the lock files automatically. My earlier comment about finding a lock file still around was most likely from my checking, right after trying to start the daemon, finding it had died, and then I was checking to see if the lock file was around. Doing the stop (or restart) does clear the lock files so you can ignore that comment of mine. Doing an explicit stop then start makes no difference. I did a diff to compare the various files on my SuSE11.0 x64 bit system which is failing, with the files on another SuSE11.0 x64 bit system where BOINC is working. No differences! I also augmented the boinc daemon script so as to trace it, but don't seen anything obvious. Yet something is happening in the startproc call to run the actual boinc client, which seems to believe it is already running and therefore failing to let the daemon run. So, my questions are - How does the boinc client test to see if another instance of itself is running? Unless it is doing something wrong, or out of sequence, I don't see how it could be examining the list of running processes because when I do something like - ps aux | grep boinc it simply is not showing up. Looking for lock files? Maybe but I dunno where one might exist that the scripts don't know about... Or could this be some sort of fall through error message (best guess) and thus bogus? Marc...

14) Message boards : Questions and problems : Trouble starting client daemon on openSuSE11.0 (Message 28958) Posted 24 Nov 2009 by Marc Chamberlin Post: I have attempted to set up BOINC on an openSuSE 11.0 computer and I have ran into a snag... I am following the instructions at http://www.spy-hill.net/~myers/help/boinc/unix.html. I cannot launch the client daemon as it keeps telling me another BOINC process is already running. I KNOW that is not true, as there is no process running with the name boinc in it... So either there is some test that is failing, or this is a bogus error message and misleading me... FYI, I changed the script for starting the BOINC client daemon slightly, in order to bring out this error better. Just before it actually starts the daemon process, there is a sleep command to pause the script for 4 second. If I leave that as is, then the script will exit and report success. BUT on doing a status check slightly later (boinc status) I will discover that the daemon as stopped running and an error message is produced in the error log file saying another process was already running... I change that 4 second pause to 20 seconds, and now the attempt to start the BOINC client daemon also reports a failure. So to me this is a strong indication that something is going wrong when the startproc is actually called and attempts to start the BOINC client daemon. I have also check under /var/lock/subsys for a boinc lock file, and if I find it, I delete it. I have noted that the lock file may not be deleted sometimes but I dunno why. I dunno how to debug this any further. Any and all help/suggestions made will be much appreciated! Thanks in advance. Marc Chamberlin

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