| Info | Message |
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| 1) Message boards : Questions and problems : BOINC Manager autostarts but doesn't find work or projects
Message 115406 Posted 9 Feb 2025 by Zeiss Ikon |
Following up, this fixed the issue, and the same fix also corrected Conky failing to start after applying this fix to BOINC Manager. |
| 2) Message boards : Questions and problems : BOINC Manager autostarts but doesn't find work or projects
Message 115341 Posted 2 Feb 2025 by Zeiss Ikon |
In reply to Dave's message of 2 Feb 2025:The manager is just a gui to control the client. If on autostart, I am pretty certain there is a way to introduce a delay in starting the client to give the system time to mount the partition if that is the issue. I was just thinking about this -- and letting the restarted machine sit for five minutes at the login screen caused BOINC Manager to start normally. It looks like I only need a few (maybe 10?) seconds. I'll try inserting a short sleep in the autostart command. I opened ~/.config/autostart/boinc.desktop and changed to EXEC= sh -c 'sleep 10 && boincmgr' with the BOINCDIR=/var/lib/boinc uncommented in /etc/default/boinc-client -- and rebooted. BOINC Manager started up after the specified delay and correctly found the work and started the client. |
| 3) Message boards : Questions and problems : BOINC Manager autostarts but doesn't find work or projects
Message 115339 Posted 2 Feb 2025 by Zeiss Ikon |
My autostart had --boincdir=/var/lib/boinc already, but I removed that and tried uncommenting the BOINCDIR line (pointing to the same location) in /etc/default/boinc-client -- with no change. Given I have a separate partition mounted as /var/lib/boinc, I wonder if it's not a case of BOINC Manager starting too quickly, before the OS has time to mount that partition? FWIW, even when I start BOINC Manager the second time, it'll take 3-4 seconds before it finds and displays the work partition (but if I don't close and reopen it, it'll sit there for at least a few minutes). Supporting this as a possibility, I just rebooted while I was in the kitchen getting some tea, and when I logged into Plasma BOINC Manager opened correctly. |
| 4) Message boards : Questions and problems : BOINC Manager autostarts but doesn't find work or projects
Message 115325 Posted 1 Feb 2025 by Zeiss Ikon |
I've recently (2 weeks) switched from Kubuntu 22.04.5 to Debian KDE 12.9 on my desktop computer (Gigabyte 97 series MB, FX8350 8 cores/threads, 4.1 GHz, 32 GB RAM, nVidia RTx2070, nVidia 535 drivers on X11). BOINC (manager 8.0.2 from the BOINC repository, Milkyway CPU, Einstein GPU) runs fine, except that when I restart with BOINC in my autostart, the BOINC manager opens without connecting to work storage or projects (no projects listed, show 0 storage available/used). I can see from Conky reporting near-zero CPU usage that no crunching is taking place in the background, and htop reports five boincmgr processes but no other BOINC related activity. If I Exit BOINC Manager and relaunch it from any of my links or from terminal, it comes up correctly with the two projects, their task lists, statistics, and correct reportage of the dedicated partition where I store the work. Previously in Kubuntu, autostart worked as I'd expect (and had done since last BOINC reinstall); on logging into Plasma, BOINC Manager would open showing the last tab I'd looked at and immediately begin crunching. What do I need to look for to get the autostarted BOINC to connect and start work on its own? |
| 5) Message boards : Questions and problems : New install BOINC (manager 7.20.5 from Debian repository) on freshly install Debian 12.8 - how do I point to a dedicated work partition?
Message 115291 Posted 27 Jan 2025 by Zeiss Ikon |
Yep, that's (almost) what I wound up doing. I already had a partition named boinc-client (on another device from my Debian install); with BOINC fully closed out, I copied the contents of the /var/lib/boinc folder to that partition and then updated /etc/fstab to mount that partition in place of /var/lib/boinc. Restarted and bazinga! That's working well now, but when BOINC starts up on a reboot (BOINC Manager opens automatically) it doesn't connect to its tasks or disk allocation, it's just a blank manager. I have to exit (from File menu) and reopen BOINC Manager to get it to show the projects and tasks. What's up with that? |
| 6) Message boards : Questions and problems : New install BOINC (manager 7.20.5 from Debian repository) on freshly install Debian 12.8 - how do I point to a dedicated work partition?
Message 115250 Posted 22 Jan 2025 by Zeiss Ikon |
Well, if it makes any difference, I was referred to the BOINC repository and installed the BOINC Manage 8.02 from the .deb repo there. I still want/need to know how to move the work unit storage to a chosen location... |
| 7) Message boards : Questions and problems : New install BOINC (manager 7.20.5 from Debian repository) on freshly install Debian 12.8 - how do I point to a dedicated work partition?
Message 115244 Posted 22 Jan 2025 by Zeiss Ikon |
I've been running BOINC for years on Kubuntu and Ubuntu MATE; for some time I've had a dedicated partition for the BOINC work units, with 20 GB and permission to use all of it if/as needed (probably doesn't need to be more than a tenth that, but storage is cheap now). I installed Debian 12.8 (KDE) on a different SSD in the same machine a few days ago, and today got to the point of installing BOINC. I've set up to mount the work partition inside my ~ folder, and changed the BOINC_DIR line in /etc/boinc-client/config.properties to point to that folder -- but the "Disks" tab still shows the larger capacity of my new install's / partition. I note that there is no config.properties in the old (flatpak) install's /etc/boinc-client folder. I'm avoiding snap and flatpak with this new Debian install due to their tendency to bloat (the support for each one is like a compact operating system of its own). What am I doing wrong in trying to redirect the work storage location? |
| 8) Message boards : Questions and problems : Removed MilkyWay as requested by notification -- now can't reconnect to project
Message 114269 Posted 17 Jul 2024 by Zeiss Ikon |
I checked the address and it appears the same, but I was using the add menu -- let me try the direct address. [a moment later] Okay, the add menu has https: where the direct address has http: -- but they give the same result. I first get "connecting to project" followed by asking my login credentials, then the progress dot makes one round trip and takes one step on the second before returning to the start position and stopping -- I've had BOINC Manager stand like this for more than five minutes on a couple attempts (in the past, it usually took 10-15 seconds). |
| 9) Message boards : Questions and problems : Removed MilkyWay as requested by notification -- now can't reconnect to project
Message 114266 Posted 17 Jul 2024 by Zeiss Ikon |
Every time I try to reconnect to MilkyWay, BOINC Manager freezes and I wind up having to kill the process(es) from htop (Kubuntu 22.04.4, flatpak BOINC). Any suggestions? I'm reluctant to remove a working flatpak install to see if 8.0.2 fixes it, given how much trouble I've had with the .deb version in the past... |
| 10) Message boards : Questions and problems : Four years on, and this still won't just install and work on Ubuntu?
Message 114218 Posted 4 Jul 2024 by Zeiss Ikon |
Given BOINC is working under flatpak, I'm a little reluctant to uninstall it and try those instructions, as the last time I used apt to install BOINC I had the RPC password problem and couldn't get it resolved (hence why I switched to the flatpak). |
| 11) Message boards : Questions and problems : Four years on, and this still won't just install and work on Ubuntu?
Message 114201 Posted 28 Jun 2024 by Zeiss Ikon |
Okay, following up, flatpak had an nVidia updated today, 535-183-01, and I'm now able to run GPU tasks again. Still getting that message from flatpak that Gnome 44 (apparently used by flatpak BOINC) is EOL, though, and flatpak BOINC is still at manager version 7.22.1... |
| 12) Message boards : Questions and problems : Four years on, and this still won't just install and work on Ubuntu?
Message 114155 Posted 20 Jun 2024 by Zeiss Ikon |
Okay, good news and bad news: Apparently, purging the apt-installed version I was led to by the notification and then running "sudo flatpak repair .edu.berkeley.BOINC" (followed by a restart) has fixed my client -- but now I'm still getting a problem that popped up after a system update earlier this evening: "GPU Missing". I run flatpak nVidia drivers as well, and they're as up to date as they can be (no updates available). According to "sudo flatpak list" I have nVidia 535-171-04. The nVidia driver search says the current recommended version for my graphics card and OS is 550.90.07, though that was only released a couple weeks ago and likely hasn't made it into flatpak form yet... |
| 13) Message boards : Questions and problems : Four years on, and this still won't just install and work on Ubuntu?
Message 114153 Posted 20 Jun 2024 by Zeiss Ikon |
I've been running BOINC (Milky Way and Einstein, for CPU and GPU respectively) for years (and distributed computing since SETI@Home was almost unique), a couple years without issues (I somehow got it to work after installing Kubuntu 22.04 a couple years ago) -- and we apparently still don't have a setup that will "just work" on Linux. I had a notification today to download BOINC 8.0.2, and silly me, I grabbed it immediately and installed it. Now I somehow have Manager 7.22.1 (which might be correct for BOINC 8.0.2??), but when I launch it I get the dreaded "Invalid client RPC password. Try reinstalling BOINC" -- which experience says never works. There's a long thread https://boinc.berkeley.edu/forum_thread.php?id=14013 from 2020-2022 about this, with no clear conclusion as to how to fix it, but I'm certain my group membership and file configuration were okay half an hour ago, and now they're not. I'm not a Linux guru, I just switched when WinXP was getting a little too vulnerable (thirteen years ago) and never had a good reason to put up with Microsoft since. This means I can paste (or type) a command sequence at the CLI, but I'm not really capable of researching for myself how to fix this -- I just like the idea of my computer contributing something useful to the world. FWIW, as noted I'm running Kubuntu 22.04.4 on an AMD Fx8350, 32 GB DDR3 RAM, nVidia GTx2070, Milky Way and Einstein projects (once I can reconnect to them). It occurs to me this may be a problem due to running the flatpak BOINC, and installing the .deb with "sudo apt install" as shown on the page linked from the notification.. Unfortunately, purging the apt-installed .deb (which was probably an older version from the repositories anyway) didn't help. So, now that I'm back to (never left) the flatpak BOINC, how do I resolve the error above? Will waiting for the flatpak to update resolve the problem (I think installing the flatpak is what fixed this for me in 2022)? |
| 14) Message boards : Questions and problems : Old way doesn't work -- how do I change where BOINC looks for its data directory (Kubuntu 22.04)?
Message 111651 Posted 23 Apr 2023 by Zeiss Ikon |
I think we're talking about two different CUDA libraries. I don't have any nVidia development libraries -- but I do have two or three libraries that have description of "compute libraries for CUDA computation" and were automatically installed when ubuntu-drivers installed the upgrade from nvidia 515 to nvidia 530. |
| 15) Message boards : Questions and problems : Old way doesn't work -- how do I change where BOINC looks for its data directory (Kubuntu 22.04)?
Message 111634 Posted 22 Apr 2023 by Zeiss Ikon |
I have the following:Thu 20 Apr 2023 07:35:44 PM EDT | | No usable GPUs found Question is, why, and how do I fix it? The OS detects the hardware: lspci | grep "NVIDIA" The driver is installed and running (not sure why it shows 11 versions??): ubuntu-drivers list So, why wouldn't BOINC have detected the GPU? EDIT: Okay, that was unexpected. I checked flatpak and found there was an update for BOINC; installing it, killing all the BOINC and project processes, and restarting BOINC has apparently fixed this issue. I now have Einstein happily running on 0.9 CPU + 1 GPU, and when BOINC started I had this: Sat 22 Apr 2023 10:15:59 AM EDT | | CUDA: NVIDIA GPU 0: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 (driver version 530.41, CUDA version 12.1, compute capability 6.1, 8106MB, 8106MB available, 6463 GFLOPS peak) |
| 16) Message boards : Questions and problems : Old way doesn't work -- how do I change where BOINC looks for its data directory (Kubuntu 22.04)?
Message 111627 Posted 21 Apr 2023 by Zeiss Ikon |
Well, okay, and the standard software-developer solution for a chicken-and-egg problem is to do something arbitrary that makes perfect sense to a developer (who may or may not have two heads, because all that knowledge won't fit in one) but no sense at all to an end user who's just trying to accomplish what ought to be a fairly straightforward task. But now, I've got an entirely different problem. I was having some issues with update kernels not booting to GUI (in my case, KDE Plasma 5 desktop), which turned out to be due to dkms somehow having gotten uninstalled so the nVidia driver blob wasn't getting built into the new kernels. Working with the Kubuntu forums, I managed to get that fixed (someone posted a link to a one-liner that rebuilds all dkms drivers for all eligible kernels) and now I can boot freshly updated kernels again (I think -- haven't had a new kernel update since the fix). BUT: since fixing that, Einstein@Home is reporting "missing GPU" for all tasks. I'm currently on Kubuntu 22.04.2, with kernel 5.19.0-40-generic (the HWE kernel path) and nVidia 530 (the recommended version for this Kubuntu an kernel) installed via ubuntu-drivers. Every test I know how to run says I have a fully functioning nVidia driver, I have the CUDA libraries installed, and have just installed nvidia-cuda-toolkit in order to check my CUDA version: nvcc --version nvcc: NVIDIA (R) Cuda compiler driver Copyright (c) 2005-2021 NVIDIA Corporation Built on Thu_Nov_18_09:45:30_PST_2021 Cuda compilation tools, release 11.5, V11.5.119 Build cuda_11.5.r11.5/compiler.30672275_0 I presume this is a supported CUDA version. This worked on nVidia 515, but I'd have to purge and reinstall nVidia drivers (possibly from command line) to get back to that version; Kubuntu's Driver manager won't even let me try. |
| 17) Message boards : Questions and problems : How to get Flatpak BOINC manager to let the client run when the manager window is closed?
Message 111613 Posted 19 Apr 2023 by Zeiss Ikon |
The Flatpak build patches BOINC to set the default for Stop running tasks when exiting the BOINC Manager to ‘on’. Yep, that seems to have worked. Kind of a non-obvious way to do it, IMO. Now, with the Manager closed, htop shows a bunch of processes that start with "../../projects*" and one that has /app/bin/boinc --redirectio --launched_by_manager-- that latter, presumably, is the one I want to set up to run on system start, but there is no /app folder -- not even inside ~/.var. |
| 18) Message boards : Questions and problems : How to get Flatpak BOINC manager to let the client run when the manager window is closed?
Message 111606 Posted 18 Apr 2023 by Zeiss Ikon |
./run_client then started the client as did run_manager with the client shut down first. Closing down manager then gave me the exit dialogue so I am guessing the problem lies in the client somewhere. To me, that suggests that the flatpak version 7.22.0 (which is what I have) is missing the ability to leave the client running (as well as to ask when it receives a close input). I've definitely got a running client when the manager is open; I can see the work units ticking down in Tasks tab, and Statistics and Disks tabs reflect the activity as well. I don't see where to execute run_client -- there don't seem to be any executables in .var/app/edu.berkeley.BOINC. |
| 19) Message boards : Questions and problems : How to get Flatpak BOINC manager to let the client run when the manager window is closed?
Message 111603 Posted 18 Apr 2023 by Zeiss Ikon |
Don't know anything about the Flatpak version, but the older versions of the Boinc Manager still had the Options >> Other Options dialog in the menu that gave you the "Enable exit Manager dialog" checkbox. I've been running with the Manager closed for literally years before the buggy version got into the Ubuntu repository. The Flatpak I have installed, however, has the following options in "Options, Other Options": Language Notice Reminder Interval Run the client (checked) Enable Manager exit dialogue (checked) Enable Client shutdown dialogue (checked) Except I haven't been seeing any shutdown dialogs. Changing settings for any of the three doesn't seem to change what happens with the client. |
| 20) Message boards : Questions and problems : How to get Flatpak BOINC manager to let the client run when the manager window is closed?
Message 111600 Posted 17 Apr 2023 by Zeiss Ikon |
After fighting with the repository (Kubuntu 22.04) version of BOINC Manager, I gave up and installed the flatpak version this past weekend. That's working just fine -- except I noticed that my CPU fan wasn't running at high level like it should when my Fx8350 is going full blast on all eight cores. A little poking, and I've determined that it runs fine per preferences when the BOINC Manager is open, but if I close the manager (either with the x button upper right, or with File, Close Window), computation stops. I *think* this means the client service isn't running? The command that would tell the client to start on boot in the .deb install (sudo systemctl enable boinc-client) returns "Failed to enable unit: Unit file boinc-client.service does not exist." I presume this is because the flatpak doesn't offer a system service. There must be a flatpak command that I can put in my autostart so the client runs independent of the manager -- but I don't know what it is. flatpak run edu.berkeley.BOINC launches the manager (which starts the client), but the client ought to run in background whether the manager is running or not. Or is this one of the ways in which the flatpak version isn't quite ready for prime time? |
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