Help....

I just updated DEBIAN LINUX and BOINC manager no longer displays! This was an automatic update to 3.16.0-4-amd64. I have been using BOINC for many years, and this has never occurred before! It appears that the actual processes are still going, but that the manager GUI itself simply does not show up. With this situation I have no way of changing my preferences or stopping execution etc.

John Capell

I had the same problem, after upgrading to Debian 8.0.0. I "found" (well, stumbled upon) a solution. If you're starting Boinc from a command line, i.e. virtual terminal or xterm window, do these steps (where you fill in your proper directory path instead of my "/home/gene/BOINC/")
/usr/bin/boinc --dir /home/gene/BOINC --redirectio &
/usr/bin/boincmgr -d /home/gene/BOINC -e /home/gene/BOINC -n localhost &

I suspend, and resume, Boinc often enough, but not often enough(!) that I can remember the right commands, that I've created a bash script to do these steps, and I gave it a name that I CAN remember...

#!/bin/bash
exec /usr/bin/boinc --dir /home/gene/BOINC --redirectio &
exec /usr/bin/boincmgr -d /home/gene/BOINC -e /home/gene/BOINC -n localhost &

You will probably notice, as I have, when you get the boinc manager window in view that the "Tasks" tab display of running tasks doesn't quite update properly. Some running tasks don't advance their elapsed time. And other little quirks. Completed tasks sometimes continue to show "running" when, in fact they have finished and uploaded the result.

Gene;

Thanks! all appears well.

John

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The Manager window not updating correctly is a known problem and should have been fixed somewhere around 7.4.40.

But did either one of you report to Debian maintainers that the Manager doesn't show up (whatever that precisely means)?

juha

The latest Linux x64 version is 7.2.42, so if this issue has been "fixed" in 7.4.40 (or later) it is not yet available for Linux systems.

I chose to install the (Debian) 7.4.23 version, as part of the recent major Debian upgrade, expecting it to have incorporated as many as possible of the boinc updates past the 7.2.42 release.

I did not file a bug report with Debian maintainers as to the problem with the boinc manager not starting smoothly as I was able to get it working with the addition of the "--redirectio" option on the boinc command line. I just accepted this as a new procedure to adapt to, as often happens with software upgrades.

O.K., I just exited boinc and went back to re-create the symptoms I encountered (and possibly the same as seen by the OP). What used to work in 7.2.42 was the command "boincmgr -e ~/BOINC -d ~/BOINC -n localhost & " and boincmgr would automatically start up the boinc client and resume all previously active projects.
When doing that in 7.4.23 the boincmgr window comes up but it is entirely blank. No projects shown, no tasks shown, no notices, ... even disk space says no projects are installed. The message status at the bottom of the boincmgr window shows "connecting to localhost" for about a minute and then shows "disconnected".

I was not getting anything written to the boinc stdoutdae.txt file, where I had hoped to find diagnostic clues. That led me, via the boinc "man", to include the redirectio option. It was not included in the boincmgr options so I did the individual startups of boinc and boincmgr successfully, as described in a previous post in this thread. Maybe this is not the "normal" way to run the boinc projects, or maybe not the easiest. But it does work for me! YMMV

As to the task status not updating properly, I will just wait for the Linux x64 release (> 7.4.23) directly from boinc developers and install that.

The 'connecting to localhost' and 'disconnected' means either the core client [daemon] is not running or the rights to connect fail.

The odd thing with Ubuntu is and their repo version [7.2.42] or any other build such as of LocustusofBorg ppa, with a blank gui_rpc_auth things work fine [default as it arrives this way], but never been able to get BM to connect with a password in. Blank the password and connect works fine again.

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Coelum Non Animum Mutant, Qui Trans Mare Currunt

With a password set, my boincmgr will only connect to "localhost.home". None of "localhost", "rodney" or "rodney.home" will do.

Plain Debian jessie system with standard BOINC setup.

With a password set, my boincmgr will only connect to "localhost.home". None of "localhost", "rodney" or "rodney.home" will do.

Plain Debian jessie system with standard BOINC setup.

Have you got remote_hosts.cfg setup with allowed DNS host names or IP addresses?

Controlling BOINC remotely

Claggy

Have you got remote_hosts.cfg setup with allowed DNS host names or IP addresses?

On the local machine (rodney) I don't have any remote hosts configured. No problem with me, I just wanted to point out that a plain "localhost" might not work as expected while something like "localhost.home" or "localhost.local" still could. With "localhost" being the default client AFAIK and explicitly used in the examples above that could explain the observed connection issues.

What used to work in 7.2.42 was the command "boincmgr -e ~/BOINC -d ~/BOINC -n localhost & " and boincmgr would automatically start up the boinc client and resume all previously active projects.

I see. I thought you had previously installed BOINC from Debian repositories and used it without customizations and then the Debian upgrade broke it.