How can I prevent boincmgr from auto-launching the client? Apparently this behavior has been around for a long time (on Linux), but for some reason I have never experienced it before. I'm running the client as a service with its own user. Starting it as my UI user just because it happens to be stopped messes up things (e.g. reinitializes all projects in my personal home directory).

How can I prevent boincmgr from auto-launching the client?

By not launching the manager if the client service is not already running, perhaps??

I'm running the client as a service with its own user. Starting it as my UI user just because it happens to be stopped messes up things (e.g. reinitializes all projects in my personal home directory).

Maybe I'm not understanding your situation. Presumably, your client starts automatically when you restart your system. If you launch the manager, presumably there would be no problem connecting to the existing client. You would need to deliberately stop the service to have the client be "not running", to cause the problem you describe. So with no client running, what would be the purpose for launching the manager? Why do you not restart the client service before deciding to launch the manager?

As far as I'm aware, and as described in the page you linked to (last updated 9 years ago, so things could have changed), the behaviour of starting a client (if one isn't running) when you launch the manager, is the way it has always been. I use Linux exclusively and always launch the client with the --daemon switch before ever launching the manager. But I run the client as my normal user so I won't have your problem even if I do things out of sequence :-).

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Cheers,
Gary.

I solved this problem on Fedora / RHEL / CentOS
https://src.fedoraproject.org/rpms/boinc-client/blob/master/f/prevent_manager_from_starting_client.patch

I will not make a pull request to include it into upstream BOINC. You may want to contact your Linux distribution BOINC maintainer to ask him to add the patch to your Linux distribution reporisory.

Have a nice day

Shouldn't this be made optional and configurable? The author of this thread has asked, reasonably and appropriately, that the client should not start when the manager is launched: other authors in other threads have been frustrated and annoyed when they have not been able to start the client from the manager.

We (upstream BOINC development) have provided two controls to allow user choice: the default is for the manager to start the client if not running, but you can

* Deselect "Run the client?" on the Options --> Other options... dialog (affects future launches only)
* Use the command line switch '--no-daemon' when launching the manager.

These may be a bit clunky, and may be badly documented, but at least they leave the final choice in the hands of the end user. This was the clear majority view in my consultation at Opinions requested from home Linux users. Note that my consultation was aimed at home users only: my observations here would be superfluous if Fedora / RHEL / CentOS and their derivatives are only ever installed under corporate management environments.