This bug can only be a feature to a very few staff programmers in the science center.

I installed a new 8.0.4 ubuntu just fine pulling in Boinc 6.4.5 from the original Hardy distribution and then upgradeing Boinc to 6.10.17. That all worked fine and I decide to upgrade two other dual opteron ubuntu's from boinc 6.6.40 to the latest 6.10.17 though none of these systems have a GPU.

Sure enough,the upgrade from 6.6.40 failed and my system was stuck in a loop, insanely attempting to download no WU's for no CPU's. I actually fixed this before googleing the problem by editing cc_config.xml and changing 0 to 4 where ncpu's were defined, a lucky guess.

Googleing here I see I should have put -1 there.

Looking at the following, the boinc code is not robust enough to get out of the loop it is stuck in. IMHO it is embarassing for a programmer to calculate the FP and INT specs after exclaiming that the values are unexpectedly zero.

Fri 05 Feb 2010 04:08:44 AM CST Running CPU benchmarks
Fri 05 Feb 2010 04:08:44 AM CST Suspending computation - running CPU benchmarks
Fri 05 Feb 2010 04:09:15 AM CST [error] Benchmark: FP unexpectedly zero; ignoring
Fri 05 Feb 2010 04:09:15 AM CST [error] Benchmark: int unexpectedly zero; ignoring
Fri 05 Feb 2010 04:09:15 AM CST Benchmark results:
Fri 05 Feb 2010 04:09:15 AM CST Number of CPUs: 0
Fri 05 Feb 2010 04:09:15 AM CST 1580 floating point MIPS (Whetstone) per CPU
Fri 05 Feb 2010 04:09:15 AM CST 3855 integer MIPS (Dhrystone) per CPU
Fri 05 Feb 2010 04:09:24 AM CST Docking Sending scheduler request: To fetch work.
Fri 05 Feb 2010 04:09:24 AM CST Docking Not reporting or requesting tasks
Fri 05 Feb 2010 04:09:29 AM CST Docking Scheduler request completed
Fri 05 Feb 2010 04:09:35 AM CST Docking Sending scheduler request: To fetch work.
Fri 05 Feb 2010 04:09:35 AM CST Docking Not reporting or requesting tasks
Fri 05 Feb 2010 04:09:40 AM CST Docking Scheduler request completed
Fri 05 Feb 2010 04:09:45 AM CST Docking Sending scheduler request: To fetch work.
Fri 05 Feb 2010 04:09:45 AM CST Docking Not reporting or requesting tasks
Fri 05 Feb 2010 04:09:50 AM CST Docking Scheduler request completed
Fri 05 Feb 2010 04:09:55 AM CST Docking Sending scheduler request: To fetch work.
Fri 05 Feb 2010 04:09:55 AM CST Docking Not reporting or requesting tasks
Fri 05 Feb 2010 04:10:00 AM CST Docking Scheduler request completed
Fri 05 Feb 2010 04:10:05 AM CST Docking Sending scheduler request: To fetch work.
Fri 05 Feb 2010 04:10:05 AM CST Docking Not reporting or requesting tasks
Fri 05 Feb 2010 04:10:10 AM CST Docking Scheduler request completed
Fri 05 Feb 2010 04:10:15 AM CST Docking Sending scheduler request: To fetch work.
Fri 05 Feb 2010 04:10:15 AM CST Docking Not reporting or requesting tasks
Fri 05 Feb 2010 04:10:20 AM CST Docking Scheduler request completed
Fri 05 Feb 2010 04:10:25 AM CST Docking Sending scheduler request: To fetch work.
Fri 05 Feb 2010 04:10:25 AM CST Docking Not reporting or requesting tasks
Fri 05 Feb 2010 04:10:30 AM CST Docking Scheduler request completed
Fri 05 Feb 2010 04:10:35 AM CST Docking Sending scheduler request: To fetch work.
Fri 05 Feb 2010 04:10:35 AM CST Docking Not reporting or requesting tasks
Fri 05 Feb 2010 04:10:40 AM CST Docking Scheduler request completed
Fri 05 Feb 2010 04:10:46 AM CST Docking Sending scheduler request: To fetch work.
Fri 05 Feb 2010 04:10:46 AM CST Docking Not reporting or requesting tasks
Fri 05 Feb 2010 04:10:51 AM CST Docking Scheduler request completed
Fri 05 Feb 2010 04:10:56 AM CST Docking Sending scheduler request: To fetch work.
Fri 05 Feb 2010 04:10:56 AM CST Docking Not reporting or requesting tasks
Fri 05 Feb 2010 04:11:01 AM CST Docking Scheduler request completed
<snipping from here to infinity>

IMHO, this is clearly a bug and any new release of boinc should void the <ncpu>0</ncpu> parameter.

According to this thread, boinc does NOT come with cc_config.xml. If so, then I do not know how it got on my system.

Also want to point out that the MIPS shown in the original post are about 3/4 of what they are supposed to be on account of ubuntu's unexpected CPU throttleing.

Benchmark changed from

Fri 05 Feb 2010 04:09:15 AM CST 1580 floating point MIPS (Whetstone) per CPU
Fri 05 Feb 2010 04:09:15 AM CST 3855 integer MIPS (Dhrystone) per CPU

to

2/6/2010 2:55:18 AM 2084 floating point MIPS (Whetstone) per CPU
2/6/2010 2:55:18 AM 5089 integer MIPS (Dhrystone) per CPU

after I disabled the Cool-And-Quiet feature in the systems bios.

I would put it down to user error. It's not the first time that a user forgets about an old work around. The cc_config.xml file is not created or deleted by Boinc. It is a tool to activate debug capabilities in Boinc. Users that use its options are responsible to remember what they've done, make sure that they track developments, and that the parameters and commands still work the same with new versions.