I've tested this repeatedly, and it is reproducible...

I run BOINC Manager 7.2.42 on a MacMini under OS X 10.9.5. The Mini is headless, and I access it through screen sharing from a MacBookPro on the same local network. After BOINC Manager has been running for a while - overnight, say - I can no longer "see" the Mini. It will appear in the "Shared" list in a Finder window of the MacBookPro, but it will not "connect", nor can I screen share into it. Curiously, when this happens I can sometimes use "Connect to Server" on the MacBookPro and vnc: into the Mini, but not always. And, when I do so, I find that I cannot reboot the Mini - it's almost as if the Mini's Finder is locked up. The only way to reestablish connectivity to the Mini is to force reboot it.

Any thoughts/advise most appreciated. Thank you.

Hello Hans,

A couple of things:

[1] If you don't run BOINC Manager on the Mac Mini, does screen sharing continue to work? If so, then the problem is something other than BOINC. Otherwise, you might want to try this test version of BOINC.

[2] Since BOINC Manager is just the Graphical User Interface to the BOINC Client, you do not need to run the Manager on a headless computer if you also run BOINC Manager on your MacBook Pro. You can instead run the BOINC Client on the Mac Mini without the Manager, and use the Manager on the MacBook Pro to control BOINC on both computers. If you wish do this, use screen sharing and follow these steps:
* In System Preferences, under Users and groups, select Login Items and remove BOINC Manager (by selecting it and clicking on the "-" box.) This will prevent BOINC Manager from starting automatically. (If you later install a new version of BOINC Manager, you will need to repeat this step.)
* Download this script.
* Open the script with TextEdit and follow the instructions under "Directions for use." You can ignore steps (6) and (7), as they won't apply to your situation. You will need to use Terminal.app, which is under /Applications/Utilities/.
* Then follow these instructions.
You can then run the BOINC Manager on the MacBook Pro and use Select computer from BOINC Manager's Advanced menu to connect to, monitor and control BOINC Client on the Mac Mini.
* If at a later time you wish to reverse this, follow the Removal instructions in the script, and then run the BOINC Installer again.

[3] Since the Mac Mini has no display, you should also set the Screen Saver to never start (in System Preferences.)

---

Charlie Fenton
BOINC / SETI@home Macintosh & Windows Programmer

Thank you for your reply.

[1] I'm not sure I understand what you're asking here - if I DON'T run BOINC Manager on the Mini, screen sharing DOES work - that's the issue - running BOINC Manager (eventually) causes screen sharing to fail - if BOINC Manager is NOT running, screen sharing is fine.

[1a] An interesting update - last night, I kept BOINC Manager running on the Mini, but I changed its mode to "Advanced View". This morning, when I would have expected screen sharing fail, it was fine! I know this is only one night's worth of testing, but still...

[1b] I will try the test version - in Simple View - and see how that works.

[2] I will hold off on this approach while I continue to test the above scenarios.

Thank you!

BOINC Manager 7.4.23/wxWidgets 3.0.0 exhibits the same problem - running it appears to kill my ability to "share" (either screen sharing or file sharing) through the Finder interface. Curiously, I can sometimes get vnc access to the Mini (vnc://macmini.local). I am going to test the "Advanced View" hypothesis again - letting BOINC Manager run in that mode for 24 hours.

What Charlie meant is this: BOINC consists of two parts, a client that does all the scheduling, caching of work, communications and such, and a graphical user interface (GUI) with which you can easily command and control the client.

We call this GUI BOINC Manager, as you use it to manage BOINC.
It isn't necessary to run BOINC Manager, for the client to do its job. The client can run perfectly fine alone.

So if you have a problem with BOINC Manager on the Mini, then don't run BOINC Manager on the Mini. Just run the client, and use BOINC Manager on the MacBookPro to remotely command and control BOINC on the Mini. How to do so, can be seen in http://boinc.berkeley.edu/wiki/Controlling_BOINC_remotely.

---

Again, thank you for your replies...

I can confirm that running BOINC Manager in "Advanced View" solves this issue. I've now been running for almost two days without a problem, so I'm not going to go through the process for running BOINC as a daemon.

Spoke too soon... Can't see the MacMini this morning. I will now try the daemon setup.

I've attempted to follow the instructions above, but the BOINC daemon is not launching on the MacMini (the host computer).

I successfully ran the shell script. I confirmed that the edu.berkeley.boinc.plist file was created in LaunchDaemons. I restarted the MacMini. The daemon does not seem to have launched.

Please advise. Thank you.

How did you determine that the daemon was not launched? The best way is to run /Applications/Utilities/Activity Monitor and look for "boinc" (all lower case) in the "Activity Monitor" window. Be sure to set All Processes in the View menu and select Activity Monitor from the Window menu.

If "boinc" is not there, try typing the following within the /Applications/Utilities/Terminal application:

sudo launchctl start edu.berkeley.boinc

If you see an error message, please report it in this thread.

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Charlie Fenton
BOINC / SETI@home Macintosh & Windows Programmer

Thank you for your reply.

Yes, I used Activity Monitor to check. Normally, when I launch BOINC Manager, I see both the boinc daemon and the Manager application in AM. After running the shell script and restarting, I do not see the daemon.

Just now, when I launched BOINC Manager to verify that I was able to see the daemon, I got this error: BOINC Manager - Daemon Start Failed.

Attempting to launch the daemon using "sudo launchctl start edu.berkeley.boinc" results in:

launchctl start error: No such process

If I re-install BOINC, launching Manager works, and I see both the daemon and Manager in AM. It seems that running the shell script is somehow doing some damage...

Note also that I do see edu.berkeley.boinc.plist in LaunchDaemons after running the shell script.

I have uninstalled BOINC (using the uninstaller script) and reinstalled it. I've also manually removed edu.berkeley.boinc.plist. I can now run Manager without error, and I'm seeing the boinc process in AM. I will await further instructions.

Thank you.

With edu.berkeley.boinc.plist in LaunchDaemons, what happens if you enter the following from Terminal?

sudo launchctl load /Library/LaunchDaemons/edu.berkeley.boinc.plist

That should be enough to start the daemon, but if not (and if that does not return an error) then also try

sudo launchctl start edu.berkeley.boinc

With edu.berkeley.boinc.plist in LaunchDaemons but the daemon not running, you might also delete /Library/Application Support/BOINC Data/stderrdae.txt and /Library/Application Support/BOINC Data/stdoutdae.txt and then restart the mini. Then check to see if these files were again created, and if they have any clues to what went wrong.

Be sure you have removed BOINCManager from the list of Login Items in the Users & Groups pane of System Preferences for edu.berkeley.boinc.plist in LaunchDaemons to work.

Also, since it took over two days after starting BOINC Manager in Advanced View before you lost the ability to screen share, I wonder how long you have tried running the mini without BOINC running to confirm that screen sharing continues to work without BOINC. I suggest running for several days without BOINC running, because if screen sharing then stops working that would indicate BOINC is not the problem.

---

Charlie Fenton
BOINC / SETI@home Macintosh & Windows Programmer

BOINC Manager is NOT in Login Items.
edu.berkeley.boinc.plist is in LaunchDaemons.

sudo launchctl load /Library/LaunchDaemons/edu.berkeley.boinc.plist

returns:

launchctl: no plist was returned for: /Library/LaunchDaemons/edu.berkeley.boinc.plist
launchctl: no plist was returned for: /Library/LaunchDaemons/edu.berkeley.boinc.plist
nothing found to load

sudo launchctl start edu.berkeley.boinc

returns:

launchctl start error: No such process

After a restart, neither stderrdae.txt nor stdoutdae.txt were recreated.

That is strange.

Would you be kind enough to examine the contents of /Library/LaunchDaemons/edu.berkeley.boinc.plist using TextEdit and copy the contents into a posting here?

I think you already understand this, but just to be sure, BOINCManager.app needs to be in the /Applications/ directory for this to work. But I don't think that is the problem here.

---

Charlie Fenton
BOINC / SETI@home Macintosh & Windows Programmer

I've triple-confirmed that BOINCManager.app (v7.4.23) is in /Applications.

Here's the plist:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
	<key>GroupName</key>
	<string>boinc_master</string>
	<key>Label</key>
	<string>edu.berkeley.boinc</string>
	<key>Program</key>
	<string>/Applications/BOINCManager.app/Contents/Resources/boinc</string>
	<key>ProgramArguments</key>
	<array>
		<string>/Applications/BOINCManager.app/Contents/Resources/boinc</string>
		<string>-redirectio</string>
		<string>-daemon</string>
	</array>
	<key>RunAtLoad</key>
	<true/>
	<key>UserName</key>
	<string>boinc_master</string>
	<key>WorkingDirectory</key>
	<string>/Library/Application Support/BOINC Data/</string>
</dict>
</plist>

Well, that looks exactly correct. I wonder if it could be some sort of permissions problem. If you enter the following in Terminal:

ls -al@e /Library/LaunchDaemons/edu.berkeley.boinc.plist

you should see:

-r--r--r--  1 root  wheel  742 Oct 21 19:36 /Library/LaunchDaemons/edu.berkeley.boinc.plist

Another thought: have you tried running "Repair Disk Permissions" in /Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility.app?

---

Charlie Fenton
BOINC / SETI@home Macintosh & Windows Programmer

Charlie -

This is a mystery - but I have good news...

I went back to square one. Uninstalled BOINC. Rebooted. Followed your instructions above (same as I did before, but whatever...). The daemon seems to be launching now! I must have done something wrong before (several times).

Next step - trying to get access from my MacBookPro. I will report.

Thanks, and sorry for the confusion.

Hans

Success! I honestly do not know what I did wrong, but it's all good now. I'm going to hope that my screen sharing issue will no longer manifest.

I do have one question --

I noted at <http://boinc.berkeley.edu/wiki/Controlling_BOINC_remotely> that there's a command line option to allow access to the daemon from anywhere: --allow_remote_gui_rpc. Would it be possible to modify the shell script to incorporate that option? My MacBookPro will not always be at the address I set up in remote_hosts.cfg.

Again, thank you for all your help.

I noted at that there's a command line option to allow access to the daemon from anywhere: --allow_remote_gui_rpc. Would it be possible to modify the shell script to incorporate that option? My MacBookPro will not always be at the address I set up in remote_hosts.cfg.

I am glad you have it working. I believe you can just add this line in the script:

		<string>--allow_remote_gui_rpc</string>

after this line:

		<string>-daemon</string>

but I have not tested this. If it does not work, try it with just a single "-" instead of "--".

Again, thank you for all your help.

You are very welcome.

---

Charlie Fenton
BOINC / SETI@home Macintosh & Windows Programmer

I will try your suggestions soon - but, in the meantime, I did want to report that, in the 4-5 days since I have NOT been running BOINC Manager on the MacMini (just the daemon), I have never lost screen sharing to it. I would consider it pretty much definitive that BOINC Manager was the culprit.