BOINC client not connecting

Q&A
1

Hi! I installed BOINC (boinc-client | Clear Linux* Project). It installs fine but it is stuck to “Connecting to localhost”. It doesn’t allow me to attach to a project at all.

The output of boinccmd --read_cc_config and boinccmd --get_state is similar: “can’t connect to local host”.

Can anyone take a look and see what the problem is here? Thanks

2

@btwarden is this working for you?

3

I don’t actually use it; I just added it per request, so I have limited knowledge. From what I understand, /usr/bin/boinc is the background process to which boinccmd and other tools should connect. It can be launched by hand, or started automatically by BOINC Manager (boincmgr).

@carlshark How did you try to start it?

@juro.bystricky Would you be willing to try to help?

4

I am pretty sure followed these instructions:
https://boinc.berkeley.edu/wiki/Installing_BOINC_on_Fedora
in particular “Set up your accounts”

5

After installation, it creates a shortcut to boincmgr.
Usually when you first start the BOINC Manager program it would be in Simple View, and when it is able to connect to localhost it would be asking you to attach a project.
My previous experience with BOINC on different Linux distros was fairly trivial. Once you download and install it, you are asked to attach a project and it will download tasks. I mainly use Debian-based distros though.
Prior to this, my experience on a different distro was that BOINC Manager was not talking to the BOINC client, which was confirmed by boinccmd --get_tasks. In this case the terminal would have meaningful output, such as asking to attach to a project which you can do manually.

6

Ah, I vaguely recall having reconfigured the desktop shortcut to use /var/lib/boinc as its starting dir, for which you’ll need to be a member of the boinc group:

sudo usermod -a -G ${USER} boinc
sudo usermod -a -G boinc ${USER}

then logout and back in to make it take effect.

1 Like
7

Thanks for the tip, but it still is not connecting. I tried to check whether it listens to port 31416 through

sudo netstat -pl | grep boinc

but still nothing. On my elementaryOS machine it shows that boinc has a tcp connection using port 31416.

When I try to follow Installing BOINC - BOINC I get stuck at the ./configure command because it says

checking for the version of libcurl... 7.65.1
checking for libcurl >= version 7.17.1... yes
checking whether libcurl is usable... no

I have installed the devpkg-curl bundle before running ./configure

Thanks for everyone’s help so far. I am confident that my BOINC contributions will benefit from the high performance of Clear Linux

8

I got it to work! Thank you. I was at my wits’ end when I checked and saw the output of groups, which did not contain boinc. So I went to the man page and reversed the parameters.

sudo usermod -a -G boinc ${USER}

Hope this helps others. Thank you.

9

Note that after doing usermod, that user has to log out before this change is permanent, which may have made thing appear nonfunctional for a while :slight_smile:

1 Like
10

It is all in
https://boinc.berkeley.edu/wiki/Installing_BOINC_on_Fedora
and in bold letters:
Finally, logout and login again so that your new group membership takes effect.

1 Like
11

Thanks @juro.bystricky @ahkok @btwarden

I logged out and logged in the first time when it didn’t work… All fine now after fixing my usermod command :grin: