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Arch Wiki -- Boinc -- mistake ???


abarbarian

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So I decided to set up BOINC on me Arch. Of I went to the wiki and followed the instructions.

 

Seemed simple enough.

 

Install the boinc program.

 

Create a boinc group.

 

Add meself to the boinc group. The wiki gives this command which I do not fully understand.

 

# usermod -a -G boinc $(whoami)

 

It is the last part I do not recognise. So I used a different method.

 

Start the boinc.service.

 

So far so good. I checked that I had done all the initial set up, made the group,added members to the group and checked the service was running.

 

Not being a geek I wanted to use the gui option so followed the wiki as below,

 

$ cd ~/
$ ln -s /var/lib/boinc/gui_rpc_auth.cfg gui_rpc_auth.cfg
# chmod 640 gui_rpc_auth.cfg

 

Which does not work.

It creates a symlink which does not work and you can not alter the permissions to make it work. So is the wiki is wrong or am I missing something.

 

To get boinc working after the initial set up phase I did ,

 


# cd /var/lib/boinc

# cp gui_rpc_auth.cfg /home/youruser

# cd /home/youruser

# chmod 440 gui_rpc_auth.cfg

# ls -l gui_rpc_auth.cfg

-r--r----- 1 boinc boinc 32 Jul 20 13:04 gui_rpc_auth.cfg

 

That got me a working gui and boinc is running and producing results.

 

I do not want boinc running at full speed or at the default of 60% so I made some changes,

 

 

To set cpu usage to less than the default 60% you need to alter " /var/lib/boinc/global_prefs.xml"

 

Both sections "global prefferences" and "venue name="home". I set mine to

 

"<cpu_usage_limit>10.0</cpu_usage_limit>"

 

 

I also did this

 

# systemctl enable boinc

 

Which makes boinc run when I boot the pc. I have turned the pc of and on twice and boinc starts and runs without any intervention so it looks like I have a automatically working boinc.

 

So I have a boinc that sort of works but I have questions.

 

EkAg.png

 

As you can see above the "gui_rpc_auth.cfg" in /var/lib/boinc is set at 600. I set the copied file in my home to 440. I could not see why the file neede to be changed so I made it read only.

 

Does the file need to have write permissions ?

 

Boinc starts when I boot and runs. Only for so long , every now and againg it stops and tells me "Suspended comptuer not in use" which is ridiculous as I am working on the pc. I can start it again with "systemctl start boinc" but that is not ideal. When boinc stops I have left it to see if it will restart but as far as I can tell it does not.

 

What can I do to keep boinc running ?

 

Lastly and this is not important but it is puzling. When I first got the gui up viewing the "advanced view" looking at the "disk" tab I had a graphic showing. Now the graphic has disappeared.

 

Where has the graphic gone and can I get it back ?

 

Any comments or help would be most welcome.

 

:breakfast:

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securitybreach

I have never played with Boinc but if you have not figured out anything by this afternoon, I will install it and mess with it. I am at work right now.

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Hey thanks Josh.

 

I find it puzzling that I have the boinc.service running since 9.05 this morning so can not see why boinc keeps stopping.

 

$ systemctl status boinc
● boinc.service - BOINC Daemon
  Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/boinc.service; enabled; vendor preset
  Active: active (running) since Fri 2017-07-21 09:05:08 BST; 5h 55min ago
Main PID: 323 (boinc_client)
   Tasks: 21 (limit: 4915)
  CGroup: /system.slice/boinc.service
	   ├─ 323 /usr/bin/boinc_client --dir /var/lib/boinc --redirectio
	   ├─3088 ../../projects/www.worldcommunitygrid.org/wcgrid_mcm1_7.36_x86
	   ├─3090 ../../projects/www.worldcommunitygrid.org/wcgrid_mcm1_7.36_x86
	   ├─3094 ../../projects/www.worldcommunitygrid.org/wcgrid_mcm1_7.36_x86
	   ├─3387 ../../projects/www.worldcommunitygrid.org/wcgrid_mcm1_7.36_i68
	   ├─3487 ../../projects/www.worldcommunitygrid.org/wcgrid_fahv_vina_7.3
	   ├─4292 ../../projects/www.worldcommunitygrid.org/wcgrid_mcm1_7.36_x86
	   ├─5142 ../../projects/www.worldcommunitygrid.org/wcgrid_fahv_vina_7.3
	   └─5365 ../../projects/www.worldcommunitygrid.org/wcgrid_fahv_vina_7.3

Jul 21 09:05:08 longship systemd[1]: Started BOINC Daemon.

 

I am going to post over at the Arch Forums. Hope I do not get roasted for telling folks I think the wiki is wrong :Muahaha:

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Try the Arch Community on G+ as you may have better luck there than the forums.

 

Out of the 65,000 or so members at G+ only one person bothered to reply when I posted my initial boinc questions and he had not heard of boinc but did offer some help.

 

:breakfast:

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It stilll blows my mind that my Community has over 60k members.

 

Yup the site does well. :clap:

 

Mind you how many of the members are Asian advertisers :tease: :Laughing:

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securitybreach

Mind you how many of the members are Asian advertisers :tease: :Laughing:

 

Yeah, I do not understand how that one got through as I have the Community set to "Hold posts for review". Either way I check it enough so that if it does get through, it will be removed rather quickly.

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Well it looks like I may not be getting any answers from the Arch Forums. I posted pretty much the same as here in my opening post over there and I got a reply.

Some little officious toerag who as much as called me a liar and deliberately ( or perhaps he is pretty thick) claimed to not understand some of the post.

 

Here is his delightful reply,

 

 

 

 

- remove the oversized image, replace it with a link - thumbnail at best

- "It is the last part I do not recognise. So I used a different method." is neither a good sign nor usable information.

=> You used *what* method? And how if you don't even understand what the command does?

- "Which does not work." is a literal version of the newbie sticky for bad posts.

=> How does the symlink "not work"? stat it and the realpath. I'm gonna bet it's because you need to be in the boinc group.

- "cp gui_rpc_auth.cfg /home/youruser" - you have a "youruser" directory??

- the owner of a file can *always* write it, regardless of what the permissions say (unless the root immuted the file) so that's an academic exercise

- "Suspended comptuer not in use" I doubt it said that and more importantly is that not a systemd message.

Given your explanations, it'll likely be a notification that the process is suspended because the system is under load.

- I have no idea regarding whatever missing graphic you're referring to, but you should seek to first setup BOINC correctly and then create a new thread with what is apparently the only question in this wall of text and ask a mod to bin this one.

 

 

:breakfast:

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Hedon James

SMH...

 

The arch forum is littered with posts that don't answer questions, but chock full of helpful instructions of how to ask a question. SB has good advice regarding his arch Google+ forum. You'll get better effort over there and likely a better reply. JMO....

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Well it looks like I put my foot in it over at the Arch Forums as the thread got binned. Whether it was me or the other guy responsible I can not tell.

 

This is the thread.

 

https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=228418

 

:breakfast:

 

This is part of SETHS last post in the thread,

 

 

And I still doubt that it said "Suspended comptuer not in use" - because thare's a typo and the line doesn't make any sense. But I'll happily see a screenshot that proves a buggy string in the application.

Now, where do you believe I called you a "liar"??

 

My answer would have been "see above".

 

This are my original sentences which I believe are pretty clear,

 

Boinc starts when I boot and runs. Only for so long , every now and againg it stops and tells me "Suspended comptuer not in use" which is ridiculous as I am working on the pc.

 

My english grammar and such is not great but I think it is clear that the sentence relates to the boinc program as stated in the first sentence. The second sentence does not state boinc but you would assume it relates to boinc and I state that the implied boinc gives me a message.

So when the guy tells me he "doubts" my word, yes I recon he is calling me a liar.

 

nQpP.jpg

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SMH...

 

The arch forum is littered with posts that don't answer questions, but chock full of helpful instructions of how to ask a question. SB has good advice regarding his arch Google+ forum. You'll get better effort over there and likely a better reply. JMO....

 

Tried that, see post 5. :biggrin:

 

One of the moderators told me to read the CoC quite nicely. I had no idea what CoC was or where to find it as there are no links on the main forum page that I could see. I had read the rules and the BB code pages but did not see a mention to it either. I might have missed some mention of it I guess. Anyways I suggested they put a link up to the CoC in a easy to see position on the main page as it might be helpful to new users. :breakfast:

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securitybreach

From the BOINC website: Use the idle time on your computer (Windows, Mac, or Linux) to cure diseases, study global warming, discover pulsars, and do many other types of scientific research. It's safe, secure, and easy.

 

From Wikipedia:BOINC: The Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC) is a non-commercial middleware system for volunteer and grid computing. It was originally developed to support the SETI@home project before it became useful as a platform for other distributed applications in areas as diverse as mathematics, medicine, molecular biology, climatology, and astrophysics. The intent of BOINC is to make it possible for researchers to tap into the enormous processing power of personal computers around the world.

https://wiki.archlin...index.php/BOINC
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securitybreach

Well it is working fine here and all I did was follow the wiki entry until 2.1 and chose a project:

 

kUhDIK2.png

 

Did you choose the boinc or the boinc-nox package and did you try changing projects? I used the normal boinc package.

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Well it is working fine here and all I did was follow the wiki entry until 2.1 and chose a project:

 

kUhDIK2.png

 

Did you choose the boinc or the boinc-nox package and did you try changing projects? I used the normal boinc package.

 

I chose the "bonic" option as I wanted a gui.

 

So you ran these commands all from within your ~/ ??

 

If you did then I have made some mistake somewhere earlier on.

 

:'(

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securitybreach

Oh and instead of

 

 

# usermod -a -G boinc $(whoami)

 

I used

# usermod -a -G boinc securitybreach
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securitybreach

Install boinc

pacman -S boinc

 

Start boinc:

systemctl start boinc

 

As user:

cd ~/
ln -s /var/lib/boinc/gui_rpc_auth.cfg gui_rpc_auth.cfg

 

As root:

chmod 640 gui_rpc_auth.cfg

 

The as user:

boincmgr

 

That's all I did and it worked.

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Oh and instead of

 

 

# usermod -a -G boinc $(whoami)

 

I used

# usermod -a -G boinc securitybreach

 

That is what I did too.

 

If it worked for you then I must have definitely made a slip up somewhere. I feel a real fool now.

 

I'll uninstall and try again. Which is what I should have done in the first place. :'(

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Here is what I get,

 

[longship@22:07:25 root]$ cd
[longship@22:07:31 ~]$ ln -s /var/lib/boinc/gui_rpc_auth.cfg gui_rpc_auth.cfg
[longship@22:08:13 ~]$ su -
Password:
[root@longship ~]# chmod 640 gui_rpc_auth.cfg
chmod: cannot access 'gui_rpc_auth.cfg': No such file or directory

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securitybreach

Here is what I get,

 

[longship@22:07:25 root]$ cd
[longship@22:07:31 ~]$ ln -s /var/lib/boinc/gui_rpc_auth.cfg gui_rpc_auth.cfg
[longship@22:08:13 ~]$ su -
Password:
[root@longship ~]# chmod 640 gui_rpc_auth.cfg
chmod: cannot access 'gui_rpc_auth.cfg': No such file or directory

 

It looks like your referencing two different directories. The first line says "root" which makes me think that you are in /root/ and the other ones are using ~ which denotes the home directory of the user (home/longship).

 

Look at the commands I posted earlier above and compare them to what you are doing. I hope that makes sense.

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securitybreach

Plus once you link the file with ln -s...., use the ls command to see if the link was placed in /home/longship

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Here is what I get,

 

[longship@22:07:25 root]$ cd
[longship@22:07:31 ~]$ ln -s /var/lib/boinc/gui_rpc_auth.cfg gui_rpc_auth.cfg
[longship@22:08:13 ~]$ su -
Password:
[root@longship ~]# chmod 640 gui_rpc_auth.cfg
chmod: cannot access 'gui_rpc_auth.cfg': No such file or directory

 

It looks like your referencing two different directories. The first line says "root" which makes me think that you are in /root/ and the other ones are using ~ which denotes the home directory of the user (home/longship).

 

Look at the commands I posted earlier above and compare them to what you are doing. I hope that makes sense.

 

Hmm I am following the wiki. "cd" get you the same result as "cd ~/" it takes you to your home directory/folder. Then I do the "ln -s ,,,," command. Then go to root and do the "chmod" command. then I get the not found message. I look in /home/bloodaxe and there is a file/symlink named "gui_rpc_auth.cfg".

I followed the wiki step by step so I have no idea what is wrong. :'(

 

That is why I posted on G+.

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Plus once you link the file with ln -s...., use the ls command to see if the link was placed in /home/longship

 

I'd need to use "ls -a" for the file to show

 

[longship@22:45:01 ~]$ ls
2017-07-21-223251_180x110_scrot.png Downloads		 Linux
aaaaaaaaaaaa						 GNUstep		 Notebooks
ABCMinors						 gui_rpc_auth.cfg Pictures
BACKUPS							 KeePassDataBase tcl
Desktop							 leftoversMX-16 zzzzzzzzz
[longship@22:45:11 ~]$ ls -a
.									 Desktop			 Pictures
..								 Downloads			 .pki
2017-07-21-223251_180x110_scrot.png .esd_auth			 .reminders
aaaaaaaaaaaa						 .gkrellm2			 .steam
ABCMinors							 .gnupg			 .steampath
.adobe							 GNUstep			 .steampid
BACKUPS							 gui_rpc_auth.cfg	 .stellarium
.bash_history						 KeePassDataBase	 .systemshock2
.bash_logout						 leftoversMX-16	 tcl
.bash_profile						 Linux				 .thumbnails
.bashrc							 .local			 .tkremindrc
.BOINC							 .macromedia		 .wmix.pid
'.BOINC Manager'					 .mozilla			 .Xauthority
.cache							 Notebooks			 .xinitrc
.config							 .nv				 .Xresources
.designer							 .nvidia-settings-rc zzzzzzzzz

 

Forget alll the above I did not see the file when using ls but it is there. I must be blind.

 

The file is there , owned by bloodaxe, group bloodaxe, View/Change/Execute by Anyone. Which is why I tried to ask the question about chmod to 440 instead of 640. :'(

 

I'm of to bed before I make any more mistakes. :'(

Edited by abarbarian
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securitybreach

Look at this line:

[root@longship ~]# chmod 640 gui_rpc_auth.cfg

 

~ in the root terminal means that you are trying to chmod the file in /root/gui_rpc_auth.cfg instead of /home/longship/gui_rpc_auth.cfg.

 

~ means the user's home. If you type as that as root, then it means /root/. If you do it as your user, then it means /home/user.

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Look at this line:

[root@longship ~]# chmod 640 gui_rpc_auth.cfg

 

~ in the root terminal means that you are trying to chmod the file in /root/gui_rpc_auth.cfg instead of /home/longship/gui_rpc_auth.cfg.

 

~ means the user's home. If you type as that as root, then it means /root/. If you do it as your user, then it means /home/user.

 

An that is the root of the problem.You have it spot on. I totally missed that I should have cd to my user home when I went root.

 

Mind you if the wiki did not contain useless crud I would not have made the mistake.

 

By default, a password is created in /var/lib/boinc/gui_rpc_auth.cfg for connecting to the daemon. To simplify connection of the GUI to the daemon, cd to your home directory, create a link to the file, and change permissions to allow read access to boinc group members.

$ cd ~/

$ ln -s /var/lib/boinc/gui_rpc_auth.cfg gui_rpc_auth.cfg

# chmod 640 gui_rpc_auth.cfg

 

Here is a screencast demonstrating the fact,

https://www.dropbox.com/s/dl2duov9ahfbv7g/chmodwhy.mkv?dl=0

 

When you use the "ln -s" command it creates a smlink that is owned by you the user. As you have already made yourself a member of the boinc group why on earth would you want to fart around as the red text advises.

Also the chmod command does absolutely nothing except waste your time.

 

So the entry in the wiki could strike out the red text and you would still have the same result.

 

Thanks for your patience and spotting the mistake.

 

Oh an I can read the output in me terminal now as I have white/coloured text on a black background again. :breakfast:

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securitybreach

Mind you if the wiki did not contain useless crud I would not have made the mistake.

 

Actually I followed it word for word when I set it up so I dunno.

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securitybreach

When you use the "ln -s" command it creates a smlink that is owned by you the user. As you have already made yourself a member of the boinc group why on earth would you want to fart around as the red text advises.

Also the chmod command does absolutely nothing except waste your time.

 

Actually, chmod 640 does quite a bit. First off, it make the file readable and writeable to the user, the group can only read and others cannot read, write or execute. So the command is there to give the file correct permissions to secure it and make it user read and writeable.

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