Bug#721298: boinc-client: Idle Detection Not Working Computer Always In Use

[Preston Maness]

Package: boinc-client
Version: 7.2.7+dfsg-1
Severity: important

Dear Maintainer,

I am unable to get BOINC to activate when computer is not in use. I
don't know how else to troubleshoot the idle detection features of
boinc. The log file at /var/lib/boinc-client/stdoutdae.txt simply shows
a line that says "Suspending Computation - computer is in use" even
after the idle time has been reached. The XML with the global
configuration parameters is below.

Telling boinc to "run always" seems to work as expected. The CPU and GPU
both get jobs at that point and start crunching away. Please advise me
as to how I may help in further troubleshooting this issue.

Cheers,
Preston Maness

-- Package-specific info:
-- Contents of /etc/default/boinc-client:
# This file is /etc/default/boinc-client, it is a configuration file for the
# /etc/init.d/boinc-client init script.

# Set this to 1 to enable and to 0 to disable the init script.
ENABLED="1"

# Set this to 1 to enable advanced scheduling of the BOINC core client and
# all its sub-processes (reduces the impact of BOINC on the system's
# performance).
SCHEDULE="1"

# The BOINC core client will be started with the permissions of this user.
BOINC_USER="boinc"

# This is the data directory of the BOINC core client.
BOINC_DIR="/var/lib/boinc-client"

# This is the location of the BOINC core client, that the init script uses.
# If you do not want to use the client program provided by the boinc-client
# package, you can specify here an alternative client program.
#BOINC_CLIENT="/usr/local/bin/boinc"
BOINC_CLIENT="/usr/bin/boinc"

# Here you can specify additional options to pass to the BOINC core client.
# Type 'boinc --help' or 'man boinc' for a full summary of allowed options.
#BOINC_OPTS="--allow_remote_gui_rpc"
BOINC_OPTS=""

# Scheduling options

# Set SCHEDULE="0" if prefering to run with upstream default priority
# settings.

# Nice levels. When systems are truly busy, e.g. because of too many active
# scientific applications started by the boinc client, there is a chance for
# the boinc client not to be granted sufficient opportunity to check for
# scientific applications to be alive and make the (wrong) decision to
# terminate the scientific app. This is particularly an issue with many
# apps started in parallel on modern multi-core systems and extra overheads
# for the download and uploads of files with the project servers. Another
# concern is the latency for scientific applications to communicate with the
# graphics card, which should be low. All such values should be set and
# controled from within the BOINC client. The Debian init script also sets
# extra constrains via chrt on real time performance and via ionice on 
# I/O performance, which is beyond the regular BOINC client. It then was
# too easy to use that code to also constrain minimal nice levels. We still
# think about how to best distinguish GPU applications from regular apps.
BOINC_NICE_CLIENT=10
BOINC_NICE_APP_DEFAULT=19
#BOINC_NICE_APP_GPU=5        # not yet used

# ionice classes. See manpage of ionice (1) in the util-linux package.
BOINC_IONICE_CLIENT=3        # idle
#BOINC_IONICE_APP_DEFAULT=3  # idle, not yet used
#BOINC_IONICE_APP_GPU=2      # best effort, not yet used


-- System Information:
Debian Release: jessie/sid
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (500, 'testing')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Foreign Architectures: i386

Kernel: Linux 3.10-2-amd64 (SMP w/4 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash

Versions of packages boinc-client depends on:
ii  adduser                3.113+nmu3
ii  ca-certificates        20130610
ii  debconf [debconf-2.0]  1.5.50
ii  libboinc7              7.2.7+dfsg-1
ii  libc6                  2.17-92
ii  libcurl3               7.32.0-1
ii  libgcc1                1:4.8.1-2
ii  libssl1.0.0            1.0.1e-3
ii  libstdc++6             4.8.1-2
ii  libx11-6               2:1.6.1-1
ii  libxext6               2:1.3.2-1
ii  libxss1                1:1.2.2-1
ii  python                 2.7.5-4
ii  zlib1g                 1:1.2.8.dfsg-1

Versions of packages boinc-client recommends:
pn  ia32-libs  <none>

Versions of packages boinc-client suggests:
ii  boinc-manager      7.2.7+dfsg-1
pn  libcuda1           <none>
pn  libcuda1-ia32      <none>
ii  x11-xserver-utils  7.7~3

-- Configuration Files:
/etc/boinc-client/global_prefs_override.xml changed:
<global_preferences>
   <run_on_batteries>1</run_on_batteries>
   <run_if_user_active>0</run_if_user_active>
   <run_gpu_if_user_active>0</run_gpu_if_user_active>
   <idle_time_to_run>2.000000</idle_time_to_run>
   <suspend_cpu_usage>25.000000</suspend_cpu_usage>
   <start_hour>0.000000</start_hour>
   <end_hour>0.000000</end_hour>
   <net_start_hour>0.000000</net_start_hour>
   <net_end_hour>0.000000</net_end_hour>
   <leave_apps_in_memory>0</leave_apps_in_memory>
   <confirm_before_connecting>0</confirm_before_connecting>
   <hangup_if_dialed>0</hangup_if_dialed>
   <dont_verify_images>0</dont_verify_images>
   <work_buf_min_days>0.100000</work_buf_min_days>
   <work_buf_additional_days>0.500000</work_buf_additional_days>
   <max_ncpus_pct>0.000000</max_ncpus_pct>
   <cpu_scheduling_period_minutes>60.000000</cpu_scheduling_period_minutes>
   <disk_interval>60.000000</disk_interval>
   <disk_max_used_gb>1000.000000</disk_max_used_gb>
   <disk_max_used_pct>90.000000</disk_max_used_pct>
   <disk_min_free_gb>0.100000</disk_min_free_gb>
   <vm_max_used_pct>75.000000</vm_max_used_pct>
   <ram_max_used_busy_pct>50.000000</ram_max_used_busy_pct>
   <ram_max_used_idle_pct>90.000000</ram_max_used_idle_pct>
   <max_bytes_sec_up>0.000000</max_bytes_sec_up>
   <max_bytes_sec_down>0.000000</max_bytes_sec_down>
   <cpu_usage_limit>100.000000</cpu_usage_limit>
   <daily_xfer_limit_mb>0.000000</daily_xfer_limit_mb>
   <daily_xfer_period_days>0</daily_xfer_period_days>
</global_preferences>

/etc/boinc-client/gui_rpc_auth.cfg [Errno 13] Permission denied: u'/etc/boinc-client/gui_rpc_auth.cfg'

-- debconf information:
  boinc-client/remove_boinc_dir: true