Bug#815214: boinc-client: boinc client not updating log files

Sat Feb 20 06:50:43 UTC 2016

Package: boinc-client
Version: 7.6.25+dfsg-1
Severity: important

Dear Maintainer,

As per email discussions with Gianfranco the boinc-client no longer seems to be updating its log files. This first occured on a number of Raspberry Pi's running the Stretch release around October 2015. This seems to have made its way into the amd64 build around January 2016.

To try and narrow down the issue I have done the following:

I have wiped the machine, downloaded Jessie 8.3 netinst(amd64) and installed it. Removed x11-*. Sure its the old one and boinc-client 7.4.23 works as expected. Log files are in /var/lib/boinc-client. Nothing in /var/log.

Changed sources-list to point to Stretch and did a dist-upgrade which along with everything else updated boinc to 7.6.25. After install log files in /var/lib/boinc-client are no longer updated. There are two log files in /var/log now, both zero bytes.

Things the Rpi and amd64 have in common is x11-* was removed (however x11-common gets installed by the dist-upgrade). Stretch has GCC 5 whereas Jessie is still on GCC 4.9. I also have two Parallella that use Gianfranco's Ubuntu ppa and they work as expected (Ubuntu Trusty). The Parallella's also have x11-* removed.

   * What led up to the situation?
dist-upgrade to Stretch

   * What exactly did you do (or not do) that was effective (or ineffective)?
clean install Jessie followed by dist-upgrade to Stretch

   * What was the outcome of this action?
Log files no longer getting updated

   * What outcome did you expect instead?
Log files to work as before

-- 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: stretch/sid
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (500, 'testing')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 4.3.0-1-amd64 (SMP w/8 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_AU.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_AU.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)

Versions of packages boinc-client depends on:
ii  adduser                3.113+nmu3
ii  ca-certificates        20160104
ii  debconf [debconf-2.0]  1.5.58
ii  init-system-helpers    1.24
ii  libboinc7              7.6.25+dfsg-1
ii  libc6                  2.21-8
ii  libcurl3               7.47.0-1
ii  libgcc1                1:5.3.1-8
ii  libstdc++6             5.3.1-8
ii  libx11-6               2:1.6.3-1
ii  libxss1                1:1.2.2-1
pn  python:any             <none>
ii  zlib1g                 1:1.2.8.dfsg-2+b1

boinc-client recommends no packages.

Versions of packages boinc-client suggests:
pn  boinc-client-fglrx        <none>
pn  boinc-client-nvidia-cuda  <none>
pn  boinc-client-opencl       <none>
pn  boinc-manager             <none>
pn  x11-xserver-utils         <none>

-- Configuration Files:
/etc/boinc-client/gui_rpc_auth.cfg [Errno 13] Permission denied: u'/etc/boinc-client/gui_rpc_auth.cfg'
/etc/boinc-client/remote_hosts.cfg changed [not included]

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