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

[Preston Maness]

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Ugh. Fuckin' mail clients. It mangled my ExecStart line (and is still
trying to mangle it). My service file looks like this presently:

http://pastebin.com/103cK3Ym

Cheers,
Preston Maness

On 02/20/2016 01:20 AM, Preston Maness wrote:
> Howdy everyone,
> 
> Since boinc-client is now handled by the systemd service file,
> systemd is determining where stdout and stderr go. You can run
> "journalctl -u boinc-client.service" to get the logs, and if
> systemd has been set up to also dump to syslog, the logs should be
> in /var/log/syslog as well (I don't know if Debian defaults to
> this, or if I had set systemd to dump logs there forever ago and
> have just forgotten about it).
> 
> Looking at the source code, it looks like there isn't an option
> for cc_config.xml to specify where to put the logs. Originally, the
> init script was utilized to appropriately redirect stdout and
> stderr as needed with the LOGFILE and ERRORLOG environment
> variables respectively, which ultimately were fed into the final
> command that started the boinc-client. As well, there is also a
> "--redirectio" flag that the boinc-client binary itself recognizes,
> which will redirect stdout and stderr to files in the BOINCDIR
> environment variable instead.
> 
> Taking a look at the environment variables for my running
> boinc-client at the moment, these are obviously not present:
> 
> # cat /proc/$(pidof boinc)/environ 
> LANG=en_US.UTF-8PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/binHOME=/var/lib/boinc-clientLOGNAME=boincUSER=boincSHELL=/bin/false
>
>  (I'm not sure what LOGNAME is doing there, but I'm ignoring it)
> 
> Presumably, we should still be able to redirect the output as we 
> desire by modifying the boinc-client.service file's "ExecStart" 
> command. Looks like we're certainly not the only ones to run into
> this:
> 
> https://stackoverflow.com/questions/32968506/how-to-pipe-output-to-a-file-when-running-as-a-systemd-service
>
>  So something like:
> 
> ExecStart=/bin/sh -c '/usr/bin/boinc --dir /var/lib/boinc-client
>> /var/log/boinc.log 2>/var/log/boincerr.log'
> 
> or whatever else is desired should work.
> 
> Aaaaand...
> 
> I changed my unit file's ExecStart to look like that, reloaded the 
> unit files via "systemctl daemon-reload", restarted boinc via 
> "systemctl restart boinc", and then the log files were written to
> again.
> 
> Cheers, Preston Maness
> 
> P.S. - With respect to the other bug 813728 where the log has a
> bunch of "No protocol specified" messages, I'm still thinking about
> how to handle that one. The xorg-server is ultimately responsible
> for the messages getting written. I'll fiddle with the freopen idea
> and see if anything obvious breaks. Though honestly, I'm more
> inclined to just leave things as-is. It's easy enough to rotate
> logs and grep out any lines you don't want. Incidentally, with the
> change to the ExecStart line, the "No Protocol Specified" lines get
> tossed into /var/log/boincerr.log so they're not polluting the
> main /var/log/boinc.log file. So that's nice. Honestly, that's
> probably going to be my answer to that bug.
> 
> On 02/20/2016 12:50 AM, mark wrote:
>> 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
> 
> 
> 

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