Bug#813134: boinc-client: systemd service file should run boinc with IO scheduling = idle by default

[Marcel Partap]

Package: boinc-client
Version: 7.6.22+dfsg-2
Severity: normal

This can be simply accomplished by adding IOSchedulingClass=idle to the
[Service] subsection of /lib/systemd/system/boinc-client.service . No need to
invoke ionice as is done from the old init.d script..



-- 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 unstable
  APT policy: (510, 'unstable'), (510, 'testing'), (509, 'experimental'), (500, 'wily'), (500, 'vivid'), (500, 'stable')
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Foreign Architectures: amd64

Kernel: Linux 4.2.0-1-686-pae (SMP w/12 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_GB.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_GB.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Init: sysvinit (via /sbin/init)

Versions of packages boinc-client depends on:
ii  adduser                 3.113+nmu3
ii  ca-certificates         20160104
ii  cdebconf [debconf-2.0]  0.201
ii  debconf [debconf-2.0]   1.5.58
ii  init-system-helpers     1.27
ii  libboinc7               7.6.22+dfsg-2
ii  libc6                   2.21-7
ii  libcurl3                7.47.0-1
ii  libgcc1                 1:5.3.1-5
ii  libstdc++6              5.3.1-5
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>
ii  boinc-manager             7.6.22+dfsg-2
ii  x11-xserver-utils         7.7+5

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

-- debconf information excluded

-- debsums errors found:
debsums: changed file /lib/systemd/system/boinc-client.service (from boinc-client package)