LHC@home

Hello everyone,

I installed Boinc from the repository on a new Debian 12 install and I get a Computation error, here the excerpt from one error:
https://lhcathome.cern.ch/lhcathome/result.php?resultid=396141360

<core_client_version>7.20.5</core_client_version>
<![CDATA[
<message>
process exited with code 1 (0x1, -255)</message>
<stderr_txt>
2023-07-12 17:24:43 (14948): Detected: vboxwrapper 26206
2023-07-12 17:24:43 (14948): Detected: BOINC client v7.20.5
2023-07-12 17:24:48 (14948): Error in guest additions for VM: -1041038848
Command:
VBoxManage -q list systemproperties
Output:
VBoxManage: error: Failed to create the VirtualBox object!
VBoxManage: error: Code NS_ERROR_SOCKET_FAIL (0xC1F30200) - IPC daemon socket error (extended info not available)
VBoxManage: error: Most likely, the VirtualBox COM server is not running or failed to start.

2023-07-12 17:24:48 (14948): Detected: VirtualBox VboxManage Interface (Version: 7.0.8)
2023-07-12 17:24:53 (14948): Error in host info for VM: -1041038848
Command:
VBoxManage -q list hostinfo 
Output:
VBoxManage: error: Failed to create the VirtualBox object!
VBoxManage: error: Code NS_ERROR_SOCKET_FAIL (0xC1F30200) - IPC daemon socket error (extended info not available)
VBoxManage: error: Most likely, the VirtualBox COM server is not running or failed to start.

2023-07-12 17:24:53 (14948): WARNING: Communication with VM Hypervisor failed.
2023-07-12 17:24:53 (14948): ERROR: VBoxManage list hostinfo failed
17:24:53 (14948): called boinc_finish(1)

</stderr_txt>
]]>

I tried a few things and made the following observations:
-Non-Boinc VMs run fine. Be it run directly in VirtualBox or through Genymobile.
-If I remember correctly from the past, Boinc VMs turn up in the list of VMs in VirtualBox and/or in its Media Manager. Now the jobs only run for 13 seconds and never turn up in VirtualBox.
-For some reason the slots folder contents get deleted immediately, so I don't have access to the latest logs
- I tried the "PrivateTmp=true" solution discussed in another thread, which did not change anything
- tried running "VBoxManage -q list systemproperties" on my usser account, which worked, no idea about the BOINC user account, as "su boinc" asks for a password which I don't have. "sudo -u boinc VBoxManage -q list systemproperties" works.

Does anyone have an idea what the problem could be?

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Did you add your boinc user to the group "vboxusers"?
If not, do it and then restart the boinc service.

thank you, I forgot about that, yes I tried it too.

Another thought, VirtualBox is up and running now, but during install I had trouble with both the generic .run installer and the experimental .deb for Debian 12. They both complained about I think python binutils and some kernel building packages, I think linux-headers and gc. After manually installing them and some tweaking install went through without a hitch, except for it noting that binutils is deprecated. However it did not show any errors anymore nor wanted me to run vboxmanage or how it was called.

Who knows though what else is missing from Virtualbox which the installers did not even complain about. I am a bit surprised that not even the .deb had these added as necessary dependencies.

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I have 6 linux mint boxes that are running BOINC.

3 of them (all mint v20.3, kernel 5.15.0) that seem to successfully process "Theory Simulation v300.07 (vbox64_theory)
x86_64-pc-linux-gnu" tasks (59 of 60 valid, 1 running on this box). None of these boxes have the user boinc in the vboxusers group

The other 3 boxes (1 mint v20.3 as above and 2 are mint v21.1) have 100% failure rate (example box skip-ES7C91, https://lhcathome.cern.ch/lhcathome/show_host_detail.php?hostid=10832951) with same or nearly same result as: https://lhcathome.cern.ch/lhcathome/result.php?resultid=396397372.

I added user boinc to vboxusers on the host linked above but no change.

All 6 of these boxes had BOINC (and I assume vbox) installed as part of a BOINC PPA I used - costamagnagianfranco/boinc
I believe the metapackage boinc-virtualbox is where vbox came from.

I don't know where/how to pursue this any further and it's obvious ya'll are more conversant about vbox... I can almost spell it.

Will follow this thread to see if anything comes up but for now the 3 'bad' boxes will be on NNW for LHC.

Thanx, Skip

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- da shu @ HeliOS,
"Free software” is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of “free” as in “free speech”, not as in “free beer".

I got it running.

I am very tired and did not read up on the full discussion surrounding this, so here just the quick and dirty fix from https://quchempedia.univ-angers.fr/athome/forum_thread.php?id=166&postid=1681#1681 :

Sebastien provided a solution and now I think we know the root cause. I copy/paste here what I think important:

To fix this issue, I edited the file /lib/systemd/system/boinc-client.service and replaced ProtectSystem=strict by ProtectSystem=full

systemctl stop boinc-client
sed -i 's/ProtectSystem=strict/ProtectSystem=full/g' /lib/systemd/system/boinc-client.service
systemctl daemon-reload
systemctl start boinc-client

I came to that answer from https://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/forum_thread.php?id=15010&postid=106328#106328
Supposedly something something BOINC not being allowed to write to folders and this enabling BOINC to write to other folders than what is strictly defined as safe folders.

I would appreciate if somebody who is more knowledgeable with Linux could explain if this setting is a safety issue as BOINC might be able to write and delete data in all folders now?

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