detect network availability

[Dagorath]

This issue was brought up in this thread. Summarising, the user starts BOINC client as a daemon during boot on a Fedora 9 system that apparently brings up the network rather slowly. When BOINC client starts it finds no network available. Putting a 15 second delay in the system startup scripts to delay starting the BOINC daemon fixed the problem for the user.

I imagine BOINC client, when it starts, checks if the network is available before proceeding. Perhaps the OS (Fedora 9) is reporting incorrectly? Perhaps the OS reports correctly but BOINC times out too quickly?

[Nicolas]

Already possible. Set <start_delay> in cc_config.xml

[Dagorath]

Setting <start_delay> in cc_config.xml delays starting science apps which is not the preferred solution.

[Nicolas]

Sorry, my misunderstanding. I thought start_delay made the client do absolutely nothing until the delay finished.

<start_delay> only delays the client starting science apps. You want to limit the client accessing the network. So, good to reopen ticket :)

[mjakubicek]

In my point of view the problem cannot be solved by waiting on startup: the real trouble is that BOINC cannot use any networks newly available after its startup. This regards not only slow DHCP responses but mainly wireless connections or any connections which indeed come up when BOINC is already running.

From what I know this should be solved in BOINC 6.4 by the asynchronous GUI RPC. I truly do not understand how GUI (!) RPC connections are related to this (isn't it a problem in the client itself?), but I hope I'm just wrong in this and it will be solved soon.

[Nicolas]

The new asynchronous GUI RPCs won't stop the client from attempting network access during startup. They will stop the GUI from hanging while the client is busy, for example, trying to access the network.

[Nicolas]

fixed link to forum thread in ticket description.

[mjakubicek]

This is actually a general problem, boinc should be able to detect network availability if the user e.g. switches network, moves with the laptop etc.

[mjakubicek]

Hm...I've done some testing on this again on behalf of a Fedora user request and this seems to be fixed. What has changed? I was searching the changeset for "network" and there are only two of them that seem to be related according to the svn commit message, either [13295] or even [12665], but those are so so old that I can't believe it took more than two year to make it into current branch for them.

So either I screwed up the testing (probably) or it has been indeed fixed meanwhile (somewhere)...could anyone please retest this? Thanks a lot.

[kamil.paral]

This is not fixed, in Boinc Manager 6.4.7 on Fedora 11 it is still not able to connect to network without restarting the daemon. It is quite annoying, could somebody fix it please?

[mjakubicek]

Replying to kamil.paral:

This is not fixed, in Boinc Manager 6.4.7 on Fedora 11 it is still not able to connect to network without restarting the daemon. It is quite annoying, could somebody fix it please?

I should have emphasized it more than by setting the "version" of this ticket, sorry: the version I was speaking about is 6.6.37 of course, please retest with this version. For Fedora it's currently available in the updates-testing repositories. You can download and provide feedback here:

Fedora 10: ​https://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/F10/FEDORA-2009-7973
Fedora 11: ​https://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/F11/FEDORA-2009-7940

[kamil.paral]

Unfortunately I will not be able to test it for a week, I'm leaving for holiday. If it is then still in testing repo, I will surely test it.

[kamil.paral]

It seems to be fixed from the first glance.

[kamil.paral]

I believe it is fixed, thanks.