I transferred my Mac OS X user account from an oldy-moldy iMac to a new Mac mini, and now I can't run BOINC. I first tried to copy the directory I was using on the iMac (which isn't going to run BOINC anymore), but running BOINC showed an error. I deleted that directory and downloaded a fresh BOINC, but now it won't run, claiming "Another instance of BOINC is running."

There are no other files in the BOINC directory (which I called "/usr/bin/boinc") right now. And I've already checked "ps aux | grep boinc" and restarted the computer, but it's still not working. I've also tried removing files "lockfile," "account_.xml," and "boinc.txt.bf" from my home directory, but still no luck.

Any ideas? Thanks in advance.

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I don't know about Macs, but this has been a common problem on the Windows forum.
There, users have setup BOINC so that it appears in all user areas, or as a service and a cli,
or some such. So Boinc starts somewhere, and then gets started in another place. It does NOT like this!
This is most likely what is happening with you. But I've no idea about how to find the other instances of BOINC.

Perhaps if you do a keyword search. And don't forget: Click the Search button! DON'T press enter.

Les

No, that's not quite what I have. I have searched all running processes for all "users" for BOINC. The Mac version of BOINC is much more like other UNIX/Linux versions than the Windows version. And I have also done a keyword search.

> I don't know about Macs, but this has been a common problem on the Windows
> forum.
> There, users have setup BOINC so that it appears in all user areas, or as a
> service and a cli,
> or some such. So Boinc starts somewhere, and then gets started in another
> place. It does NOT like this!
> This is most likely what is happening with you. But I've no idea about how to
> find the other instances of BOINC.
>
> Perhaps if you do a keyword search. And don't forget: Click the Search button!
> DON'T press enter.
>
> Les
>
>
>

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Have you tried grepping the actual model name ? For example the output of top for my g5 is listed below. For my example you need to kill the PIDs of 25676, 25601, 25602 and 25603.

My 2 cents,
Cliff




Processes: 62 total, 4 running, 58 sleeping... 142 threads 11:32:09
Load Avg: 2.50, 2.17, 1.76 CPU usage: 77.4% user, 22.6% sys, 0.0% idle
SharedLibs: num = 122, resident = 26.0M code, 2.70M data, 7.23M LinkEdit
MemRegions: num = 6352, resident = 103M + 6.05M private, 63.5M shared
PhysMem: 75.5M wired, 113M active, 228M inactive, 417M used, 94.3M free
VM: 4.29G + 82.7M 464588(0) pageins, 315095(0) pageouts

PID COMMAND %CPU TIME #TH #PRTS #MREGS RPRVT RSHRD RSIZE VSIZE
25728 top 15.2% 0:11.24 1 16 25 276K 492K 676K 27.1M
25684 bash 0.0% 0:00.74 1 12 25 740K 920K 1.35M 18.2M
25683 login 0.0% 0:00.02 1 13 38 128K 500K 508K 26.9M
25676 hadsm3viz_ 26.5% 5:42.34 2 96 207 6.16M 20.4M 29.3M 170M
25674 bash 0.0% 0:00.05 1 9 26 140K 1.54M 988K 18.2M
25631 bash 0.0% 0:00.88 1 12 25 100K 1.52M 836K 18.2M
25630 login 0.0% 0:00.04 1 13 38 124K 500K 508K 26.9M
25617 Safari 0.0% 0:47.22 5 103 226 14.7M 11.9M 23.1M 156M
25603 hadsm3um_4 33.3% 30:59.19 1 12 38 40.8M 7.27M 43.5M 91.2M
25602 hadsm3_4.0 0.0% 0:02.39 1 11 27 212K 1.54M 1.12M 29.6M
25601 boinc_4.19 0.0% 0:00.98 1 13 26 336K 1.27M 1.02M 23.8M
25600 bash 0.0% 0:00.01 1 11 16 92K 912K 548K 18.2M
25599 bash 0.0% 0:00.02 1 9 25 432K 936K 688K 18.2M
3921 lookupd 0.0% 0:25.01 2 37 98 1.87M 980K 1.20M 30.6M
1325 bash 0.0% 0:00.68 1 12 25 400K 936K 464K 18.2M

Thanks for your suggestion, Cliff, but I can't find anything that looks like the model name. My gut tells me that there's some file that's locking BOINC that I haven't found yet.

I did try grepping "/usr/bin" (ps aux | grep /usr/bin), since my copy of BOINC is in "/usr/bin/boinc". No dice - the only thing that came up was my grep command.

Any help finding that lock file or even just a user guide for the BOINC project would be helpful.

Todd

>
> Have you tried grepping the actual model name ? For example the output of top
> for my g5 is listed below. For my example you need to kill the PIDs of 25676,
> 25601, 25602 and 25603.
>
> My 2 cents,
> Cliff
>
>
>
>
> Processes: 62 total, 4 running, 58 sleeping... 142 threads
> 11:32:09
> Load Avg: 2.50, 2.17, 1.76 CPU usage: 77.4% user, 22.6% sys, 0.0% idle
> SharedLibs: num = 122, resident = 26.0M code, 2.70M data, 7.23M LinkEdit
> MemRegions: num = 6352, resident = 103M + 6.05M private, 63.5M shared
> PhysMem: 75.5M wired, 113M active, 228M inactive, 417M used, 94.3M free
> VM: 4.29G + 82.7M 464588(0) pageins, 315095(0) pageouts
>
> PID COMMAND %CPU TIME #TH #PRTS #MREGS RPRVT RSHRD RSIZE VSIZE
> 25728 top 15.2% 0:11.24 1 16 25 276K 492K 676K 27.1M
> 25684 bash 0.0% 0:00.74 1 12 25 740K 920K 1.35M 18.2M
> 25683 login 0.0% 0:00.02 1 13 38 128K 500K 508K 26.9M
> 25676 hadsm3viz_ 26.5% 5:42.34 2 96 207 6.16M 20.4M 29.3M 170M
> 25674 bash 0.0% 0:00.05 1 9 26 140K 1.54M 988K 18.2M
> 25631 bash 0.0% 0:00.88 1 12 25 100K 1.52M 836K 18.2M
> 25630 login 0.0% 0:00.04 1 13 38 124K 500K 508K 26.9M
> 25617 Safari 0.0% 0:47.22 5 103 226 14.7M 11.9M 23.1M 156M
> 25603 hadsm3um_4 33.3% 30:59.19 1 12 38 40.8M 7.27M 43.5M 91.2M
> 25602 hadsm3_4.0 0.0% 0:02.39 1 11 27 212K 1.54M 1.12M 29.6M
> 25601 boinc_4.19 0.0% 0:00.98 1 13 26 336K 1.27M 1.02M 23.8M
> 25600 bash 0.0% 0:00.01 1 11 16 92K 912K 548K 18.2M
> 25599 bash 0.0% 0:00.02 1 9 25 432K 936K 688K 18.2M
> 3921 lookupd 0.0% 0:25.01 2 37 98 1.87M 980K 1.20M 30.6M
> 1325 bash 0.0% 0:00.68 1 12 25 400K 936K 464K 18.2M
>

In Windows there is a folder under BOINC called slots. I'm running HT, so there are 2 subfolders, called 0, and 1.
There is a file in each of these called boinc_lockfile. In both cases, the file size is 0.

Les

> even just a user guide for the BOINC
> project would be helpful.

Official documentation for BOINC is sparse, but there is a manual on <a href="http://boinc-doc.net/index.php">Paul Buck's site</a>.

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I got this error message, \"another instance of boinc is running\" on my Linux system.

Turned out I had set permissions [how?] of the whole BOINC directory to being owned by root, therefore boinc was unable to create \'lockfile\' & assumed it was in use.

chown -R mark:mark BOINC (as root from my home dir.) fixed it.

Mark

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