Network related problems

Slow network startup

Discussion

This problem is caused by networking hardware (modems, routers, NICs) that initialise slowly for various reasons. You will see this problem if BOINC client starts before the network has initialised and become ready for use. BOINC client should check to see if the network is ready before attempting to use it and take appropriate measures if the network is not ready but unfortunately BOINC does not do that. Furthermore, BOINC is unable to use network connections that become available after it has started.

Typically, this becomes a problem when you have BOINC configured to start at boot time as a Windows service or Linux daemon service. It can also happen when BOINC is running on a laptop that goes into hibernation and moves from one network connection to a different connection where it comes out of hibernation.

The behavior

You will, in relatively short time, see all of the following error messages:

Project communication failed: attempting access to reference site
Access to reference site failed - check network connection or proxy configuration.
Scheduler request failed: Couldn't resolve host name

You will see the 3 messages in the above list every time BOINC client tries to contact a project to initiate a scheduler request. It will be unable to contact any of your projects.

The test

To determine if you actually have this problem, restart BOINC client (just BOINC client, not the operating system) then try to update 1 or 2 projects. If BOINC is able to contact your projects after the restart then you probably have this problem.

The fix

The proper fix is to have BOINC client check to see if the network is up and running before attempting to use it and, if it is not up and running, to check every few seconds until it is. This bug will hopefully be fixed by version 6.3.4. For laptops that lose the connection when moving from one connection to another the only workaround is to simply restart BOINC. For desktops, the workaround is to introduce a delay into either the system boot procedure or the BOINC startup procedure.

Windows

(needs expansion)

Linux

• For Fedora systems, add the line NETWORKWAIT=yes to /etc/sysconfig/network to delay system startup for 10 seconds or until a network connection is up, whichever occurs sooner.

Proxy not configured