I hate to suggest this but you might be better off installing Mint 20.3 rather than 21.1. The boinc version (7.18.1) that "ships" with 21.1 is known to have bugs. If you want to start over, Mint 20.3 can be downloaded at this link.

https://linuxmint.com/download_all.php

I hate to suggest this but you might be better off installing Mint 20.3 rather than 21.1. The boinc version (7.18.1) that "ships" with 21.1 is known to have bugs. If you want to start over, Mint 20.3 can be downloaded at this link.

https://linuxmint.com/download_all.php

I was think along the same lines, that if this doesn't work, than I should pick another version of linux, and install that. I am glad you came up with a suggestion of which one. I will do that. This is just getting too aggravating. It shouldn't be like this.
Thanks again.

After installation of the system software:

Update and upgrade the system packages to the latest releases

sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade
reboot

Install nvidia drivers (version 525). There are other versions available

sudo apt install nvidia-driver-525
reboot

Install boinc meta package (includes boinc and boinc manager):

sudo apt install boinc
sudo usermod -a -G boinc $USER
reboot

I hate to suggest this but you might be better off installing Mint 20.3 rather than 21.1. The boinc version (7.18.1) that "ships" with 21.1 is known to have bugs.

My journey with Linux started with Linux Mint 20, after 25 years or so of being exclusively a Windows user - and MSDOS and CP/M before that. It took a few false starts, but after a while I got it all running, and switched to the PPA, because I'm an active member of the BOINC development community, and I wanted to keep up to date with new test releases.

I installed Mint 21 (initially 21.0) as an upgrade over 20 (by that time 20.3). During the upgrade process, Mint rejected the PPA because of the security key problem, and installed the repository version of v7.18.1 in its place. And it ran. (rendering null and void my plan to explore what was really wrong with v7.18.1)

The PPA uses the systemd launch process to run BOINC. I'm speculating that it's really the meta-framework surrounding BOINC that's broken in v7.18.1 (the responsibility of the repository maintainers), rather than BOINC itself. But alternative explanations are invited.

The PPA uses the systemd launch process to run BOINC. I'm speculating that it's really the meta-framework surrounding BOINC that's broken in v7.18.1 (the responsibility of the repository maintainers), rather than BOINC itself. But alternative explanations are invited.

I found this bug report that suggests the v7.18.1 client crashes with a core dump on processors without the avx instruction set. https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/boinc/+bug/1970521

The flatpak boinc v7.22.1 is available on flathub.org. I do have another computer on which I could give this a try to see if it's fully functional. Is there a downside to running boinc in a container? https://flathub.org/apps/edu.berkeley.BOINC

That launchpad bug report looks interesting. BOINC detects CPU capabilities via a single long string, and it's been getting longer over time as more instruction sets have been added. There have been times in the past when the string has overflowed and/or been truncated, and has needed extending. I'll have a look through the v7.18.1 source tree, to see the status of that string in that release. v7.18.1 was primarily targeted at Android, so some other elements may have got left behind. But it'll take me some time, though.

We've already explored flatpak earlier in this conversation, and it didn't help - I don't think it's worth revisiting.

@ Bedrich Hajek: because you haven't succeeded in attaching to the project yet, we can't see the details of the CPU in this host. Could you let us know the make/model of the CPU, or - if you've successfully attached it to another BOINC project in the past - post a link to the host details at that project?

That launchpad bug report looks interesting. BOINC detects CPU capabilities via a single long string, and it's been getting longer over time as more instruction sets have been added. There have been times in the past when the string has overflowed and/or been truncated, and has needed extending. I'll have a look through the v7.18.1 source tree, to see the status of that string in that release. v7.18.1 was primarily targeted at Android, so some other elements may have got left behind. But it'll take me some time, though.

We've already explored flatpak earlier in this conversation, and it didn't help - I don't think it's worth revisiting.

@ Bedrich Hajek: because you haven't succeeded in attaching to the project yet, we can't see the details of the CPU in this host. Could you let us know the make/model of the CPU, or - if you've successfully attached it to another BOINC project in the past - post a link to the host details at that project?

The computer in question is:

https://www.gpugrid.net/show_host_detail.php?hostid=544232

I installed a second hard drive on which I installed Mint. I can boot into either windows or Mint now. The machine does run well with either OS.

If I am going to experiment it's on an older model, not my primary one.

I did manage to attach from the boinc manager to new project accounts, but I wasn't able to attach to my existing project accounts. I think I mentioned that somewhere in one my message board post.

https://github.com/BOINC/boinc/issues/5247

Here is an example attaching to new project account:

https://sech.me/boinc/Amicable/show_host_detail.php?hostid=206613

Of course, I since delete the flatpak and reinstall Mint. The WU's were crunching well, at the time.

I plan to work on this, later today, I am actually away from from home now. I hope this helps. Thanks.

OK, got some basic background. The list of processor features is stored in <p_features>: until early 2020 (around BOINC v7.16.7), it was set at 256 bytes, but it was increased to 1024 following https://github.com/BOINC/boinc/issues/3431 - concern over, specifically, an AMD Ryzen R9 3900X CPU. That's in the v7.18 branch source. It's recently been increased again, to 8192 bytes, though that won't take effect until v7.22.x

Looking at my own machines, which are mostly Intel i5s, they report much shorter feature lists under Windows than under Linux: an old one running Windows has a list 242 bytes long, and on a newer one running Linux the list is 757 bytes. You can see the list in BOINC's Event Log in the top few lines after a restart.

This probably isn't the cause, then, but if anyone can capture any figures for an AMD Phenom II X6 1090T or similar, it would be interesting.

There was another bug - again involving avx, I think - which caused 64-bit versions of BOINC to fail on low power Intel CPUs running Windows - 32-bit versions worked OK. I'll have a look for that next.

Edit - that particular bug was in an SSL security library distributed with the Windows client. It won't affect the Linux client at all - red herring. But #2470 if you're interested.

Looks like, I made some progress, but I am not there yet.

Click below and scroll down:

https://github.com/BOINC/boinc/issues/5247

I attached the projects by the weak method.

http://www.gpugrid.net/hosts_user.php?userid=19626

https://einsteinathome.org/host/13142147

It works on Einstein. It's pity gpugrid doesn't have any work, so I can test it.

The work is very low but some is still trickling out. I have done 8 tasks today. Still working on one currently for the 26th.

You just have to ask for the work and it shows up.

A script to ping them every 5-10 minutes is all it takes.

After running boinc client flawlessly for several weeks, rebooting the computers on average everyday, without any issues. I reboot it today, and got this message:

"Boinc Manager - Daemon Start Fail"
'Boinc Manager is not able to start a Boinc client."
"Please run the client and try again"

BTW: Boinc manager is running in the background, but I can't access it.

This is happening on my GenuineIntel Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-5820K CPU @ 3.30GHz [Family 6 Model 63 Stepping 2] (12 processors).

The other machine is running fine.

https://www.gpugrid.net/hosts_user.php?userid=19626

I have posted screenshot on this site, please scroll down:

https://github.com/BOINC/boinc/issues/5247

What is the solution?

After running boinc client flawlessly for several weeks, rebooting the computers on average everyday, without any issues. I reboot it today, and got this message:

"Boinc Manager - Daemon Start Fail"
'Boinc Manager is not able to start a Boinc client."
"Please run the client and try again"

BTW: Boinc manager is running in the background, but I can't access it.

This is happening on my GenuineIntel Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-5820K CPU @ 3.30GHz [Family 6 Model 63 Stepping 2] (12 processors).

The other machine is running fine.

https://www.gpugrid.net/hosts_user.php?userid=19626

I have posted screenshot on this site, please scroll down:

https://github.com/BOINC/boinc/issues/5247

What is the solution?

Nevermind, I solved this problem myself.

In the Boinc window, I clicked file, then select computer, then typed in the host name.
I don't know how this happened, but it's fixed.