I've installed BOINC and attached my Charity Engine account to it, but now the BOINC Manager can't download the files (work units, I'm guessing).
It just times out and then waits a while to try again. Been doing this since yesterday. I tried searching these forums, but I couldn't find anyone with a similar complaint. Any thoughts?
If you check the Event Log in BOINC, there may be some further details about what is happening. Also, your system should get attached to more projects in another day or so, which might help in determining where the source of the problem is (a specific project, the BOINC client, etc).
(You can just delete the file, if the download works).
If you can download that manually in your web browser, but BOINC cannot download it, then I'd suspect a software firewall in Windows might be blocking BOINC from accessing the work.charityengine.com domain.
If you can't download it manually, then it still looks like a firewall issue, but could be on your network or beyond. I checked VirusTotal, but no engines are reporting these files as being suspicious or anything.
I was able to download the file from the link just fine, however, I looked up the allowed apps for Windows Firewall, and BOINC (nor anything like it) is not one of them. There are six different .exe files in the BOINC installation folder. Should I allow all of them? Any others I should add?
If the firewall is set to a strict, white-list-only policy, then you probably would have to add boinc.exe to that list. As an option, a quick way to test is to disable the firewall and then see if BOINC works. If it still doesn't, then the problem must be somewhere else.
Usually, that "connect() failed" message you saw in the log is a temporary thing... I'd be curious if your computer has attached to any additional projects now and if they have the same problem? Another look at the event log might help to check that, if the problem isn't the firewall.
Interestingly, BOINC has other tasks (specifically, Rosetta@Home and Cosmology@Home) that have made progress; the Charity Engine task still sits at 0.000%.
I did try adding BOINC.exe and BOINCMGR.exe to the firewall whitelist, but it didn't seem to make a difference. I forced a retry of the downloads, but they still show zero file transfer speed and eventually time out like before.
That's good that other tasks are working, and possibly ok that the Charity Engine task is sitting at 0%. If the event log is not reporting download errors anymore, that is a step in the right direction. I didn't think there was a Charity Engine task in the task list before, so this would be a good thing!
Maybe give it another day. If the Charity Engine task is an "idle" task, it may not report progress, even though it is working (some tasks are not deterministic, so it isn't possible to say how far along it is or how much work it will do until it's done).
As far as I can remember, the Charity Engine task has always been there, it just hasn't made any progress because BOINC can't receive the files. The issue is in the Transfers tab: none of the Charity Engine transfers ever complete (or even start, from the look of it). This is why I wanted to post screenshots, so people could see exactly what I'm talking about without having to describe it in detail and risk an inaccurate description. The proverbial thousand words...
Speaking of which, any progress on why we can't include images in these messages?
At any rate, the event log still shows the same sort of download errors for Charity Engine. Rosetta and Cosmology are receiving data to work on. Doesn't that suggest the issue is with the Charity Engine data rather than BOINC itself?
No... I can't. So it's particular locations (ie servers) that the firewall is catching? I was able to download that same file from work.charityengine.com. Is there a way to force BOINC to check certain servers and not others?
Can you whitelist the download servers? download1.charityengine.com / download2.charityengine.com / download3.charityengine.com are the current ones (and should not change in the foreseeable future).
I don't think so. I'm not that familiar with how our firewall is set up. I may not even have the permissions to do it. I did find an option to allow apps through the firewall, but not specific servers. That's why I was wondering about directing BOINC to the server I know I can get to.
The download servers are necessary for balancing the load, so the fix would have to be on your end, for now at least. If you can provide the name of the firewall, we might be able to offer some tips on whitelisting. (This assumes it is installed on your computer; if it is an independent network device, it's definitely the administrator of the network that would need to make the change).
Yeah, the second one. I'm not really comfortable asking IT to make that change. Probably not supposed to be running BOINC at all, officially. My computer just sits idle for so long I thought I'd do something good with it. Thanks for all your help! It looks like I won't be able to use Charity Engine from here for now. Sorry to put you to the trouble.
It isn't all bad. You're unable to get tasks from the Charity Engine server, but you can (and are) still getting work from other projects. This is a good charitable contribution and you still get entered into the prize drawings for it.
Now, it is a bit of a gray area, for a couple of reasons:
If you're on a company computer, it's likely the company that would be deemed the winner, if you won the drawing--and companies are not eligible to claim the prize, but only to donate it to the charity of their choosing.
It's generally against the terms to manipulate which projects your computer is working on, so if you won, there would be a question as to whether a company firewall preventing work from certain projects would affect eligibility to win the prize. The purpose of such rules is to prevent gaming the system, which would not be the case, so very well might not be relevant, but like I said, it's a gray area...
If your purpose is strictly to do some charitable computing, you can still use Charity Engine regardless. I'd even encourage you to consider mentioning it to someone in IT or management. You could win some hearts or make a case for a good PR opportunity. And in any case, we don't want trouble finding any of our users, even if for a good cause.
Thanks again for your support, and we're glad to help answer questions whenever we can, not a problem at all.
(By the way, that image upload issue turned into a tricky one. I'll post back when the solution comes around.)
I've installed BOINC and attached my Charity Engine account to it, but now the BOINC Manager can't download the files (work units, I'm guessing).
It just times out and then waits a while to try again. Been doing this since yesterday. I tried searching these forums, but I couldn't find anyone with a similar complaint. Any thoughts?
What OS is your computer?
If you check the Event Log in BOINC, there may be some further details about what is happening. Also, your system should get attached to more projects in another day or so, which might help in determining where the source of the problem is (a specific project, the BOINC client, etc).
Sorry, I should have mentioned! OS is Windows 10 Pro.
Thanks for the advice to check the Event Log. It's full of items like this (here's a small portion):
This could be a firewall issue on your system. As a test, are you able to download this file from the server: http://work.charityengine.com/download/check_vtx-20190706.exe
(You can just delete the file, if the download works).
If you can download that manually in your web browser, but BOINC cannot download it, then I'd suspect a software firewall in Windows might be blocking BOINC from accessing the work.charityengine.com domain.
If you can't download it manually, then it still looks like a firewall issue, but could be on your network or beyond. I checked VirusTotal, but no engines are reporting these files as being suspicious or anything.
I was able to download the file from the link just fine, however, I looked up the allowed apps for Windows Firewall, and BOINC (nor anything like it) is not one of them. There are six different .exe files in the BOINC installation folder. Should I allow all of them? Any others I should add?
If the firewall is set to a strict, white-list-only policy, then you probably would have to add boinc.exe to that list. As an option, a quick way to test is to disable the firewall and then see if BOINC works. If it still doesn't, then the problem must be somewhere else.
Usually, that "connect() failed" message you saw in the log is a temporary thing... I'd be curious if your computer has attached to any additional projects now and if they have the same problem? Another look at the event log might help to check that, if the problem isn't the firewall.
Interestingly, BOINC has other tasks (specifically, Rosetta@Home and Cosmology@Home) that have made progress; the Charity Engine task still sits at 0.000%.
I did try adding BOINC.exe and BOINCMGR.exe to the firewall whitelist, but it didn't seem to make a difference. I forced a retry of the downloads, but they still show zero file transfer speed and eventually time out like before.
That's good that other tasks are working, and possibly ok that the Charity Engine task is sitting at 0%. If the event log is not reporting download errors anymore, that is a step in the right direction. I didn't think there was a Charity Engine task in the task list before, so this would be a good thing!
Maybe give it another day. If the Charity Engine task is an "idle" task, it may not report progress, even though it is working (some tasks are not deterministic, so it isn't possible to say how far along it is or how much work it will do until it's done).
As far as I can remember, the Charity Engine task has always been there, it just hasn't made any progress because BOINC can't receive the files. The issue is in the Transfers tab: none of the Charity Engine transfers ever complete (or even start, from the look of it). This is why I wanted to post screenshots, so people could see exactly what I'm talking about without having to describe it in detail and risk an inaccurate description. The proverbial thousand words...
Speaking of which, any progress on why we can't include images in these messages?
At any rate, the event log still shows the same sort of download errors for Charity Engine. Rosetta and Cosmology are receiving data to work on. Doesn't that suggest the issue is with the Charity Engine data rather than BOINC itself?
Your firewall might be blocking other download servers that we use, for instance, can you access http://download1.charityengine.com/check_vtx-20190706.exe directly?
No... I can't. So it's particular locations (ie servers) that the firewall is catching? I was able to download that same file from work.charityengine.com. Is there a way to force BOINC to check certain servers and not others?
Can you whitelist the download servers? download1.charityengine.com / download2.charityengine.com / download3.charityengine.com are the current ones (and should not change in the foreseeable future).
I don't think so. I'm not that familiar with how our firewall is set up. I may not even have the permissions to do it. I did find an option to allow apps through the firewall, but not specific servers. That's why I was wondering about directing BOINC to the server I know I can get to.
The download servers are necessary for balancing the load, so the fix would have to be on your end, for now at least. If you can provide the name of the firewall, we might be able to offer some tips on whitelisting. (This assumes it is installed on your computer; if it is an independent network device, it's definitely the administrator of the network that would need to make the change).
Yeah, the second one. I'm not really comfortable asking IT to make that change. Probably not supposed to be running BOINC at all, officially. My computer just sits idle for so long I thought I'd do something good with it. Thanks for all your help! It looks like I won't be able to use Charity Engine from here for now. Sorry to put you to the trouble.
It isn't all bad. You're unable to get tasks from the Charity Engine server, but you can (and are) still getting work from other projects. This is a good charitable contribution and you still get entered into the prize drawings for it.
Now, it is a bit of a gray area, for a couple of reasons:
If your purpose is strictly to do some charitable computing, you can still use Charity Engine regardless. I'd even encourage you to consider mentioning it to someone in IT or management. You could win some hearts or make a case for a good PR opportunity. And in any case, we don't want trouble finding any of our users, even if for a good cause.
Thanks again for your support, and we're glad to help answer questions whenever we can, not a problem at all.
(By the way, that image upload issue turned into a tricky one. I'll post back when the solution comes around.)
It looks like the image upload is working again. Here's a test...