I've recently (2 weeks) switched from Kubuntu 22.04.5 to Debian KDE 12.9 on my desktop computer (Gigabyte 97 series MB, FX8350 8 cores/threads, 4.1 GHz, 32 GB RAM, nVidia RTx2070, nVidia 535 drivers on X11).

BOINC (manager 8.0.2 from the BOINC repository, Milkyway CPU, Einstein GPU) runs fine, except that when I restart with BOINC in my autostart, the BOINC manager opens without connecting to work storage or projects (no projects listed, show 0 storage available/used). I can see from Conky reporting near-zero CPU usage that no crunching is taking place in the background, and htop reports five boincmgr processes but no other BOINC related activity. If I Exit BOINC Manager and relaunch it from any of my links or from terminal, it comes up correctly with the two projects, their task lists, statistics, and correct reportage of the dedicated partition where I store the work.

Previously in Kubuntu, autostart worked as I'd expect (and had done since last BOINC reinstall); on logging into Plasma, BOINC Manager would open showing the last tab I'd looked at and immediately begin crunching.

What do I need to look for to get the autostarted BOINC to connect and start work on its own?

By default BOINC client runs as a service.
When you run it manually, it starts from your user.
If you want service to pickup your user location, go to /etc/default/boinc-client and set path to your BOINC Data directory.
Then do the restart.

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BOINC maintainer.
For any insight, check my BOINC Development Blog.

My autostart had --boincdir=/var/lib/boinc already, but I removed that and tried uncommenting the BOINCDIR line (pointing to the same location) in /etc/default/boinc-client -- with no change.

Given I have a separate partition mounted as /var/lib/boinc, I wonder if it's not a case of BOINC Manager starting too quickly, before the OS has time to mount that partition? FWIW, even when I start BOINC Manager the second time, it'll take 3-4 seconds before it finds and displays the work partition (but if I don't close and reopen it, it'll sit there for at least a few minutes).

Supporting this as a possibility, I just rebooted while I was in the kitchen getting some tea, and when I logged into Plasma BOINC Manager opened correctly.

The manager is just a gui to control the client. If on autostart, I am pretty certain there is a way to introduce a delay in starting the client to give the system time to mount the partition if that is the issue.

In reply to Dave's message of 2 Feb 2025:

The manager is just a gui to control the client. If on autostart, I am pretty certain there is a way to introduce a delay in starting the client to give the system time to mount the partition if that is the issue.

I was just thinking about this -- and letting the restarted machine sit for five minutes at the login screen caused BOINC Manager to start normally. It looks like I only need a few (maybe 10?) seconds. I'll try inserting a short sleep in the autostart command.

I opened ~/.config/autostart/boinc.desktop and changed to EXEC= sh -c 'sleep 10 && boincmgr' with the BOINCDIR=/var/lib/boinc uncommented in /etc/default/boinc-client -- and rebooted. BOINC Manager started up after the specified delay and correctly found the work and started the client.

Following up, this fixed the issue, and the same fix also corrected Conky failing to start after applying this fix to BOINC Manager.