I just got OS X Lion 10.7.2 set up and managed to get VNC logins working. Unfortunately it seems the changes in Lion's multiuser capabilities and VNC handling have made it such that BOINC no longer detects a VNC login as system activity like it did in OS X Snow Leopard 10.6. When I was running 10.6, as soon as logged in via VNC, BOINC would suspend until I either went idle or logged out. Now, BOINC seems to not detect the login on Lion as activity, and only follows the cpu usage rules for suspending.

I've found the --check_all_logins command line switch, but I don't run BOINC from the command line and don't want to. I want it to run as normal as it's designed on OS X, but tell it to watch for VNC/ARD logins and suspend computing as if the local keyboard and mouse were being used. It'd be ideal if I could do this through the GUI, and okay if I could do it through a config file, but I'm unable to find anything that looks like a config file in /Library/Application Support/BOINC Data.

Any help would be appreciated!

...but I'm unable to find anything that looks like a config file in /Library/Application Support/BOINC Data.

You won't find it if you didn't create it beforehand. ;-)

The cc_config.xml file isn't there by default, but there doesn't seem to be an equivalent to --check_all_logins anyway.

However, you needn't run BOINC from the command line yourself. You only have to edit the init file (RC?) from where the client is started at boot time and add the --check_all_logins switch to the command line there.

Gruß,
Gundolf

---

Computer sind nicht alles im Leben. (Kleiner Scherz)

I've found the --check_all_logins command line switch

This works on Linux only, not on Mac or Windows.

---

It'd be awesome if it worked on OS X. Lion (10.7) is a "truly multiuser GUI environment" with a lot of built in support for remote usage, and it's not a terribly uncommon use case for people to be logging in remotely to their machines. I can renice the processes maybe, but that doesn't solve the memory usage issue and isn't easy for non-technical users.

The developer for the Mac let me know that he has found a solution to this problem ([trac]changeset:25018[/trac]) and that this will be added to BOINC 7.0.8

---

I was able to work around this problem by using a different API , but that API does not work when the BOINC client is set up to run as a daemon or system service using the script described here. So it will continue to use the previous API when running as a daemon.

This mean that BOINC 7.0.8 will be able to detect remote user activity under OS 10.7.2 when BOINC is run normally (i.e., when BOINC Manager is launched as a Login Item and in turn then launches the BOINC Client), but will detect only local activity when run as a daemon. I'm afraid that's the best we can do.

I believe the problem you found is a bug in OS 10.7.2, and I am considering filing a bug report with Apple. Before I do, it would be good to know whether it was working on OS 10.7.0 or OS 10.7.1. What was the last OS version you tried where BOINC successfully detected ARD or VNC activity?

Thanks in advance for your reply.

---

Charlie Fenton
BOINC / SETI@home Macintosh & Windows Programmer

Hi there -- I personally installed 10.7.0 and upgraded straight to 10.7.2 before installing BOINC. If I remember, when I get around to installing Lion on my laptop, I'll try to test this.