boinc doesn't always detect Virtualbox

[Ken Sharp]

The BOINC client does not always successfully detect Virtualbox, though Virtualbox does start successfully each time.

15-Jan-2015 12:53:29 [---] VirtualBox version: 4.3.20r96996
16-Jan-2015 11:26:36 [---] VirtualBox version: WARNING: The vboxdrv kernel module is not loaded. Either there is no module
17-Jan-2015 13:31:43 [---] VirtualBox version: 4.3.20r96996
18-Jan-2015 09:41:57 [---] VirtualBox version: 4.3.20r96996
18-Jan-2015 22:43:25 [---] VirtualBox version: 4.3.20r96996
19-Jan-2015 14:40:57 [---] VirtualBox version: 4.3.20r96996
19-Jan-2015 20:45:52 [---] VirtualBox version: 4.3.20r96996
19-Jan-2015 21:38:36 [---] VirtualBox version: 4.3.20r96996
19-Jan-2015 22:27:01 [---] VirtualBox version: WARNING: The vboxdrv kernel module is not loaded. Either there is no module
20-Jan-2015 00:42:59 [---] VirtualBox version: 4.3.20r96996
20-Jan-2015 14:23:18 [---] VirtualBox version: WARNING: The vboxdrv kernel module is not loaded. Either there is no module
20-Jan-2015 21:25:13 [---] VirtualBox version: WARNING: The vboxdrv kernel module is not loaded. Either there is no module
20-Jan-2015 22:24:35 [---] VirtualBox version: WARNING: The vboxdrv kernel module is not loaded. Either there is no module
20-Jan-2015 23:01:51 [---] VirtualBox version: WARNING: The vboxdrv kernel module is not loaded. Either there is no module
20-Jan-2015 23:12:46 [---] VirtualBox version: WARNING: The vboxdrv kernel module is not loaded. Either there is no module
21-Jan-2015 12:59:39 [---] VirtualBox version: WARNING: The vboxdrv kernel module is not loaded. Either there is no module
21-Jan-2015 13:21:59 [---] VirtualBox version: 4.3.20r96996
21-Jan-2015 20:01:22 [---] VirtualBox version: 4.3.20r96996
21-Jan-2015 20:10:16 [---] VirtualBox version: 4.3.20r96996

To work around I changed the start sequence of the init script:

# mv 20boinc-client 80boinc-client

It would appear that boinc starts too early in the boot sequence.

$ cd /etc/rc2.d
$ ls S*
S01policykit S20hotkey-setup S20winbind S50rsync S99acpi-support
S10apmd S20kerneloops S24dhcdbd S70dns-clean S99grub-common
S20clamav-daemon S20nbd-server S35vboxautostart-service S70pppd-dns S99ondemand
S20clamav-freshclam S20openbsd-inetd S35vboxballoonctrl-service S75sudo S99rc.local
S20fancontrol S20speech-dispatcher S35vboxweb-service S80boinc-client
S20hddtemp S20vboxdrv S50pulseaudio S95distcc

[Gianfranco Costamagna (costamagnagianfranco)]

Please try this ppa and boinc 7.8.1, and let me know if the problem still occurs
https://launchpad.net/~costamagnagianfranco/+archive/ubuntu/boinc/

[Ken Sharp (kennybobs)]

Looks good here:

1: 09-May-2020 14:48:47 (low) [] Starting BOINC client version 7.9.3 for x86_64-pc-linux-gnu
15: 09-May-2020 14:48:48 (low) [] VirtualBox version: 6.1.4r136177

Of course all the machines now use systemd.

To find out if anything is different for sysvinit I installed a Devuan Ceres VM which also seems to work. In this case the startup script follows the Virtualbox startup script. Older (including stable) releases of Devuan use older packages so they may still have an issue. I looked at Devuan's bug system but:

“There is no maintainer for boinc-client. This means that this package no longer exists (or never existed). Please do not report new bugs against this package.”

Additionally, Virtualbox isn't in the repos for the previous Devuan release (or the one before that - I can't remember), but all this is up to Devuan.

Looking good here.

(Sorry for the incredibly slow reply)

[Ken Sharp (kennybobs)]

Some Ubuntu LTS releases use old packages too so I won't mark this as fixed completely (I can't choose individual releases).

[Christian Ehrhardt  (paelzer)]

Since >=7.9.3 is mentioned to be good this seems only to still affect Xenial.