Skip to main content

BOINC

Plugin: python.d.plugin Module: boinc

Overview

This collector monitors task counts for the Berkeley Open Infrastructure Networking Computing (BOINC) distributed computing client.

It uses the same RPC interface that the BOINC monitoring GUI does.

This collector is supported on all platforms.

This collector supports collecting metrics from multiple instances of this integration, including remote instances.

Default Behavior

Auto-Detection

By default, the module will try to auto-detect the password to the RPC interface by looking in /var/lib/boinc for this file (this is the location most Linux distributions use for a system-wide BOINC installation), so things may just work without needing configuration for a local system.

Limits

The default configuration for this integration does not impose any limits on data collection.

Performance Impact

The default configuration for this integration is not expected to impose a significant performance impact on the system.

Metrics

Metrics grouped by scope.

The scope defines the instance that the metric belongs to. An instance is uniquely identified by a set of labels.

Per BOINC instance

These metrics refer to the entire monitored application.

This scope has no labels.

Metrics:

MetricDimensionsUnit
boinc.tasksTotal, Activetasks
boinc.statesNew, Downloading, Ready to Run, Compute Errors, Uploading, Uploaded, Aborted, Failed Uploadstasks
boinc.schedUninitialized, Preempted, Scheduledtasks
boinc.processUninitialized, Executing, Suspended, Aborted, Quit, Copy Pendingtasks

Alerts

The following alerts are available:

Alert nameOn metricDescription
boinc_total_tasks boinc.tasksaverage number of total tasks over the last 10 minutes
boinc_active_tasks boinc.tasksaverage number of active tasks over the last 10 minutes
boinc_compute_errors boinc.statesaverage number of compute errors over the last 10 minutes
boinc_upload_errors boinc.statesaverage number of failed uploads over the last 10 minutes

Setup

Prerequisites

Boinc RPC interface

BOINC requires use of a password to access it's RPC interface. You can find this password in the gui_rpc_auth.cfg file in your BOINC directory.

Configuration

File

The configuration file name for this integration is python.d/boinc.conf.

You can edit the configuration file using the edit-config script from the Netdata config directory.

cd /etc/netdata 2>/dev/null || cd /opt/netdata/etc/netdata
sudo ./edit-config python.d/boinc.conf

Options

There are 2 sections:

  • Global variables
  • One or more JOBS that can define multiple different instances to monitor.

The following options can be defined globally: priority, penalty, autodetection_retry, update_every, but can also be defined per JOB to override the global values.

Additionally, the following collapsed table contains all the options that can be configured inside a JOB definition.

Every configuration JOB starts with a job_name value which will appear in the dashboard, unless a name parameter is specified.

Config options
NameDescriptionDefaultRequired
update_everySets the default data collection frequency.5no
priorityControls the order of charts at the netdata dashboard.60000no
autodetection_retrySets the job re-check interval in seconds.0no
penaltyIndicates whether to apply penalty to update_every in case of failures.yesno
nameJob name. This value will overwrite the job_name value. JOBS with the same name are mutually exclusive. Only one of them will be allowed running at any time. This allows autodetection to try several alternatives and pick the one that works.no
hostnameDefine a hostname where boinc is running.localhostno
portThe port of boinc RPC interface.no
passwordProvide a password to connect to a boinc RPC interface.no

Examples

Configuration of a remote boinc instance

A basic JOB configuration for a remote boinc instance

remote:
hostname: '1.2.3.4'
port: 1234
password: 'some-password'

Multi-instance

Note: When you define multiple jobs, their names must be unique.

Collecting metrics from local and remote instances.

Config
localhost:
name: 'local'
host: '127.0.0.1'
port: 1234
password: 'some-password'

remote_job:
name: 'remote'
host: '192.0.2.1'
port: 1234
password: some-other-password

Troubleshooting

Debug Mode

To troubleshoot issues with the boinc collector, run the python.d.plugin with the debug option enabled. The output should give you clues as to why the collector isn't working.

  • Navigate to the plugins.d directory, usually at /usr/libexec/netdata/plugins.d/. If that's not the case on your system, open netdata.conf and look for the plugins setting under [directories].

    cd /usr/libexec/netdata/plugins.d/
  • Switch to the netdata user.

    sudo -u netdata -s
  • Run the python.d.plugin to debug the collector:

    ./python.d.plugin boinc debug trace

Do you have any feedback for this page? If so, you can open a new issue on our netdata/learn repository.