BOINC

Plugin: go.d.plugin Module: boinc

Overview

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

It communicates with BOING using GIU RPC Protocol.

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, it detects BOINC client instances running on localhost that are listening on port 31416. On startup, it tries to collect metrics from:

• http://127.0.0.1:31416

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:

Metric	Dimensions	Unit
boinc.tasks	total, active	tasks
boinc.tasks_per_state	new, downloading, downloaded, compute_error, uploading, uploaded, aborted, upload_failed	tasks
boinc.active_tasks_per_state	uninitialized, executing, abort_pending, quit_pending, suspended, copy_pending	tasks
boinc.active_tasks_per_scheduler_state	uninitialized, preempted, scheduled	tasks

Alerts

The following alerts are available:

Alert name	On metric	Description
boinc_total_tasks	boinc.tasks	average number of total tasks over the last 10 minutes
boinc_active_tasks	boinc.tasks	average number of active tasks over the last 10 minutes
boinc_compute_errors	boinc.tasks_state	average number of compute errors over the last 10 minutes
boinc_upload_errors	boinc.tasks_state	average number of failed uploads over the last 10 minutes

Setup

Prerequisites

No action required.

Configuration

File

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

Options

The following options can be defined globally: update_every, autodetection_retry.

Config options

Name	Description	Default	Required
update_every	Data collection frequency.	1	no
autodetection_retry	Recheck interval in seconds. Zero means no recheck will be scheduled.	0	no
address	The IP address and port where the BOINC client listens for connections.	127.0.0.1:31416	yes
timeout	Connection, read, and write timeout duration in seconds. The timeout includes name resolution.	1	no
password	The GUI RPC password for authentication.		no

Examples

Basic

A basic example configuration.

Config

jobs:
  - name: local
    address: 127.0.0.1:31416

Multi-instance

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

Collecting metrics from local and remote instances.

Config

jobs:
  - name: local
    address: 127.0.0.1:31416

  - name: remote
    address: 203.0.113.0:31416
    password: somePassword

Troubleshooting

Debug Mode

Important: Debug mode is not supported for data collection jobs created via the UI using the Dyncfg feature.

To troubleshoot issues with the boinc collector, run the go.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 go.d.plugin to debug the collector:

  ./go.d.plugin -d -m boinc

Getting Logs

If you're encountering problems with the boinc collector, follow these steps to retrieve logs and identify potential issues:

• Run the command specific to your system (systemd, non-systemd, or Docker container).
• Examine the output for any warnings or error messages that might indicate issues. These messages should provide clues about the root cause of the problem.

System with systemd

Use the following command to view logs generated since the last Netdata service restart:

journalctl _SYSTEMD_INVOCATION_ID="$(systemctl show --value --property=InvocationID netdata)" --namespace=netdata --grep boinc

System without systemd

Locate the collector log file, typically at /var/log/netdata/collector.log, and use grep to filter for collector's name:

grep boinc /var/log/netdata/collector.log

Note: This method shows logs from all restarts. Focus on the latest entries for troubleshooting current issues.

Docker Container

If your Netdata runs in a Docker container named "netdata" (replace if different), use this command:

docker logs netdata 2>&1 | grep boinc