I usually don't try to shoot myself in the foot.
But.......

I was running an out-of-date version of Ubuntu-mate in oder to get the opencl drivers for an AMD card.
Then, I started getting crashes on an unrelated problem
so I decided to bite the bullet and upgrade.

My mistake was to NOT let my current BOINC tasks complete their WU. (just 7)
That's easy, I thought. All I have to do is to save off a copy of the boinc-client directories in /var/lib - and the replace them.

Silly me.

I am now running Ubuntu-mate 16.04 (64 bit)
and have re-installed boinc (and boinc-client)
I had saved the directories with --archive and restored them the same way.

My usual start up is to
1) xhost +si:localuser:boinc
and
2) sudo service boinc-client restart

Now, the manager starts up OK but shows no projects.
the boinc log says:
26-Feb-2017 00:37:02 [---] This computer is not attached to any projects
all of the comands are stippled out under: View, Activities, Options, and Tools.
- so I can not add the pre-existing project

The user 'boinc' exists and belongs to groups: boinc and video

I am stumped.
Please help.
Shall I ditch the var/lib/boin-client and start over?
Or is there a shining light to illuminate the way???

Thanks in advance (!!!!)

Jay

additional info....

boinccmd --get_simple_gui_info
shows all tasks prempted --- yes, I did a project suspend before I copied and re-wrote OS

so
boinccmd --project http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/ resume

BUT, get
Operation failed: authentication error

hmm.
I ran this as myself in /var/lib/boinc-client
which should pick up the auth in the current directory.

well. If its wrong/old , how do I get the new one?
I tried reinstallingboinc-client - but did not fix.
Drat.

Need sleep.
Maybe that will help.

Any ideas? Drink a beer. Repeat?
Plug in brain?
Follow the yellow brick road?

I think you missed two of the most important points about backups: Don't make a backup of data that could be changing during that process, and never ever overwrite data that something is working on. In this case that means before you even think of touching /var/lib/boinc-client, make sure BOINC is shut down.

I'd have done it this way:
0. Suspend network activity in BOINC.
1. Stop BOINC. Don't suspend it, shut it down!
2. Backup /var/lib/boinc-client and /etc/boinc-client. Verify the backup.
3. Reinstall as needed. Remember, if you do a fresh install of BOINC, it will be running and it will have a new identity.
4. Shut down BOINC. This is even more important now than before.
5. Restore /var/lib/boinc-client and /etc/boinc-client. Call yourself names because you forgot to backup the latter.
6. Start BOINC and make sure everything is working.
7. Resume network activity.

boinccmd --project http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/ resume

BUT, get
Operation failed: authentication error

hmm.
I ran this as myself in /var/lib/boinc-client
which should pick up the auth in the current directory.

Which is of course not readable. Or is it? That would make the whole authentication useless.

Any ideas?

20 GOTO 10. Uh, make that GOTO 4. And hope your backup is good.

Got it.

Thanks, Floyd. Owe you a beer. Will buy a round somewhere in your honor.