Are there any known problems running BOINC 7.8.4 with the new Apple File System (APFS)? I too cannot connect. BOINC Manager seems to have hung trying to download some data from the Einstein project.

BOINC Manager quit working for me after I installed High Sierra 10.13. At that point I tried updating to 7.8.3 then a beta version, neither worked. Today I saw that 7.8.4 had been released so I downloaded & installed it. No joy, it still would not run. I uninstalled everything including the various data & preferences folders to try a clean slate. I reinstalled and it allowed me to add projects to work on. At that point the program would not progress. I logged out and back in then restarted the computer, still nothing. The program appears to be hung — all menu commands are grayed out except the File Menu commands.

Here are the first 40 log file lines from stdoutdae.txt followed by the last 3:

13-Nov-2017 08:56:58 [---] cc_config.xml not found - using defaults
13-Nov-2017 08:56:58 [---] Starting BOINC client version 7.8.4 for x86_64-apple-darwin
13-Nov-2017 08:56:58 [---] log flags: file_xfer, sched_ops, task
13-Nov-2017 08:56:58 [---] Libraries: libcurl/7.50.2 OpenSSL/1.1.0 zlib/1.2.11 c-ares/1.11.0
13-Nov-2017 08:56:58 [---] Data directory: /Library/Application Support/BOINC Data
13-Nov-2017 08:56:59 [---] OpenCL: AMD/ATI GPU 0: ATI Radeon HD 6750M (driver version 1.2 (Sep 29 2017 18:59:39), device version OpenCL 1.2, 1024MB, 1024MB available, 288 GFLOPS peak)
13-Nov-2017 08:56:59 [---] OpenCL CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2720QM CPU @ 2.20GHz (OpenCL driver vendor: Apple, driver version 1.1, device version OpenCL 1.2)
13-Nov-2017 08:56:59 [---] Creating new client state file
13-Nov-2017 08:57:03 [---] Host name: Brians-MacBook-Pro-2.local
13-Nov-2017 08:57:03 [---] Processor: 8 GenuineIntel Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2720QM CPU @ 2.20GHz [x86 Family 6 Model 42 Stepping 7]
13-Nov-2017 08:57:03 [---] Processor features: fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clfsh ds acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss htt tm pbe pni pclmulqdq dtes64 mon dscpl vmx smx est tm2 ssse3 cx16 tpr pdcm sse4_1 sse4_2 x2apic popcnt aes pcid xsave osxsave tsctmr avx
13-Nov-2017 08:57:03 [---] OS: Mac OS X 10.13.1 (Darwin 17.2.0)
13-Nov-2017 08:57:03 [---] Memory: 16.00 GB physical, 132.98 GB virtual
13-Nov-2017 08:57:03 [---] Disk: 893.45 GB total, 124.29 GB free
13-Nov-2017 08:57:03 [---] Local time is UTC -7 hours
13-Nov-2017 08:57:03 [---] No general preferences found - using defaults
13-Nov-2017 08:57:03 [---] Preferences:
13-Nov-2017 08:57:03 [---]    max memory usage when active: 8192.00 MB
13-Nov-2017 08:57:03 [---]    max memory usage when idle: 14745.60 MB
13-Nov-2017 08:57:03 [---]    max disk usage: 124.19 GB
13-Nov-2017 08:57:03 [---]    don't use GPU while active
13-Nov-2017 08:57:03 [---]    suspend work if non-BOINC CPU load exceeds 25%
13-Nov-2017 08:57:03 [---]    (to change preferences, visit a project web site or select Preferences in the Manager)
13-Nov-2017 08:57:03 [---] This computer is not attached to any projects
13-Nov-2017 08:57:03 [---] Visit http://boinc.berkeley.edu for instructions
13-Nov-2017 08:57:03 Initialization completed
13-Nov-2017 08:57:03 [---] Suspending GPU computation - computer is in use
13-Nov-2017 08:57:14 [---] Suspending computation - CPU is busy
13-Nov-2017 08:57:17 [---] Fetching configuration file from http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/get_project_config.php
13-Nov-2017 08:57:44 [---] Resuming computation
13-Nov-2017 08:58:55 [---] Running CPU benchmarks
13-Nov-2017 08:58:55 [---] Suspending computation - CPU benchmarks in progress
13-Nov-2017 08:58:55 [---] Running CPU benchmarks
13-Nov-2017 08:58:55 [---] Running CPU benchmarks
13-Nov-2017 08:58:55 [---] Running CPU benchmarks
13-Nov-2017 08:58:55 [---] Running CPU benchmarks
13-Nov-2017 08:58:55 [---] Running CPU benchmarks
13-Nov-2017 08:58:55 [---] Running CPU benchmarks
13-Nov-2017 08:58:55 [---] Running CPU benchmarks
13-Nov-2017 08:58:55 [---] Running CPU benchmarks
.
.
.
13-Nov-2017 09:02:08 [Einstein@Home] Started download of h1_1461.10_O1C02Cl1In0C.pVbx
13-Nov-2017 09:02:09 [Einstein@Home] Finished download of l1_1461.05_O1C02Cl1In0C.2QKr
13-Nov-2017 09:02:09 [Einstein@Home] Started download of l1_1461.10_O1C02Cl1In0C.pVbx

I have restarted the computer since 9AM.

Looking in the console at the system.log I found this error repeating:

Nov 13 14:30:28 Brians-MacBook-Pro-2 BOINCManager[53180]: /BuildRoot/Library/Caches/com.apple.xbs/Sources/AppleFSCompression/AppleFSCompression-96.1.1/Libraries/CompressData/CompressData.c:353: Error: Unknown compression scheme encountered for file '/System/Library/CoreServices/CoreTypes.bundle/Contents/Library/AppExceptions.bundle/Exceptions.plist'

My system does boot from an SSD and so it has been formatted to the new APFS and I am using FileVault which I believe also uses new encryption.

Please let me know if there is any other information I can provide that might be useful.

Thanks,

Brian

Forwarded to the developer.

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Thanks, let me know if any beta testing is needed.

The developer answered:

I searched Google for:
> Error: Unknown compression scheme encountered for file '/System/Library/CoreServices/CoreTypes.bundle/Contents/Library/AppExceptions.bundle/Exceptions.plist'

and found many reports saying they saw that in the console log. At least some of them say they are not using the new Apple File System, such as:
> https://www.scootersoftware.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?15966-macOS-High-Sierra-10-13-Beta-problems&p=55557#post55557 which says:
> Same problem, not related to APFS because I chose not to upgrade the file system. Currently running 10.13 17A291m.
>
> default 10:33:03.787610 -0700 BCompare /BuildRoot/Library/Caches/com.apple.xbs/Sources/AppleFSCompression/AppleFSCompression-95/Common/ChunkCompression.cpp:50: Error: unsupported compressor 8
> default 10:33:03.787661 -0700 BCompare /BuildRoot/Library/Caches/com.apple.xbs/Sources/AppleFSCompression/AppleFSCompression-95/Libraries/CompressData/CompressData.c:353: Error: Unknown compression scheme encountered for file '/System/Library/CoreServices/CoreTypes.bundle/Contents/Resources/Exceptions.plist'

The files named in these console log entries are part of the OS, not part of BOINC. In my experience, it is not unusual to have errors reported in the Mac's console log that are caused by bugs in the OS and don't seem to be associated with any problems that affect users. But I don't mean to imply that errors reported in the console log never point to real problems in user software.

He further asks if you could check with Activity monitor to see if the client is running when the manager seems to hang. BOINC consists of two main parts, the client (doing all the scheduling, caching and difficult hooha) and the manager (which allows you to control the client via a graphical user interface). We'd like to see what the client (called boinc or boinc-client) does when the manager hangs at adding Einstein.

Also, Einstein's tasks can be quite big, it can be that BOINC is just downloading a long task. That you please check on that as well.

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Additional questions and remarks:

- Why did the Event Log say "Running CPU benchmarks" so many times?
- How long did you wait for the Manager to come up after rebooting? (On his Macs, it takes several minutes after a reboot before the Manager becomes usable.)
- What do you mean by saying the projects were not progressing?
- What exactly did you see that makes you come to that conclusion?
- The system uses a lot of CPU after a major upgrade, sometimes for many hours, as it indexes the entire disk for search functions. Might this have exceeded the "suspend work if non-BOINC CPU load exceeds 25%"?
- Was BOINC suspended for some other reason (like due to the setting in the Activity menu, or because the computer was in use)?

You have omitted part of the event log, so we can't see what happened after running benchmarks.
You said that "I reinstalled and it allowed me to add projects to work on" so apparently BOINC Manager was running before he restarted the computer. It makes no sense that it would run before but not after the restart, unless there was a permissions problem; in that case the manager should have displayed an alert saying so.

Lastly, as long as you're the only one reporting this problem, it is highly unlikely it has anything to do with the new file system.

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