I've recently installed the latest BOINC Manager (7.0.31) on Mac OS X 10.7.4.
There are two big problems:

1) It is very slow to start (several minutes)
2) advanced view is unresponsive. When I switch to the Advanced view, it is either completely unresponsive or is very slow to respond. Clicking on anything in the window gives the spinning disk for about 20 seconds, then does nothing. (just occasionally I can get to another tab, but then it seems to get stuck on that one).

It is so unresponsive I can't even close the window to get back to "standard" view to quit BOINC.

I've tried uninstalling, and reinstalling, all to no avail. Also tried dropping the max CPU down to 10%: didn't help.

This was a new installation (never had BOINC before).

The only BOINC-ish thing I can see in the console logs (apart from the installation) are

boinc: [CL_INVALID_OPERATION] : OpenCL Error : Failed to retrieve device information! Invalid enumerated value!

and several entries along the lines of:

mdworker: zip importer encountered an error (3) scanning "/Library/Application Support/BOINC Data/slots/0/GFAM_x1OKTtetramer_PfGST_0032212_0124.zip".

Although given the tasks seem to be running I'm guessing this is a non-fatal error.

I'm afraid I'll have to kill and uninstall BOINC.

Any ideas?

What kind of GPU is in that system? The line about OpenCL is BOINC trying to determine if the GPU is OpenCL capable. This detection can slow the system down if it's low on (other) resources.

So, other than that it's OS X 10.7.4, what kind of Mac is it?
Memory amount?
And as asked, GPU (graphics card)?

---

It's a 17" Mid-2010 Macbook pro, twin graphics (NVIDIA GT330, Intel HD) and 4GB of memory.
As a crash report in the syslog says:

Model: MacBookPro6,1, BootROM MBP61.0057.B0F, 2 processors, Intel Core i5, 2.53 GHz, 4 GB, SMC 1.57f17
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M, NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M, PCIe, 512 MB
Graphics: Intel HD Graphics, Intel HD Graphics, Built-In, 288 MB
Memory Module: BANK 0/DIMM0, 2 GB, DDR3, 1067 MHz
Memory Module: BANK 1/DIMM0, 2 GB, DDR3, 1067 MHz

I'm guessing GPU detection would only happen at BOINC startup. The OpenCL syslog event only seems to appear that one time. So that (on the face of it) wouldn't explain the general poor performance in the Advanced view.

Are there any other messages being generated that I could check (ones that don't appear in the system logs?)

OK, a couple of things.
- Do you have BOINC set to suspend when the user is active?
--> If not, the project application may be responsible for the sluggish behavior, but everything on the computer should be slow in that case.

- The developer asks if you can make a cc_config.xml file and add into it:

<cc_config>
<log_flags>
<coproc_debug>1</coproc_debug>
</log_flags>
</cc_config>

Place this file in your BOINC Data directory, default on OS X at /Library/Applications Support/BOINC/

Then exit & restart BOINC to let it make use of the configuration file.
The extra output will be in the Event Log. We ask that you post the first 2 minutes worth of line here in the forums. I'll forward that to the developer.

With thanks.

---

I set up the debugging as requested. To my (untrained) eye it seems to start OK:

26-Aug-2012 16:56:42 [---] Starting BOINC client version 7.0.31 for x86_64-apple-darwin
26-Aug-2012 16:56:42 [---] log flags: file_xfer, sched_ops, task, coproc_debug
26-Aug-2012 16:56:42 [---] Libraries: libcurl/7.26.0 OpenSSL/0.9.7l zlib/1.2.5 c-ares/1.9.1
26-Aug-2012 16:56:42 [---] Data directory: /Library/Application Support/BOINC Data
26-Aug-2012 16:56:42 [---] Processor: 4 GenuineIntel Intel(R) Core(TM) i5 CPU M 540 @ 2.53GHz [x86 Family 6 Model 37 Stepping 2]
26-Aug-2012 16:56:42 [---] 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 SSE3 PCLMULQDQ DTES64 MON DSCPL VMX SMX EST TM2 SSSE3 CX16 TPR PDCM SSE4.1 SSE4.2 POPCNT AES
26-Aug-2012 16:56:42 [---] OS: Mac OS X 10.7.4 (Darwin 11.4.0)
26-Aug-2012 16:56:42 [---] Memory: 4.00 GB physical, 312.70 GB virtual
26-Aug-2012 16:56:42 [---] Disk: 464.96 GB total, 312.46 GB free
26-Aug-2012 16:56:42 [---] Local time is UTC +10 hours
26-Aug-2012 16:56:42 [---] OpenCL: NVIDIA GPU 0: GeForce GT 330M (driver version CLH 1.0, device version OpenCL 1.0, 512MB, 512MB available)
26-Aug-2012 16:56:42 [---] No NVIDIA library found
26-Aug-2012 16:56:42 [World Community Grid] URL http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/; Computer ID 2145975; resource share 100
26-Aug-2012 16:56:42 [World Community Grid] General prefs: from World Community Grid (last modified 01-Jan-1970 11:00:01)
26-Aug-2012 16:56:42 [World Community Grid] Host location: none
26-Aug-2012 16:56:42 [World Community Grid] General prefs: using your defaults
26-Aug-2012 16:56:42 [---] Reading preferences override file
26-Aug-2012 16:56:42 [---] Preferences:
26-Aug-2012 16:56:42 [---]    max memory usage when active: 2048.00MB
26-Aug-2012 16:56:42 [---]    max memory usage when idle: 3072.00MB
26-Aug-2012 16:56:42 [---]    max disk usage: 10.00GB
26-Aug-2012 16:56:42 [---]    don't use GPU while active
26-Aug-2012 16:56:42 [---]    suspend work if non-BOINC CPU load exceeds 50 %
26-Aug-2012 16:56:42 [---]    (to change preferences, visit the web site of an attached project, or select Preferences in the Manager)
26-Aug-2012 16:56:42 [---] Not using a proxy
Initialization completed
26-Aug-2012 16:57:12 [World Community Grid] Restarting task GFAM_x1OKTtetramer_PfGST_0032212_0234_0 using gfam version 612 in slot 5
26-Aug-2012 16:57:12 [World Community Grid] Restarting task GFAM_x1OKTtetramer_PfGST_0032212_0251_0 using gfam version 612 in slot 0
26-Aug-2012 16:57:12 [World Community Grid] Restarting task GFAM_x1OKTtetramer_PfGST_0032212_0074_0 using gfam version 612 in slot 1
26-Aug-2012 16:57:12 [World Community Grid] Restarting task GFAM_x1OKTtetramer_PfGST_0032212_0221_0 using gfam version 612 in slot 2

The only worrying there (as far as I can see) is the "No NVIDIA library found"

I next tried leaving the Community Grid project and trying something else. This didn't help.

Then I looked at what files were being written to in /Library/Application Support/BOINC data/. Interestingly, stdoutgui.txt is full of this:

17:20:58: Error: Cannot get the official hostname (error 2: No such file or directory)
17:21:29: Error: Cannot get the official hostname (error 0: Undefined error: 0)
17:22:00: Error: Cannot get the official hostname (error 0: Undefined error: 0)
17:22:31: Error: Cannot get the official hostname (error 0: Undefined error: 0)
17:23:02: Error: Cannot get the official hostname (error 0: Undefined error: 0)

and so on, every 30 seconds when the Advanced view window is open.
There are also some instances of:

Error: Cannot get the official hostname (error 35: Resource temporarily unavailable)

There is also this in stderrgui.txt:

BOINCManager[499:b07] CFURLCreateWithString was passed this invalid URL string: '/System/Library/CoreServices/CommonCocoaPanels.bundle' (a file system path instead of an URL string). The URL created will not work with most file URL functions. CFURLCreateWithFileSystemPath or CFURLCreateWithFileSystemPathRelativeToBase should be used instead.

although that seems to have been written just once, when BOINC manager started.

And stderrdae.txt has several of these:

getaddrinfo: No such file or directory
getaddrinfo: No such file or directory

Noticing that BOINC manager seemed to spend a long time saying it was "downloading status", I turned on HTTP logging too, but there really wasn't anything untoward in that (that is, there weren't any "timeout" errors or the like).
[/code]

I forgot to answer your other questions:

- Do you have BOINC set to suspend when the user is active?
--> If not, the project application may be responsible for the sluggish behavior, but everything on the computer should be slow in that case.

No, it is running all the time. But it really doesn't impact hugely on other applications - web browsing, for example, continues without a hitch.

I'm seeing this as a problem with BOINC Manager, rather than with BOINC itself.

Did you allow the BOINC binary and the BOINCMGR binary to talk to each other through your firewall? You'll need to allow them on TCP port 31416.

Separately, the BOINC binary needs to be able to access the internet through TCP ports 80 and 443.

---

The firewall is turned off completely.

Did you allow the BOINC binary and the BOINCMGR binary to talk to each other through your firewall?

We're waiting for some answers from another developer, but since he lives in the projected path of hurricane Isaac, it can take a while for him to answer.

In the mean time a request from the Mac developer. Try running with "suspend when the user is active" set to On. This so we can test if it's really BOINC or BOINC Manager that's so slow to start.

---

OK, more answers from developers.

It is either a permissions problem or a corrupted system configuration file, causing BOINC to be unable to get network the name of his Computer. Please repair permissions (using the Disk Utility application in the /Applications/Utilities/ directory.)

If that does not solve the problem, go to the Sharing pane of System Preferences, and check the "Computer Name". You may need to edit or re-enter this "Computer Name".

---

Sadly, neither of these suggestions have helped.
There were some disk permissions problems, mostly to do with directories set to group 80 instead of 0, or drwxrwxr-x instead of drwxr-xr-x (i.e. too permissive). Nothing really obvious there.
The hostname appears to be set OK:

> scutil --get HostName
thismac
> scutil --get ComputerName
thismac
> scutil --get LocalHostName
thismac
> hostname
thismac

but I did change it a few times just to be sure.

All symptoms remain the same. The log files (in /BOINC data/) contain the same "hostname" error messages as mentioned in an earlier post.

I have found that I can get some response from the Advanced view if I
- click something (to get focus)
- nothing happens, then the spinning wheel starts
- wait for the spinning wheel to stop spinning (about 20 seconds)
- click again (or issue a keyboard command, such as command-shift-V)
That second click seems to do the trick, although occasionally it takes several attempts.
This does make it essentially impossible to use, however.

The same problem appears when trying to access the "Task Commands" on the standard view of BOINC manager.

BOINC tasks run OK.

I also tried uninstalling, blowing away the /BOINC data/ directory, and doing a clean install. Same problems. And they appeared even before I'd added any projects.