I'm running a new, to me, install of trixie. I was working fine yesterday, but now boincmgr won't start. I keep getting that message. There are boinc client processes running, but no manager processes. I've rebooted the machine, shut it down and cycled the power, but it's very consistent in giving me that message. What have I missed? Apparently there's something telling boincmgr it's already running, but I can't find it.
When I get that error on my openSUSE machines it is usually the result of me stopping things with an open Event Log active. But I can kill the process boinc-gui and fix it.
Any help would be appreciated, thanks.

Stop the client, delete the lockfile in the Boinc folder and restart the client and Manager.

Thanks for the response. I'd tried that, no joy. In the meantime I discovered a problem with the gui_rpc_auth.cfg file. Apparently it was failing on a password error and I couldn't see the forest for the trees. We used to refer to this, when I worked, as a UBD error [User Brain Damage].
I came back here to try and delete the message since it seems to be working.

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... I couldn't see the forest for the trees. We used to refer to this, when I worked, as a UBD error [User Brain Damage].
I came back here to try and delete the message since it seems to be working.

PEBKAC Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair

Oh joy...now it's decided to not work again!
I'll be over in the corner working on some of the language skills I learned while in the Navy...It's late, I'll look at it in the morning.

Hope you get it working again without using too many blue words.

Using Ubuntu, the file I have to delete is BoincManager-username in my home directory. I always get this if I shut the computer down without exiting the manager first.

It seems to have settled down to a predictable pattern.
What I discovered was that if I was actually in front of the monitor/keyboard/mouse connected to the computer it would work, meaning logged in to the local computer. Even though I wasn't using the boincmgr and I ssh'd in from another computer it wouldn't work for the remote computer (remote being 2 feet away). If I logged off of the "local" computer the "remote" computer could get boincmgr to work. I can live with this. It may have been that way for a long time on other computers, but I wouldn't have noticed it because I practically never sit down and log into two, or more, computers. I do everything via "ssh -X" (I've heard others swear by the -Y option).

In reply to bill's message of 22 Dec 2025:

If I logged off of the "local" computer the "remote" computer could get boincmgr to work.

You are using a local BOINC Mgr to connect to a remove BOINC Client? Just verifying mgr and client terms are used correctly.

BOINC Mgr is not needed. It's just the GUI so doubly not needed for remote clients w/o KVM. My headless Linux machines never have mgr running and I use BOINC Tasks to communicate with the other hosts as a BOINC mgr replacement.

ssh into the other machine, run boincmgr there. I rarely sit down in front of any computer, except this one. Everything is done via ssh from a konsole. I will say boincmgr is practically useless unless running on a fast network, I have a small 1Gb ethernet connecting my "local" machines. If I ssh to another computer, say 1500 miles away, I don't run the boincmgr. I edit config files and/or issue boinccmd commands.