My company recently installed Blue Coat, a network security tool. This tool blocks people from surfing to "bad" sites using the corporate internet connection.

Unfortunatly, this impacts the BOINC software when it tries to upload or download information. The error shows up in the messages as a "transient upload error" with no other information.

This isn't because the project sites are on some "bad" list, but beause the BOINC software doesn't "authenticate" itself with the Blue Coat software. I've reported the problem to the support team, and hopefully a fix will be incorporated into a future version of BOINC.

In the mean time, my network people came up with a workaround. I've installed FireFox. Every time I launch it, it prompts me for my user id and password to use for authentication. Once this is supplied, the BOINC software running on my corporate machines can upload and download for the next 8 hours, after which I have to re-authenticate. It's a pain, but it works.

I added this thread because there was no mention of Blue Coat on this forum.

Bill

It is a proxy server, isn't it?
Which BOINC version are you using and what proxy settings did you set under BOINC Manager->Advanced->Options?

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It is a proxy server, isn't it?
Which BOINC version are you using and what proxy settings did you set under BOINC Manager->Advanced->Options?

I'm running the 5.10.45, and the proxy settings are "out of the box".

Bill

OK... You can force the authentication of the proxy server through the client configuration file cc_config.xml

To do so, you need to know what kind of authentication the proxy server uses, but options are basic, digest, gss-negotiate and ntlm

To force the authentication, make a cc_config.xml file in your BOINC directory. I use Notepad to make mine, make sure the extension is .xml and not .txt

Add in it:

<cc_config>
<options>
<force_auth>N</force_auth>
</options>
</cc_config>

Where N is either basic, digest, gss-negotiate or ntlm

Save the file. Now open BOINC manager->Advanced view->Advanced->Read config file
It won't show in the messages that it did read the file, but it will have.
Now try to communicate.

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OK... You can force the authentication of the proxy server through the client configuration file cc_config.xml

To do so, you need to know what kind of authentication the proxy server uses, but options are basic, digest, gss-negotiate and ntlm

To force the authentication, make a cc_config.xml file in your BOINC directory. I use Notepad to make mine, make sure the extension is .xml and not .txt

Add in it:

<cc_config>
<options>
<force_auth>N</force_auth>
</options>
</cc_config>

Where N is either basic, digest, gss-negotiate or ntlm

Save the file. Now open BOINC manager->Advanced view->Advanced->Read config file
It won't show in the messages that it did read the file, but it will have.
Now try to communicate.

I just spoke with my network people who manage the Blue Coat server. They have not set it up to authenticate as you describe above, but are planning to do so later this week. I'll give this a try and report back.

Thanks for the help,
Bill

My network people gave me the address to an HTTP PROXY server to allow BOINC to authenticate with the Blue Coat software.

As described above, I went to "ADVANCED", "OPTIONS", and clicked on the "HTTP Proxy" tab. I filled in the proxy server information that was supplied by the network people, and then restarted the BOINC application.

It started uploading immediately.

I didn't have to create the "cc_config.xml" file.

Since my password is now stored in "client_stat.xml", I'll have to remember to go in and edit it every time I change my password.

Thanks for the help.

Bill

Great news and you're welcome. If you have any more questions or problems, you know where to find us. :-)

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