I’d like to use BOINC on my VPS

Bare Metal and VPS
1

Hello

I would like to run BOINC on my VPS but I think the connections are blocked.

A simple: curl -I https://boinc.berkeley.edu returns nothing. I opened outbound ports 80,443 TCP just in case.

But nothing. Has anyone managed to get it running?

Thanks in advance

2

Hello @Gus

I suppose you have already done this:

sudo iptables -A OUTPUT -p tcp --dport 80 -j ACCEPT
sudo iptables -A OUTPUT -p tcp --dport 443 -j ACCEPT

Can you tell me what this returns? :backhand_index_pointing_down:

curl -I --connect-timeout 10 https://boinc.berkeley.edu

If the command doesn’t work, the block could be in the OVHcloud network firewall or at a higher level.

If after reviewing and allowing traffic on your VPS the problem persists, the next step is to open a support ticket. In the ticket, indicate that you are trying to run BOINC and that outbound connections to ports 80 and 443 appear to be blocked at the infrastructure level. Technical support can check whether any restriction has been applied to your VPS.

Let us know, best regards.
Sergio Turpín

3

Hello @sturpin

sudo ufw status 
Status: active

To                         Action      From
--                         ------      ----
49160/tcp                  ALLOW       Anywhere                  
49160/tcp (v6)             ALLOW       Anywhere (v6)             

80,443/tcp                 ALLOW OUT   Anywhere                  
80,443/tcp (v6)            ALLOW OUT   Anywhere (v6)



curl -I --connect-timeout 10 https://boinc.berkeley.edu
curl: (28) Failed to connect to boinc.berkeley.edu port 443 after 10000 ms: Timeout was reached

Thanks to you
4

Where do you have your VPS?

Is it a standard region or a Local Zone?

Regards.

5

I don’t understand your question :sweat_smile:

this?

OpenStack Region: os-sbg6

Location

Strasbourg (SBG) - France

6

Don't worry :sweat_smile:

You can see it from your OVHcloud client area, under "My solutions and services" you’ll get a list of all the services you have with OVHcloud. When you locate your VPS, click the three dots on the right and "View service details". There you can check which zone your VPS is deployed in.

Regards :wink:

7

I only have that info.

8

I just got support; rule 19 on my firewall in OVH Manager was apparently blocking the connection.

1 Allow TCP all 49160
2 Allow TCP 164.132.103.100 80
3 Allow TCP 164.132.103.100 443
4 Allow IPv4 164.132.103.100
19 Deny IPv4 all

In my opinion, rules 2 and 3 should let the traffic through, right?

curl -I --connect-timeout 10 https://boinc.berkeley.edu
still returns nothing....
9

Have you tried the test with a different destination?
curl -I --connect-timeout 10 https://www.google.com

Here I see a small problem. Ports 80 and 443 are allowed, but only for outgoing connections. However, curl makes an outgoing connection to boinc.berkeley.edu and expects a response. That response, which is incoming traffic, is being blocked by ufw, which only has inbound rules for port 49160 and not for the HTTPS connection response.

What I would do is allow inbound connections related to the outbound ones:

sudo ufw allow in 80,443/tcp

Then reload these rules:

sudo ufw reload

Try it and let me know. Regards.
Sergio Turpín

10

Hello,

curl -I --connect-timeout 10 https://www.google.com
I get a response on this command, I tested it before opening ports 80,443.

I added the rule to the firewall still no response on

curl -I --connect-timeout 10 https://boinc.berkeley.edu

11

What intrigues me is that I have a local server at home to run Nextcloud internally; incoming connections are refused except for local IPs such as 192.168.1, etc., while outgoing connections are allowed. BOINC works perfectly well, and the command does too.

12

Hello,

Is the DNS working/allowed as well?

13

Hello,

In the end I didn’t need to open any local ports on my computer except allowing the lo connection for boinctui.

The command curl -I --connect-timeout 10 https://boinc.berkeley.edu only works when the edge firewall is disabled,

with Google it worked straight away both with and without the edge firewall.

I opened ports 80 and 443 TCP with the ESTABLISHED state, but I’ll run more tests to see if that actually matters.

For now BOINC works correctly, so I’ll leave it as is. :slight_smile:

Thanks for your answers.

14

I'm glad it has been resolved :wink:

15

Hello, I'm posting an update about the issue.

In the end I was experiencing connection drops with every new project added. The OVH firewall was still blocking; I finally asked Claude because despite your help and support, the rules given to me by support were incorrect. In the end I needed to add the rule:

| 2 | Allow | TCP | all | | | established |

The OVH Edge Network firewall is a stateless firewall — unlike iptables/ufw on your VPS, it does not keep in memory "this connection was initiated by the server". Consequently, your TCP 80/443 "established" rule does nothing for BOINC: the return packets of an outbound connection initiated by your VPS don't arrive on port 80 or 443, but on a random ephemeral port (e.g., 54321) on the VPS side — that is the port the firewall blocks, due to the lack of a matching rule.

The official OVH documentation states explicitly for priority‑0 rules: you must allow the TCP protocol on all IP addresses and all ports, with the "established" option — not just 80/443.

Now everything works correctly, even the command

curl -I --connect-timeout 10 https://boinc.berkeley.edu

I think my reply might help someone else.

Thanks again to all of you.