How does Boinc affect the speed of the computer i.e. how can I turn it off?

Hi Guys,

I just switched from the classic program which ran in the background, although I had it setup to start at the startup of the computer, there were situations (i.e. processor intensive tasks or when I thought the computer was sluggish) when I turned the seti program off.

Do I still have to "turn off" or does this new version somehow go into "sleep mode" when I'm doing other tasks?

OR do I have to manually shut it down and if yes, how would I go about?

Thanks,

David

The BOINC software operates at a very low priority, so if you are using the computer for something else, BOINC gives up the CPU time to the other apps when they need it. You can easily watch this - go to your Applications/Utilities folder and start up Activity Monitor. Pull down the menu MONITOR and select SHOW ACTIVITY MONITOR. Click on the CPU button near the bottom left and you can watch the different processes/applications use the CPU. When BOINC is using most of the resources, just move the cursor in a small circle, click on another window that's open, and watch the CPU percentage shift from BOINC to something else.

C
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Forgot to mention...if you do need to turn off BOINC, just click on the terminal window to make it the active window and then type a "control-c". This will pause BOINC. To really quit, type "exit" and press Return. To continue a run from the paused state, just type "./boinc_4.19_ppcG4" or whatever the name of the version you are running, and press return, and BOINC will resume.

While paused, you can see the various commands you can send to BOINC by typing
"./boinc_4.19_ppcG4 -help" (use your BOINC version here) and press return.

To avoid having to type a long BOINC name each time, I simply type "./boinc*" and hit return. [in case you have trouble reading the font, that's "dot-slash-boinc-asterisk". This works because my BOINC folder only has one file in it that begins with "boinc"...

Hope this helps you.

C
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Thanks C for the quick response. Does that mean, if I'm running a browser, email client and a word processor that Bionc will run only very slowly or will it use ALL the remaining processor power since these wouldn't be very intensive tasks?

David
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BOINC will use all the remailing power. Open up your browser, emailer, and WP and then look at the CPU allocations in Activity Monitor - you'll see how SETI loses the resource whenever one of the others demands it. For example, on my PowerBook, when Eudora is actually downloading email, CPU allocations change from 90% SETI and 1% Eudora to around 60% SETI and 30% Eudora. As soon as the email finishes downloading, the allocation goes back to 90% SETI and 1% Eudora.

C
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Perfect! I checked and it worked like a charm! As a followup for other users (not C since he seems to know everything :) -> are there intelligent life forms on other planets ? :) )

Another way to turn the boinc off is to use an addon program called deep thought (versiontracker.com) if you quit this application it seems to also turn off the BOINC units.


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