Hello everyone,

This strikes me as one of most poorly designed campaigns ever. Please BOINC/Seti developers please some explanations in plain English for us non programming idiots. I've got the BOINC Menubar (BOINC Menubar 4.25 (v2)) with the "B" in the finder on a iMac G5 10.3.8

Can somebody help explain what the BOINC Menubar 4.25 (v2) is?

Is it the BOINC application itself? Y/N?

Do I need to run something in the terminal other than BOINC Menubar 4.25 (v2)?

How do I change the preferences? I've got Seti and Predictor on it. How do I tell it what percent of processor time to spend on Seti vs Predictor?

Predictor seemed to have some sort of preference for this but it didn't seem to know about Seti, totally confusing.

What do these preferences on the Seti page actually mean?

Use no more than .5 GB disk space

How much disk space does Seti need?

How should I set this?

Leave at least 0.1 GB disk space free

Would Seti really consume ALL the space on my hard drive if I let it?

Use no more than 50% of total disk space

If I've told Seti to use .5GB of space why do I need to specify this?

Write to disk at most every 60 seconds

What should this be set at?

Use no more than 75% of total virtual memory

Again what should this be set at? Does it take up virtual memory (swap space?) only when it's running or does it take up space when I'm doing the rest of my work? I don't want it to slow down whatever else I'm doing. What is it doing with virtual memory?

I've found so little info on BOINC in plain English. I'm not a programmer but I work in Communications, photography and graphic design. I can't find anything that explains what/how to use any BOINC client in lay English. I've had the old Seti screen saver for years and have done thousands work units. It was simple clear and straightforward to use. BOINC is just the opposite. I will gladly put a webpage together with any info anyone can give me so I can spread the word to non-computer programming people.

sincere thank you's

Hi;
The instructions for setting up MenuBar are here: http://boinc.berkeley.edu/menubar.php

As for preferences on the setiweb.ssl.berkeley.edu, mine are set a little differently than yours, i.e.:
Use no more than 10 GB disk space
Leave at least 0.1 GB disk space free
Use no mmore than 50% of total disk space
Write to disk at most every 900 seconds
Use no more than 90% of total virtual memmory
Connect to network about every 6 Days

Somewhere on the forums, probably Cafe Seti, I read a "Maximum" Seti efficiency setup. That's where I found the above numbers.

As for your queries about what these settings really do, you could check out Paul's web site:
http://boinc-doc.net/index.php

It's an unofficial documentation web site that is very useful and informative.

By the way, I agree with you about the sore lack of information available at setiweb.

Regards;

---

LarryB56