Would some great God of Geeks out there please bestow a bit of their fathomless wisdom upon a wannabe geek who'd like to download, install, configure, and run Seti@Home on his newly installed Fedora 4 computer? I will promise to sacrifice one old 14" monitor to the collectors of sanitation if my request is granted.
Thank you Oh Great Ones!
(hey, it's been a rough day......)

Thanks!

-- mkabru.

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I don't know if this will work the same for Fedora as with Slackware but I simply downloaded the linux boinc package and uncompressed it into a directory in my home directory, fired it up and attached to the projects. There was nothing else I needed to do or anything just to get it running. The only special thing I did was installed a command in my boot scripts to start the actual boinc client program when I boot the computer. If you only want it to run when you're logged on you could put the command in your user .bashrc or .cshrc file (whichever you have). If you run multiple desktops, you could always do like I started with and that is just firing up the boinc manager in a desktop and leave it running. I never log out for the most part unless something forces me to (such as the rare time when I *have* to switch to Windows). I just left it running in a desktop and when I wanted to check on it I'd just switch to that desktop. However the manager does take a few cpu cycles away from the actual client. Best thing to do would be start the client at boot time and let it crunch any time the computer is booted whether you are logged in or not. You can always log in and check it's status with the manager then log back out.
Hope this helps, and if you do run into problems just let us know. There are plenty of us here that run Linux and even Fedora linux in case there's something specific to that distro that you need to know.

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Jim

Some people plan their life out and look back at the wealth they've had.
Others live life day by day and look back at the wealth of experiences and enjoyment they've had.

Hi, oh mighty ones :)

Im trying to get BOINC to work on damn small linux.
When i first downloaded it and extracted it, it worked but said no disc space :S (that was in \\OPT)
Now i'm trying to get it to work again, but everytime i open the client and try to connect to a project it says that http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/ is not a boinc project (same goes for other projects)

I've tried running the client from different maps, but nothing worked so far.
Anybody knows what the problem is?

I'm a complete linux noob, so excuse me for any faults, or things i overlooked.
Thnx.

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Hi, oh mighty ones :)

Im trying to get BOINC to work on damn small linux.
When i first downloaded it and extracted it, it worked but said no disc space :S (that was in \\OPT)
Now i'm trying to get it to work again, but everytime i open the client and try to connect to a project it says that http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/ is not a boinc project (same goes for other projects)

I've tried running the client from different maps, but nothing worked so far.
Anybody knows what the problem is?

I'm a complete linux noob, so excuse me for any faults, or things i overlooked.
Thnx.

Make sure you don't have the backslash on the end of the url. This has been reported to give this error. Also make sure that when you enter your email address and password or account key to log on there are no extra spaces before or after them. This problem has occured by having extra spaces either before or after your account key if you use that way to attach.

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Jim

Some people plan their life out and look back at the wealth they've had.
Others live life day by day and look back at the wealth of experiences and enjoyment they've had.

Thnx m8! I got it working, from home/dsl/boinc/
Attached, does'nt say anythings wrong.
Now the last part, getting it to fetch work.
so i'm gonna fiddle around a bit with the program.

If there's anything i should know about getting the work, i'm very willing 2 hear!
Thnx again, jim!

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Thnx m8! I got it working, from home/dsl/boinc/
Attached, does'nt say anythings wrong.
Now the last part, getting it to fetch work.
so i'm gonna fiddle around a bit with the program.

If there's anything i should know about getting the work, i'm very willing 2 hear!
Thnx again, jim!

Go to your "preferences" page here on the website and check your preferences. Make sure you have the settings right. We recommend letting it run while the computer is in use and set your "Connect every X days" to about 1 day to start with. Then hit the "update" button and let it run for a little while. If this doesn't work post about 20 lines of your messages and we'll go from there.

/edit/ I just looked at your computer and see that you've already got three wu's and returned two of them! Congratulations!
Happy crunching!

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Jim

Some people plan their life out and look back at the wealth they've had.
Others live life day by day and look back at the wealth of experiences and enjoyment they've had.

/edit/ I just looked at your computer and see that you've already got three wu's and returned two of them! Congratulations!
Happy crunching!

Yeah 2 of my computers are allready working. (Win98 & XP)
The third (xbox :) is the one with damn small linux.

I'll see if the 20-line works, if not. I'll be back right here..

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/edit/ I just looked at your computer and see that you've already got three wu's and returned two of them! Congratulations!
Happy crunching!

Yeah 2 of my computers are allready working. (Win98 & XP)
The third (xbox :) is the one with damn small linux.

I'll see if the 20-line works, if not. I'll be back right here..

Oops, I checked on the wrong account! I checked Mike's account (the original poster!)

Some bad (possibly) news for you Jiggy, I don't think your xbox is going to run here. You are only showing 56.98mb of memory and the seti application requires more than that. I'm not sure but I think 96 megs is the minimum. I know that a computer running 64 megs won't do it because we've had several people to try it and it said that it needed more.

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Jim

Some people plan their life out and look back at the wealth they've had.
Others live life day by day and look back at the wealth of experiences and enjoyment they've had.

Some bad (possibly) news for you Jiggy, I don't think your xbox is going to run here. You are only showing 56.98mb of memory and the seti application requires more than that. I'm not sure but I think 96 megs is the minimum. I know that a computer running 64 megs won't do it because we've had several people to try it and it said that it needed more.

Ok.
And what about clustering the device? connecting it to another computer?
(You know quite a-lot!:)

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Some bad (possibly) news for you Jiggy, I don't think your xbox is going to run here. You are only showing 56.98mb of memory and the seti application requires more than that. I'm not sure but I think 96 megs is the minimum. I know that a computer running 64 megs won't do it because we've had several people to try it and it said that it needed more.

Ok.
And what about clustering the device? connecting it to another computer?
(You know quite a-lot!:)

I don't believe that would be an option either. To make use of clustering the program itself would have to be written to support it. Even if you have multiple processors on the same computer it only runs a work unit on each processor. It doesn't split the program and run it on both processors. It simply fires up a new instance of the program to run on the second processor (with all the limitations of the separate instances of the program). This means that if one program requires X amount of memory then running two instances of it would require 2X memory. There has been mention of the new applications being developed would lower the minimum memory requirement, but I have not heard anything to confirm it. (Even though my info on the left doesn't show it I am a volunteer tester testing the new enhanced app.)
If you are serious about using this for a crunching box, there are possible options but they are also possibly problems to it too. You may be able to check around and see if there is some sort of memory expansion that you can get. I don't know a thing about the xbox but I do know it is available for some "game machines". However even if you do get it to where it would run, it has been discussed that there is a possibility that it would not return valid results. During the discussion several game machines were mentioned however I don't know which ones. The problem lies in the way the mathematic functions are computed. In a "normal" computer, the precision of calculations is carried out to a high degree. To increase the speed of game machines this precision is (possibly) not there. It was pointed out that only a few decimal points is sufficient to compute a position of a pixel on the screen to give the effect of smooth high speed graphics, however in a scientific application such as ours such imprecision can't be tolerated. It would probably crunch the wu but later during validation your results would be too far "outside the box" as it is called to be validated and would result in an error.
All I can suggest at this point, without knowing anything about the actual precision of your computational abilities on the xbox is that if you can find enough memory to get the application to run, try a few wu's on it and let them be validated. If they don't error out you have succeeded. If they do, you just have a souped up machine that you could use for other things that don't require the precision. You never know, the extra memory might even make it a faster gamer!

BTW, you can help me! Do you see a logo in my sig or is it showing an error icon? The logo should say GQFCrunchers? (I get an error icon because I'm serving the logo from the machine I'm on and my connection doesn't allow me to connect to my own ip. I have to use my private network ip to see a page on my own web server!)

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Jim

Some people plan their life out and look back at the wealth they've had.
Others live life day by day and look back at the wealth of experiences and enjoyment they've had.

Yes, your signature is visible:)
Nice 1 too, you actually play quake?
I just used my Far Cry sig, wich i play allot on my xbox.

2 bad about the low-precision you mentioned, if they do decide to launch a low-memory version i'll definitly check it out.
Maybe i'll be the first to post about using your xbox as a cruncher :)

It's 2 bad i cant compile, maybe i should post something on a xbox-community site. see if they can compile it into a "true" (read: homebrew)xbox version.
This way the memory X-dsl uses is no longer needed, giving the app the full 64mb of ram the xbox has. (it wont be much, but at such low RAM anything is welcome)
It can be done, i hope if all that work is put in, the results come back positive:S

Oh and upping the ram on the xbox will only work out if you use it 4 linux only, normal games somehow don't understand the extra memory, actually slowing them down.

Thnx 4 the input, i wait around till the slower version of BOINC comes..

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Yes, your signature is visible:)
Nice 1 too, you actually play quake?
I just used my Far Cry sig, wich i play allot on my xbox.

Thanks for the compliment. It's just something I threw together in just a few minutes! (I have been noticing a lot of hits on my server with no errors. I just can't see it myself because I would be trying to loop back to my own ip address and it won't let me!)
I play Quake 3 mostly in single player but occasionally on a lan with some friends. Never played online though. The "GQF" in my sig is really in dedication to some of my friends that are (were) members of the ClanGQF gamers.
(Trying to talk a couple into donating time on their super fast gaming computers for here!)

2 bad about the low-precision you mentioned, if they do decide to launch a low-memory version i'll definitly check it out.
Maybe i'll be the first to post about using your xbox as a cruncher :)

It's 2 bad i cant compile, maybe i should post something on a xbox-community site. see if they can compile it into a "true" (read: homebrew)xbox version.
This way the memory X-dsl uses is no longer needed, giving the app the full 64mb of ram the xbox has. (it wont be much, but at such low RAM anything is welcome)
It can be done, i hope if all that work is put in, the results come back positive:S

Oh and upping the ram on the xbox will only work out if you use it 4 linux only, normal games somehow don't understand the extra memory, actually slowing them down.

Thnx 4 the input, i wait around till the slower version of BOINC comes..

Yep, the other thread I mentioned where the person juat had 64 megs said that it gave him a message saying that only around 450 k more was needed! So even a little extra would work but wouldn't want to slow down the gaming! Mabey Dotsch in the other thread can help. Good luck to both of you!

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Jim

Some people plan their life out and look back at the wealth they've had.
Others live life day by day and look back at the wealth of experiences and enjoyment they've had.

grin... a common problem this... yes I will do.. but have a little patience.. I will be back thursday as i have to leave within the hour

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grin... a common problem this... yes I will do.. but have a little patience.. I will be back thursday as i have to leave within the hour

plane delayed.. sitting with laptop...
The latest version for linux is boinc_5.2.13_i686-pc-linux-gnu.sh
it is a self extracting file ... so no major problems with "extracting" it.
The biggest decision is where to install it. Because linux is another unix you have a system that performs very very nicely as a server for a network... mine here do all day every day. so your security is important...

ok ...using a combination of the gui and command line interface to get this done...

log on as root
start your gui .. if not already started....
create a folder in the root "/" directory called seti ,use the gui if you prefer, or do mkdir /seti

move the downloaded file boinc_5.2.13_i686-pc-linux-gnu.sh into /seti.
start a "terminal" window [the command line interface]
enter the command cd /seti to change into the folder
enter the command ls to list the contents ... just in case your file is not there.. and you need to move it again?
enter the command sh boinc_5.2.13_i686-pc-linux-gnu.sh
the "sh" is short for "shell" and will start a shell process to open the file named after the sh command

file self extracts, you now have another folder called BOINC
enter the command cd BOINC
inside this folder is the boinc program and all its interface drivers

two important files are here run_client and run_manager, they are both shell "scripts" [system executables]

to start boinc client,
enter command ./run_client &

the ./ is important dont leave it off, the & is important also dont leave it off
the terminal screen you are in will now show some output as the client starts

press enter key to get back to the command line [this is why the & on the end of the command is important!!]

now start gui manager,
enter the command ./run_manager &
you will see [after a few seconds... ] the gui screen
proceed to enter you account details etc to connect to seti

Ensure you have your linux firewall running!!!!. allow http... just for now turn OFF ssh until you configure it just for your local users... or else you WILL be hacked.

hint: useful tool for firewall maintenance... download "webmin"
install webmin by doing rpm -i webmin
it has its own web-page interface tool... start your web browser and point it to localhost:10000
login... play with the tools... you can also browse to it from any network attached windows pc's ... remote admin...

I will comment more on the reasons for creating the /seti folder
and come back to changing folder pemissions for enhanced security etc later.. got to go now..

all other unix users reading this please feel free to comment...

cheers M
happy crunching...

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