I've been running Seti@Home Boinc for about a week and was notified today, in my terminal window, that a new version of Boinc (4.12) is available.

How do I update the software without loosing the project data that is currently being run/analyzed ?

Thanks ...

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Michael J Lettini
AKA Viper Mike

Well, I'm not really one of the real computer brains around here, but I just did this myself, so I should be able to help.

Are you using SETI Control Version 2.4? I am, and it makes life with Seti/Boinc much easier.

Anyway, I downloaded the new client, with Safari. Safari automatically uncompresses it. I stopped SETI running using SETI Control. I then swapped the new version, 4.12, for the old version, 4.09 in the setiathome-BOINC folder in the Applications folder. Then I opened up a Terminal window then dropped the new client on the Terminal window. Then I found I had to repair the permissions or something in it by typing chmod +x /Applications/setiathome-BOINC/boinc_4.09_powerpc-apple-darwin.

Then I typed ./boinc_4.09_powerpc-apple-darwin and it started running. It re-benchmarked, but since all the other files were still in the folder, it knew which account to use and just re-started the same work unit. Anyway, then I quit terminal, and launched SETI Control. In preferences I changed the pathname to reflect 4.12 instead of 4.09. Then I hit start seti in Seti Control, and it again started just where it had left off. But it now says it is "starting Boinc client version 4.12"

I hope I got all those steps right.

Let me know how it turns out.

North

"When I was growing up, I wanted to be an astronaut. Later, reality set in and I had to settle for being a skydiver." - Bryan

An even easier way, for those who don't like using Terminal, is to download and replace 4.09 with 4.12 in the Applications folder, exactly as North95 advises but don't open Terminal.

Now, still using SETI Control, go to the Preferences and change the path name to go to the new version. All the new benchmarks are run after you start the new version via SETI Control.

This way, you don't have to touch Terminal at all!

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> Are you using SETI Control Version 2.4? I am, and it makes life with
> Seti/Boinc much easier.

Thanks for the response:

I'm not using SETI Control ... I have downloaded the new version of Setiathome-BOINC 4.13 ...

But I have been running the older version for over a week and have been cranking out valid results ... I have more data in work ... I don't want to lose that work and from what I've been reading shutting down has caused other people problems in restarting ... how can I shut down Terminal without losing the data and other associated problems ...

Thanks ...

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Michael J Lettini
AKA Viper Mike

I don't want to
> lose that work and from what I've been reading shutting down has caused other
> people problems in restarting ... how can I shut down Terminal without losing
> the data and other associated problems ...

Certainly if you stop SETI using SETI Control you don't lose any data, and when you replace one version of boinc with a newer one it just carries on processing the work unit where the previous version left off. Hope this helps.
MM

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>
> I'm not using SETI Control ... I have downloaded the new version of
> Setiathome-BOINC 4.13 ...
>
> But I have been running the older version for over a week and have been
> cranking out valid results ... I have more data in work ... I don't want to
> lose that work and from what I've been reading shutting down has caused other
> people problems in restarting ... how can I shut down Terminal without losing
> the data and other associated problems ...

Terminal is much to opaque and mysterious for me to tell you how to deal with it. I would advise strongly to get Seti Control 2.4. It's free. It lets you control what's going on without worrying about all the weird terminal commands. It doesn't use any processor time. You can keep it closed all the time and just launch it when you want to see what's been going on with SETI. And, apparantly, you can upgrade your client very easily without losing the work unit you're working on, and keeping all the units you've downloaded.

I would think that there's also a way to do this just using Terminal but why bother? Unless you really want to get into that Unix stuff.

North


Sex is not the answer. Sex is the question. Yes is the answer.

I would advise strongly to get Seti Control 2.4. It's free. It lets you
> control what's going on without worrying about all the weird terminal
> commands. It doesn't use any processor time. You can keep it closed all the
> time and just launch it when you want to see what's been going on with SETI.
> And, apparantly, you can upgrade your client very easily without losing the
> work unit you're working on, and keeping all the units you've downloaded.
>
> I would think that there's also a way to do this just using Terminal but why
> bother? Unless you really want to get into that Unix stuff.
>
> North

I agree with all that North has said here. I didn't know about SETI Control when I started with Boinc, so had to quickly learn more of the mysteries of UNIX (previously only having used it in single user mode for fsck-ing the Mac).

What we really need is a proper SETI Boinc GUI for Macs but meanwhile, SETI Control makes things a lot easier!

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For those using Terminal ... here is how I switched over to BOINC 4.13 from 4.09.

Go into the file menu of Terminal and select Send Break (Ctrl- C) ... this suspends activity ... You will get a login line ... drag the new BOINC application into the Terminal window and hit Return ... it will then run a benchmark check and resume processing the work unit being analyzed ...

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Michael J Lettini
AKA Viper Mike

I love the terminal, and I use the team MacNN compiles as well, there much faster, using setiathome-4.30.... I highly advise ya checking it out... look at http://members.dslextreme.com/~readerforum/forum_team/boinc.html and get whatever cpu ur using + get the seti worker and follow the instructions so that it will use the seti worker, instead of downloading one that is slower and is for mac as well.. =) also before running it you will need to do that chmod command, i use chmod u+x boinc_____ to make it executable.

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