SETI@Home BOINC switch over (or new user!) Tutorial.

This is a tutorial to make signing up to BOINC and participating in S@H BONC as easy as possible for anyone.

Step 1
The Signup.


1.If you are running Seti@home classic, exit the program completely.

2.Go to the Seti@home BOINC site : setiweb.ssl.berkeley.edu....

3. Click on "Participate in SETI@home" in the top left of the page.

4. If you have been running Seti@home classic, click on(Under the heading "Getting started") " You must now activate the account."
If you are new to Seti@Home,click " Otherwise: Create a new account "


5.If you are just activating your BOINC account, you will just need to type in the email address you signed up to seti@home classic with, and click "OK". Your new BOINC account ID number will be emailed straight to you.

If you are new to Seti@home and creating an account, the process is only marginally more complicated. You need to put in a name (not necessarily your real one), and an email address so your BOINC account ID number can be emailed to you. You can also choose a country, for working out national Seti@home statistics if you wish.



[edit on 21/11/04 by minimi]

Step 2
The software Download.

1.At the Seti@home BOINC site (setiweb.ssl.berkeley.edu...), click on "Participate in SETI@home " in the top left of the page.

2.Under the heading "Getting started", click on "3. Download, install, and run the BOINC software used by SETI@home."

3.Look at the table under "Stable version (recommended)" on the page that comes up.
Click on the "Download" link in the row of the table relating to the operating system your computer uses.

Click "Save to disk" in the dialog box that comes up.




[edit on 21/11/04 by minimi]

Step3
The software installation.

1. Make sure that you have completely exited seti@home classic (if yu are running it)

2.(in windows) Double click on the file you just downloaded (boinc_4.13_windows_intelx86.exe or similar).

3. Wait for the Installation screen to come up. Click through all the "Next" buttons.

4. After the installation the software should start. A large yellow B in a blue circle should pop up in the system tray - this represents BOINC.

[edit on 21/11/04 by minimi]

Step 4
Connecting to seti at home.

1. Double click on the B in the system tray to open up BOINC
(if the BOINC window is not already open.)

2.Just under where it says "BOINC" in the title bar, click "Settings", then "Attach to Project..."

3.Check your email now. Look at the email sent to you by BOINC Admin, subject " Seti@home Account confirmation".

From it cut and paste the Seti@home URL( setiathome.berkeley.edu...) into the "Project URL" box in BOINC.

4.Also cut and paste your "Account ID" (example:3a567bb25273838sbb7a093ng6h) from the email into the "Account ID" box in BOINC. Then click the OK button.

(Make sure when cut and pasting you didn't accidentally cut and paste any spaces in. I did this. I had a space before the project URL, so couldn't get it to attach.)

You should now have BOINC successfully installed, and be attached to Seti@home. Once you click OK in the Attach to Project box, BOINC will automatically start to download Seti@home crunching software and work units (pieces of information to be scanned by your computer)

Now you're running BOINC, if you weren't a Seti@home classic user on the ATS team, you'll want to join the AboveTopSecret.Com Seti@home team.


1.Go to The Seti@home BOINC site (setiweb.ssl.berkeley.edu...).

2. Click on "Your Account", (below"Participate in SETI@home" in the links list). In the page that comes up, enter your Account ID number (the long 24sbfdbf63bd8383jdf6dh00 nfrom your BOINC Admin email) in the box provided. The click "Log In"

3. Scroll to the bottom of the page and click on "Return to SETI@home main page"

4. Back at the main page, click on "Community" in the list of links on the left (below "Your Account"

5.Click the "Teams" link on the page that comes up.

6.In the search box on the next page, type in AboveTopSecret.com (no spaces) and click the "Search" button.

7. Click on "AboveTopSecret.com" in the list of search results.

8.On the page that comes up, which has a list of all the team members, click "Join" below where it says "SimonGray" in the team info.

9.Click the "Join team" button on the page that comes up.

Congratulations. Now you are a member of the AboveTopSecret.Com Seti@home BOINC team.

[edit on 21/11/04 by minimi]

[edit on 21/11/04 by minimi]

Seti@home classic users may have used external programs like Setimon to cache work units on the hard disk for scanning later, soconnecting to the internet was not necessary everytime you finished a work unit. BOINC needs no external program to do this; here is how to do it:


1. Go to the BOINC site:

setiweb.ssl.berkeley.edu...

2. Click on "Your Account"

3. Login.

4.Scroll down and click on "General Preferences".

5. Click on "Edit Preferences".

6. In the box : "Connect to network about every _____ Days" fill in the box with the

number 5. You can increase it if you want more cached WUs.

7. Click "Update Preferences"

You should end up having a cache of WUs like this





Check ATS BOINC stats at:
www.setisynergy.com...



[edit on 21/11/04 by minimi]

One question, ive disbanded my team which i was the only member..lolol..joined ats on seti with my 3887 units. Just joined boinc team, shutdown s@h 3.08. Now my question is, i see in the messages tab of boinc that it is actually runnin s@h 4.08 in the background. Are my previously done units converted to boinc units? cuz i see a kinda different set of leaders on the list on the boinc team page versus the seti team page.

Not that i care whose leadin, just want to make sure the finished ones get added to the cause..

[edit on 21-11-2004 by S1LV3R4D0]

BOINC scores are kept seperate from the old seti@home classic ones.

BOINC scores work on a different basis. Credit is awarded on the basis of how much work you actually do, as the amount of scanning each work unit takes is different.

So no, your Old work unit total isn't brought over to BOINC, or converted into BOINC credity, but its still there under your Seti@home classic ranking.


Also, not many of the people from ATS are using BOINC yet. Some are using BOINC beta test, but most are sticking with Seti@home classic to the bitter end.

I'll just take this oppurtunity to urge all ATS Seti team members with more than one machine crunching to turn over at least one of their machines to BOINC. Team ATS is 286 of 10184 on BOINC and if we want to stay there we need to have more people switching over.

[edit on 21/11/04 by minimi]

[edit on 21/11/04 by minimi]

Turned over all 3 to boinc ive noticed that seti runs bout 50% on each cpu of a hyperthread(100% if i open the graphical window, cmd line seems just about the same in cpu and time per unit, but can run multiple instances of it REALLY maxin out the cpu. but boinc seems to be doing 2 at a time to max both out so kinda evens out....not too shabby, im likin it so far. and Thanx for all ur help and info minimi... u rox

Kewl got the linux version too...mo units mo units mo units

[edit on 21-11-2004 by S1LV3R4D0]

This is just to adress something I've noticed on my PC; not a problem , just a peculiarity with BOINC.

On a 0% scanned work unit, the time to completion is 08:19:20
When the work unit is being scanned it then shows about 25% complete after about half an hour.
Then, just leaving, it gets up to 100% in about 8 hours.
This seems completely normal on my 2 PCs, so don't wory about weird speeds of scanning.

The moral of that seemingly overcomplicated story:
While scanning, don't trust the time till completion displayed in BOINC.

Keep scanning S1LVR4DO

BTW, any comments/corrections/additions to this tutorial anyone feels like just post in the thread or U2U them.

Additional Programs for BOINC/Seti@Home


Seti@Home map view

This is a page which has a download link and instructions for installing.

The program does just about what it says on the tin.


BoincLogX


Here is a list of addons, including some of these; but some of the links take you to non-English language webpages.

BoincLogx logs information about your scanned work units, and creates the data necessary to see old units in SetiSkymap. Download and instructions on the link page.

BOINCSpy

BOINC Spy is like the program SetiSpy for seti@home classic. It allows you to see information on the work unit you are scanning.

Minimi's Jargon Buster

A little glossary for those unacquainted with some of the terms here;

SETI: the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence. A private program of scientists trying to find alien life.

Seti@home: A Project by the SETI Institue using the principle of distributing computing, in which one can install the seti@home program onto there computer, which will then download radio data collected by radio telescopes and scan it for signals which may have an alien origin.

Seti@home classic: The original Seti@home screensaver program


Distributed Computing: A tehcnique of distributing data to lots of computers for processing, such as Seti@Home does.

BOINC: a program developed by Berekeley Space Science Labs as a platform for the next generation of distributing computing projects. (Seti@home classic/folding@home etc. being the original generation). BOINC is being used as the platform for the new Seti@home and other projects such as Astropulse.

Work Unit (WU): A piece of Radio data downloaded and scanned by Seti@home on your computer.

BOINC Seti@home help forum link:

setiweb.ssl.berkeley.edu...

This is just a bump up, as Seti@home classic nears switch-off, this thread should be useful for some people in switching.

I keep on gettting "no schedulers responded" messages.

I think thats a general seti problem, i've been getting that for the past 2 days too.

edit:

Been to site to chevk it out, appears they've had sever problems/upgrades etc.

[edit on 21/2/05 by minimi]

Originally posted by minimi
I think thats a general seti problem, i've been getting that for the past 2 days too.

edit:

Been to site to chevk it out, appears they've had sever problems/upgrades etc.

[edit on 21/2/05 by minimi]

I'm using all four BOINC projects but the only one that works is Einstein@home

thank you mini for this update and tutorial! I just was u2u-ing Spectre and asking him what he knew of this........

THANKS!

kewl i thought i was the only one havin probs...but now my stats are tweakin also...says my systems are hidden and i cant access my boinc pref page...

This cant be right

The newest version of BOINC (4.25) is a little different, but the only thing thats significant is that when installing, you get the option to install for just your username, install for all users on pc and to run when each one logs on, or to run as a service, which means run all the time even when noone is logged on.

I have it running as a service, but for some reason if your user account on your computer doesn't have a password, it gives a no password error if you leave the password box in boinc blank. If this error comes up, i would just install for all users.


The rest of BOINC is almost exactly the same in its operation.

Minor change to STEP 4: to attach to a project, click the"projects" tab, and then "Attach to Project" in the blue bar to the left of the window