The AltOS FAQ

NAME
setiathome - the SETI@home client program

SYNOPSIS
setiathome [options]

DESCRIPTION
setiathome is the UNIX version of the SETI@home client.
It downloads radio telescope data from a network server,
analyzes the data looking for signals of extraterrestrial origin,
and uploads results to the server, repeating this cycle indefinitely.
See http://setiathome.berkeley.edu for more information.

FILES
The program generates several files with .sah extension
in the directory from which it's run.
These should not be modified.

If you want to run multiple instances of setiathome
(on a multiprocessor machine, or on multiple machines
that share a filesystem) each one must be run in a different directory.
You can use symlinks for each directory to avoid duplication
of the binary image. e.g.:
ln -s cpu0/setiathome cpu1/setiathome

setiathome uses a lock file (lock.sah) to prevent
multiple instances from running in the same directory.

To finish up your current work unit, return your result, and not
download a new work unit, while the client is running, touch
a file named "stop_after_send.txt" in the client directory.
When the processing is finished, and the result sent, the client will stop.
*** Note this one file extension is .txt, while all other files used by the client have extensions .sah ***

The file "pid.sah" contains the process ID of the current instance.

RUNNING SETIATHOME
The first time you run setiathome it will interactively
ask you for email address, name, country etc.
This info is stored in a file and no interaction is
needed when you run the program subsequently.

After this you can run setiathome in the background,
and direct its output to /dev/null if you like.

setiathome can be freely stopped and restarted.
It saves its state in files, and will pick up where it left off.

If you want setiathome to be started automatically, you can
set up a cron job. Add the following line to your crontab:

0 * * * * cd <setidir>; ./setiathome -nice 19 > /dev/null 2> /dev/null

Where <setidir> is the directory where the setiathome client is installed.
This cron job will attempt to start the client at the top of every hour.
If it is already running, the next invocation will do nothing.
If the client is not running, it will be started.
For more information on cron jobs see the crontab(1) manual page.

The following script will stop all instances SETI@home:
(assuming the binary execution name is: setiathome)

#! /bin/sh
kill `ps aux | grep setia | grep -v grep | awk '{print $2}'`

(adjust the ps arguments for your system)

The following will stop the instance in the current directory:

#! /bin/sh
kill `cat pid.sah`

Please do not operate the client on machines for which you do not
have permission.

ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES

If the environment variable HTTP_PROXY is defined,
setiathome will connect through a proxy server,
specified as hostname or hostnameort.

If the environment variable SOCKS_SERVER is defined,
setiathome will connect through a SOCKS server,
specified as hostname or hostnameort.
If the environment variables SOCKS_USER and SOCKS_PASSWD
are defined, these will be used as the login name and password
for the SOCKS server. Otherwise setiathome will query you.

OPTIONS
-login
Login or create new account.

-countries
Show list of country codes.

-version
Show software version

-nice N
Set "nice" priority to N (default 1);

-email
Send email (to login email address) on errors.
Useful if you run in background directed to /dev/null.
This option is not available for all clients.

-graphics
Generate a data stream for the xsetiathome graphical interface
(see README.xsetiathome)
This option is not available for all clients.

-proxy hostnameort
Connect to SETI@home server via specified HTTP proxy server and port.

-socks_server hostnameort
Connect to SETI@home server via specified SOCKS server and port.
Overrides SOCKS_SERVER.
SOCKS versions 4 and 5 are supported.

-socks_user name
SOCKS user name.

-socks_passwd password
SOCKS password.

-stop_after_process
If a work_unit.sah file is present, process this work unit
and stop after processing is complete, do not return result.
If the client is started with this option, and there is
a completed result.sah file present, the client will first
return the results, then pick up a new work unit, process
to completion, then exit.

-stop_after_xfer
Return results and pick up a new work unit.
This option only functions if the result.sah file is present
and complete indicating that processing is finished for this
work unit. If a work_unit.sah is present, indicating processing
is not complete, no transfer or processing will be performed,
and the client will exit.
(see also: stop_after_send.txt mentioned in FILES above)

-verbose
print a running summary of the work being done.
Starting with the version 2.4 clients, the client is silent
to stdout during processing. There are messages at the start
and finish of processing a work unit, but there are no progress
messages printed during processing unless this option is used.

-nolock
omit the multiple-instance check, which uses file locking
(not available on some NFS systems)

KNOWN BUGS:
Outstanding shared memory segments and semaphores may be left
active in case of an abnormal exit of the 'setiathome -graphics'
process. These can prevent any future invocation of
'setiathome -graphics'. To resolve this problem, use 'ipcs'
and 'ipcrm' to remove shared memory segments and semaphores that
are not associated with a process. This behavior may vary
depending upon how your UNIX system handles this situation.
See also ipcs(1) and ipcrm(1)

For version 3.0 clients, the estimated progress as indicated
by the prog= line in the state.sah file in not exactly linear
in relationship to completion time. Using this value to
predict completion time may not be completely accurate.
The linear relationship will vary depending upon the characteristics
of the work unit parameters.

SEE ALSO:
There is much more information to be found about the operation
of the client at the following WEB sites:
http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/
http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/faq.html
http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/links.html
with discussions of add-on programs and scripts to control
the client in various situations.

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