I looked, but couldn't find this topic.

Something strange happened to seti on my iMac. About 3 or 4 mounts ago, it stopped doing anything (much) when it is in screensaver and the screen is dark. I watch it go into screensaver and process data just as fast as it used to. Then it goes dark. When I bring it out of screensaver the next day, the percent complete and the time used haven't changed. Its been sitting there doing nothing! The result is that it has taken about 12 hours to complete data file, but IT TOOK ABOUT A WEEK TO RUN 12 HOURS.

What the heck is going on? I had been completing a couple of data files a day using only the screensaver mode. I had not been using the screensaver during the summer (because of the heat) and soon after I turned it back on, I noticed this.

Any suggestions for a solution, would be GREATLY appreciated.

I'm running on a 400Mhz iMac with 9.0.4. This started just BEFORE I upgraded seti to v3.

Thanks a lot,

mudd

[reader50]

Check your Energy Saver CP settings. Your system may be going to sleep after X minutes of inactivity. Sleep will slow SETI (any version) to a crawl.

reader50,

I thought of that, but I haven't changed anything in that regard. Further, the system is set to go to sleep after 30 minutes of inactivity but it won't if the seti screensaver is 'active' crunching numbers. Will it?

Thanks anyway.

mudd

PS I AM a member of 'Team MacNN', sooooo any other ideas?

[This message has been edited by iMudd (edited 12-27-2000).]

[druber]

iMudd, I'm glad you're on the team, but, um, we'd try to help you anyway. Somehow my impression is that, by inactivity, think no user-input. No keystrokes, mouse movement in half an hour, sleepy time for Mr. Mac. If Seti always comes on before the machine is set to sleep, why have it set to sleep at all? Not sure why this would pop up now if you hadn't changed the energy saver settings. I'd say turn off the sleep and see if it makes a difference. If not, well we try agin thin.

[reader50]

To my knowledge, sleep works as druber describes it. Network activity like a chat program may be able to keep your Mac awake, but SETI will not. The SETI readme even says that sleep will drastically slow SETI down.
For that very reason, I have been avoiding sleep and letting my Mac crunch 24/7 at fill speed. Interrupted when I actually want to use my Mac for something.

[Danometer]

If the green "Power" light has turned orange, that means that the Mac is asleep and that SETI has been slowed to a crawl, since Sleep cycles down everything, including the processor, to about 10% of the normal power consumption. Setting the Energy Saver control panel to "Never" on "Sleep Setup" should cure the problem.

Updating the OS often resets the Energy Saver Preferences to the factory pre-set, which is 30 minutes. I wouldn't be surprised to find other installations doing the same.

Don't be offended by druber's tone. [stupid crap deleted by me]

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En el día nací, las enfermeras recolectadas todo alrededor y miraron con maravilla salvaje en el muchacho que habían encontrado. La enfermera principal habló para arriba, ella dijo "licencia ésta sola." Ella podría decir enseguida que fuera malo al hueso.

[This message has been edited by Danometer (edited 12-29-2000).]

Welllll...... I'll try that, BUT.

The green light stays on. I have it setup with all the data in a RAM disk and with the hard disk set with a separate sleep setting. I was accustomed to putting it in screensaver and after 30 minutes the disk would stop but the green light would stay on, and when I got out of screensaver it had been crunching along the whole time.

And another thing. I have noticed that now, the hard disk goes in and out of sleep a lot (if it goes to sleep at all). This is not what was happening before this problem started.

And another 'nother thing. Sometimes, I will watch seti before the screen goes blank, and it will just freeze for maybe 10 or 20 seconds just before it goes dark. No graph changes, no numbers updating, nothing.

Thanks for the help.

mudd

PS This is a good one, eh?

[druber]

well, operations usually stop when the machine prepares itself to go into sleep mode, so that's no surprise. the green light on your machine should stay on. it's only monitors, afaik, that change to an orange light when they hit sleep mode. my vote hasn't changed. keep energy saver away from your hard drive.

I forgot to mention that I have seti go dark after 1 minute. I don't think the machine prepares itself to go into sleep mode 1 minute after you touch the keyboard.

Tried turning off sleep altogether. Let seti screensaver run for almost an hour. It had done about 4 minutes of CPU time during that hour. Something in seti seems to be expecting a response that it is not getting.

[Todd Madson]

Another big cause of slowdowns is hard disk indexing. Go into your find file utility and shut that off. I found it one night after midnight indexing away on my wife's iMac DV SE and it was in the middle of something
that would have taken an hour of processing. Horrible. So I shut it off.

[stephend]

I had my mac crash, and suddenly it was using a backup copy of the SETI data folder on the hard drive. Go into your application support folder and make sure the alias is still pointing to your RAM disk (my guess is that it is not) this would explain the symptoms you are seeing.

[druber]

Funny, I guess I hadn't read Danometer's post until just now. My old Performa575 didn't have an orange light on sleep that I remember, and my Umax clone doesn't have an orange light period, so it obviously doesn't turn colors on sleep. Just speaking out of my experience, here. Are you sure there isn't another screensaver that snuck onto your system? Unlikely, I know, but if it isn't energy saver that's cutting you off, there must be something else that's stealing clock cycles. Maybe try downloading peek-a-boo and watch what pops up...

Don't be offended by druber's tone. He went to the OCN School of Charm and Manners.

I was trying to tell iMudd that we'd help him even if he wasn't on Team MacNN. I'm not from OCN. If you think my manners could stand correcting, email me privately, I don't mind. Speaking poorly of me to the forum like I'm not a "real" member or something is in poor taste. [yes, I bite my thumb at you.]

[reader50]

I must protest that druber is a real team member. He and his work units have been getting away from me for the last couple months. I call that quite real.

[This message has been edited by reader50 (edited 12-29-2000).]

[Danometer]

Oh good grief, I was just being silly. I thought you were being needlessly harsh on iMudd, so I razzed you. You're right, I should have done it privately. If you want revenge, run my signature through Babelfish (babelfish.altavista.com) and post it. It will make me look quite stupid.

On iMacs, there is a green Power light that turns orange while sleeping. It is between the CD drive and the right speaker. Apparently Sleep isn't the problem if the light stays green.

SETI usually catches the presence of another screensaver. I know it snags Berkeley System's After Dark series every time, much to my wife's dismay.

iMudd, what files are on the RAM Disk and what SETI items are in the Applciation Support folder in the System Folder? Where is the SETI@home program located on your Mac?

[druber]

i'm staying trained on keyser at the moment. he just manages to keep ahead of me and it's making me nuts. i'll sure hoot and holler when he steps up to #100, which will probably be very soon.

viva la difference

Geewiz. I didn't think this topic would attract so much attention. Anyway, let me try to respond to these in order:

Todd,
I don't think indexing could be the problem. It only seems to run at midnight and it only takes about five minutes.

stephend and Danometer,
I checked, and my RAM disk setup is still in place. In my RAM disk I have the SETI@home Data folder. It contains a bunch of stuff, including .sah files that get touched while seti is up and some that get touched each time I get a new work_unit. In my Application Support folder in the System folder I have a pointer (alias?) named 'SETI@home Data', (without the word alias) pointing to 'RAM Disk: SETI@home Data'.
As far as I can tell, the SETI@home program is called a 'control panel' in System folder: Control Panels.

druber and Danometer,
I don't belive there is another screensaver on my system. Unless one 'snuck in' as you said. It seems clear to me that something IS stealing clock cycles. BTW, what is 'peek-a-boo'? Also, last spring (hummm?) I downloaded some demo games called 'After Dark demo', but there was no screensaver with it. (hummm? again)

Also druber,
I just completed #132 last night.

Thanks a lot peoples.

mudd

PS If this was UNIX, I'd have figured it out a long time ago.

[This message has been edited by iMudd (edited 12-29-2000).]

[Danometer]

Peek-a-boo is a program from Clarkwood Software that allows you to customize the fraction of the time your Mac's CPU spends on one particular program. This allows you to give SETI priority over any other program, including the Finder.

This may be a wild goose chase, do you have an extension titled "Screen Posters" with a version less than 4? It often came with After Dark stuff. If the version is less than 4, that *MAY* (not certain) be a source of some trouble.

[reader50]

Peek-a-boo shareware $10
Memory Mapper freeware: allows you to track memory usage & kill any process in OS 9 & earlier.
PPCLoad Watcher freeware: allows tracking of CPU usage of each application & process in real time. It can sort all running apps & processes by the percentage of CPU each is using.

[This message has been edited by reader50 (edited 12-29-2000).]

[druber]

peek-a-boo also shows you exactly what processes are running on the computer and how much of the cpu they're taking up. it might show what other app is launching before the screen goes to sleep, or give some clue as to what else is lying in wait (spooky). (thanks for the links, guys)
also, i meant #100 in rank, not wu's completed. #100 has 452wu's done, i think. if i could just....reach...

[Scotttheking]

Does Peekaboo have to be running to prioritize stuff?

[Danometer]

Nope. The Peekaboo application almost like a Control Panel, you put the settings where you want them, then close it up. The settings remain operational after quitting the application.

I think it is well worth the shareware fee.

[This message has been edited by Danometer (edited 12-29-2000).]

CONTROL STRIP!

Sorry, I didn't mean to yell. I figured out what was interfering with seti. It was the control strip!

You see, every time I got up from my computer, I would move the pointer down to the lower left corner to start the screensaver. Well, in the same corner was... the control strip. For some reason, the pointer sitting on the control strip while the screensaver was running was activating the control strip without fully exiting the screensaver. Cool.

I figured it out by looking at Peek-a-Boo. (Well worth $10). I put a CPU graph on the background stuff. I then noticed that the control strip extension had these little peaks of activity while screensaver was active. Anyway, I removed the strip and let the screensaver run for four hours and it actually processed FOUR HOURS OF DATA.

Thanks a lot to druber, Danometer and reader50 for pointing me to Peek-a-Boo.

BTW, I should have known you didn't mean 100 work_units. You know, I was almost at 60th position in rank when I joined Team MacNN. Of course, there was just about 100 members then. Then I stopped running during the summer heat. And then, well you know. But, I'm catching up with you NOW!

mudd