[Brazuca]

I used to be in the 99%tile in Seti, many years ago (I was the admin of a lab)....now I'm ready to get back into it.

Can you guys give me a guide as to the best program for my dual 2.0 G5? Should I do Seti? Folding? RC5?

Your opinons are of interest to me. Also, if you can post/link instructions on the how to install (I understand there are altivec versions of some clients and I would like to use these.)

Thanks!

[Brazuca]

)

I just looked myself up at SETI, and after 2.5 years without submitting any work, I'm STILL at the top 99.18%

[Lateralus]

I think the general consensus is that of all the major projects, Folding has the most 'point'. But to argue that participating in any one distributed computing project (an act which really takes geekness and anti-social behavior to another level entirely) over another is any more 'meaningful' really seems a bit redundant to me. Do what you want.

For me, I started out with SETI and then moved to RC5-72 because of a few reasons. Those being; 1) I felt that there were more participants in SETI than were needed. 2) Because of the large number of participants, 'the developers that be' have not felt the need to optimize their clients for any processors. Whereas smaller projects like RC5 and Folding, in an effort to attract new participants, have been big on processor optimizations. And for the Mac specifically: AltiVec.

But, it then occurred to me that I was running RC5 because of the extreme AltiVec optimizations which provided me bragging rights over my PC using distrbuted computing loving friends... not because I actually believed in the goal of the project. So, back to SETI for me.

[Brazuca]

Yeah...I think that I'll stick with Seti unless there is some grand medical effort (that isn't run by some commercial company trying to save computing costs).

Can you give me a good guide on what to install to take max advantage of my box? I understand that there is a new G5 optimized version? Are there installation instructions? I would want two copies to use both cpus.

[Brazuca]

Should I use the BOINC version? Should I download the g5 optimized version? I also need some GUI (menuling?) since I'm not comfortable with CLI.

Any help?

[Shaktai]

Originally posted by Brazuca:
Should I use the BOINC version? Should I download the g5 optimized version? I also need some GUI (menuling?) since I'm not comfortable with CLI.

Any help?

BOINC on the Mac is currently CLI only, though a GUI is in the works. In addition to SETI, Predictor@Home is another project that runs on BOINC, and is worthwhile.

If it is important to have a GUI then I would recommend either sticking with the SETI Classic GUI at this time or give Folding@Home a try. They have a very nice GUI and also support optimzations for some work units.

If you are willing to try a CLI, there are plenty of us here who will help you through getting set-up. (I am not crazy about CLI either, but have gotten used to the basics).

If you want to give BOINC a try, just keep in mind that the software is still beta. In addition to SETI, you can run Predictor@home also on BOINC with more projects such as Climate Prediction and Einstein@Home to shortly follow. In fact with BOINC you can run multiple projects and assign an approximate share to each, that you want it to run. Frameworks like BOINC are the future, but they do have their "growing pains". Folding@Home

[Brazuca]

Thanks for the advice. Now I'm trying to actually install the CLI clients. yesterday I had SETI running (darwin 1.2) but I couldn't get a second instance running. Also, I don't think that it was BOINC.

I want to run SETI and PREDICTOR. What do I need to do? How to I install the optimized version that is posted in the other thread?

I read somewhere that you have to "attach" another client. How do I do that?

[Shaktai]

First register for the project(s) you want at their website. This will let you get your account key/ID. Wherever you see a request for a URL, or a command with URL in it, that will be the homepage URL of the project you are interested in, or that the command pertains to.

Check out mikkyo's thread About how to get started and to attach to multiple projects at:
http://forums.macnn.com/showthread.p...hreadid=219776

Where he references 3.19, just replace that with 3.20 (the current version)

And my thread lists all of the BOINC commands that can be used at:
http://forums.macnn.com/showthread.p...hreadid=220642

To use a command type "./boinc_3.20 -"command"
(I always shorten the name of my app after download, just to keep it simple)

You can use multiple commands at once if you like,
./boinc_3.20 -"command 1" -"command 2"

For example the command line looks like:
[iBookDWR:~/applications/BOINC] shaktai%

Then I add my commands to start the program, update preferences and run benchmarks
[iBookDWR:~/applications/BOINC] shaktai% ./boinc_3.20 -update_prefs http://predictor.scripps.edu -run_cpu_benchmarks

./boinc_3.20 = starts the program
-update_prefs http://predictor.scripps.edu = updates the peferences for the Predictor project
-run_cpu_benchmarks = re-run the benchmarks for my computer

Hope that helps.