[Schatz]

All,

Maybe one of you has been here before and can offer some help. I am an admin for a mac shop and have about 65 iMac and Tower Macs. Most are Intel and the rest are late model G5. I have Apple Remote Desktop control of all of them. Towers are all Quads. This is a good chunk of horsepower....

I think I can add a lot to the team if I get this to work.

My goal is to have cli version of boinc (SETI) running on all of them whether logged in or not, transparent to the user. I have root if I need to use it.

What I need help with is how to push out the needed pieces and to have it always running even if user is logged out. Some of these folks never shut down and the thought of these machines getting bored is driving me crazy.

I am wondering if anyone has needed scripts to create the 2 or 4 directories (depending on core count) and copy the cli app, prefs file, and any other needed pieces and then fire them all up at machine startup, hidden, before user logs in. I expect I'll have a different procedure for the 4 variations of hardware and that is fine. If I have the basics I can modify.

I also need to be able to specify a port 80 proxy by DNS name. I will set my boinc prefs to stop with mouse activity so users won't be impacted at all.

My 15 quad G5 macs get hot so I may have to skip them during the summer months.

I also realize SETI is down right now, so I'll wait until things stabilize there.

I have some really hot machines here so the potential is great, but I need to be able to do it the way I described to make it happen. I am the IT manager BTW so I'm not going behind any backs here. If I notice user impact I'll have to adjust quickly or kill the idea.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks!

Bob

[ChillyWilly5280]

I'm running all single core PPCs so I can't offer any advice in the multi-core area, but I do know of Mac Admin Tools. I'm using the "Running BOINC as a daemon or system service" for about a month or two now without any issues that I am aware of. I like being able to log out to free up resources for BOINC.

Good luck, and thanks for thinking of humanity in general and Team MacNN in particular!

[besson3c]

You can script a "scp" command to copy out the app to all machines (or use ARD to do this). You should be able to run the command line app in the background by doing a:

sudo /path/to/app &

The & will spawn the application into the background. The only way you can get this app to stop running is by killing the process or rebooting. The "sudo" will make the process be owned by root, so that logging out as a regular user will not kill this process.

I've never actually done this with SETI, but this would be my guess as to how to get this to work.

[zombie67]

1st) Hello! Are you the "schatz" that has 3.2M in SETI@Home credit? or the "Schatz" that has .17M and is a member of SETI.Germany? There are about 5-10 "Schatz" listed in BOINCStats.

2nd) I don't notice heat issues with the quad G5s, but *man* they are loud, especially compared to the Mac Pros.

3rd) Regardless of the answer to #1, Join us! We can really use your contribution, and it looks like you could use our help.

4th) I see that "Schatz" is already using Chicken's optimized app for his XP machine. If you are "schatz", your computers are hidden. So I can't tell if you are using optimized apps or not. If not, please do so! They help the science and have the added benefit of helping your credits.

[Knightrider]

Hi schatz and welcome.

The quickest way to get help from the networking folk is to send them a PM (personnel message) through you MacNN account page. Keep us up to date on how you get on Please.

You may also want to take a look at the latest gui version of BOINC (5.8.17) and check out the
'Advanced/Select computer' tab. I don't have a network, so I don't know how it runs, perhaps someone here has tried it out. It allows you to connect to and then displays in that open BOINC, the remote BOINC, I think.

Good luck

K.

[Todd Madson]

One other thought: I run Boinc/Seti pretty much all the time on my G5 2.5 dual and I notice no slowdowns
in running it while running some very demanding applications. Even massive audio apps that use a lot
of disk. You might be surprised to see the performance you get with this running.