setiathome(1)setiathome(1)NAMEsetiathome - the SETI@home client program
SYNOPSISsetiathome [options]
DESCRIPTIONsetiathome 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 direc-
tory. 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.txt) 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 run-
ning, 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 <sdir>; ./setiathome -nice 19 >/dev/null 2>&1
Where <sdir> 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 run-
ning, 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
killall setiathome
The following will stop the instance in the current direc-
tory:
#! /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 hostname:port.
If the environment variable SOCKS_SERVER is defined,
setiathome will connect through a SOCKS server, specified
as hostname or hostname:port. If the environment vari-
ables 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 graphi-
cal interface (see README.xsetiathome) This option
is not available for all clients.
-proxy hostname:port
Connect to SETI@home server via specified HTTP
proxy server and port.
-socks_server hostname:port
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)
-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 invoca-
tion of 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 han-
dles this situation. See also ipcs(1) and ipcrm(1)
For version 3.* clients, the estimated progress as indi-
cated 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 com-
pletely accurate. The linear relationship will vary
depending upon the characteristics of the work unit param-
eters.
SEE ALSO
There is much more information to be found about the oper-
ation 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.
setiathome(1)
