FYI, we use Macs because we don't like living in the command line.

When will you have a GUI version built and running?

The old Seti@home client really can't be phased out until you have this ready....

I believe it's on the slate for M2... for both Linux and Mac (as well as any other *nix).

And if you aren't living in the command line, you're missing one sweet world. :-)

Rob

> And if you aren't living in the command line, you're missing one sweet world.
> :-)
>
> Rob
>
>
A world populated with stone axes, straw, and flints. This is hardly a customer-friendly answer.

Why does Windows get a GUI and we don't? (Rhetorical question)

I agree. The old Seti@Home client needs support until there's a GUI version for Mac OS X.

Brian

> I believe it's on the slate for M2... for both Linux and Mac (as well as any
> other *nix).
>
> And if you aren't living in the command line, you're missing one sweet world.
> :-)
>
> Rob
>
>


I have always used an cli on macs older ones using FreeBSD.... Its faster and better than GUI's just my 2 cents...

SETI-BOINC is still a little rough, but it is improving. The niceties will come eventually.

http://seti.mundayweb.com/stats.php?userID=126&trans=off
Join best Macintosh team ever assembled.

Well thats nice and all but not everyone knows the commands either, I had to look them up to be able to get in the right dir. to install it. Now thats a massive pain. This is what u call a public beta, and it shouldnt be. This shouldnt be avalible to people unless it works right. I mean now come on, we all are giving up cpu time our electricity and everything for this program, the least we could get is the dang thing to work right off the bat and not do funky stuff. Now again thats all nice and good that some of u know the command line, but alot of people that use macs dont, therefor the reason for the MAC OS X GUI intereface, ;)... Catch what Im saying.

Im pretty unimpressed with this so far. And it just goes along with this whole thing. People not being able to use dual processors on seti... What gives there, I mean come on they want people to do this but at the same time dont give the software to handle it. Now that seems to be changing in this one, but dang gotta get it to work first.... lol

Anyway I know I went way off here but it is totally called for. Hopefully they will get this fixed ASAP. And make it to where it installs easy and doesnt put files where u dont want them and so on. In my sweet world it should work without me knowing command line and having to learn something new, for something that will never really help me in my daily routine of life.... Anyway tose are my thought and I could go on but I wont. ;)

What the heck is up with this forum? Why doesnt it shows posts after one another... OMG , STOP TRYING TO REINVENT THE WHEEL..... Use a REAL forum , Like phpbb or something like that. My god!!!!!!!!!! >:o

I add my signature to this petition. I finally got it to work from the Terminal, sort of (the SETI@home server seems to be down). But the only reason I did is because someone in this forum knew how to work around an install issue. I'm far from a UNIX guru, and would prefer to keep it that way. :)

Me too. I would be much happier with this if it was a 'proper' Mac OSX program.

There were no installation instructions given that I could understand and it wouldn't open in Terminal by default, so I had a look at this forum to see if I should force it to open (which I did, though my Mac queried it and told me it didn't know if Terminal could open it or not!) I got it going OK as I'm not a complete UNIX virgin, having used it for fsck, to delete undeletable files and such like tasks but anything more complicated would need some more investigation and experimenting.

Now, it seems I have to keep Terminal open all the time for the thing to run. Mind you, that would be if I actually had some data to crunch, as so far I keep getting the message that there is 'No work available'. (I've now reinstalled the old version and will continue with that while I am not given anything to do with Boinc!)

> I believe it's on the slate for M2... for both Linux and Mac (as well as any
> other *nix).

Sooner would be better, because at the moment I'm about to go look at one of the screen savers that tries to defeat smallpox, and I've been doing SETI for five years.

> And if you aren't living in the command line, you're missing one sweet world.
> :-)

After screaming at this thing trying to mess with it ("paste account number into screen" my ###, I get email on my laptop and I'm trying to do this on the Big Mac), after finally drag-and-dropping the name into Terminal (THAT made it run; chmod whatevertheheckIpasted sure as #### didn't), and getting the "deferring communication with project for 1 hours" yadda... I can't even do the stuff to check it that the web page http://boinc.berkeley.edu/client_unix.php lists!

Here, I show you, typos and all, what is sitting on my Terminal window right now:

*****
[Terracom-G4:/Applications/BOINC_SETI] arcangel% /Applications/BOINC_SETI/boinc_3.20_powerpc-apple-darwin
2004-07-19 13:08:05 [---] Starting BOINC client version 3.20 for powerpc-apple-darwin
Enter the URL of the project: http://setiathome.berkeley.edu
You should have already registered with the project
and received an account key by email.
Paste the account key here: [[[I TYPED IN THIS THING BY FREEPING HAND AND AM NOT AMUSED]]]
2004-07-19 13:10:35 [http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/] Project prefs: using your defaults
2004-07-19 13:10:35 [http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/] Host ID not assigned yet
2004-07-19 13:10:35 [---] No general preferences found - using BOINC defaults
2004-07-19 13:10:35 [---] Running CPU benchmarks
2004-07-19 13:10:35 [---] Suspending computation and network activity - running CPU benchmarks
2004-07-19 13:11:36 [---] Benchmark results:
2004-07-19 13:11:36 [---] Number of CPUs: 2
2004-07-19 13:11:36 [---] 471 double precision MIPS (Whetstone) per CPU
2004-07-19 13:11:36 [---] 1442 integer MIPS (Dhrystone) per CPU
2004-07-19 13:11:36 [---] Finished CPU benchmarks
2004-07-19 13:11:37 [---] Resuming computation and network activity
2004-07-19 13:11:37 [---] Fewer active results than CPUs; requesting more work
2004-07-19 13:11:37 [---] Fewer active results than CPUs; requesting more work
2004-07-19 13:11:37 [http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/] Requesting 34560 seconds of work
2004-07-19 13:11:37 [http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/] Sending request to scheduler: http://setiboincdata.ssl.berkeley.edu/sah_cgi/cgi
2004-07-19 13:11:38 [http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/] Scheduler RPC to http://setiboincdata.ssl.berkeley.edu/sah_cgi/cgi succeeded
2004-07-19 13:11:38 [SETI@home] Message from server: No work available
2004-07-19 13:11:38 [SETI@home] Message from server: No work available
2004-07-19 13:11:38 [SETI@home] Deferring communication with project for 1 hours, 0 minutes, and 0 seconds
2004-07-19 13:11:38 [SETI@home] Deferring communication with project for 1 hours, 0 minutes, and 0 seconds
-show_project
_show_projects
-show_projects
-help
*****

I want a GUI interface that works. This command-line stuff is unclear, doesn't seem to work, and all the smiley faces in the world are only going to make me want to commit murder instead of mere maiming. Slow murder. With hot irons and used kitty litter. The clumping kind.

Command-line instructions that are clear to someone who just wants to run a freeping SETIcruncher and doesn't want to screw around with it would be a start.

I think I'll go look at the smallpox solution site now.

> I believe it's on the slate for M2... for both Linux and Mac (as well as any
> other *nix).
>
> And if you aren't living in the command line, you're missing one sweet world.
> :-)
>
> Rob
>
>
Might as well be using DOS. I'm a Mac user. That means GUIs. That's what make Aplle so mush better then Windows. If we have to start learning command-line crap, i would rather go back to OS 9....Still one of the best OS ever.

Just my opinion!
Stef

There is a 3rd party control program with a GUI. It's called Seti Control, you can find it at versiontracker.com. I'm using it now, it's not that fancy but at least you can see that something is happening.

> There is a 3rd party control program with a GUI. It's called Seti Control,
> you can find it at versiontracker.com. I'm using it now, it's not that fancy
> but at least you can see that something is happening.
>
>
SETI Control is the first program close to doing what we need but it still is in need of further development. Thanks for this effort so far. I did figure out how to get SETI Boinc running and will only install it on one computer. The other 7 computers will still run the CLI version of the original SETI using SETI Dockling and SETICNTL. The bigger problem I see coming it that with so few people using SETI Boinc now and they still can not keep up with the demand for work units what will happen when they shut off the other one and have 1000 times as many work units needed?

SETI@home = 26756 as of 8/8/04
SETI Boinc = 590.33

I actually got it to work with Seti Control on my G5 Dual 2.0 last week. But yesterday it stopped working for no apparent reason. I have spent all morning trying to get it to work with different scripts etc, all to no avail. I'm back to OS X Classic until someone comes up with a proper GUI version. I also want to say that I agreee with the many posts on here that the level of feedback from the project is abysmal and will only succeed in driving many users away.

> > There is a 3rd party control program with a GUI. It's called Seti
> Control,

August 25, 2004
A trio of splitters are now up and producing new work.

We plan to release major version 4 of BOINC and SETI@Home tomorrow.



I hope the new version of BOINC have a GUI.
--------------------------------------------
M.f.G, HaQuiX

www.setiboard.com --> deutsches Seti-Forum

> Me too. I would be much happier with this if it was a 'proper' Mac OSX
> program.

And, if there is no Boinc with GUI for OSX and Seti is making the transition to Boinc ? Then there is only one option for me to do, I will quit my Seti work because I hate the command line version.
I already reinstalled the old (classic) version and deleted Boinc. :)

I still get a cold feeling when I think of the boinc command line......

frankly, people use MAC for a couple of reasons.
easy.
or
we work in design/graphics.

we'd only use the darwin command lines for technical 'fiddling'.

therefore, a GUI is essential for MacOSX/9. It's almost as if the programers just tweeked the *nix build and released it for OSX and said "Our work is done here".

That isn't very kind to *nix users either.

SETI has been important to me, but not THAT important. it's supposed to be a useful screensaver.

---

While it might be a little intimidating for the long time Mac user, the command line is actually easy enough to use for applications like this one that just require you to launch it and forget about it. Try these instructions if you are stuck:

1) Download the program file and place it on your Desktop (it is a .gz file at the time of writing. This is a compressed ZIP file).

2) Double-click the .gz file to decompress it (if it hasn't happenned by itself).

3) Make a directory in your Home folder called "boinc" that can house the application and it's supporting files

4) Open Applications->Utilities->Terminal

5) Type 'cd Desktop'

6) Now type 'chmod +x boinc_4.19_powerpc-apple-darwin' (or the name of the file if it is a different version to 4.19 or has a different name - this is highly probable so check the name of the file by looking at your Desktop)

7) Using the Finder, move the file to your "boinc" directory and then type 'cd ~/boinc' in the terminal

8) Now type the programs name 'boinc_4.19_powerpc-apple-darwin'.

9) The program should now be running! Follow the prompts for information (like the site URL, your user ID) and soon enough the program should be running smoothly

10) Minimise and forget about it! (or close it if you want to quit the application)

Also, next time you start your computer you can double-click the application to run it!

Footnote:

Many Mac users complain when there is no GUI, but you should be thinking about what SETI and other BOINC projects are really trying to achieve - as a user you should be trying to contribute to the search for alien life, help with climate prediction etc. and the best you can do to help these projects is crunch the numbers. Any processor (CPU) time spent on drawing graphics is wasting time that could be better spent on solving the problem at hand, or at least diverted to your other applications. Particularly relevant to the climate prediction crowd - wasting CPU time uses energy unessecarily, and that inevitably hurts the environment!

Also, think about the work that must have gone into creating an application like this, and furthermore the work that you are contributing to - how do you think the scientists and programmers would feel if they read these posts claiming that their software was not a "real program"!?

Mac OS X users have a powerful UNIX-based system at their fingertips - it's in your interest to learn a little bit about it - even those who don't feel they need to know or have time to can learn just the basics. Besides, for the purposes of this program, there's very little to do - just type the commmand name or double-click the file.

Please don't say a complex distributed application like this isn't a "real program" - as a programmer (who tries to make usable GUIs where possible too!) I find this very insulting!

I think it's perfectly fine to expect a gorgeous and effective user interface where one is granted, but for this project it's really not needed - you don't actually have to do anything, your computer does all the hard work!

And to the user who thinks SETI should just be a fun screensaver - aren't you missing the whole point? You're supposed to be contributing to science!

---

> And to the user who thinks SETI should just be a fun screensaver - aren't you
> missing the whole point? You're supposed to be contributing to science!

I still use the old Seti version (not the boinc version) because Seti is for me the best screensaver. I don't have to think about it to run Seti, and if seti is running, it goes after one minute to blank screen.
The Boinc version is not a screensaver any more, this is why I think it s*cks.

---