I am far from a quintessential "GenX" noob, but am finally moved (my Firewall/Antivirus program has abandonded Win98) to loose Micro$oft!

I am stil having install problems, and on first boot of Ubuntu, I can still not connect to SETI. Occasionally, I have had it running, but via near-frantic clicking on executable programs and strangely seeing 2 versions of BOINC runing, one with rounded angles on the boxes and buttons, and simultaneously seeing one with acute angles for all corners. I originally used the distro froim Ubuntu's repositories and at one time last week did download the file direct from Berkleley. I manually deleted all reference to it (or so I thought) and went back to the Ubunto distro of BOINC.

While I value my contributions to science, I do not feel that delving into obtuse commands and creating special uesr directories and all that - seems illogical just to get a simple program running. Therefore, for my sake - stop a moment and consider this:

I started with the Apple II in 1984. I and my company progressed and FOUGHT Windows because the DOS prompt did all that was needed. When my company finally forced it upon us (and caused weeks of downtime with the incessant calling Autodesk over Autocad for Windows, and RACAL/REDAC over CADSTAR for Windows) as Windows for Workgroups and then, on to Windows 95 - Oh how I remember those days.

Well it was 1995 when I personaly bailed out of the rat race, and moved to Indiana. In 1996 I was one of the first to sign on to a local ISP, (I recall Netscape came on 7 floppies) and soon thereafter bought a "dotcom" domain. I resisted (and still do) Windows as a single source for all WWW communications and data processing applications. (As an aside, I met my wife via the Internet. We just had out ninth anniversary.) What a tangled web it is. I have tolerated the M$ empire until now.

So, you see, I am not clueless to the nuances to PC computing.

With Vista and the continial security issues of XP, more and more people like me will be turning to Linux. Ubuntu has a popular front as to it's perceived transisional simplicity; Maybe I am wrong, but regardless, if I can't get a simple app like SETI to reliably connect and operate upon boot, in Ubuntu, how do you think others less versed in command line structure and file configuration will fare?

Why does teh native install put some downloaded files in the user root directory, why does it tell me my (unknown) password is invalid, why, if I load multiple instances, and suddenly see the install wizard "to connect to project",and enter all my information again, does it suddenly work, and why are there two versions of the same program (see above) (ver 5.4.9) that display differently? AAAAAAARGH!!!

I WANT to help SETI, and I have my PC on for at least 10 hours a day, but if I can't get a simple procedure or instruction to get it working, I will just forsake BOINC and let some lame local screenslaver occupy my CPU.

Please if you can assist, help, or can pass this on to some "guru"; please?

I will await a response.

Thank You.

Michael K
Ferdinand IN
mrk@emarkay.com

Which Ubuntu are you using, Michael? I have been successful using Breezy and Dapper, but I have run into a problem with Edgy.

I do not use the BOINC from the repositories (installed with Synaptics Package manager). I download it from the BOINC site and run it from my home folder.

Pam

6.06LTS Dapper Drake.

I have had it running dual boot with Win98SE successfully for about 2 weeks. Linux has its own 40Gig partition on one of 2 HDU's installed in my Dell Optiplex GX110 (about 850MHz, 348 Meg of RAM I recall - There's no "System properties" in Ubuntu ...)

It's just so frustrating learning a new OS, while seeing things so familiar-yet so different.

I used the Synaptics as well as the downloaded version, and as I said, the version numbers are these are the same but the display features of these versions is (apparently) different.

Not knowing alot (enough) about linux- and knowing a lot about Window$ - is it possible there's some hidden files that have been left that could be corrupting things due to my attempts at getting this running? I know there's no "registry" in linux, but is there something else, where deleting all the files automatically (and yes, manually) still leaves subtile traces? (I have the show all files enabled, so I see all the "./" files and such.)

I have been looking at Ubuntu, Linux, BOINC, and the SETI boards and do see a fair amount of "some work fine while some have problems" with BOINC when installed "out of the box" in Linux. (Strangely, I see more than a statistical norm of this regarding many multi-OS type programs on the Linux boards)

I originally was flummoxed with the mysterious local host/ hidden password thing, but that seems to have strangely disappeared for now. Now, it's just not saving a working install between reboots.

Let me know if there is any additional info I can offer to help solve this and to get be back online with SETI?

Thanks.

MRK

I am not a Linux expert, I only know enough to run the Linux GUI.

I download the Linux BOINC from the BOINC page.

I put that file in my home folder.

I open a terminal and type

sh boinc*

then I type

cd BOINC
./run_client

Let it run the benchmarks and then open a second terminal (in Ubuntu, you can do a tab on the terminal window and it will automatically be at the BOINC folder. Type

./run_manager

Then you can attach to projects. I copy the urls from the websites, since I am too lazy to type them in. It seems some days I have to try to attach two or three times, I don't know if it's a problem with the sites or with my router or my isp. Sometimes it will say it didn't work but it did anyway.

I haven't used the BOINC from the repositories much since it is installed somewhere else and I couldn't put my favorite optimized Seti apps in the var/lib folder. But if you don't care to do that kind of stuff, then installing the BOINC client and manager from Synaptics Package Manager should put BOINC in your Accessories tab and you can start the manager just by clicking on that.

I hope this helps and I apologize if it wasn't what you needed. I needed a great deal of help when I was first doing Linux and back then all we had was command line and we had to unzip archives and chmod and all that, which I don't miss at all. :)

Pam

Thank you, Pam. I followed your instructions, and it looks like it is working, however I did get this message from the Terminal box:

Gdk-WARNING **: Missing charsets in FontSet creation
Gdk-WARNING **: JISX0208.1983-0
Gdk-WARNING **: KSC5601.1987-0
Gdk-WARNING **: GB2312.1980-0
Gdk-WARNING **: JISX0201.1976-0
send: -1
send: Bad file descriptor
connect: Operation now in progress
Gdk-WARNING **: Missing charsets in FontSet creation
Gdk-WARNING **: JISX0208.1983-0
Gdk-WARNING **: KSC5601.1987-0
Gdk-WARNING **: GB2312.1980-0
Gdk-WARNING **: JISX0201.1976-0
Gdk-WARNING **: Missing charsets in FontSet creation
Gdk-WARNING **: JISX0208.1983-0
Gdk-WARNING **: KSC5601.1987-0
Gdk-WARNING **: GB2312.1980-0
Gdk-WARNING **: JISX0201.1976-0
Gdk-WARNING **: Missing charsets in FontSet creation
Gdk-WARNING **: JISX0208.1983-0
Gdk-WARNING **: KSC5601.1987-0
Gdk-WARNING **: GB2312.1980-0
Gdk-WARNING **: JISX0201.1976-0
Gdk-WARNING **: Missing charsets in FontSet creation
Gdk-WARNING **: JISX0208.1983-0
Gdk-WARNING **: KSC5601.1987-0
Gdk-WARNING **: GB2312.1980-0
Gdk-WARNING **: JISX0201.1976-0
Gdk-WARNING **: Missing charsets in FontSet creation
Gdk-WARNING **: ISO8859-1
Gdk-WARNING **: ISO8859-1
Gdk-WARNING **: JISX0208.1983-0
Gdk-WARNING **: KSC5601.1987-0
Gdk-WARNING **: GB2312.1980-0
Gdk-WARNING **: JISX0201.1976-0
Gdk-WARNING **: ISO10646-1
Gdk-WARNING **: Missing charsets in FontSet creation
Gdk-WARNING **: JISX0208.1983-0
Gdk-WARNING **: KSC5601.1987-0
Gdk-WARNING **: GB2312.1980-0
Gdk-WARNING **: JISX0201.1976-0

But it does then open the wizzard and I did attach to the SETI project. I will add it to the statup sessions reboot and see if it connects. I have my fingers and toes crossed...

Thanks again!

MRK

Well,it looks like it is working - I just leave it in workspace 1 and move on to workspace 2. Of course the graphics are abhorhently slow (and usually show a Question Mark instead of the data) but I hear that's the nature of the beast in Linux.

Thanks again.

MRK

Of course the graphics are abhorhently slow (and usually show a Question Mark instead of the data) but I hear that's the nature of the beast in Linux.

Generally speaking and with all graphical applications? No - that's certainly not true.

But going by your earlier post showing the Gdk warnings, other more basic stuff on your system is either incorrectly installed or not installed at all.
(and I'm sorry I don't have any suggestions on how to fix that!)

---

To err is human; to moo, bovine.

Well it's working so far so good - 12 hours yesterday!

Thanks, Pam!

Thanks, all!

MRK

::Snip::
So, you see, I am not clueless to the nuances to PC computing.

With Vista and the continial security issues of XP, more and more people like me will be turning to Linux. Ubuntu has a popular front as to it's perceived transisional simplicity; Maybe I am wrong, but regardless, if I can't get a simple app like SETI to reliably connect and operate upon boot, in Ubuntu, how do you think others less versed in command line structure and file configuration will fare?
::Snip::

While I don't agree with everything in this article (especially their motorcycle vs. car analogies) your post reminds me of this:
http://linux.oneandoneis2.org/LNW.htm

This is the infamous Linux != Windows article, which you may or may not have seen before. Basically, the gist of it is, even if you are a computer expert with DOS, Windows, Apple DOS and Mac, it doesn't mean you will understand Linux right off the bat. Linux is a hackers' OS (by hacker I mean tweaking and fiddling with computer hardware and software at both the high and low levels).

I have used Linux on and off for the past 10 years and more recently I've been using it consistantly at home, school, work over the past six years. However, I still consider myself a newb because I still have trouble with some stuff that other Linux gurus just fly through.

That being said, I am currently trying to get BOINC to run as a service so it will startup at boot time, but I am having trouble with getting the runlevels right. I still have my Windows machines (two of them) and I admit the recent controversy over Vista DRM has me nervous, but I'll probably stick with both OSes for a long time to come. Best of luck with running BOINC on Ubuntu (a much more userfriendly Linux distro than most, good choice). If you figure out how to get BOINC to run at startup, let me know.

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