Slashdot Mirror
SETI@Home Transitions To BOINC
SeaDour writes "The team at SETI@Home have finally released their highly-anticipated new client software based on the BOINC (Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing) software platform. This new platform promises transparent version upgrades, more efficient work unit distribution, and the ability to seamlessly integrate other distributed computing projects that are also using the BOINC standard. For now, SETI@Home is allowing both the Classic and BOINC clients to run, but eventually they will shut down the Classic data server and force everyone to upgrade. You can read more about the transition here."
welcome our BOINC alien-finding overlords. sorry.
SETI seems like a bit of a waste of energy compared to Folding at Home. It's not that I don't believe in extraterrestrials or anything, I even think that SETI is a pretty worthwhile project but compared to curing some of the ailments folding works on...well yeah.
vampirical
The real question is, will this help the project, or will it harm it when the classic is phased out, those users looking for a pretty screensaver who installed the software one day when they were bored are unlikely to upgrade, that said however, the way that it can now be used for any project means that more causes can benefit without having to write the software themselves.
A very long time ago, I heard that SETI@Home was running low on work-units because their client was so popular that they were just burning through them... Did they restructure it? What happened. I remember when I heard that I started downloading work-units that were taken by the dishes more recently then I had been seening too...
If what you are reading sounds funny, or sarcastic, lame, or stupid
it is because it is supposed to be. just laugh
The team at SETI@Home have finally released Bonic
On Bonic web page: Status BOINC is under development. We are conducting a beta test of BOINC using the SETI@home and Astropulse applications. The public release will be announced on the SETI@home web site. Several other distributed computing projects are evaluating BOINC.
Bonic has been "released" for use for a long time; I thought when a release annoucment arrives then the product is no longer beta. So which is it - Released means ready for use or does it mean Please beta test now?
"Scientific progress goes BOINC?"
You know, I'd love to setup a transmitter and inject a signal into the seti data collection dish - you know, a low level non-random mathematically transformed character stream that roughtly translates to "The earthlings will never find us here" or something.
If done right it could be a bigger practical joke than the War of the Worlds broadcast of 1938!
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
This BOINC thingy seems to be an adequate infrastructure for the next generation of... worms.
There you are, staring at me again.
Well this is interesting... probably the first time a service provider was required to upgrade software: "You better upgrade if you want us to continue using your cpu cycle service."
The practical implementation of a million monkeys at a million typewriters... ...finding nothing.
Seriously, what has Seti@Home found as of yet?
By summer it was all gone...now shesmovedon. --
From article: "Will the format of input and output files change? Yes. The new format is XML-like (though not legal XML). " Sorry SETI, the RIAA has long since scared me away from having anything illegal on my PC. :-P
Does the new client include methods to block the methods used to spoof the current SETI@Home client?
Interestingly enough, the new client has the option to compile it yourself. The old client didn't have this option, or atleast it was very difficult to find, _if_ it was available. Now maybe it can be ported to archs that were previously unsupported.
"BOINC transparently and securely downloads new application versions. This lets us upgrade and extend SETI@home without requiring you to download and install new software. "
Well, if I can't turn this feature off, they've lost my cycles. I don't even allow my OS vendor to perform automatic downloads of "new versions" of programs.
For those with the tinfoil hats, the Patriot Act could be used to force Berzerkeley to download random "interesting" ware for the Feds, and keep quiet about it under penalty of law, under the umbrella of looking for terrorist activity. This ain't Java playing in a secure sandbox either.
Well-formed XML facilitates communication and interoperability, because standard XML parsers can grok it, making it easier to write new implementations that understand the same XML format.
I had heard about the eventual switch-over some months ago, but never found the time to play around with the beta, so I took the opportunity now to install the client and check it out.
On Mac OS X, all went well, and my PowerBook is munching on it's first unit, fans spinning. However, when I tried to start the client on a Sun box at work, it failed with "ld.so.1: ./boinc_3.18_sparc-sun-solaris2.7: fatal: libstdc++.so.3: open failed: No such file or directory." A quick Google confirmed my suspicions: the client is linked against the GCC stdlib, which is not a standard part of Solaris. Now, that's easy enough to fix if you've worked with Solaris before: just go to sunfreeware.com, and find a suitable binary package to put on.
However, someone not knowing about Solaris, GCC, and sunfreeware.com might be a bit stumped. And the boinc/setiboinc boards reveal that quite a number of beta testers are confused about this, not only on Solaris but also on Linux. It's not completely obvious which GCC/libgcc packages contains libstc++.so.3 (as opposed to .2.x or .4.x).
The real kicker is that I couldn't find any hint of this problem or a solution on the site. I probably looked in all the wrong places in the last half hour... And I couldn't find a feedback form or email address either. This definitly needs to be improved if they want people to move over to boinc.
The FAQ didn't answer that question--does anyone know?
I guess this just shows that every project, even a non-commercial one, eventually needs to have someone with some marketing sense if it wants to continue to thrive.
I have a suspicion that any advanced galatic civilization, realizing the nature of expansionistic species, broadcasts instructions on how to blow yourself up, knowing full well that any sufficiently aggressive species will not be able to resist following the instructions. The tiny note at the end "Do not attempt this on your home planet" just indicates a puckish sense of humor.
Boinc is more than just an updated Seti@Home, it's a generic delivery platform for distributed projects. That means you, yes you, can develope a BOINC app. Just gather some people to run it for you and compute away without needing any approval from the guys at Berkeley. Basically the participants enter a project URL into the BOINC application, the program then downloads your code and the crunching begins. BOINC handles all the network, workunit, results, distribution, security, versioning etc. issues for you.
Participants can even choose to split their resources among several projects, say, Seti@Home and Folding@Home. Another thing that will also be used in the new Seti@Home is that you can have clients participating in the same project working on completely different computation sets. For example, clients that have proven themselves to have a fast workunit turnaround time and a long history of participating and that have a gigabyte or more of RAM can be given special tasks that would normally be impossible because of the high number of griefers on the net.
It's like deja vu all over again.
Lets see what we can cover:
BOINC isn't nearly as usful to society as Folding@home, AIDS research@home, help feed starving disabled puppies in war torn african nations@home, etc.
BOINC != Seti@Home. BOINC is a step up the ladder from Seti, it provides the infrastructure for multiple projects. *you* choose the project to attach yourself to and contribute time to. In an ultra-perfect hippie world, Folding@home would use the BOINC infrastructure. Instead you get to help out who you want.
I ain't trustin no Berkeley hippies to silently install no black helicopter, tinfoil hat disablin' technology on my system.
Then don't use it. If you ran seti, you really had no way of knowing what was coming down the pipe now did you? You opened up a nice big gaping connection into your system while trusting that the work units weren't poison pills and that Berkeley's infrastructure hadn't been comprimised. Run the client on a non-critical machine, put it outside your firewall if it makes you happy.
Scientific progress goes BOINC!
You're very clever. You're the only person that ever thought of that.
Aliens will enslave the earth when we make contact!!!!!
You really shouldn't have rented Battlefield Earth.
There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell 'em.
Anyway, enough preamble. Here's the problem:
In the Work tab, when I right-click on the currently-running work unit, the context-sensitive menu displays one option, Show Graphics.
When I select Show Graphics, a window pops up, the entire contents of which is black. At this point, my Windows 2000 SP4 computer freezes. CTRL-ALT-DEL doesn't bring up the Windows Security window. CTRL-SHIFT-ESC doesn't bring up the Task Manager. I can't move the mouse. The keyboard is completely unresponsive.
Being a sucker for punishment, I sent a non-maskable interrupt to my CPU, and rebooted the machine. Then I tried the exact same steps, and got the same results. Yup, this bug is repeatable.
So is the new client ready for prime time? Um, not really. Add the insult of the website not recognizing the account ID that it gave me to begin with and I'd say this program should stay in beta a while longer.
A final note: If you happen to be one of the programmers for the client, and know why this problem is happening, reply here. I'd appreciate a reply.
I have to agree. It was with some sadness that I uninstalled the old SETI@home client before installing BOINC. The old client was compact, quick, and friendly. In contrast, the BOINC interface seems cheerless and industrial.
If tonight had been my first experience with the SETI@home project, I would have uninstalled it completely and told all my friends to avoid it. I refuse to keep any program that crashes my system when I try to use its basic functions.
That said, I really like SETI@home, and I'm willing to stick it out with the new BOINC client. I only hope the most egregious bugs are removed. Ever since I was a kid, I have wanted to contribute to the search for extraterrestrial life. Since I didn't grow up to be a professional astronomer, I would continue to gladly contribute my spare clock cycles even if the SETI client was much worse than it is now.
I think that SETI@home does important work, but I worry that BOINC might become a classic second system, with plenty of new functionality and configurability, yet big, cumbersome, and bloated in comparison to the original version.