Seti@Home is a brilliant little project. It uses the spare cpu cycles of millions of computers around the world to search radio telescope tapes for a signal from aliens.
The project needs so many computers because the is a lot of data that needs crunching.
Seti@home has just recently switched over to the BOINC client. They are having a few problems, but I'm sure they will eventually smooth them out.
Running Seti@Home BOINC as a windows service
Running Seti@Home as a service allows it to run continuously in the background, with a priority of idle, even when you are not logged on to your computer.
The BOINC install does include a Command Line Interface (CLI), which allows setting up as a service, but it will not allow you to set the -allow_remote_gui_rpc switch which is really handy to be able to monitor and control your BOINC and others on your network, using the great program BoincView.
So I recompiled the boinc_cli.exe program to always have the GUI RPC enabled, and I also removed the application event log logging, which was logging far too much.
So, to setup Seti@Home as a service:
- Download my (recompiled exe and source removed, out of date) (Version 3.2).
- Signup for Seti@Home.
- Download and install BOINC. When installing, do not set the autostart options.
- Close the BOINC program.
- Goto your BOINC direcory (c:\program files\BOINC\), and replace the boinc_cli.exe with the one I recomplied.
- If you are running Windows XP or 2003, you need to give the Network Service user modify security permissions to the entire BOINC folder, this is because the service is installed as a Network Service.
- Using a command prompt, goto your BOINC directory and run boinc_cli.exe, then enter in your account and ID informtion.
Press [CTRL] + Break to exit.
- At the command prompt type:
boinc_cli -install
This installs the service.
- Download, run and add your computers to BoincView, this allows you to check the status and control Seti@home.