To whom it may concern,

I have been doing SETI since the beggining. When I went to OSX 10.4 and loaded BOINC I was like well. It sucks but give it a chance.

Well I gave it a chance and it just sucks big time. The UI sucks the control sucks.

The thing doesn't even work all the time. I had the manager lock up on me too the point where I have had too force quit.

Well thanks for the rant. I am going to take it off the system now.

Thanks
Gordon

---

To whom it may concern,

I am adding my two cents to this message because I am hoping that someone in the BOINC development department will read these and do something about it.

I too have been running SETI@home on my machines since I first heard about it years ago. The whole project not only made sense to me but also was easy. I think having computers run through different types of scientific information during their idle time has always been a great idea. However this BOINC thing really bites!

Not only is it almost impossible to understand but there are no easy to reference manuals or anything on how to get started and setup the software. I literally have spent hours sitting at my computers trying to get this software working. It was a pain in the butt for windows and after about two hours and help from the system administrator at work we gave up on setting up the software on LINUX.

Now perhaps there are people out there who are gurus in this area and will laugh at me for having so much trouble with this but quite frankly I have better things to do with my time than to mess with a program that as far as I was concerned worked perfectly when it was cheesy.

So let me just state that I work at a university and I work in the sciences and I was the one who setup all of the computers in all of the labs to start running SETI@home and now with all of this trouble and lack of info I am being asked to remove all of the software and never touch the computers again, this all after I assured everyone that SETI@home was a no brainer and all one had to do was install it and leave it. It could take care of itself.

Well this is no longer true in my opinion. So I am giving you an ultimatum, (remember you work with this stuff everyday Joe Bilgleschmucker at the law offices of Dewey Cheatem and Howe doesn’t and he would dump the program in a second if you don’t make it COMPLETELY brainless) get this software back to an easier setup ASAP or I guess I will just have to go back to running the old star field, and I guess we can push SETI back another 30 years.

Sorry to be so blunt but the old version of click on the exe file and setup two or three little easy to understand steps was much easier than running around the net reading gobs of information on stuff I don’t care about just to get the program working.

Well I also would like to thank you for the forum so that I may rant.

Thanks,
Marcus

Not only is it almost impossible to understand but there are no easy to reference manuals or anything on how to get started and setup the software.

Bookmark the Boinc Wiki for when you return. It's linked off of the Boinc homepage as well.

The Wiki caters for your needs. The various projects their forums are the place to ask for help.

---

Not only is it almost impossible to understand but there are no easy to reference manuals or anything on how to get started and setup the software. I literally have spent hours sitting at my computers trying to get this software working. It was a pain in the butt for windows and after about two hours and help from the system administrator at work we gave up on setting up the software on LINUX.

Marcus,

Not only will we not laugh, won't even smile. In fact, you will geet mostly frowns. Because, for most people, BOINC installs cleanly, and starts up well, and runs without attention.

Unfortunately, there are not enough details in your post to offer us much hope to be able to answer you on the installation issues you had, mostly because other than knowing that it did not work, there is nothing to go on.

Ageless already pointed to the Wiki, where there are definitions, instructions, and all manner of helpful information.

---

i have to agree...
I had been running seti@home client for years
so long, in fact, that i had forgotten my password.. :)

so, when wanting to install seti on a new machine.. i found the new client BOINC...
i installed it..and it required new account info...so i set up an account. I successfully downloaded 2 data blocks, ran them and in the last 3 weeks..has done nothing at all...except try to connect and fail.
I gave up 1800 completed blocks of stats with my first seti account for this BOINC crud..and im...SO not impressed :|

---

unfortunately, you got here at a very bad time for a new user. Boinc does work. Yes, it has problems but over all, it does work.

---

I, too, am a long-time SETI user who switched over to BOINC because the old s/w stopped working. Everything stopped after I had sent in my 4500th work unit after over five years.

On the surface, BOINC looks like a significant improvement. But it just doesn't seem to like my environment. Here are the kinds of things I'm seeing:
-Connections seem to be hard to come by. 90% of the actions the BOINC manager makes are deferrals.
-The graphics display is hit-or-miss as to whether it will show.
-I have two work units showing 100% progress, and still listed as Running. Shouldn't they be Waiting for Transfer or actually in the Transfers page?
-I know that at least one work unit has been successfully transferred. My statistics page is absolutely BLANK! What happened to my other 4500 results?

Look at this log. Is there anything in here that indicates forward progress?

9/2/2005 8:42:27 AM|SETI@home|No work from project
9/2/2005 8:42:28 AM|SETI@home|Deferring communication with project for 1 minutes and 0 seconds
9/2/2005 8:42:53 AM||request_reschedule_cpus: result op
9/2/2005 8:43:29 AM|SETI@home|Sending scheduler request to http://setiboinc.ssl.berkeley.edu/sah_cgi/cgi
9/2/2005 8:43:29 AM|SETI@home|Requesting 13099 seconds of work, returning 0 results
9/2/2005 8:43:50 AM|SETI@home|Scheduler request to http://setiboinc.ssl.berkeley.edu/sah_cgi/cgi failed
9/2/2005 8:43:50 AM|SETI@home|No schedulers responded
9/2/2005 8:43:51 AM|SETI@home|Deferring communication with project for 5 minutes and 56 seconds
9/2/2005 8:49:48 AM|SETI@home|Sending scheduler request to http://setiboinc.ssl.berkeley.edu/sah_cgi/cgi
9/2/2005 8:49:48 AM|SETI@home|Requesting 13099 seconds of work, returning 0 results
9/2/2005 8:50:09 AM|SETI@home|Scheduler request to http://setiboinc.ssl.berkeley.edu/sah_cgi/cgi failed
9/2/2005 8:50:09 AM|SETI@home|No schedulers responded
9/2/2005 8:50:10 AM|SETI@home|Deferring communication with project for 5 minutes and 39 seconds
9/2/2005 8:55:50 AM|SETI@home|Sending scheduler request to http://setiboinc.ssl.berkeley.edu/sah_cgi/cgi
9/2/2005 8:55:50 AM|SETI@home|Requesting 13099 seconds of work, returning 0 results
9/2/2005 8:55:54 AM|SETI@home|Scheduler request to http://setiboinc.ssl.berkeley.edu/sah_cgi/cgi succeeded
9/2/2005 8:55:54 AM|SETI@home|No work from project
9/2/2005 8:55:55 AM|SETI@home|Deferring communication with project for 23 minutes and 45 seconds
9/2/2005 9:19:41 AM|SETI@home|Sending scheduler request to http://setiboinc.ssl.berkeley.edu/sah_cgi/cgi
9/2/2005 9:19:41 AM|SETI@home|Requesting 13099 seconds of work, returning 0 results
9/2/2005 9:19:45 AM|SETI@home|Scheduler request to http://setiboinc.ssl.berkeley.edu/sah_cgi/cgi succeeded
9/2/2005 9:19:45 AM|SETI@home|No work from project
9/2/2005 9:19:46 AM|SETI@home|Deferring communication with project for 56 minutes and 56 seconds
9/2/2005 10:04:55 AM||request_reschedule_cpus: result op
9/2/2005 10:04:55 AM|SETI@home|Pausing result 04no03aa.19012.8576.690904.59_1 (removed from memory)
9/2/2005 10:04:55 AM|SETI@home|Restarting result 04no03aa.19012.8528.1022148.84_1 using setiathome version 4.18
9/2/2005 10:05:35 AM||request_reschedule_cpus: result op

What's going on? Is there anything I should be doing with my firewall or Norton Internet Security program (Nothing different seems to occur if I disable it).

---

Here are the kinds of things I'm seeing:
-Connections seem to be hard to come by. 90% of the actions the BOINC manager makes are deferrals.

Seti is just back up from a big outage. Connections are congested. 400,000 computers try to reach Seti at once, all demanding to upload their old work and downloading new work. Have patience. (And this was better posted on the Seti Q&A forums)

-The graphics display is hit-or-miss as to whether it will show.

It will only show when it is working on work.

-I have two work units showing 100% progress, and still listed as Running. Shouldn't they be Waiting for Transfer or actually in the Transfers page?

Not necessarily. Due to a (known) bug, some units go a bit over 100%. Eventually they will reach the Uploading stage. Have patience.

-I know that at least one work unit has been successfully transferred. My statistics page is absolutely BLANK! What happened to my other 4500 results?

The Statistics page takes at least 3 days to build up, once you get granted credits. The 4500 credits from Classic are not compatible with Seti through Boinc.

If you look at the server status site you see the ready to send amount is around 10. That is an approximation and not a real time number. The system is incapable of keeping up demand. So if you just let Boinc do its thing, it will give you new work once it can. Have patience, all of the connections are overworked.

---

Not only will we not laugh, won't even smile. In fact, you will geet mostly frowns. Because, for most people, BOINC installs cleanly, and starts up well, and runs without attention.

Are you for real?

First of all, this thing is not packaged correctly at all. It is setup by a bunch of amateurs! The Windows client should be downloaded via a MSI file, Mac software should be downloaded via .BIN files, and Linux software should be packaged into .RPM & .DEB files.

While you are at it, and Linux (my platform) is being discussed, why is BOINC not in the Fedora Extra's repository, the Mandera URPM, BSD Portage, or Debian APT. Every hoop you ask me to jump through to assist you, is just disrespectful.

The old software worked far better, and while I agree with the BOINC premise, it is time to stop these amateur mistakes.

---

it is time to stop these amateur mistakes.

Since it is Open Source, why not repair the mistakes you see? Why not compile it correctly for each of the OSes you said?

---

First of all, this thing is not packaged correctly at all. It is setup by a bunch of amateurs! The Windows client should be downloaded via a MSI file, Mac software should be downloaded via .BIN files, and Linux software should be packaged into .RPM & .DEB files.

Inside the exe file for Windows is an MSI database. The most common form of web released software packaging for Windows is execs. The most common examples that come to mind right now is Acrobat, Winzip, Winrar, etc.

While you are at it, and Linux (my platform) is being discussed, why is BOINC not in the Fedora Extra's repository, the Mandera URPM, BSD Portage, or Debian APT. Every hoop you ask me to jump through to assist you, is just disrespectful.

Setting up and maintaining a Linux build environment that is compatible with most of the distro's is hard enough. The current build machine I use took two weeks to configure properly for the job of building a Linux client that can run across distros. Talk about jumping through hoops. I'm not even going to guess how much time I would have to spend putting together an environment where I could build all installation packages for all distros.

If somebody wants to create the template files for building the various installer packages for the various distros, I'll add them to the source tree so they can be built as part of the configure/make process.

---

----- Rom
BOINC Development Team, U.C. Berkeley
My Blog

Not only will we not laugh, won't even smile. In fact, you will geet mostly frowns. Because, for most people, BOINC installs cleanly, and starts up well, and runs without attention.

Are you for real?

Yes. Either that or a real strong figment of your imagination.

First of all, this thing is not packaged correctly at all. It is setup by a bunch of amateurs! The Windows client should be downloaded via a MSI file, Mac software should be downloaded via .BIN files, and Linux software should be packaged into .RPM & .DEB files.

For my part, yes, you could say that I was an amateur. I just use the install packages as they are. The windows one works fine for windows, and the OS-X one works for OS-X. If there is a better way, and you seem to think that there is ... why don't you help all of us out by making it?

The old software worked far better, and while I agree with the BOINC premise, it is time to stop these amateur mistakes.

The old software did not have installers at all. And was so limited almost no one could, or did, run it without several third part applications.

In any case, while it is still available, you can continue to run the old version. And if BOINC is not your cup of tea you can do other DC projects. If I read correctly, there are a couple other frameworks out there for doing DC computing.

---

While you are at it, and Linux (my platform) is being discussed, why is BOINC not in the Fedora Extra's repository, the Mandera URPM, BSD Portage, or Debian APT. Every hoop you ask me to jump through to assist you, is just disrespectful.

In Linux,to install boinc, you have just ONE line to write in command-line after having cd to the right folder:
sh boinc_5.x.x_i686-pc-linux-gnu.sh

Troll detected....

---

I finally installed BOINC after seeing how the site seemed to push for me to use it and for some reason my Seti classic was taking over 20 hours to run a script that used to take under 4 hours so I figured it was configured now for BOINC. Installing BOINC is anything but intuitive. When I finally got it set up I saw where to import my Seti Classic credits so I tried it and it said it had already been done. So I let it start running and of course I had 0 credits. I lost 150 credits once before when I changed ISPs and learned there was a password I needed that they would only send to my email address that was no longer active. Now I have lost another 4300 credits because of a bug in the new software. Since seeing my credits is the only satisfaction I get for running my computer 24/7 with Seti computations it really causes me to lose all motivation to continue.
The new software is terrible and if I don't see my credits soon and the system gets up and running correctly I will just drop the whole thing.

---

The new software is terrible and if I don't see my credits soon and the system gets up and running correctly I will just drop the whole thing.

Since you are unwilling to read any documentation, or ask any questions without attacking, or give us any information that might let us help solve any problems you may be having, and (I assume) are talking about SETI instead of BOINC (and are on the WRONG WEB SITE), and since I suspect you wouldn't listen to the answers anyway (such as "you haven't lost 4300 credits, there is no bug, you just are insisting on doing everything YOUR way instead of following the directions"), then I, who am not affiliated with BOINC or SETI in any way, will say "Please do drop the whole thing. You are obviously not capable of helping with this any more. Goodbye."

If you really want to make it work (and see where your "4300 credits" are) then you might want to go to the SETI site, and READ (not post flames on) the boards over there a bit, and READ the Wiki, instead of assuming that everyone is out to get you and steal your credits. If you have any LEGITIMATE problems or complaints, we'll be happy to listen.

Sigh. Some people are not worth the effort to help.

---

Now I have lost another 4300 credits because of a bug in the new software.

Rudy – Just one quick question; were these 4,300 credit points accumulated by you, while you were a member of a SETI “team”?

Thanks,
Tom

---

Theory of Gravitational Waves & LIGO
Paul's BOINC WIKI of Technical Info
JPL-Caltech

I run Seti on a home computer. I belong to no team so they are mine only.

And as for Bill comments about me flaming on the wrong site I would loke to know how it is the wrong site. I am not really flaming other than venting my frustration. I have looked around the BOINC site looking to see how to regain my credits but have found nothing. When I went to the one place that said I could import my past credits and tried it it said it was already done. If this is a SETI problem I apologize but it is a problem that only happened when I went to BOINC. Notice I did not complain of the over 2 weeks I got to watch the BOINC emblem as a screen saver because the system was down because I figured that was Seti. This happend after changing to BOINC and I had run only 2 new credits. The only advantage I see is I am back to completing a download in under 4 hours where Seti classic was taking over 20 and the 3D graphics look neat but honestly I have them go black after just a few minutes.

Rudy

---

Credit is ann attribute of an account. For you to "see" your classic credits you have to connect to the SETI@Home project with the pre-established e-mail account. The directions to do that are on the SETI@Home web site. There is a procedure written in the Wiki that *SHOULD* guide you through the steps required.

If you have established a NEW account, then, there is no connection to the old account in SETI@Home Classic, hence no credits.

This site is established to assist people with problems with BOINC, and not directly with project related issues like this ... your primary issue is how to establish a SETI@Home account with your credit, as such, you are better served on the SETI@Home web site for BOINC (http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/).

---

Go to your Seti Account, scroll down to SETI@home classic workunits (as of 15 March 2005); what does it say there?

It was a snapshot made of the Seti Classic database on the 15th of March 2005. Seti/Boinc cannot update the Classic database in realtime, as the whole Classic database needs to be offline to make a snapshot. So the next and last update will be done once Classic shuts down.

You start from zero credits in Seti/Boinc. If you attached to the project, that is. If you didn't, you may want to read the Wiki on that. If you did, you will get new credit within the next two weeks once you returned and reported your new unit.

The credits in Classic aren't compatible with the credits in Boinc. So the old ones won't be added to the new ones, ever.

---

If I read this correctly all account of my last 6 years and 4300 units completed are gone with BOINC and Seti classic will be closed down so this happens to everyone?

The credits in Classic aren't compatible with the credits in Boinc. So the old ones won't be added to the new ones, ever.[/quote]

---