path: root/astro/setiathome/files/setiathome.1

.\" Copyright status unkown
.\" $FreeBSD$
.Dd May 19, 1999
.Dt setiathome 1 LOCAL
.Os FreeBSD
.Sh NAME
.Nm setiathome
.Nd the SETI@home client program
.Sh SYNOPSIS
.Nm
.Op Ar options
.Sh DESCRIPTION
.Nm
is the 
.Ux
version of the 
.Tn SETI@home
client. It downloads radio telescope data from a network server, analyzes
the data looking for signals of extraterrestrial origin, and uploads results
to the server, repeating this cycle indefinitely. See
http://setiahome.ssl.berkeley.edu/ for more information.
.Pp
The first time you run
.Nm
it will interactively ask you for email address, name, country etc. This
info is stored in a file and no interaction is needed when you run the
program subsequently.
.Pp
After this you can run
.Nm
in the background, and direct its output to
.Pa /dev/null
if you like.
.Pp
.Nm
can be freely aborted and restarted. It saves its state in files,
and will pick up where it left off.
.Pp
If you want to run multiple instances of setiathome
(on a multiprocessor machine, or on multiple machines
that share a filesystem) each one must be run
in a different directory.
.Pp
.Nm
requires about 0.5\ MBytes of disk space per working directory, and about
12\ MBytes of memory per instance. If you have ample physical memory, it's work load
should be almost undetectable. Additionally,
.Nm
requires a permanent or
.Dq dial on demand
Internet connection to upload results to and download new work units from the
.Tn SETI@home
server at any time.
.Ss Starting setiathome
This
.Fx
port includes a start-up script that starts
.Nm
at system start-up.
.Ss Configuration File
The optional configuration file
.Pa /usr/local/etc/setiathome.conf
can contain one or more of the following variable assignments to override
their default values:
.Bl -tag -width seti_wrkdir
.It Pa seti_wrkdir=/var/db/setiathome
The working directory where
.Nm
will store it's temporary files.
.It Pa seti_user=nobody
The user to run
.Nm
as.
.It Pa seti_nice=1
The
.Xr nice 1
value to run
.Nm 
at.
.It Pa seti_maxprocs= Ns Va Number of CPUs
The number of
.Nm 
processes to run concurrently. Defaults to the number of CPUs installed.
Running more than one instance per CPU is not useful, as
.Nm
is almost completely CPU-bound.
.El
.Pp
If you change values in the configuration file, you need to stop and start
.Nm Ns ,
and possibly reconfigure the working directory for the changes to take
effect. Run
.Dl /usr/local/etc/rc.d/setiathome.sh stop
.Dl /usr/local/etc/rc.d/setiathome.sh register
.Dl /usr/local/etc/rc.d/setiathome.sh start
to do that.
.Ss Setting up setiathome
You can use the start-up script to set up a working directory
and register with or log in to
.Tn SETI@home
by calling it with the argument
.Ar register .
If you'd like to configure and run it manually, you should first disable the
start-up script. Then, for each
.Nm
instance you'd like to run, create a directory, make it owned by the user
you'd like to run
.Nm
as, and run
.Ic setiathome -login
in that directory.
.Pp
Then, arrange for
.Nm
to be started automatically.  You can easily do so by adding a line similiar
to
.Bd -ragged -offset indent
.Li */10 * * * * cd 
.Va working directory 
.Li && setiathome -email >/dev/null
.Ed
to the user's crontab.
.Sh OPTIONS
.Bl -tag -width countries
.It Fl countries
Show list of country codes (a numeric country code must be entered during
registration).
.It Fl email
Send email (to the email address registered with
.Tn SETI@home )
on errors. Useful if you run 
.Nm
in the background with the output directed to
.Pa /dev/null .
.It Fl login
Log in to or register with
.Tn SETI@home .
.It Fl nice Ar N
Set 
.Xr nice 1
priority to 
.Ar N
(default 1).
.It Fl proxy Va hostname Ns Xo
.Op Li : Ns Va port
.Xc
Use the HTTP proxy server
.Ar hostname
at port
.Ar port
to download work units and upload results. Alternatively, you can set the
environment variable
.Ev HTTP_PROXY .
.It Fl stop_after_process
Process the current work unit and exit before uploading the result.
.It Fl stop_after_xfer
Process the current work unit and upload the result, then exit.
.It Fl version
Show software version.
.El
.Sh ENVIRONMENT
.Bl -tag -width HTTP_PROXY
.It Ev HTTP_PROXY
The address (in the form
.Do Va hostname Ns
.Op Li : Ns Va port
.Dc )
of a HTTP proxy server to download work units and upload results via.
.El
.Sh FILES
.Pp
.Bl -tag -width /var/db -compact
.It Pa /usr/local/etc/setiathome.conf
Optional configuration file for the start-up script.
.It Pa /usr/local/etc/rc.d/setiathome.sh
Start-up script.
.It Pa /var/db/setiathome/
Primary working directory.
.It Pa /var/db/setiathome/user_info.txt
Registration data.
.It Pa /var/db/setiathome/ Ns Va n Ns Pa /
Working directories for additional process
.Va n
(when running more than one instance).
.It Pa /var/db/setiathome/ Ns Xo
.Op Ns Va n Ns Pa / Ns 
.Pa lock.txt
.Xc
Lock file to prevent multiple instances to work on the same data.
.It Pa /var/db/setiathome/ Ns Xo
.Op Ns Va n Ns Pa / Ns 
.Pa *.txt
.Xc
Working files.
.El
.Sh BUGS
As of version 1.1, the proxy setting ignores the
.Va port
argument in both the option and the environment variable.
.Pp
There is currently no easy way to run
.Nm
continuosly if you don't have a permanent or
.Dq dial on demand
Internet connection.
.Sh AUTHORS
.Tn SETI@home
was developed by David Anderson, Jeff Cobb, Charles Congdon, Charlie Fenton,
David Gedye, Kyle Granger, Eric Korpela, Matt Lebofsky, Peter Leiser, Brad
Silen, Woody Sullivan, and Dan Werthimer.
.Pp
.An Stefan Bethke <stb@freebsd.org>
amended the original manual page for this FreeBSD port.