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SETI@home on Dual Processors

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UNLTuba

Senior member
I'm wondering how to use SETI@home to the fullest with my new dual processor setup (dual AthlonMP 1600s on a Tyan Tiger MP). Running the usual GUI client only uses 50% (one of the processors) of my processing capability. I would like to switch to the CLI client in order to use close to 100% of my processing capability, and know I have to do another instance of it, but how do I do that? Thanks...

- Eric

PS - I basically need to be taken by the hand and led through the set-up process on dual processors. I've tried a couple of different ways, but nothing has worked yet.
 
Very easy! Just unistall the GUI, get the CLI, grab Setidriver, check out Sukhoi's SETI help thread, and you'll see instructions for just about everything, including Setidriver setup (with my example for running on a dual)! 😀
 
When using the client with SETI Driver you only need to set Maximum Processes to 2 on the Driver to be able to use your both processors.
 
OK - I got that part going and it's using 100% of my processors now. One minor problem though - it displays every single one of the transmits. Is there any way for it to hide those? Also - how do I use SETI Spy with SETI Driver and the CLI client? Thanks...

EDIT: I forgot to say that I have "Display Transmits" unchecked and it's still doing that.
 
I'm not sure how to use SETI Spy with seti driver but... To hide the transmits, uncheck show tranmits (not sure if that's exactly what it's called, but it's something like that).
 
Hopefully, my post doesn't confuse you..

In an alternate setup here at home, I have one machine running a SetiQueue and a SETI CLI instance on each cpu(the machine just happens to be Tiger MP with a pair of 1.2GHz MPs) 😉 - and I use SetiSpy with the CLIs on the other machines(some dual, some single) with those flushing to the box running SetiQueue.

Same basic idea as SetiDriver.. just another way of doing it. 🙂
 
Mk4 - When you first install it, Setidriver will see all your processors and will automatically put that in as your default number of processes. 🙂

UNLTuba - There should be a checkbox that you can uncheck to not have it display the transmits. And as for Setispy, you can just stick the Setispy executable in the same directory as Setidriver and run it from there. Note that you can choose whether or not to also have Setidriver display the % completed. 🙂
 
To set up SETI Spy you need to copy the executable to the directory where you already have the client and the Driver.
Then you'll just have to check the "Use SETI Spy" on the SETI Driver and run the SetiSpy.exe.

That should do it.

Please correct me (again 😀) if I'm wrong. 🙂

 
Go to the SETISpy FAQ 2.13 for instructions on setting up SETISpy to use SETI Driver as it's client. Note that SETI Driver will only report the progress of the oldest WU it's currently handling. Whenever a new WU starts, SETI Driver will determine which WU is the oldest processing WU and monitor that one. WU age is determined by looking at the Last Modified Date of the work_unit.sah files.

The SETI Driver interface to SETISpy works by copying the .SAH files as they are updated by the client. Both SETI Driver and SETISpy configure Windows to notify them for changes to the state.sah, thus using no CPU time between updates.

The Display Transmit check box controls whether or not SETI Driver displays the transmit in a window. When you are manually transmitting, however, the first WU to transmit is always displayed in a window and any remaining WUs will transmit in a minimized window if Display Transmit is clear or displayed in a regular window if Display Transmit is checked. When using Auto Transmit, the transmits are hidden completely if Display Transmit is clear. There is at least one version of SETI Driver that will display the transmit window after 15 minutes to allow the user to manually terminate the transmit. I don't believe v1.6.3.3 does this. There is one other time a WU transmit will appear in a window. This is if there is no usable user_info.sah file and the client will be asking for a login.

Mike Ober.
 
OK - I've decided to not run SETI Spy since it doesn't tell me anything that I need to know really anyway. My question is now this - How do I get SETI to run automatically when I start my computer up rather than me having to double click the SETI Driver icon? I'm running Windows 2000 Professional... Thanks.
 
I forgot to add, that if you place the shortcut inside the All Users Start Up folder, then anyone who logs to your Windows 2000 will have SETI Driver running. Also, you might want to change the property of the shortcut to Start Minimize🙂
 
Cool. 😀

Just think, you even had the author of the program here to tell you how to do it too... 😉

😛
 
One last thing before I "finish up" here (I think). In SETI Driver, it lets me chose the desired cache size. Right now I have it set at 10. How much does this actually affect things? Is there a better setting that I should have? Thanks once again.

EDIT: I knew there'd be something else. What about the "SETI Client Priority" box? What should that be set at? Mine's set at "High" for now. Is that right?

EDIT 2: What about the "Set Processor Affinity" check box? What does that do? Thanks...
 
You can just figure out how many WUs/day that your machine will process then multiply by how many days you want to store up for. Most people store 3 - 5 days' worth in case of a long SETI outage. 🙂

[EDIT: #1 - Priority "High" can sometimes make your machine slow down on CPU0, but "Normal" should be okay for your setup in general. Most people prefer to set it to "Low"

#2 - Setting the affinity means that the program will fix itself on one processor statically (and not share across both as is normal)]
 
On a dual processor system, you should be able to run "High" priority without too much impact. Don't do this on a single processor system. The "Set Affinity" checkbox locks the client processes onto a single processor. This avoids "costly" cache misses when the OS moves an application from one processor to another. SETI Driver itself will continue to run on either processor, but since it will spend most of it's time waiting for Windows to tell it to do something, there's no cache benefit from locking it on a single processor.

Whether or not the Set Affiinity checkbox will improve your performance depends on multiple variables - how heavily used is your system and CPUs, memory contention, processor L2 cache size, etc.

Mike Ober.
 
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