flthompson's questions about Getting Started
15 Nov 2005 13:07:35 UTC
Topic 190170
(moderation:
I am a newbie to this effort, and have a couple of questions:
1. How do you get the screen saver. It looks really cool, but don't see where to down load it.
2. What do you do with the credits? Are they good for anything?
3. I have three computers and would like to sign the others up so they could be doing calculations as well. How do I sign up the others using the same account?
Cheers,
Gary.
flthompson's questions about Getting Started
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flthompson,
Welcome aboard Einstein!
Check the Boinc Wiki, linked on the Einstein homepage under Community, for answers to your questions. It has an excellent search feature. Your getting started questions will stand a much better chance of being answered if you post them to the "Getting Started" messageboard, instead of the Science board, where hard science and not crunching is discussed.
Regards,
Michael
microcraft
"The arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice" - MLK
Hi, Welcome to
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Hi,
Welcome to Einstein@Home.
As Michael indicated, the Getting Started forum is a more appropriate place for your questions. As I wanted to add some more information to what Michael said, I've decided to move the two posts here where you can hopefully find them.
It's part of the BOINC package you downloaded. Do you remember the install screen where you were asked if you wanted to use BOINC as your default screensaver and to launch BOINC on startup? They are ticked by default so unless you deselected them you should have the ability to show the Einstein screensaver which is a module in the science application downloaded by BOINC during installation. A word of caution however. There are known issues between the standard version of EAH science app, recent versions of BOINC and some types of graphics hardware (ATI) which may cause client errors during processing. If that happens you will need to either stop using graphics or switch over to the newer Beta science app which is linked on the front page of the website.
People get addicted to stats. They are a cunning ploy to get you hooked :).
Exactly the same way you signed up the first one. You can sign up as many as you like on the one set of account credentials. Just use exactly the same credentials for each one. If you have a few to sign up and you want to save unnecessary downloading you can "pre-create" a BOINC folder in exactly the same place on each desired machine. On your first machine you can take a copy of the files you find in BOINC\\projects\\einstein.phys.uwm.edu\\*.* with the exception of the large data file which will have a size of over 6MB. You need a new one of that particular file for each machine so copy everything else. You should also copy the account_einstein.phys.uwm.edu.xml file from the main BOINC folder to each extra machine. Then when you do the install, BOINC will already know the credentials it will be using for the new machine (from account_einstein.phys.uwm.edu.xml) and will already have the program and configuration files for EAH in the projects folder so it will skip downloading all those files yet again. You will probably save 7-8MB of downloading for each extra installation.
If you have more questions, please fire away and please use the search function in the Wiki.
Cheers,
Gary.
RE: {snip} ..so unless you
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The screensaver will always be installed, the check box in the installer only prioritizes the screensaver, making it the default Windows screensaver. But otherwise, if you go to your screensaver option of the Display Properties, you'll see BOINC as an optional screensaver. That's the one of choice.
Jord, It's very good to
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Jord,
It's very good to see you back here contributing again. Thanks for the correction. I never use the screen saver as I don't want to waste any cpu cycles. I just let windows blank the screen. So I always untick that box and I actually thought that the screensaver didn't even get installed. So you learn something new every day :).
While I've got your attention, you can perhaps answer a question for me. I've never actually seen the BOINC screensaver that I now can actually see listed in the selection of available screensavers. Presumably it's just some variation of the BOINC logo. When you attach various projects, I understand that the project screensaver is part of (a module within) the science app. So presumably if the BOINC screensaver is actually selected, it runs itself if a project doesn't have a screensaver or somehow it detects the screensaver module in the science app and runs that instead if there is one? Is this basically a fair enough description of the process that occurs?
Cheers,
Gary.
Gary, That's completely
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Gary,
That's completely correct as far as I have seen it happen when testing. PrimeGrid for instance has no screensaver, while Seti Beta does. So if I am testing the screensaver, PG will show me the "bouncing" BOINC logo with the project name, prcentage and time (I think), while when SB kicks in after 62 minutes, the wildly spinning Seti board comes into my view.
If you do not have graphics or a screensaver, the science application either doesn't have them included, or as with the optimized Seti apps, they aren't linked to the internal grahpics databases. Thus no graphics.
RE: Jord, It's very good
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Gary,
I may be wrong, but I think I read somewhere on the boards that the screensaver option is unavailable(?) with a service install, and that most of your installs were as the service. I think I also read that the project graphics actually run on top of the Boinc graphics. Curious, no?
Cheers,
Michael
microcraft
"The arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice" - MLK
You're correct Michael: By
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You're correct Michael: By default the service install does not show graphics or the screensaver. I've got BOINC installed as a service, yet I do see the graphics and screensaver, by using this little work-around.
If you're more than a little interested in how the graphics work, then look here in the Wiki. :)
RE: You're correct Michael:
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Jord,
Man, am I glad you're back! You're ever an asset to the boards. Thanks.
Michael
microcraft
"The arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice" - MLK
RE: I may be wrong, but I
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Michael,
I've got a whole lot of different installs of a number of different versions just so I can see and experience what others are seeing. In some cases I've been through the install, uninstall, reinstall a number of times. The machine I looked at is actually running as a service but there is a boinc.scr in the Windows folder. Who knows at what stage of the game it actually got put there :).
I've also been through "Repair installs" as well. They are actually very useful for fixing a number of "issues" :).
Cheers,
Gary.
RE: RE: I am a newbie to
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Opps, i sent the message without the message. Sorry about posting on the wrong message board. Did not know that there were other message boards. Thanks for the help.
Francis
Francis Thompson - STSS Ground Segment Program Manager