I can start it up in command line mode and it runs, but I'm not sure if it stays running. Do you guys run a cron job or something?

AMDPwred,

You can add seti as a cron job alright:

Type: "crontab -e"
This brings up your crontable list in a vi editor or similar. You can put your entry for seti to this here eg:

10, 20, 30, 40, 50 * * * * $HOME/wherever/startseti > /dev/null 2> /dev/null

Save it. Now your seti job (if not already running) attempts to run every 10 minutes.

crontab -l # shows your cron jobs
# crontab -r # remove the users' crontab file


The fields are represented as:

FIELD VALUE
------------------
minute 00 to 59
hour 00 to 23 (military time)
day 1 to 31
month 1 to 12
weekday 0 to 6 (0=Sunday) Note: Linux uses sun, mon...

* Format of cron: <min> <hour> <day> <month> <day of week> <command>
0-59 0-23 1-31 1-12 0-7 (task cmd)
* "task cmd" can be a cmd or script
* An asterick '*' instead of '7' for month means every month etc.
* A '-' means such as 1-28 means a range.
* A comma ',' between 1,2,3 means a list.
* A '/' means a skip of a specified range:
eg 0-59/2 means every 2nd minute or */3 every 3rd month etc.

hope this helps?

Ok, so if I wanted it to run everyday, the command would look like this?

Is that right?

no need for the commas unless you mean a list:

eg. A comma ',' between 1,2,3 means a list but...

0 0 * * * /opt/setiathome-3.08.i686-pc-linux-gnu/setiathome

0 0 means 0 mins past midnight. You might want:

0 * * * * /opt/setiathome-3.08.i686-pc-linux-gnu/setiathome

... but this means every 0 mins past every hour but what if you log in at 1 min past... you're cron job won't start for another 59 mins. So you might try:

15, 30, 45 * * * * /opt/setiathome-3.08.i686-pc-linux-gnu/setiathome


This gets it to start every 15 mins... and so on.

Again:

0-59 0-23 1-31 1-12 0-7 (task cmd)
* "task cmd" can be a cmd or script
* An asterick '*' instead of '7' for month means every month etc.
* A '-' means such as 1-28 means a range.
* A comma ',' between 1,2,3 means a list.
* A '/' means a skip of a specified range:
eg 0-59/2 means every 2nd minute or */3 every 3rd month e

Would this require me to be logged in?

Would this require me to be logged in?

AMDPwred,

Good question. I'm not 100% sure but I know that if you add your cronjob under your own user then yes that user needs to log in.

Not too sure if you crontab -e under root but I guess you still would have to log on.

Instead you could add just the seti start command (not the cron just the normal path & cmd) to /etc/rc.d/rc.local

This is the final script run before boot up. Again you need to test this as I haven't done this.

Anyone who knows better can you correct me? Thanks.

AMDPwred, I hope this helps you.

I run seti constantly, at nice + 19, never even think about it...

bulliver,

Are you running it when you log in as your user (starting with a cronjob or other) or do you start seti somewhere else before any user logs in? eg. /etc/rc.d/rc.local

I start it in my ~/.bashrc actually. Cron isn't neccesary because I always have it running...and I'm too lazy to figure out how to get rc.local to start it as my normal user.

You may need to adjust the path to reflect your own system.

i have this problem now on slackware, if i run it as a cron job every 10 mis, will it run the whole program every 10 mins, or will it check to see if its running first, i dont want a gazillion seti clients running...

Nope, mine just runs the one unit no matter how matter how many times it checks...

again in my crontab I have:

10, 20, 30, 40, 50 * * * * $HOME/wherever/startseti > /dev/null 2> /dev/null