SETI has a weekly scheduled downtime of 3 days, but has also recently had server problems, causing the project to be down for longer. And to get 'hammered' by thousands of computers when they came up.

And this is the BOINC board. SETI is here, where you can check on their servers, the status of work available, etc.

edit
They seem to be down at the moment.
This board has a thread here where you can check to see if anyone else has a problem getting to a project.

I just started running SETI@home after a few years hiatus... Twice now this week I am unable to send my finished work units, and get another 1 or 2... The messages say that the server is down for maintenance. This goes on for well over 24 hours. If that's true, and my computer cannot communicate with the host - then to hell with it. I'll find a different BOINC project to run when I'm not on the computer. What is wrong with this project?

Seti U/D servers now go offline for 3 days a week, Tuesday to Friday mornings (California time). In part this is to allow for system maintenance, but mainly it is to allow the data to be analyzed for likely candidates. With 11 years of data stored, continuous inserts of new results was overloading the database access and preventing the science being done. It is suggested to keep a 3 to 4 day cache so your system can keep crunching while the database is offline.

Normally the Seti forums are available except for a few hours on Tuesdays, but it looks like one of the servers has crashed overnight. Check the Seti forums, the site should be restored in a few hours when someone gets into the lab.

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Boinc V 7.4.36
Win7 i5 3.33G 4GB NVidia 470

I have tasks for several projects that are "ready to report" on a Windows XP box running 6.10.58. However, the only one listed on the "transfer" tab is for the SETI project -- and that server is down for their three day outage.

Surely it's not typical for only one project to be allowed to be queued at a time? Especially when the one that is queued is in a retry status? FWIW, all tasks are complete. I'm guessing I hit some sort of bug or unusual behavior and this isn't by design? If by design, I'd suggest that's a flaw...

Ah ... Never mind.

After being like this for at least several hours, it cleared just after I posted. Seems like the tasks for multiple projects cleared just after I toggled one of the projects from "no new tasks" to "allow new tasks". (I had set them all to "no new tasks" earlier while moving the data dir to a different drive. At any rate, it was indeed just some temporary wierdness....

Uploading and reporting are two different things.

Uploading is merely a data transfer from your hard drive to a hard drive at the project(s).

Reporting uses the project's master database and since this creates a lot of overhead, it's tried to put as many results together into one report. One report takes up as much data and bandwidth as 20 reports do, so it's preferred to do the 20 reports.

And as such, reports are done:
1) 24 hours before deadline.
2) Connect Every X before deadline.
3) 24 hours after task completion.
4) Immediately if the upload completes later than either 1, 2, or 3 upon completion of the task.
5) On a trickle up message (CPDN only, I believe).
6) On a trickle down request.
7) On a server scheduled connection. Used, but I am not certain by which project.
8) On a request for new work.
9) When the user pushes the update button.
10) On a request from an account manager.

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I downloaded the generic BOINC software, and when I selected SETI I was told to try again later. A fe minutes later I tried to do so, but there is no icon etc to start the process; I tried "Repair" hoping it would give me the selection screen again, but nothing. I can't find anything as a "new" program. Can you help ? Thanks.

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In Windows it's:
Start->(All) Programs->BOINC->BOINC Manager->Add project->Attach to project->etc.

But you best skip trying to add Seti for now. They're still down. Check http://setiathome.berkeley.edu for news.

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Due to a never ending NON response from the Seti website of projects not available and project servers are not available, I have decided to remove the whole thing.
No sense wasting my CPU time on something that does not EVER work!

Maybe in the future you get it fully functional again I may reinstall it! Until then, sorry to say 1 less person, and many fewer computers to help SETI!

Best of luck!

Their database servers are down after having crashed repeatedly and are waiting to be replaced. This can take up to 3 weeks, if not longer. I sincerely hope they keep their project down during this waiting period, especially since the last time there was a crash, it also corrupted part of the database. (See their tech news)

Now, as for uninstalling, BOINC is so much more than just Seti. See http://boinc.berkeley.edu/projects.php for a list of projects. You can do much more than just look for an alien signal. All for the same (totally useless) credits. :D

If your computer is going to be on and idling away anyway, why not let BOINC use those idle cycles for something different?

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That is due to .58 to have BOINC only see 1 core and not all the others, but if you downgrade to .56 the problem will go away and wait for the next version.

Attention, that only you see this behaviour doesn't mean everyone else will. Please stop posting this 'advice'. If it helps for you, fine. But now you're starting to spam these forums, totally unnecessary.

Any next post you have on this subject in threads other than your own will be removed. We try to help people with their problems. BOINC 6.10.58 has been extensively tested before release. Had any of the 45+ Alpha testers found any such problem on their systems, this version wouldn't have been released.

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Extended outage warning for Seti@Home. From this thread:

Jeff Cobb wrote:

We've decided to keep the project down until the new servers are up and running and the databases migrated to them.

The forums will stay up.

The back end and the upload server will stay up until we clear the outstanding results.

The time line we are looking at is about one month - two weeks for the servers to arrive and another two to get them going. We'll see as time goes on whether or not that's too aggressive.

The down time will be used for preparing the databases for migration. For example, on the science side, we can finally finish a big merge of the spike table and drop the old spike table. This will make the database smaller and easier to migrate.

We will also use the time for science processing and analysis.

More later...

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here's what i have done to keep the machine working on something at all times:

i set up SETI to run 100% of the time...

i set up CLIMATE PREDICTION to run 100% of the time...

so, when SETI work units are available, SETI runs on 1 core...and CP runs on the other core...

when there are no SETI work units available, CP runs on both cores...

frank

Front page news at SETI@home:

We've been offline for over a month to remodel our database servers. The bulk of this work is complete, and work is being distributed. Please note we may continue to bring servers up/down over the next few weeks (outside of regularly planned outages) as we wrap up the final stages of this major endeavor.
(Matt Lebofsky, 8 Dec 2010 20:45:55 UTC)