PerlSETI Readme --------------- Thank you for downloading PerlSETI. PerlSETI runs the setiathomeclient in the background and while it's running fetches the stats out of the data files and displays them on your shell in a nice order. That gives you some more information about your SETI stats. PerlSETI ist completely developed in Perl and should run on Perl 5 and above. It uses no special Perl modules. I have tested it with the SETI@home client 1.1, 1.2 and 1.3, if there are major new SETI@home client releases and the data files have changed - please go to the PerlSETI home page and try to get a new version which hopefully supports the new SETI@home client data files. PerlSETI should be compatible with ALL SETI@home clients which have the same data files as the Linux Version. PerlSETI is programmed by Jan Rocho, jan@ude.org and uses the GNU GPL v2 or newer, a copy is included in every copy of PerlSETI, file COPYING. However, people have also contributed to PerlSETI - take a look at the CREDITS file. To use the client: ------------------ Copy the files perlseti, perlseti.pl, perlseti.reset.pl, and perlseti.conf into the directory where you have your SETI@home client. Be sure to do a 'chmod 755' on perlseti, perlseti.pl, and perlseti.reset.pl. You may have to edit the paths in the file 'perlseti' and maybe also the Perl path in 'perlseti.pl', and 'perseti.reset.pl' that means the top line #!/usr/bin/perl, nothing else. To configure other variable please take a look at the perlseti.conf file, details are included in that file. Then just start the shell script 'perlseti' by typing ./perlseti and be happy if it runs. Typing ./perlseti will present you a help page with possible switches. The standard way of starting PerlSETI would be by typing './perlseti start'. The client is now killed after exiting PerlSETI with CTRL-C if that option is enabled in the configuration file perlseti.conf. The PID is displayed always but it is only correct when you typed './perlseti start' to start it. WINDOWS NT: ----------- PerlSETI is programmed for the Unix environment and for the Unix PerlSETI clients, but there are some people which try it on NT and it seems to work with the text-based client for Windows NT. Here are some more detailed instructions: 1. Download the text-based or console client for Windows NT 2. Download active Perl from http://www.activestate.com 3. The NT SETI@home client and all PerlSETI files have to be in the same directory. 4. Type following: nt-seti@home.exe | perl perlseti.pl ... or something simular to that ... Don't ask me for help on this. I don't have Windows NT, I only received this report from: Brian 'darkpoet' Carpenter OS/2: ----- I have received two e-mails that it works but I don't know more than that you have to remove the underscores from the filenames. I don't have any more details. Explanations: ------------- There isn't a lot that has to be explained, but I'll still explain some information which is shown: Units RX/TX: The RX stands for the units which have been send to you and the TX stands for how many units you have completet and returned. perlseti_data file: This file contains the information which is needed for the display of the Best Spike and Gaussian. You don't need to do anything with this file, just leave it as it is or the display might not work anymore. However, if you messed up something, just type "perlseti reset" at the shell prompt and the file will be resetted to zero. Idea: ----- My inspirations came from SETIView, X-SETI and TkSETI. I mainly started it because I have one client running over an internet connection and SETIView doesn't display enough information and the X-SETI and TkSETI interfaces are to slow over the internet. An other idea was to make a program that shows a graph like the windows version does but it didn't get a graph drawer, it just go another programs that lists the stats. Have fun! Jan, zylox@punkbands.de Updates are on the Homepage: http://perlseti.sourceforge.net