Forums | MacLife

u4ick · 2005-02-06 11:02 am

Exploring use of Boinc on my G5 and the instructions from Seti@home say "Then chmod +x the executable and run it." How in the hell can I do that. Mac Help, Apple and a search on the web does not turn up any usefull information. I suspect this is one of those DOS like commands that Apple geeks have hidden in the OS.

I am using 10.3.7 and have the old fashioned view that if a command does not show up in the Mac help area then it may be illegal. However, I have discovered that Mac help is very limited -- end of rant.

Any help information would be appreciated.

Macskeeball · 2005-02-06 12:37 pm

Open the Terminal, which is in /Applications/Utilities. Type "chmod +x " (no quotes, include the space) then drag and drop the executable from the Finder right after the space. Hit the enter key and you're done.

This is UNIX, an operating system that has stood the test of thirty years and forms the backbone of the Internet (most servers run it). Mac OS X is based on UNIX. To understand all this better, see this thread.

u4ick · 2005-02-06 2:37 pm

Thank you for the help --- I did as you suggested and when finished Terminal responded with another prompt upon which I quit Terminal. Nothing has changed? Is something suspose to happen?

Macskeeball · 2005-02-06 2:55 pm

No, I think you completed the step successfully. Did you try the steps SETI for after that?

u4ick · 2005-02-07 8:04 am

Thanks for your help. I don't understand "Did you try the steps SETI for after that?" I have been to the SETI web site and read about BOINC and been through the setup instructions and found nothing about what to do next.

My screen saver seems to work the same so I have no problems -- just wondering what is going on in the background. The memory usage program does not show any BOINC but does show the SETI app in the backgound.

Thanks for any info.

u4ick

Macskeeball · 2005-02-07 5:52 pm

Oh, I didn't look at the site for SETI. I'm a Folding@Home person myself. I just came across this thread through the MAF's RSS feed.

Kosh · 2005-02-12 8:12 pm

u4ick wrote:
Thank you for the help --- I did as you suggested and when finished Terminal responded with another prompt upon which I quit Terminal. Nothing has changed? Is something suspose to happen?

You followed the step to "chmod +x" the executable, but you were then told to "run" it. To do that, open up a Terminal window again, type "cd " (without the quotes, including the space), then drag the folder where the executable is sitting onto the terminal window, then hit <Return>. Not much will happen, other than a new prompt.

I'll stop at this point to note that the program will create several other files and subdirectories (folders) when it runs, so if you don't have the executable in it's own directory, you might want to create a directory & put it in first, then run the "cd" command. This will keep all the "clutter" contained with the program.

Now, type "./" (that's a period & a slash), followed by typing the name of the executable. If you downloaded recently, it's probably "boinc_4.19_powerpc-apple-darwin". If you don't want to type, then don't type "./", just drag the executable from the Finder to the Terminal window, at a new prompt, then press <Return>. It should write out several lines of text. It's been a while since I could run BOINC on my (10.2.8) Mac, but I believe you will then be prompted to "attach" to the SETI@Home project, given the information mailed to you when you registered for an account on the website.

mixtli1 · 2005-02-24 8:59 pm

Kosh wrote:
It's been a while since I could run BOINC on my (10.2.8) Mac, but I believe you will then be prompted to "attach" to the SETI@Home project, given the information mailed to you when you registered for an account on the website.

Hello:

I've been crunching data for 2 years now. Were new accounts mailed out to long-time seti@home members, or do we have to register for one? I haven't been able to log into the BOINC site for s@h for the past few days because of the power outage.

mixtli

Kosh · 2005-03-12 1:20 am

No, they didn't send out BOINC accounts, but since you were registered before 05-14-2004, you can choose the "activate it" link from the main page (which is up again now), or click this duplicate of the link. Note that this will email your account info to the email address you had registered for sah as of 05-14-2004, so if you no longer have access to that account, you're basically SOL and will have to create a new account.

The main difference between an "activated" copied account and a new account you create is the activated account will have info about your "classic" WUs completed (as of the account copy date), and your "join" date will be (close to) the date when you originally joined with the classic account. Also, they are supposed to resynchronize this information once they finally turn off classic sah. Hopefully, they'll also fix the "off-by-two" error in the joined date when they do this, as well smile

Last edited by Kosh (2005-03-12 1:28 am)

Forums | MacLife

#1 2005-02-06 11:02 am

How do I "chmod +x"

#2 2005-02-06 12:37 pm

Re: How do I "chmod +x"

#3 2005-02-06 2:37 pm

Re: How do I "chmod +x"

#4 2005-02-06 2:55 pm

Re: How do I "chmod +x"

#5 2005-02-07 8:04 am

Re: How do I "chmod +x"

#6 2005-02-07 5:52 pm

Re: How do I "chmod +x"

#7 2005-02-12 8:12 pm

Re: How do I "chmod +x"

u4ick wrote:

#8 2005-02-24 8:59 pm

Re: How do I "chmod +x"

Kosh wrote:

#9 2005-03-12 1:20 am

Re: How do I "chmod +x"

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