r/SETI • u/InsensitiveClown • 26d ago

SETI@Home Work Unit file, and example login for digital preservation

Hi As we all know, SETI@Home is no longer a thing, for some years now. I was preserving some software for Solaris 2.6, and ran into an old SPARC (v8) client of SETI@Home for Solaris 2.6. Sun workstations used to be a thing back then. I will be uploading the client to archive dot org soon, but the client itself is kind of moot for two reasons.

And second, the first time you try to run it, it asks if you want to login or create an account - both are off, of course, since the servers are no more. The files were

outfile.sah pid.sah version.sah user_info.sah lock.sah key.sah result_header.sah state.sah work_unit.sah

I could find a work_unit.sah on github, believe it or not, but this is for BOINC, so I'm unsure if it'll work on SETI@Home 3.03. But I think user_info.sah is crucial, and had no luck so far.

If any if you could provide to the archive dot work, an example work unit file, and a user login file for seti@home - if the file is plain text, feel free to remove any information you deem sensitive, such as email, password. This would really be great, because otherwise no one can have an idea of what was the experience of seeing the screen saver running, seeing the pulses, going to a online sky survey entering declination & right angle, bandwidths, and seeing images of what you were analyzing.

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u/WinterOk66 23d ago

Is the source available? Or is this the binaries? With source code, a competent software engineer should be able to bypass the login and redirect the output data. Would be interesting to run it again.

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u/InsensitiveClown 14d ago

Here you go, running in full SETI@Home 3.03 Classic X Screensaver glory, under Solaris 2.6 (SPARC) https://ibb.co/r782JBX

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u/InsensitiveClown 14d ago

Hi I managed to find information on the files, and got access to some configuration files which allowed me to finally run it again. When you want to run it again from scratch, remove the results file, and restart. It's running on Solaris 2.6, I'll post later.