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The main window of KSetiSpy contains two elements: a toolbar and a panel. The toolbar allows you to select which panel you want to see: each button corresponds to a different panel. By default, it is located on the left, and it displays both names and icons of the panels. However, you can change both its position and its look by right-clicking on it and choosing from the pop-up menu that will appear.
Each panel has a header containing its name and icon. Below the header, there is the content area. Typically, you'll be able to copy the content area to the clipboard by right-clicking on it and choosing Copy to clipboard.
This panel reports on the progress of the computation. Therefore, it will be most useful when the client is running; otherwise, the majority of its content will be set to unknown.
Here is a brief explanation of the fields it contains:
The time the client has been processing the current work unit. This counts the time spent analyzing the work unit, not the time elapsed since the analysis started. That is, if for example we run the client for 2 hours, then stop it, wait 8 hours, and resume the computation, the CPU time reported would be 2 hours, not 10.
An estimate of the total computing time required to complete the current work unit.
The average speed, measured in MegaFLOPS.
An estimate of the computing time required to complete the work unit. This is can be obtained as the difference between Estimated total time and CPU time.
The (average) speed of the client, measured as the percentage of work unit it processes every hour.
An estimate of the time by which, at the current speed, the analysis will be done. Typically, this will be a time of the day, in the format specified by the system locale setting. If it exceeds 24 hours, there will be a "(+n)" suffix to indicate the number of days.
Average efficiency of the CPU, measured in CpF.
The drift rate currently being analyzed. For SETI@home version 3.08, this is a value ranging between -50 and +50.
Percentage of the work unit that has already been processed.
Number of FFTs computed so far. In SETI@home version 3.08, processing a work unit involves performing about 31,560 FFTs.
This panel measures the performance of the SETI@home client. Therefore, the data presented will be meaningful only when the client is running. Otherwise, most fields will have a unknown value.
Performance can be measured instantaneously (i.e. the current speed will be reported) or averaged over all the time spent so far analyzing the current work unit. Instantaneous performance is computed by comparing the last two consecutive measurements, so it might take a minute or two after you launch client application before KSetiSpy has enough data to provide meaningful values.
A brief description of the fields follows:
The processing rate, presented both as the number of hours necessary to complete the work unit and as the percentage of work unit that is processed each hour.
The processing speed in MegaFLOPS.
The average number of CPU cycles necessary to complete an elementary floating point operation (CpF).
The total number of FLOPs required to process this work unit. In version 3.08 of the client, it takes approximately from 3.3 to 4.5 TeraFLOPs to complete a work unit.
Pressing the Compare button opens the Peak Processing Efficiency window.
This panel summarizes the signals found so far by plotting them in a two-dimensional diagram. The x-axis expresses the drift rate. For SETI@home version 3.08, drift rates have values ranging from -50 to +50. A vertical red bar indicates the current drift rate. This will move back and forth during the processing of the work unit.
The y-axis measures the strength of the signal. Signals in the black area are considered completely uninteresting, and will not be reported back to the SETI@home servers. Signals in the blue zone may be of some significance, and will be returned to the servers for further consideration.
Just because a signal is returned to the servers, don't break out the champagne and announce to the world you found proof of extra-terrestrial intelligence! First of all, most work units have returned signals, so this is not an unusual occurrence. But even if you encounter a signal whose strength stands out over all the signals you've ever come across, still chances are that this comes from terrestrial radio interference rather than from an extra-terrestrial civilization.
The View Log and Details buttons open the the Log and Results Details windows, respectively.
The fields in this panel report information about the origin of the data stored in the current work unit. They are:
The unique ID that SETI@home uses to identify the work unit.
Day and time the data contained in this work unit was recorded.
Position in the sky, given as Right Ascension (RA), Declination (Dec), and Angle Range (AR).
Name and 3-letter symbol of the closest constellation. Clicking on the link, you can get more information on the specific constellation.
Radio telescope that collected the data. Currently, this is always Arecibo. By clicking on the link, you can visit the Arecibo web site.
Base of the frequency slice examined in this work unit.
Pressing the Sky Map button opens the Sky Map window.
Much of the information presented in this panel cannot be computed by just looking at the local files. Instead, it must first be retrieved from the SETI@home web site. This can be done by pressing the Update button.
The fields contained in this panel are:
The user name handle. If there is an email address known for this user, this name will be a link, and clicking over it will open the SETI@home account stats page associated to that address.
Date in which the current SETI@home account was created. This is a link to the registration class page (i.e. the page containing a list of all other users that registered that day).
Number of completed work units that have been returned to SETI@home under this account. If you have been awarded any certificate, this will be a link to the latest certificate awarded.
Total time dedicated by this user to processing work units.
Average time elapsed between two consecutive work units are completed and their results returned to the servers.
CPU time to process a work unit, averaged over all the work units completed so far.
Average of the number of CPUs (computers) the user is using to process work units.
Environment in which your computer operates. If known, this is one of three possible values: home, school, or work. In this case, a link to a page containing the top 1000 users with your environment is also provided.
Information about your environment was entered by you when you registered with SETI@home.
Country in which you're located (this too was entered by you during the registration process). Clicking on this link brings up a web page listing the top 1000 users of your country.
Rank of the user, measured in terms of number of completed work units returned.
Clicking the Calendar button will open the Calendar window.
In most situations, KSetiSpy should be able to download the extra user information quickly and without problems each time you click on the Update button. In case something goes wrong, however, this can be usually tracked down to one or more of the following things:
Internet connection
Check that you're connected to the internet. If you are behind a firewall that uses a HTTP proxy server, check Konqueror's settings and make sure that the proxy name and port are correctly set. As a rule of thumb, if you can browse the web using Konqueror, KSetiSpy should also be able to retrieve the information it needs from the web server.
The SETI@home stats web server
The web server KSetiSpy uses for the connection is the one specified in the User Data panel of the Statistics Servers Setup dialog. Try to browse that web site with Konqueror (or any web browser you normally use). If you cannot browse it, it might be the case that the SETI@home web server is down, or that you're trying to connect to the wrong web server.
E-mail address
In order to locate your account statistics, SETI@home needs the e-mail address you used when you created that account. If KSetiSpy doesn't know that address, it can't download the information. If this is the case, you should see your name in the User field to be static text instead of an link, and the Update grayed out. If you're using the cache, you need to fill that address in the Cache Setup dialog; if you're not using the cache, edit the current profile instead.
Much like as for User Statistics, the information presented in this panel has to be retrieved from the SETI@home statistics web server. Hence the troubleshooting tips listed before for the User Stats panel also apply here.
SETI@home allows single users to form teams. The information presented in this panel relate to the user's team. If you do not belong to any team, most of the fields will have value unknown.
Some of the fields of these panel can be computed by a single lookup to the statistics servers, and hence they will be computed each time you will press the Update button. They are:
Name of the team you belong to, and link to a web page containing your team's statistics.
Number of completed work units that have been returned to SETI@home by members of this team.
Total time spent by members of this team crunching work units.
Average time needed to process a work unit by members of this team.
The founder of this group.
The number of SETI@home who are currently members of this group.
Other fields show information that requires at least two consecutive measurements. Therefore, these may not appear immediately after you start using KSetiSpy, but will eventually appear after a few days of use. They are:
An estimate of the number of completed work units that are returned each day by members of this team.
The number of CPUs from members of this group 100% dedicated on processing work units, and their average frequency.
The speed at which the group is processing data, measured in FLOPS.
Here we present some data about the SETI@home client, and the system (i.e. memory, OS) on which it runs. This information is organized in the following fields:
The version of the SETI@home client.
Location of the SETI@home files.
The operating system of the machine. For Linux, this will typically list the kernel version, and possibly the maker of the distribution.
The amount of physical memory (in KB, MB or GB) installed in the machine.
The amount of virtual memory (in KB, MB or GB).
You can start the client by pressing Start (if it's not running), and stop it pressing Stop (if it is). In order for this button to work, however, you need first to fill out the client location (and command line arguments, if any) in the Profile configuration dialog.
This panel reports some information about the processor running SETI@home. This is by default the processor (or processors) of the machine KSetiSpy is running, but can be changed if you use KSetiSpy to monitor clients running remotely.
It contains a pop-up menu that allows you to select the CPU you're interested in. Admittedly, this is not very useful on computers with just one processor, or homogeneous (all the processors have the same characteristics) multiprocessor machines, but has been included for generality.
The panel also contains the following fields:
The name of the CPU. This typically includes the manufacturer's name (for example: Intel), the CPU family and model (for example: Pentium III), and possibly the codename (for example: Katmai). This information might prove useful when looking at the Peak Processing Efficiency window or choosing the right calibration.
The speed in MHz of the processor.
The size (in KB or MB) of the CPU's (or sometimes motherboard's) cache.
MIPS is an acronym for Millions of Instructions Per Second. It is used to indicate the speed of a CPU, and can be considered the integer equivalent of MegaFLOPS.
However, BogoMIPS are not MIPS, although the two are (very loosely) related. This is a measure Linus Torvalds came up with, and measures the number of times the CPU executes one particular loop in the Linux kernel in one second.
Here you will find information about the work unit cache management system. The following fields are displayed:
The complete path of the directory containing the cache.
The maximum number of work units the cache will download from the server.
The number of work units that have been downloaded and await to be processed.
The number of work units that have been completed and whose results still need to be uploaded into the servers.
The date and time of the last successful work unit download (if any).
The date and time of the last successful result upload (if any).
The date and time of the next scheduled work unit download (if any).
The date and time of the next scheduled result upload (if any).
The Setup... button will bring up the Cache Setup dialog, allowing you to set up the cache or modify some of its parameters. The Show Log button will open the Connection Log window, where you will be able to see the input/output of the most recent connection.
For the impatient, there is a Connect button that will start both download and upload connections to the servers (provided there is anything to transmit or receive).
This panel controls most of KSetiSpy's settings. They are grouped in three tabs.
To account for the fact that one may want to monitor more than a single SETI@home client, KSetiSpy allows you to define several profiles. Each profile will point to a different SETI@home directory, and will be identified by a unique name. However, since KSetiSpy is geared toward displaying information regarding a single client at a time, the concept of "current profile" is used. At any time, KSetiSpy will report data relative to the current profile only, but at the same time you'll be able to switch the current profile with ease.
The list on the left enumerates all the profiles defined so far. The current profile has a "(current)" suffix.
The Add... button allows you to create a new profile, that, upon completion, will be added to the list. Pressing Edit... you will be able to modify the profile that is currently highlighted on the list. Delete will destroy the highlighted profile. It will display a confirmation dialog first, so if you pressed this button accidentally you'll be given the chance to cancel the operation. Finally, Set Current will change the current profile to the one that's currently highlighted.
Three of the four checkboxes in this tab deal with the tray icon. Checking Minimize to tray causes KSetiSpy to minimize to an icon in the system tray rather than to a taskbar button. If Run in tray is checked, the tray icon will be visible at all times. Finally, with Close to tray set, clicking the close button will leave the application running in the tray; if this option is checked, the only way to exit KSetiSpy will be to right-click the tray icon, and then select Quit from the menu.
The Remember windows positions setting tells KSetiSpy whether to remember the location and size of all its windows. If you change screen resolution often, you may want to leave this unchecked, since otherwise at lower resolutions some of the windows might end up being located off-screen. On the other hand, if your screen resolution always stays the same, it's probably more convenient to check this option and let KSetiSpy remember the window layout you used last time.
This tabs groups together all the settings relative to the User Statistics and Group Statistics panels.
You can have KSetiSpy to automatically download an up-to-date version of your stats on startup, and/or at regular intervals (in multiples of 1 hour).
If you use the cache, you may want to update automatically your user statistics after you upload your cached results.
The Servers... button opens the Statistics Servers Setup dialog, that you can use in the (statistically unlikely, but possible) event that SETI@home moves its statistics web servers to a different address, or changes the syntax used to dynamically generate the stats pages.
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