[HOW-TO] Make SETI@Home work from a RAM disk.

[michaelsanford]

At the time of this writing the most current build for Mac OS X is "setiathome-3.03.powerpc-apple-darwin1.2". This tutorial assumes you have the OS X command-line client installed in ~/bin/setiathome-3.03.powerpc-apple-darwin1.2, so if it is installed elsewhere make the appropriate changes.

1. Download a RAM disk utility like ramBunctious2 ( http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/14621 ).

2. Create a new 3MB RAM disk called seti-at-home, and put the .ramb file in your home folder. Though 3 megs is more than you'll need, it will afford you some breathing room just in case.

3. Copy ~/bin/setiathome-3.03.powerpc-apple-darwin1.2 to ~/bin/setiathome-3.03.powerpc-apple-darwin1.2-old

[amras@nimbus ~/bin]% cp -r setiathome-3.03.powerpc-apple-darwin1.2 setiathome-3.03.powerpc-apple-darwin1.2-old

4. Create a new symlink to replace your old path and point it to your new ram disk.

[amras@nimbus ~/bin]% ln -s /Volumes/seti-at-home/ setiathome-3.03.powerpc-apple-darwin1.2

We make this symlink in case you have SETI Menu, other shell scripts configured to start and stop SaH, or if you have added SaH to your $PATH. This way you don't have to re-configure anything.

Now you can simply start SaH the way you normally would.

It will run marginally faster (depending on your system) and will allow your hard disk to take a break now and then.

[ksv]

Now if they can AltiVec/G5 optimize SETI. Seriously, they're four years behind