AlienSearchE16

Overview

AlienSearchE16 is a bitcoin payable web app designed for the 21 Marketplace to allow clients to pay for the server to run SETI@home. If we do find aliens one day, we think they would be intrigued by bitcoin.

Installation

To install, run:

$ git clone https://github.com/pooleja/AlienSearchE16.git
$ cd AlienSearchE16
$ sudo ./setup.sh

This will install the prerequisite software and set things up. By default, it will allow only up to 50% of the CPU to be leveraged to prevent VPS services from killing it.

Running the server

To run the web server:

$ python3 alienSearchE16-server.py -d

Make Sure it Stays Running

To ensure the server stays running across reboots, you can create a reboot cron job. This will ensure AlienSearchE16 will be restarted any time the device comes back online.

To open the cron file:

$ crontab -e

Edit the file and add a reboot line (replace the path):

@reboot cd /your/path/to/AlienSearchE16/ && python3 alienSearchE16-server.py -d

Now you can reboot the device and ensure it is running:

$ ps aux | grep python3
twenty     545  2.2  2.5  39928 25884 ?        Sl   17:35   0:07 python3 alienSearchE16-server.py

How It Works

A client can pay bitcoin to have the server run SETI. They can also see the status of the node and how much it has contributed to the SETI project.

To get status:

$ 21 buy url 'http://0.0.0.0:10016/status'
{
    "hostCredits": "0.210372",
    "state": "SUSPENDED",
    "success": true
}

To start SETI:

$ 21 buy url 'http://0.0.0.0:10016/run'
{
    "message": "SETI will run until Wed Aug  3 13:56:36 2016",
    "success": true
}

Now you will see it is running:

$ 21 buy url 'http://0.0.0.0:10016/status'
{
    "hostCredits": "0.210372",
    "state": "RUNNING",
    "success": true
}

Starting and stopping

The service will poll on an hourly basis and see if the current time is before or after the time specified in time.txt. Every time someone pays to run the service, it will add an hour to the time in the file (or to the current time) and save that in the file. This is how it keeps track of whether it has been paid to run.

pooleja / AlienSearchE16