Hi,
At 09:20 AM 2/10/00 -0500, Stephan Grupp wrote:
I missed the answer in the digest to the question regarding old results
that are left in your Primenet account after a synchronization. I, too,
have wondered about these accumlating old results (although I just
checked my Account Report and they all have miraculously disappeared).
Are those "legacy" exponents counted in your P90 years? Had they been
(NOT to reopen this thread) poached or reassigned in some other way?
This will take a little explaining
A database merge is done using the binary database format that only
the old-time GIMPSers remember. The Primenet server removes results
from the cleared exponents report if the exponent is no longer in the
binary database. Unfortunately this algorithm has a flaw. The exponent
may still be in the binary database - only now it is marked for
double-checking. So even though you properly did a first-time check,
the exponent is still in the database, and your line still appears in the
cleared exponents report.
At present the binary database has data on all exponents below 7 million
that need double-checking. In the past it had been 5 million, so not all
result lines between 5 million and 7 million were saved. Furthermore,
buggy v17 results hung around for quite a while because the exponent
was not removed from the binary database for obvious reasons.
Now, why did these old lines recently disappear? That's a completely
different issue! The prime95 client sends two result messages to the
server for every LL test. One is an easy to use C structure that the
server uses to update its databases. The other is a text message
(identical to the results.txt line) that I download once a week and
update my database. Once in a great while I plow through the cleared
exponents report and see if the primenet server database has results
that I am missing (there were 5 since last May). I've emailed the 5
users in hopes of getting them to email the results.txt file to me. I also
told Scott to purge the cleared exponents report of all results sent in prior
to Feb 1, 2000.
Obviously this isn't the cleanest way for Scott and I to maintain our
databases. It developed this way partly for historical reasons and
partly due to constraints on our free time.
Best regards,
George
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