>
>[...snip...] Now, how to incorporate that in Prime95
>is another matter, especially as I don't think George would like too many
>zeroed-out security codes due to people running own-compiled versions.
>
I _know_ it's not as efficient in the absolute sense, but, if people would
prefer to run a screensaver _and_ a version of Prime95, I wonder if it
would be worthwhile updating the old Win 3.1 screensaver version. The point
is, we want to make it attractive for people to participate.
Perhaps we should wait a few weeks, then poll a selection of users as to
whether they prefer to participate using a "Prime95 style" background
program or a "Seti@home" style screensaver. I mean the style of interaction,
not the way they percieve the project.
>>What if you periodically had each machine copy it's P/Q files to some
>>central location on a server.
Something like this may possibly be required in the long run, as run
times on the very large exponents which v19 can cope with could be more
than the lifetime of a system! However, a few megabytes per savefile
times tens of thousands of systems is _still_ a lot of filestore, and
shifting that much data across dial-up network links is going to be
painful.
Questions have also been asked in the past about what use could be made
of a number of machines which are only available temporarily. Being able
to upload partially completed assignments would be useful from this
point of view, too.
There are technical (security) and non-technical (what happens to the
prize money if more than one PrimeNet user has worked on the assignment)
problems, but I don't see these as insuperable.
>>When an exponent is checked out by your
>>pseudo proxy, have it check if there's a partially worked on P file and send
>>that out or something. At the very least, it'll be nice to back those up on
>>occassion to prevent lost work when someone formats their drive.
I take it that's your own pseudo proxy, in which case it can do more or
less what you want it to... I would have its clients check in fairly
frequently (assuming permanent network connectivity & a reasonable
bandwidth) & upload the P file for the exponent it's working on. If a
client fails to check in twice running, the next time a client wants a
new assignment, give it the assignment and the last P file from the
"broken" machine. And log the event so someone can check out what went
wrong.
>
>How? That is the question... I guess I need to get VC++ back, enter Windows
>(yuck) and do something smart (an FTP upload, for instance). If any coders
>out there are willing to help me, it would be nice.
Doesn't sound too hard. The psuedo proxy could run OS/360 or Multics for
all the clients care. I guess all you need to do at the client end is to
find a FTP client which can be run from the command line, then have the
Mersenne client simply construct the command, fork off a copy of the
FTP client to do the file transfer, leave FTP to do its thing & get on
with crunching numbers. You might want to worry about what happens to
the client if it wants to rewrite the save file before the FTP finishes,
my guess is that the best thing is to (a) abort & restart the FTP _and_
(b) double the interval between writing save files.
Actually, for local groups, you could probably just use the ordinary OS
"file copy" command across filesystems shared using Windows, NFS, Netware
or Samba (depending on the (N)OS or mix of (N)OSes).
George - suggestion for V19 - option to run an external command (supplied
by user as value in local.ini file) at fixed intervals (time again supplied
as value in local.ini file) ? Those who think it's justifiable _could_
use this option to kill screensavers ;-)
Regards
Brian Beesley
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