On 25 Mar 00, at 2:35, David Campeau wrote:
> I was looking at the PrimeNet's World Test Status and in the recent couple
> of days, the factoring assignment went from ~10000 to ~13000. I put my
> detective cap and went digging in the Assignment Report.
>
> Seeing who the majority of the factoring exponent were assigned to
> reminded me of a previous message to the list.
Before we get too hot under the collar, perhaps we should consider
the possibility that there is a bug somewhere which is causing excess
exponents to be allocated. The user concerned may have triggered this
by running factoring assignments on a fast system, but...
Note that there is a maximum size for the worktodo.ini file. What
would happen if the worktodo.ini file was filled with assignments so
that no more could be fitted in, but that the work queued was still
less than the amount specified? I think there is at least a
possibility that the program would continue to request assignments
from PrimeNet in a doomed attempt to get to the required outstanding
work quota. If I'm right then the majority of the recently assigned
factoring exponents won't be in "live" worktodo files on any system &
are therefore likely to expire in due course.
Why has this hit now? There are several possible explanations, but at
least one which should be looked at is any recent change in the
estimate for factoring time. Other possibilities would be a system
upgrade and/or the fact that the factoring time (to a given depth) is
_inversely_ proportional to the exponent.
Given that P-1 factoring assignments (when introduced) will also be
"short" there may be a need to review the client/server linkage to
reduce the possibility of accidents.
I would urge the user concerned to report what happened and also to
take any steps neccessary to prevent a repetition. I'd suggest
halving the "days of work" value as a first step.
Regards
Brian Beesley
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