Mersenne Digest Wednesday, March 29 2000 Volume 01 : Number 712 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 27 Mar 2000 10:26:11 -0500 From: "Geoffrey Faivre-Malloy" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: RE: Mersenne: The recent popularity of Factoring > There is a point there, but I'm sure there are a few folks who just enjoy > the thrill of finding a factor. There is, we must admit, a pleasure of > discovery to seeing > > "Mxxxxxxx has a factor: yyyyyyyyyyyyyyy" several times a month that is > utterly absent from seeing > > "Mxxxxxxx is composite" only monthly. Exactly why I do factoring :) G-Man _________________________________________________________________ Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm Mersenne Prime FAQ -- http://www.tasam.com/~lrwiman/FAQ-mers ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 27 Mar 2000 11:33:05 -0500 From: Marc Getty <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Mersenne: The Recent Popularity of Factoring > Date: Sat, 25 Mar 2000 07:53:36 EST > From: "Nathan Russell" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Subject: Re: Mersenne: The recent popularity of Factoring > *snip* > I don't honestly know what to say... The real reason some of us might be > annoyed is that there are machines out there, such as 486's and low > Pentiums, that cannot deal with the current 10 M LL tests, or even, in the > case of the 486s and some K-6s, the 5-6 M doublechecks. Fortunately, I do > not have such a machine, however those who do would be understandibly, if > maybe not rightly, annoyed that someone with large numbers of fast machines > that can easily do LL work has chosen to not only do factoring, but to cache > an amount of factoring work that would normally take GIMPS as a whole months > to finish. Regards, Nathan Russell While I do no use the undocumented FactorOverride feature, I do have 300+ factoring assignments assigned to my TempleU-DI account. All of these machines are 400 MHz Dell OptiPlex GX1's with the low profile cases from hell. This terrible design forces me to factor due to the fact that LL tests make the video flicker terribly. Please do no be annoyed at those of us "with large numbers of fast machines" doing factoring work, the only other alternative is a pretty screen saver. - -Marc Marc Getty [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.temple.edu/dentistry/di/ Department of Dental Informatics, Temple University School of Dentistry Phone: 215-707-8192 Fax: 215-707-2208 New Building Room 3C05 _________________________________________________________________ Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm Mersenne Prime FAQ -- http://www.tasam.com/~lrwiman/FAQ-mers ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 27 Mar 2000 10:43:48 -0600 From: "Willmore, David" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: RE: Mersenne: The recent popularity of Factoring Brian J. Beesley wrote: > A more general & more secure method of preventing the type of problem > exposed by this incident would be to have the server enforce a quota > for the maximum number of assignments issued to any user/computer id > combo in a particular time interval e.g. 20 per day. Yes, this could > still be got round by anyone determined to cause mischief by changing > the computer id and grabbing another bunch of assignments, but it > would be effective against accidents. > I would hope there would be a way to bypass such a limit as I have a dual PII/333 system where one processor does first time LL and the other does factoring--I was experiencing severe slowdown with two LL running. I don't connect to the net all that often with that machine, so I have a Work to Get value of 90 days. For some reason, I'm not allowed to get more than about a month of factoring work. It's starting to cut into my efficiency. Is there a way around this? Cheers, David _________________________________________________________________ Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm Mersenne Prime FAQ -- http://www.tasam.com/~lrwiman/FAQ-mers ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 27 Mar 2000 08:53:37 -0800 From: Paul Leyland <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: RE: Mersenne: The recent popularity of Factoring > From: Willmore, David [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] > value of 90 days. For some reason, I'm not allowed to get more than about a > month of factoring work. It's starting to cut into my efficiency. Is there > a way around this? Try joining the people at the bleeding edge. I've been factoring an exponent just below 60M. It's taking several weeks on a PII-366. Ken Kriesel is co-ordinating these folk. Paul _________________________________________________________________ Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm Mersenne Prime FAQ -- http://www.tasam.com/~lrwiman/FAQ-mers ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 27 Mar 2000 11:00:31 -0600 From: "Willmore, David" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: RE: Mersenne: The recent popularity of Factoring > > From: Willmore, David [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] > > value of 90 days. For some reason, I'm not allowed to get more than > about > a > > month of factoring work. It's starting to cut into my efficiency. Is > there > > a way around this? > Paul Leyland wrote: > Try joining the people at the bleeding edge. I've been factoring an > exponent just below 60M. It's taking several weeks on a PII-366. Ken > Kriesel is co-ordinating these folk. > Wonderful Idea(tm)! I hadn't thought of that. Funny, considering I did some factoring as part of the v19 QA effort. Should have though of it.... Ken! Sign me up! :) I'd be glad to leave these smaller numbers to the 486s. Cheers, David _________________________________________________________________ Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm Mersenne Prime FAQ -- http://www.tasam.com/~lrwiman/FAQ-mers ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 27 Mar 2000 13:07:48 EST From: "Nathan Russell" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: Mersenne: The Recent Popularity of Factoring >From: Marc Getty <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] >Subject: Mersenne: The Recent Popularity of Factoring >Date: Mon, 27 Mar 2000 11:33:05 -0500 > > > >While I do no use the undocumented FactorOverride feature, I do have 300+ >factoring assignments assigned to my TempleU-DI account. All of these >machines >are 400 MHz Dell OptiPlex GX1's with the low profile cases from hell. This >terrible design forces me to factor due to the fact that LL tests make the >video >flicker terribly. Please do no be annoyed at those of us "with large >numbers of >fast machines" doing factoring work, the only other alternative is a pretty >screen saver. > >-Marc Certainly factoring is better than nothing, and it can be argued that, since there is an unlimited number of prime exponents available, there is an unlimited amount of factoring work for GIMPS to do. It is wonderful that colleges and businesses are getting into GIMPS, and there are certainly situations in which there is a need to do a certain type of work. This is one, and machines with limited memory may be another. The bone I have to pick is really with the (now hypothetical) person who was, according to the info I had at the time, factoring thousands of exponents without a good reason. Trying to sound sane, Nathan Russell ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com _________________________________________________________________ Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm Mersenne Prime FAQ -- http://www.tasam.com/~lrwiman/FAQ-mers ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 27 Mar 2000 13:19:57 EST From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Mersenne: Prime 95 Speeds Recently - someone posted an excel sheet comparing speeds of processors running Prime95 Is this spreadsheet still available? Lawrence...... _________________________________________________________________ Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm Mersenne Prime FAQ -- http://www.tasam.com/~lrwiman/FAQ-mers ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 27 Mar 2000 18:08:28 -0500 From: Jeff Woods <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Mersenne: Exponent in limbo? I have an exponent that was completed while a Linux box was misconfigured to NOT have permissions to write the temp files. It looks like it never checked in its results. It did have permissions to handle writing results.txt, but didn't have the ability, so it seems, to write NEW files, which seemed to be needed to send the results to IPS. (This has been corrected, and the new exponent is running fine). However, it wasn't corrected before it went on and started the next exponent. I know the result reasonably close enough -- I have the non-prime masked residue from the results.txt file. How can I turn in this "orphaned" exponent, so that IPS still gives me credit for the work, and is it possible to recover the last 16 bits of the residue for George? (If it isn't possible, and you want me to just "restart" it, I do have the saved intermediary files about 4 days prior to completion, which COULD be resumed, I suppose, with the exponent simply re-added to the bottom of "worktodo.ini"). I imagine this is best, because we'll get the FULL residue without losing more than 4 days' work, but I'd like to know where Scott and George think I ought to go with this.... _________________________________________________________________ Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm Mersenne Prime FAQ -- http://www.tasam.com/~lrwiman/FAQ-mers ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 27 Mar 2000 22:25:36 EST From: "Nathan Russell" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: RE: Mersenne: The recent popularity of Factoring >From: "Brian J. Beesley" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >To: "Geoffrey Faivre-Malloy" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >CC: [EMAIL PROTECTED] >Subject: RE: Mersenne: The recent popularity of Factoring >Date: Sun, 26 Mar 2000 07:39:15 -0000 > >Geoffrey Faivre-Malloy wrote: Stuff that we've already gone over and dabated for a few days. Regarding factoroverride=, Brian stated: >I'd call it an "unwanted feature". George, I think perhaps the easy >way to handle this would be to check "UsePrimeNet" and refuse to >execute AdvancedFactor assignments if UsePrimeNet=1. Seems perfectly reasonable, or maybe allow it only if the difference between the override value and the default depth is no more than two bits. One can still make a case, however, that this will result in other users getting exponents that will take nearly as long to run and have a greatly reduced chance of finding a factor. > >I appreciate the point about slower machines. One way to deal with >this would be a few small changes to Prime95, and a small enhancement >to PrimeNet. > >It could go something like this: > >Prime95 would have a new parameter for the maximum elapsed time for a >factoring assignment. When it completes to a depth of n bits, before >going on to (n+1) bits it checks if the max elapsed time would be >exceeded. If so, it reports "no factor found to 2^n", signals >PrimeNet that it is abandoning work on this exponent & goes on to the >next assignment. (I think that this is purely client end so far, >since there is already a mechanism to return an unwanted assignment, >both in the manual testing pages and invoked from "Quit Gimps".) I think the date should be user-modifiable, but only as a whole number of days. There is no reason why a person would not be able to have a machine doing factoring for one day (or three days, even, if it's a business machine) > >When requesting factoring assignments, Prime95 would tell PrimeNet >the maximum number of bits pre-factored it was prepared to accept >assignments for (this could be calculated approximately from the max >factoring assignment time parameter) . This requires a change to the >server as well as to the client to accommodate, since the server >would have to scan down the list of available factoring assignments >until it found a suitable candidate. And what of those assignments that have already been pre-factored? I guess we might assume that there will be enough naive novice users coming in who will be able to deal with them though... >However it is also possible that slower machines with reasonable >amounts of memory could find a role running P-1 assignments, when >they become available. Note that this is dependent on a major change >to the server software, so maybe now is a good time to specify the >relatively minor change needed to accommodate a scheme similar to the >above. I feel I'm still a touch new to comment on this part. >A more general & more secure method of preventing the type of problem >exposed by this incident would be to have the server enforce a quota >for the maximum number of assignments issued to any user/computer id >combo in a particular time interval e.g. 20 per day. Yes, this could >still be got round by anyone determined to cause mischief by changing >the computer id and grabbing another bunch of assignments, but it >would be effective against accidents. > > >Regards >Brian Beesley I still feel that 20/day is rather liberal. I have a P3-600, nearly top-of-the-line now, and when I was doing factoring 24//7 it was rare to finish two assignments in a day; I never finished more. Regards Nathan ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com _________________________________________________________________ Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm Mersenne Prime FAQ -- http://www.tasam.com/~lrwiman/FAQ-mers ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 27 Mar 2000 22:48:04 -0500 From: "Paul Victor Novarese" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Mersenne: primenet proxy any plans to support mprime for linux as a client for the windows primenet proxy? I've been fooling with it and have been unable to make it work. Any reports of success would be helpful. - -- Paul Victor Novarese "Bob Dole thinks he's a doofus" http://gammatron.weblogger.com --Bob Dole KF4ZLI _________________________________________________________________ Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm Mersenne Prime FAQ -- http://www.tasam.com/~lrwiman/FAQ-mers ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 28 Mar 2000 11:52:21 -0500 From: Marc Getty <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Mersenne: The Recent Popularity of Factoring Russel Brooks wrote: > Marc Getty wrote: > > All of these machines > > are 400 MHz Dell OptiPlex GX1's with the low profile cases from hell. This > > terrible design forces me to factor due to the fact that LL tests make the video > > flicker terribly. > Did anyone ever contact Dell about this interference problem? What was > their responce? cheers... Russ I never did contact Dell, anyone else? - -Marc Marc Getty [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.temple.edu/dentistry/di/ Department of Dental Informatics, Temple University School of Dentistry Phone: 215-707-8192 Fax: 215-707-2208 New Building Room 3C05 _________________________________________________________________ Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm Mersenne Prime FAQ -- http://www.tasam.com/~lrwiman/FAQ-mers ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 28 Mar 2000 13:07:09 -0500 From: "Louis Towles" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: Mersenne: The Recent Popularity of Factoring Both Gateway and Dell had this prob with the onboard video and the FPU on some of their profile cases . Both have fixed it in their current lines but have no way of dealing with it on the previous models. Louis Towles (#14 on the factoring list - just not by choice) - ----- Original Message ----- From: "Marc Getty" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Russel Brooks" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; "Mersenne List" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Tuesday, March 28, 2000 11:52 AM Subject: Mersenne: The Recent Popularity of Factoring > Russel Brooks wrote: > > Marc Getty wrote: > > > All of these machines > > > are 400 MHz Dell OptiPlex GX1's with the low profile cases from hell. This > > > terrible design forces me to factor due to the fact that LL tests make the video > > > flicker terribly. > > Did anyone ever contact Dell about this interference problem? What was > > their responce? cheers... Russ > > I never did contact Dell, anyone else? > > -Marc > > Marc Getty [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.temple.edu/dentistry/di/ > Department of Dental Informatics, Temple University School of Dentistry > Phone: 215-707-8192 Fax: 215-707-2208 New Building Room 3C05 > _________________________________________________________________ > Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm > Mersenne Prime FAQ -- http://www.tasam.com/~lrwiman/FAQ-mers _________________________________________________________________ Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm Mersenne Prime FAQ -- http://www.tasam.com/~lrwiman/FAQ-mers ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 29 Mar 2000 20:47:37 -0500 From: George Woltman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Mersenne: V20 beta #3 Hi all, The third beta is available. It fixes three more bugs. See the whatsnew.txt at the end of this email. If your day and night available memory settings are unequal, then you should replace version 20.1 with this one. You can download it from ftp://entropia.com/gimps/v20/p95setup.exe or ftp://entropia.com/gimps/v20/prime95.zip or ftp://entropia.com/gimps/v20/mprime.tgz or ftp://entropia.com/gimps/v20/sprime.tgz Regards, George New features in Version 20.2 of prime95.exe - ------------------------------------------- 1) If P-1 stage 1 completed and there was not enough memory to start stage 2 immediately, then an incorrect save file was generated. This bug was introduced in version 20.1. Upon restart of the P-1 factoring job a crash or other unpredictable behavior was possible. This bug was fixed and this version has special code to properly read these incorrect save files. 2) P-1 will restart any time the memory settings change. This is done so that the optimal P-1 bounds can be computed with the new memory settings. 3) A bug in ECM testing was fixed. _________________________________________________________________ Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm Mersenne Prime FAQ -- http://www.tasam.com/~lrwiman/FAQ-mers ------------------------------ End of Mersenne Digest V1 #712 ******************************
