On 5 Dec 2001, at 22:33, George Woltman wrote: > > > No. The server never contacts the client. That's too much of a security > > > risk in my book.
Correct. Though I suppose the server could automatically e-mail a warning to the user that their assignment has been pre-empted. > > > >That isn't exactly what I meant. Given that his exponent has been expired > >and assigned to me, if he then checks in later to report further progress > >on the exponent, will the server tell his client that the exponent has > >been expired and assigned to someone else, or will it tell me the next > >time I check in that he is still working on it? Surely _his_ checkin will result in "assignment does not belong to you" if he's allowed it to expire? > > If he checks in his result, primenet will return error 11 - but your > computation > will continue. > > >Or do both of our clients continue happily chugging away on it? > > I think prime95 removes it from worktodo.ini only if you have not > started the LL test. This makes sense... > > Obviously there is some room for improvement here. The current scheme > works OK for first time checks since yours would then become a valid > double-check. There are four points here: (1) there's a Big Difference between abandoning a run which is only just started and one which is nearly complete; (2) if you do decide to change the policy to "abandon", it would be wise to make the program keep the savefile (can be deleted manually if neccessary) just in case the residuals don't match - it seems silly to throw away work done already when it still might be required; (3) IMO the occasional triple check doesn't matter; (4) AFAIK it is fairly rare for people who allow assignments to expire _having made at least one intermediate checkin_ to later reappear with a result. The current policy is fine, even ideal, so far as "first LL test" assignments are concerned. I'm not convinced that changing the policy for DC assignments would result in a noticeable improvement in the efficiency of the project as a whole. Regards Brian Beesley _________________________________________________________________________ Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.ndatech.com/mersenne/signup.htm Mersenne Prime FAQ -- http://www.tasam.com/~lrwiman/FAQ-mers
