RE: Mersenne: Re: Factoring bugs
From: Paul Leyland [EMAIL PROTECTED] You are merely restating a law of nature. After a point, everything becomes useless. I am reminded of a quote from Homer Simpson: "Trying is the first step toward failure." :) A question for George (and Scott): Is there any chance that Prime95's ECM factoring will ever become automated as a part of PrimeNet? Even if it is never given as a default type of assignment, it would still be useful to dedicated number theory enthusiasts who want to run it on more machines than they can manage manually. ___ Get Free Email and Do More On The Web. Visit http://www.msn.com Unsubscribe list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm
Mersenne Digest V1 #545
Mersenne DigestThursday, April 15 1999Volume 01 : Number 545 -- Date: Mon, 12 Apr 1999 21:01:25 -0400 From: Pierre Abbat [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Mersenne: preventive measures How about this?: If mprime finds that it needs to update itself, it downloads the new files, renames the old ones, renames the new ones, and quits at five 'til. One minute past the hour, a cron job notices that mprime isn't running and restarts it. phma Unsubscribe list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm -- Date: Mon, 12 Apr 1999 21:30:12 -0500 From: Amy and Shane Sanford [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Mersenne: preventive measures A easy way with any OS that has some sort of easy batch file support (such as the flavors of Windows from what I remember Unix). Have the Prime program download the files to the current directory (maybe a self executable zip file). Then execute the download. The download will unzip all the files including a batch file which when launched will replace the nessecary files with the new ones. The orginal prime program then would launch the batch file (maybe with a execution delay of 2 seconds) then close itself (and unload any .dlls if nessecary). The Batch file then takes over with the file updates, cleans up the mess, and then launches the new prime program before it closes. Shane At 09:01 PM 4/12/99 -0400, Pierre Abbat wrote: How about this?: If mprime finds that it needs to update itself, it downloads the new files, renames the old ones, renames the new ones, and quits at five 'til. One minute past the hour, a cron job notices that mprime isn't running and restarts it. phma Unsubscribe list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm Unsubscribe list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm -- Date: Mon, 12 Apr 1999 22:49:31 -0400 From: Andrew Isaacson [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Mersenne: preventive measures On Mon, Apr 12, 1999 at 09:30:12PM -0500, Amy and Shane Sanford wrote: A easy way with any OS that has some sort of easy batch file support (such as the flavors of Windows from what I remember Unix). Have the Prime program download the files to the current directory (maybe a self executable zip file). Then execute the download. The download will unzip all the files including a batch file which when launched will replace the nessecary files with the new ones. The orginal prime program then would launch the batch file (maybe with a execution delay of 2 seconds) then close itself (and unload any .dlls if nessecary). The Batch file then takes over with the file updates, cleans up the mess, and then launches the new prime program before it closes. The problem really is NOT solving the technical problem of how to update the program on the fly. That's a bit challenging, sure, but it's really not all that hard. The real problem is ensuring that this scheme is secure. When there's no human being in the loop, the system becomes ripe for abuse. For example, I could use established DNS poisoning attacks to redirect ftp.mersenne.org (or wherever the software is automatically downloaded from) to a host of my choosing, and provide malicious software there posing as an "update" to the mersenne software. Then your computer would happily dowload and install my evil program! Any automatic executable download system is suceptible to this problem in some form or another, unless it provides some form of cryptographic signature or other verifiability check. But doing things like that runs afoul of the US government's medieval crypto policy. Now, providing a method for one person to automatically update a bunch of remote computers they control is something else entirely, and that does not have the same security implications. For example, Aaron Blosser installed prime95 on 3000 (or so) Windows computers from his desktop, using remote administration software. I've done similar things on Solaris (Unix) here at school, to run Distributed.net's client software. Anyways, what does this have to do with Mersenne primes? - -andy - -- Andy Isaacson [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED]Fight Spam, join CAUCE: http://www.csl.mtu.edu/~adisaacs/ http://www.cauce.org/ Unsubscribe list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm -- Date: Mon, 12 Apr 1999 23:09:32 -0400 From: Bassam Abdul-Baki [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Mersenne: Mime-Version: 1.0 Here's a website (http://www.directupdate.com) that has a free program that allows you to auto-update any application. Bassam Anyone who goes to a psychiatrist ought
Re: Mersenne: RE: Mersenne Digest V1 #544
[Brian:] Interesting. rpcnet.dll from the v18 distribution is much smaller than that in the v17 distribution. Should be safe enough to keep the v17 distribution copy. Yes, but it the v17 version uses a proxy running on the old PrimeNet 3.1 server's box. I'd rather everyone use HTTP if possible, or at least use the updated v18 version dated 4/12/1999. Ooops, sorry... I presumed that something had gone wrong which was making the v18 rpcnet.dll misbehave and had a much smaller file size as an indirect result ... Actually my systems are all using either http or the special rpcnet.dll used to connect to the PrimeNet Proxy server, so I just don't know how badly the v18 rpcnet.dll is broken. The v18 program defaults to HTTP when you first install it, so new users should not run into it. The PrimeNet FAQ page also describes how to handle the RPC run-time library crash situation. I've updated the posted v18.1 zips with a new RpcNet.dll. I couldn't get it to crash. If you have an environment that can test this, please do so and tell me how it went. I don't have a suitable environment, as I explained above. Perhaps other people could have a go. BTW, Scott, when you post new versions of software, could you please either mail me or change the "last updates" date on the PrimeNet News page. I didn't know that the files had been changed until I read this message, hence by ftp mirror was still serving the version with the "old" v18 rpcnet.dll. (I've just pulled the latest files onto the mirror. Sorry to anyone who's been fetching over the last few days) Regards Brian Beesley Unsubscribe list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm
Re: Mersenne: Question Suggestion
Message text written by George Woltman At 01:02 PM 4/12/99 -0400, you wrote: It also seems that the number of sumout errors [that is, sum(inputs) != sum(outputs) ] on my AMD K6-2 400 has dropped to zero in the past few days [I think] from about 1 every 2 to 3 hours late last week. My bet would be overheating or flaky memory - but I certainly cannot prove that. I understand that hardware problems certainly cause sumout errors. If I had an overheating CPU or flaky memory, I would expect the problems to continue but they seem to have stopped for the moment. This is indistinguishable from an intermittant hardware problem like a separating circuit board (or other component). Oh, well, and thanks. Joth Unsubscribe list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm
Mersenne: Performance hit on Pentiums with 64MB?
I currently have a P200MMX with 64MB running Primenet under Linux. Finding 64MB rather limiting on my desktop workstation, I'm looking to equip the machine with a couple of 64MB SIMMs. However I shall be running into the limitation of most Pentium motherboards in that the machine will be unable to cache more than 64MB of RAM. How much of a performance hit am I likely to encounter in running Primenet? I've seen figures of 10-30% quoted for various applications. Not that I'm overly bothered - I have a PII contributing rather more these days :-) -- Robin Stevens [EMAIL PROTECTED] Merton College, Oxford OX1 4JD, UK http://www-astro.physics.ox.ac.uk/~rejs/ "Never attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence." Unsubscribe list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm
Mersenne: Proth factoring problem.
hey all. i am very excited about finding a new math discovery. i wanted to find a factor of fermat's number 20. - F20 so.. using Proth.. i set it up with Start: For n=1048576 to 1048576, For k=2 to 2 step 2, GFN. 1048579 being 2^20. after 3 days of processing on my Intel 300 Mhz.. it came out with this result in the log file.. 1*2^1048576 + 1 is composite. (a = 3) what is the relevance of a? and HOW can i use my computer to find a factor of F20? thank you. -paul Unsubscribe list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm
Mersenne: Java client?
Hello, Well, my brother is really getting into the prime number thing. He has it running on his Ultra Sparc but, as expected, it is only running in 32 bit. He had mentioned the possibility of porting the MacLucasUnix code, in particular, to Java...in theory anyway, the Java runtime engine on the Ultra Sparc *is* 64 bit capable, so he's hoping for better performance, plus since it's Java, you could run it on your Windows CE device, or anything else with a Java engine. Is there a demand out there for a Java port? It wouldn't be as fast as C or ASM for most platforms, but for platforms with NO port at all, I think this would be great. Comments anyone? Aaron Blosser Unsubscribe list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm
Re: Mersenne: Java client?
On Thu, Apr 15, 1999 at 02:20:16PM -0600, Aaron Blosser wrote: Is there a demand out there for a Java port? It wouldn't be as fast as C or ASM for most platforms, but for platforms with NO port at all, I think this would be great. You may be surprised at just how fast a Java implementation could be. I did essentially the same thing for the distributed.net RC5-64 effort (see http://www.hewgill.com/rc5/). It turned out that the Java decryption routine, with a JIT compiler, could reach 25% of the speed of a hand optimized assembler decryption routine. Greg Hewgill Unsubscribe list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm
RE: Mersenne: Java client?
On Thu, Apr 15, 1999 at 02:20:16PM -0600, Aaron Blosser wrote: Is there a demand out there for a Java port? It wouldn't be as fast as C or ASM for most platforms, but for platforms with NO port at all, I think this would be great. You may be surprised at just how fast a Java implementation could be. I did essentially the same thing for the distributed.net RC5-64 effort (see http://www.hewgill.com/rc5/). It turned out that the Java decryption routine, with a JIT compiler, could reach 25% of the speed of a hand optimized assembler decryption routine. Well, my brother went ahead and got it coded and working okay. According to his tests, for larger exponents it actually begins to approach the speeds of the C port. He's doing some work on it to optimize it now and promises to have it multithreading in no time. Hmm. His initial timings were based on the Ultra Sparc running MacLucasUNIX. For example, M(3217) was only 17% slower with Java than with the C code. Aaron Unsubscribe list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm
Re: Mersenne: Question Suggestion
That sure sounds simple enough. Now I just have to determine if the sumouts I am suddenly seeing are really hardware. Hmmm. I was getting a reproducable sumout error with Win9X but not NT on multiple systems that had MMX extensions if and only if I ran a web plugin called "Crescendo Live" which is a sort of streaming MIDI player (http://www.liveupdate.com). So, they can be caused by software as well as hardware. I tried to isolate just what was going on, but didn't have any luck. NT was immune. I'm gonna bite the bullet right now and see if it recurs with the current prime95 and Crescendo plugin...Ah, Crescendo 4.0 and win98 'special edition' beta 3 (build 2183) combined with Prime95 18.1.1 seem 'safe' on my pentium-II 300MHz system. Crescendo's music playback is eating over 50% of the CPU tho, sheesh. -jrp Unsubscribe list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm
