Mersenne Digest Friday, May 14 1999 Volume 01 : Number 556 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 13 May 1999 04:02:16 -0400 From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Mersenne: M617 sieving >> This weekend sieving for M617 has started. Binaries for DOS and >>linux are available from ftp://ftp.netdoor.com/users/acurry/nfs >>Let me know if you want binaries for other platforms. > > >- ---------> I will provide source code for anyone who wants it. Bob I'm messing around trying to construct more "user-friendly" factoring site. However, I'm perpetually stymied by the nitty-gritty details of most of the algorithms. If you don't mind me reading the code in an effort to fix this, I'd love a copy. On a somewhat related note, is there a mailing list anywhere which deals with factoring? I hate to admit it, but I don't have nearly enough time to plow through sci.math with any sort of regularity. On top of which, my newsfeed seems to be getting flakier by the day. I also noticed alot of exponents in excess of 7m cropping up in the account, does this indicate that we've caught up on the bug problem? ________________________________________________________________ Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 13 May 1999 12:19:09 +0200 (CEST) From: Henrik Olsen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: Mersenne: Factoring bignums On Wed, 12 May 1999, Pierre Abbat wrote: > Is there a program for factoring numbers up to, say, 2^128 in a reasonable > time? I tried bc but it doesn't have a factor command, so I wrote a loop and it > spent all its time outputting. Get Richard Crandall's giantint package, it contains factor, which will factor "any size" numbers, using a variety of algorithms. As for time, I just did a quick test: echo 123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234 |time ./factor Sieving... 2 * 73 * 1723 * Commencing Pollard rho... .................................................................. .................................................................. .................. Commencing Pollard (p-1)... .................................................................. Commencing ECM... Choosing curve 1, with s = 352116908, B = 1000, C = 50000: .. 17108860903 * 28685059068699533197755335074782923141 14.11user 0.01system 0:15.72elapsed 89%CPU This on a 188MHz Pentium. You can get giantint from http://www.perfsci.com/ - -- Henrik Olsen, Dawn Solutions I/S URL=http://www.iaeste.dk/~henrik/ `Can you count, Banjo?' He looked smug. `Yes, miss. On m'fingers, miss.' `So you can count up to ...?' Susan prompted. `Thirteen, miss,' said Banjo proudly. Terry Pratchett, Hogfather ________________________________________________________________ Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 13 May 1999 10:29:07 -0600 From: "Aaron Blosser" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: RE: Mersenne: LLL Perhaps Scott could contact this fellow and see whats up? I know when I had a bunch of machines checking out numbers, Scott emailed me to be sure it wasn't just a bug or something. At any rate, it looks like all the LL exponents have been chewed up. Moreover, judging by the estimated time to complete, these are not fast machines... LLL would probably have been better off leaving the auto assignment turned on because I'd guess it would have taken DoubleCheck exponents. I hope this person knows what they're doing! Some of those numbers checked out all had the same ComputerID...hmmm... Aaron > -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of david > campeau > Sent: Wednesday, May 12, 1999 11:45 PM > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: Mersenne: LLL > > > I don`t know what is going on, but LLL as about 6000 exponnent > reserved and > it`is still asking for more! If this continue for the night there > should not > be any exponnent available this morning. > > David, > > P.S. current number of exponents available 5351 (5AM UTC) ________________________________________________________________ Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 13 May 1999 13:59:00 -0500 From: Amy and Shane Sanford <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: RE: Mersenne: LLL Maybe there something wrong with the PrimeNet server? Earlier today I had some of my machines check in and it seemed a little wacky. Also, entropia.com seems to be pretty flacky especially the status pages. When I loaded my individual account report it went completely nuts and told me I had 1000's & 1000's of numbers check out (then I did a reload and it back to normal). Shane At 10:29 AM 5/13/99 -0600, Aaron Blosser wrote: >Perhaps Scott could contact this fellow and see whats up? > >I know when I had a bunch of machines checking out numbers, Scott emailed me >to be sure it wasn't just a bug or something. > >At any rate, it looks like all the LL exponents have been chewed up. >Moreover, judging by the estimated time to complete, these are not fast >machines... LLL would probably have been better off leaving the auto >assignment turned on because I'd guess it would have taken DoubleCheck >exponents. > >I hope this person knows what they're doing! Some of those numbers checked >out all had the same ComputerID...hmmm... > >Aaron ________________________________________________________________ Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 14 May 1999 00:15:32 +0400 From: Alexey Khlyamkov <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: Mersenne: LLL > I don`t know what is going on, but LLL as about 6000 exponnent reserved and > it`is still asking for more! If this continue for the night there should not > be any exponnent available this morning. I'am so sorry for this situation. I couldn't log in to our main server for some days because my account was locked through misunderstanding. My disk quota on the server was overfulled in that time and mprime running on several machines which connected to main server via NFS zeroed out some setting files such as local.ini and worktodo.ini. So, every time when every machine runs mprime, it asked primenet server for new exponent because it couldn't find anything in worktodo.ini :-( I returned everything to the normal state except redundantly reserved exponents. Please, PrimeNet supervisor, take all exponents from me which reserved for me after May 11 (if that is not too hard for you). It is better to change primenet software in order to avoid incidents like this. Sorry for inconvenience, Alexey ________________________________________________________________ Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 13 May 1999 15:19:22 +0200 From: "Steinar H. Gunderson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Mersenne: Getting maximum speed out of a Linux machine Hello, I've compiled mprime on my own (after doing some minor changes to make it compile under glibc2), and I've noticed something strange. If I run the program with -m, and use `Test/Continue', I get an iteration time of 0.201 secs (n=7398xxx, P2/400 overclocked to 448MHz (bus=112MHz, multiplier=4); I use some programs to keep track of the CPU temperature, it is not even close to overheating). But, if I instead run it from init, on a separate tty (on the same machine, kernel, binary etc.), the iteration time goes up to 0.203 secs! These results are very consistent, usually only +/- 10,000 clocks (considering that the iteration takes about 90,000,000 clock, this is nothing). Anybody know why? (I've compiled the binary with `-O2 -fomit-frame-pointer -m486', and it seems to be a few percent faster that George's, especially on smaller FFTs.) /* Steinar */ ________________________________________________________________ Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 13 May 1999 15:10:45 -0600 From: "Aaron Blosser" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: RE: Mersenne: LLL > My disk quota on the server was overfulled in that time > and mprime running on several machines which connected > to main server via NFS zeroed out some setting files > such as local.ini and worktodo.ini. > So, every time when every machine runs mprime, > it asked primenet server for new exponent because it couldn't > find anything in worktodo.ini :-( > I returned everything to the normal state except redundantly > reserved exponents. > Please, PrimeNet supervisor, take all exponents from me which > reserved for me after May 11 (if that is not too hard for you). > It is better to change primenet software in order to avoid > incidents like this. Well, that solves that mystery. I knew it was only a matter of time before some instace of Prime95 went crazy and started reserving exponents like mad. I guess it should check that a checked out exponent is properly saved in the worktodo.ini file. I assume there is some error checking going on during the write to file routines? I hope so! :-) Aaron ________________________________________________________________ Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 13 May 1999 20:46:26 +0100 From: Dave Harris <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Mersenne: Stoopid Bureaucracies! - --------------BC8108B74CCB9723C435AEE2 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hello, generally a lurker but... I have to agree with the comments below especially re the Bellcos - except in my case it's another well known UK telco provider. I gave my project proposal to set up on our machines to my boss weeks ago and it has vanished into a black hole. They didn't even have the courtesy to return the folder I bought! Cost me a quid! I just hope that our IT dept doesn't suddenly 'have a good idea' re the GIMPS project and claim it as their own! Hi Ho... dave ================================= Date: Tue, 11 May 1999 23:02:24 -0400 (EDT) From: lrwiman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Mersenne: Convincing administrators All, I'm going to try to get my school to install Prime95 on their >100 PII's. Does anyone have experience dealing with large stupid beurocracies? Any pointers? Who should I try and talk to first? Thank you in advance, Lucas Wiman ________________________________________________________________ Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm - ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 11 May 1999 21:36:12 -0600 From: "Aaron Blosser" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: RE: Mersenne: Convincing administrators > All, > I'm going to try to get my school to install Prime95 on > their >100 PII's. Does anyone have experience dealing with > large stupid beurocracies? Any pointers? Who should I try and > talk to first? First rule when dealing with large stupid beauracracies: If it's a bellco, forget about it. - -- In gentle decay, d. The Hippy Corporation ttp://www.thc.u-net.com news://alt.binaries.music.rebirth - --------------BC8108B74CCB9723C435AEE2 Content-Type: text/html; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit <!doctype html public "-//w3c//dtd html 4.0 transitional//en"> <html> Hello, <br>generally a lurker but... <br>I have to agree with the comments below especially re the Bellcos - except in my case it's another well known UK telco provider. <br>I gave my project proposal to set up on our machines to my boss weeks ago and it has vanished into a black hole. <br>They didn't even have the courtesy to return the folder I bought! Cost me a quid! <p>I just hope that our IT dept doesn't suddenly 'have a good idea' re the GIMPS project and claim it as their own! <p>Hi Ho... <br>dave <p>================================= <br> <br> <br><i></i> <i></i> <p><i>Date: Tue, 11 May 1999 23:02:24 -0400 (EDT)</i> <br><i>From: lrwiman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]></i> <br><i>Subject: Mersenne: Convincing administrators</i><i></i> <p><i>All,</i> <br><i>I'm going to try to get my school to install Prime95 on</i> <br><i>their >100 PII's. Does anyone have experience dealing with</i> <br><i>large stupid beurocracies? Any pointers? Who should I try and</i> <br><i>talk to first?</i> <br><i>Thank you in advance,</i> <br><i>Lucas Wiman</i> <br><i>________________________________________________________________</i> <br><i>Unsubscribe & list info -- <A HREF="http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm">http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm</A></i><i></i> <p><i>------------------------------</i><i></i> <p><i>Date: Tue, 11 May 1999 21:36:12 -0600</i> <br><i>From: "Aaron Blosser" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]></i> <br><i>Subject: RE: Mersenne: Convincing administrators</i><i></i> <p><i>> All,</i> <br><i>> I'm going to try to get my school to install Prime95 on</i> <br><i>> their >100 PII's. Does anyone have experience dealing with</i> <br><i>> large stupid beurocracies? Any pointers? Who should I try and</i> <br><i>> talk to first?</i><i></i> <p><i>First rule when dealing with large stupid beauracracies: If it's a bellco,</i> <br><i>forget about it.</i> <br><i></i> <br><i></i> <p>-- <br>In gentle decay, <br>d. <p>The Hippy Corporation <br>ttp://www.thc.u-net.com <br><A HREF="news://alt.binaries.music.rebirth">news://alt.binaries.music.rebirth</A> <br> </html> - --------------BC8108B74CCB9723C435AEE2-- ________________________________________________________________ Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 13 May 1999 21:35:40 -0400 From: "Marc Honey" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Mersenne: I am curious Hi everyone... I am mhoney on the prime list and am curious about something. How many of you with 10 or more machines personally would be interested in joning me if I were to form a team? I ask because I am interested in finding about 6 people with 10 or more machines that would like to join me in going for the prize :) If your interested in working together for the benefit of our team, not to mention the monatery (sp?) benefit please e-mail me. ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) I would like to give Temple-U a run for the money "Literaly" (sp?) ;) Sorry my spelling sucks, I am a yupper.. hehe Marc Honey [EMAIL PROTECTED] ________________________________________________________________ Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 14 May 1999 02:24:37 -0400 From: Marc Getty <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Mersenne: Possible mhoney team? Go Marc! This would be quite interesting to see, something on the tune of team love fest I guess. Don't worry about beating TempleU-CAS guys, it's not that hard! While I may have 335 P90 CPU years racked up, I doubt that it will get much higher then that. In fact, for the past two weeks SW has actually had a higher CPU rate! I was ~93 years ahead him, but now am only 85 years ahead. Beating TempleU-CAS should not be too hard...... Next friday is my last day working for the College of Liberal Arts here at Temple. I am transferring to another division within the university and will no longer be running the 275+ machines that currently have Prime95 on them. I don't know who will follow me, but chances are they will not continue my search for Mersenne Primes. On the bright side, the labs will most likely continue to run Prime95 all summer long, with little usage. But by September they will all be pretty much dormant, back to running screen savers again. Also, I already have permission to run Prime95 on the machines at my new job even though they will be far fewer in number. Lastly, GIMPS got some positive media exposure in Philly recently. This past monday our local ABC affiliate, WPVI channel 6, aired a 2+ minute piece on my running Prime95 in our labs. It's basically a sugar coated story just to fill up air time but it's media exposure none the less. I will capture it soon and put it on my web page. Good luck on the team idea Marc, I may just join you from my new job! > Hi everyone... I am mhoney on the prime list and am curious about something. > How many of you with 10 or more machines personally would be interested in > joning me if I were to form a team? I ask because I am interested in > finding about 6 people with 10 or more machines that would like to join me > in going for the prize :) If your interested in working together for the > benefit of our team, not to mention the monatery (sp?) benefit please e-mail > me. ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) I would like to give Temple-U a run for the money > "Literaly" (sp?) ;) Sorry my spelling sucks, I am a yupper.. hehe Marc Getty - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - ICQ: 12916278 http://www.getty.net http://www.vwthing.org Work: 215-204-3291 http://etc.temple.edu/ Home/Cell: 215-962-5603 ________________________________________________________________ Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 14 May 1999 07:28:16 -0400 From: Jud McCranie <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: Mersenne: I am curious At 09:35 PM 5/13/99 -0400, Marc Honey wrote: >finding about 6 people with 10 or more machines that would like to join me >in going for the prize :) If your interested in working together for the >benefit of our team, not to mention the monatery (sp?) benefit please e-mail >me. Why not form one big team out of all of GIMPS and split the money, Honey? +-------------------------------------------+ | Jud McCranie [EMAIL PROTECTED] | | | | I have macular stars in my eyes. | +-------------------------------------------+ ________________________________________________________________ Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 14 May 1999 10:49:17 -0400 From: "Rick Pali" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: RE: Mersenne: I am curious From: Jud McCranie > Why not form one big team out of all of GIMPS and split > the money, Honey? While I can't speak for others, I'm not in GIMPS for the money. While the awards are reasonably new, I've got over ten years accumulated on my two home machines and I *like* to be able to look at that total and see what I've done. Sure I'll take the money if it's thrown my way, but I'm not going to change the way I'm doing this just to have a better chance to get it. That's my MO, anyway. Rick. - ----- [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.alienshore.com/ ________________________________________________________________ Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 14 May 1999 11:51:01 -0400 From: Jud McCranie <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: RE: Mersenne: I am curious At 10:49 AM 5/14/99 -0400, Rick Pali wrote: >From: Jud McCranie > >> Why not form one big team out of all of GIMPS and split >> the money, Honey? > >While I can't speak for others, I'm not in GIMPS for the money. While the >awards are reasonably new, I've got over ten years accumulated on my two >home machines and I *like* to be able to look at that total and see what >I've done. Sure I'll take the money if it's thrown my way, but I'm not going >to change the way I'm doing this just to have a better chance to get it. > >That's my MO, anyway. I was being a little sarcastic. I think that the original poster who was wanting to team up with other people running at least 10 machines is not in the spirit of the adventure. I think it is fine to make a team if everyone on the team has regular physical access to each machine, but I don't like the idea of teaming up with unknown people. That's why I said "why not make everyone a big team", with a little sarcasm that was probably too subtle. +-------------------------------------------+ | Jud McCranie [EMAIL PROTECTED] | | | | I have macular stars in my eyes. | +-------------------------------------------+ ________________________________________________________________ Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 14 May 1999 18:52:02 +0100 (BST) From: Chris Jefferson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: RE: Mersenne: I am curious - ---QUOTE--- I was being a little sarcastic. I think that the original poster who was wanting to team up with other people running at least 10 machines is not in the spirit of the adventure. I think it is fine to make a team if everyone on the team has regular physical access to each machine, but I don't like the idea of teaming up with unknown people. That's why I said "why not make everyone a big team", with a little sarcasm that was probably too subtle. - ---QUOTE--- Yes, I would have to agree here. Trying to create groups to get nice big numbers of CPU years I do agree with, but not for the money. By the way, aren't we forgetting something? I hope if anyone DOES win, they will give a reasonable portion to the people who wrote the very highly optimised software to do it, and the people who made sure they weren't re-checking an exponent that hadn't been checked a hundred times before.... Just out of interest, can I have someone demand I give them a share of the money / stop being in GIMPS if they really wanted to (not that I should think they would...) ________________________________________________________________ Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 14 May 1999 11:21:08 -0700 (PDT) From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Mersenne: Stoopid Bureaucracies! This message is in MIME format. The first part should be readable text, while the remaining parts are likely unreadable without MIME-aware tools. Send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] for more info. - --------------BC8108B74CCB9723C435AEE2 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=us-ascii Content-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> I tried at my company too (A very large Aerospace company based in Washington) and my boss said that it didn't add any value to the company so she couldn't approve it. I gotta find a way to show it does have value... - -Chuck On Thu, 13 May 1999, Dave Harris wrote: > Hello, > generally a lurker but... > I have to agree with the comments below especially re the Bellcos - > except in my case it's another well known UK telco provider. > I gave my project proposal to set up on our machines to my boss weeks > ago and it has vanished into a black hole. > They didn't even have the courtesy to return the folder I bought! Cost > me a quid! > > I just hope that our IT dept doesn't suddenly 'have a good idea' re the > GIMPS project and claim it as their own! > > Hi Ho... > dave > > ================================= > > > > > Date: Tue, 11 May 1999 23:02:24 -0400 (EDT) > From: lrwiman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Subject: Mersenne: Convincing administrators > > All, > I'm going to try to get my school to install Prime95 on > their >100 PII's. Does anyone have experience dealing with > large stupid beurocracies? Any pointers? Who should I try and > talk to first? > Thank you in advance, > Lucas Wiman > ________________________________________________________________ > Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm > > ------------------------------ > > Date: Tue, 11 May 1999 21:36:12 -0600 > From: "Aaron Blosser" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Subject: RE: Mersenne: Convincing administrators > > > All, > > I'm going to try to get my school to install Prime95 on > > their >100 PII's. Does anyone have experience dealing with > > large stupid beurocracies? Any pointers? Who should I try and > > talk to first? > > First rule when dealing with large stupid beauracracies: If it's a > bellco, > forget about it. > > > > -- > In gentle decay, > d. > > The Hippy Corporation > ttp://www.thc.u-net.com > news://alt.binaries.music.rebirth > > -- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ : WWW: http://www.silverlink.net/poke : : E-Mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] : ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ : Ask Mike! Aviation's response to Dear: : Abby. http://www.avstarair.com : ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ - --------------BC8108B74CCB9723C435AEE2 Content-Type: TEXT/HTML; CHARSET=us-ascii Content-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Content-Description: <!doctype html public "-//w3c//dtd html 4.0 transitional//en"> <html> Hello, <br>generally a lurker but... <br>I have to agree with the comments below especially re the Bellcos - except in my case it's another well known UK telco provider. <br>I gave my project proposal to set up on our machines to my boss weeks ago and it has vanished into a black hole. <br>They didn't even have the courtesy to return the folder I bought! Cost me a quid! <p>I just hope that our IT dept doesn't suddenly 'have a good idea' re the GIMPS project and claim it as their own! <p>Hi Ho... <br>dave <p>================================= <br> <br> <br><i></i> <i></i> <p><i>Date: Tue, 11 May 1999 23:02:24 -0400 (EDT)</i> <br><i>From: lrwiman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]></i> <br><i>Subject: Mersenne: Convincing administrators</i><i></i> <p><i>All,</i> <br><i>I'm going to try to get my school to install Prime95 on</i> <br><i>their >100 PII's. Does anyone have experience dealing with</i> <br><i>large stupid beurocracies? Any pointers? Who should I try and</i> <br><i>talk to first?</i> <br><i>Thank you in advance,</i> <br><i>Lucas Wiman</i> <br><i>________________________________________________________________</i> <br><i>Unsubscribe & list info -- <A HREF="http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm">http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm</A></i><i></i> <p><i>------------------------------</i><i></i> <p><i>Date: Tue, 11 May 1999 21:36:12 -0600</i> <br><i>From: "Aaron Blosser" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]></i> <br><i>Subject: RE: Mersenne: Convincing administrators</i><i></i> <p><i>> All,</i> <br><i>> I'm going to try to get my school to install Prime95 on</i> <br><i>> their >100 PII's. Does anyone have experience dealing with</i> <br><i>> large stupid beurocracies? Any pointers? Who should I try and</i> <br><i>> talk to first?</i><i></i> <p><i>First rule when dealing with large stupid beauracracies: If it's a bellco,</i> <br><i>forget about it.</i> <br><i></i> <br><i></i> <p>-- <br>In gentle decay, <br>d. <p>The Hippy Corporation <br>ttp://www.thc.u-net.com <br><A HREF="news://alt.binaries.music.rebirth">news://alt.binaries.music.rebirth</A> <br> </html> - --------------BC8108B74CCB9723C435AEE2-- ________________________________________________________________ Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 14 May 1999 20:12:51 +0100 (BST) From: Chris Jefferson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: Mersenne: Stoopid Bureaucracies! > > > I tried at my company too (A very large Aerospace company based in > Washington) and my boss said that it didn't add any value to the company > so she couldn't approve it. I gotta find a way to show it does have > value... > > -Chuck If you find one... 1) £50,000 2) Lots of free publicity ________________________________________________________________ Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 14 May 1999 12:17:04 -0700 From: Tim Esau <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Mersenne: It is with deep regrets that I must consider this option... It has finally happened: SETI@Home (http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/) has come on-line as a distributed project. While I truly admire the work done at GIMPS by George, Scott and the rest of the team, and I enjoy the 'purity of pursuit' in this scientific endeavor, I am compelled to redirect the majority of my computing team to another target--SETI. I will still leave a few systems working on primes, but there is now the hunt is on... Sadly I will depart from a probable peak of position 59 as team "timesau" with 22.832 cpu/yrs and 811.96 cpu-hrs/day and I will begin to convert to the new task at hand. Thanks again to all who make GIMPS a fantastic resource! ________________________________________________________________ Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 14 May 1999 15:29:05 EDT From: "Foghorn Leghorn" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Mersenne: SETI on ABC News last night The GIMPS project may be in for some serious competition for America's CPU time now, as ABC news did a story last night on the SETI project and the impending release of software for Mac and Wintel systems. Which do you suppose will sound more appealing to the average person--"the search for enormous prime numbers" or "the search for alien life forms"--especially now that SETI has such high-profile exposure? GIMPS has a big disadvantage in that area. Would anyone care to comment on the appeal of SETI? Personally speaking, it doesn't interest me at all. I don't consider its goals to be terribly useful or important, and I don't think that it has a reasonable chance of accomplishing anything. But as number theory enthusiast I find something intrinsically interesting and worthwhile about finding factors and searching for Mersenne primes. I am probably in a minority of the general population in this regard. Let's just hope we don't lose too many existing GIMPS accounts. _______________________________________________________________ Get Free Email and Do More On The Web. Visit http://www.msn.com ________________________________________________________________ Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 14 May 1999 15:43:42 -0400 From: "Rick Pali" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: RE: Mersenne: It is with deep regrets that I must consider this option... From: Tim Esau > I am compelled to redirect the majority of my computing > team to another target--SETI. When this was announced, I looked into it and had to decide whether to jump ship as well. The single largest reason that I'm staying 100% with GIMPS/PrimeNet is the efficiency and thought that went into the project. The biggest single factor against SETI (in my book) is that they decided to go the screensaver route. That gives up *a lot* of computing cycles for no good reason, IMO. But that's just my opinion. Rick. - ----- [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.alienshore.com/ ________________________________________________________________ Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 14 May 1999 13:58:14 -0400 From: George Woltman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Mersenne: Minor primenet server glitch Hi all, The server will return "ERROR 11: Exponent already tested." when you report a result that was previously tested by the buggy version 17 software. So don't panic, your work was not wasted. You really were the first person to test the exponent. Scott, we may need a FAQ on this.... Best regards, George ________________________________________________________________ Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 14 May 1999 13:47:30 -0400 From: George Woltman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: Mersenne: LLL Hi, At 12:15 AM 5/14/99 +0400, Alexey Khlyamkov wrote: >I'am so sorry for this situation. No need to apologize Alexey. This is really a bug in mprime. >My disk quota on the server was overfulled in that time >and mprime running on several machines which connected >to main server via NFS zeroed out some setting files >such as local.ini and worktodo.ini. Prior to contacting the server, mprime calls the routine IniFileWritable, which should have returned FALSE and thereby avoiding contact with the server to get more work. I do not know why this routine failed - maybe it has something to do with NFS. I can't test an NFS setup, but I'll try debugging using a local disk. Best regards, George ________________________________________________________________ Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 14 May 1999 16:36:08 -0400 (EDT) From: JustRay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: Mersenne: SETI on ABC News last night > suppose will sound more appealing to the average person--"the search for > enormous prime numbers" or "the search for alien life forms"--especially now > that SETI has such high-profile exposure? GIMPS has a big disadvantage in This might be true for a few months but I susupect that many will lose interest as (at last report) the SETI software will not alert you if it finds a "match." They won't tell you if your dataset has an interesting target because they don't want to cause a possible panic due to a false alarm. > Would anyone care to comment on the appeal of SETI? Personally speaking, it > doesn't interest me at all. I don't consider its goals to be terribly useful > or important, and I don't think that it has a reasonable chance of > accomplishing anything. But as number theory enthusiast I find something > intrinsically interesting and worthwhile about finding factors and searching > for Mersenne primes. I am probably in a minority of the general population > in this regard. What's the appeal of SETI? Many people (at least in the US) seem to believe in ETs (just look at the popularity of the X-files, MIB, Independense Day, Star Trek, etc.) As for useful goals that seems to be a matter of opinion no matter what you decide to study. As a number theory enthusiast I would think that you would find it unusual if they didn't find something. Not to say that there are ETs but if you consider the number of stars we know about (and say similar to our sun) then I would expect at some point for life to form on that planet and accidently/intentionally broadcast radio signals. Yes I'm playing fast and loose here with a few things but this are just the results from a quick poll of co-workers. - -Ray ________________________________________________________________ Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 14 May 1999 16:34:13 -0400 From: Bryan Fullerton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: Mersenne: It is with deep regrets that I must consider this option... On Fri, May 14, 1999 at 03:43:42PM -0400, Rick Pali <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > When this was announced, I looked into it and had to decide whether to jump > ship as well. Ditto. > The single largest reason that I'm staying 100% with GIMPS/PrimeNet is the > efficiency and thought that went into the project. The biggest single factor > against SETI (in my book) is that they decided to go the screensaver route. > That gives up *a lot* of computing cycles for no good reason, IMO. I've decided to leave all my x86 machines (Win9x, Linux and FreeBSD) crunching away at GIMPS/PrimeNet, and run the SETI@Home client on the Sparc machines I administer. The *NIX SETI clients don't come with all that GUI crap, GIMPS/PrimeNet runs faster on x86 boxes, and I don't have time or energy to muck about with non-PrimeNet GIMPS clients. Bryan - -- Bryan Fullerton http://www.samurai.com/ Core Competency Samurai Consulting "No, we don't do seppuku." Can you feel the Ohmu call? ________________________________________________________________ Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 14 May 1999 21:01:30 +0200 From: "Steinar H. Gunderson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: Mersenne: Getting maximum speed out of a Linux machine Brian (and any list members that might be interested): I've ported ReCache to Linux, and tested it out. Oddly enough, it didn't help. I'm not sure if I've ported the spawnl() call in a wrong way (I'm doing a fork() and then an exec()), but it certainly doesn't help (the iteration time goes up from 0.201 to 0.203 secs). Perhaps the Linux MM is better than Windows after all. What _does_ help, however, is killing everything (by going to a different runlevel) and starting again (by going back). This is a bit surprising; I thought this kind of thing was reserved Windows users. (The iteration time is still at 0.201 secs, but it is in fact needed to get maximum speed back after running ReCache.) Result: I don't have any clue about what's going on. /* Steinar */ ________________________________________________________________ Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 14 May 1999 21:10:17 +0200 From: "Steinar H. Gunderson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Mersenne: Screen saver killers? OK, second message in a row, I just thought it would be nice to separate them. Has anybody got experience in turning off/disabling screensavers under Win95? We run Prime95 at 40 machines (most of them 486'es, though) at school, and screen savers are CPU hoggers (I suppose... at least everybody tells me so). Two solutions I could think of (both ideally incorporated under Win95): 1. Have Prime95 reset the screen saver every 5 minutes or so (possibly when it's outputting) to `Blank Screen'. Would need fiddling with the Registry. 2. Do a call to mouse_event() or keyboard_event() (possibly hitting Ctrl, or any not-so-important key, or moving the mouse one pixel), preventing the screen saver from being run at all. If anybody could submit some code (hopefully ultimately being incorporated in the official Prime95 program, I guess this is a common problem), I would be most grateful. (I could compile the program on my own, but the best thing would get it into an official version, so we wouldn't need to have the security code problem.) BTW, we had another problem that I'm in the process of fixing: Every now and then, these machines will be reset using Ghost, losing both the [pq]* files and the worktodo.ini files (the rest of the files are not that important). I'm now writing a Linux pseudo-proxy that will give out the same exponent every time if it has not been cleared. (The [pq]* problem remains unsolved :-( ) If anybody are interested (I could make this work under Windows, too, if there is a need for it), let me know. (Of course, if there is no uncleared exponent, the request will be forwarded to the standard PrimeNet server. I'm wondering how Prime95 will cope if it wants more than one exponent, and gets the same all the time. Setting `Days of work to get' to 1 should fix this problem.) /* Steinar */ ________________________________________________________________ Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 14 May 1999 17:08:43 -0400 From: Marc Getty <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Mersenne: Convincing University Administrators > I'm going to try to get my school to install Prime95 on > their >100 PII's. Does anyone have experience dealing with > large stupid beurocracies? Any pointers? Who should I try and > talk to first? Thank you in advance, Lucas Wiman If you are already referring to your school as a "large stupid beurocracy" I think your hopes may be quite dim. I don't know of how your beurocracy is setup, so it can be difficult to explain how to go about actually getting permission to do the install. Here at Temple, the majority of the labs are owned and ran by the individual colleges within the university. Of the colleges that have computer labs, about half of the computer staff work directly for the deans office of the particular college that owns the lab. The other half of the colleges have their staff working within a department within the college. These departmentally based colleges typically have a department head who then reports to the dean, while the colleges without separate departments typically all of the staff report directly to the dean without a department head or the like. So, in my situation within the College of Liberal Arts we have 4 full time staff who all report directly to an assistant dean. All I needed was verbal permission from that assistant dean and I was clear to start. This is the absolute best case scenario. What you have to do depends on how your beurocracy is setup. I would imagine that a university controlled beurocracy would be the most difficult organizational setup to get approval to run GIMPS in my opinion. At least in a large place like Temple it would be (35th largest university in the US, 28K students, 9 campuses, 1600 full time faculty). But when you work isolated from the rest of the university like here is was pretty easy. In my situation I had no problem implementing Prime95 on >275 machines providing I did it on my own time. I created a web page that details my efforts as to dispel any rumors before they start. I found that it helps to be very open about GIMPS. Universities can become he said/she said worlds very easily. Unlike the business world where there is a bottom line, we play by a completely different set of rules. A complaint that Prime95 slows down "the whole system" could be the death of our GIMPS participation. Complaints at a University can be like rumors, they don't need to be based in fact to be taken as gospel. You must be prepared to respond anything with immediate action if you want to succeed in GIMPS participation. Before I started GIMPS participation I sought some sort of faculty sponsorship thinking that would keep me out of any possible trouble. I was unable to find any of our Math faculty interested so I started out on my own. If you can find a faculty member that is interested in GIMPS and will help you write a proposal or at least a memo your chances are much better for being approved. Faculty sponsorship is definitely the best way to go about it in 20/20 hindsight. Good luck in getting permission in your college or university, hope this helps! - -Marc Marc Getty - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - ICQ: 12916278 http://www.getty.net - http://www.vwthing.org Work: 215-204-3291 http://etc.temple.edu/ Cellular/Home: 215-962-5603 ________________________________________________________________ Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm ------------------------------ End of Mersenne Digest V1 #556 ******************************
