On 13 May 2001, at 19:41, Nathan Russell wrote:
> >Another nice thing would be if people who have submitted several results
> >that don't match other people's results they could be notified that they
> >may have a hardware problem.
>
> I can't help wondering whether some users would find that to be overly
> invasive or startling; however, if I had such a problem - especially
> one that could cause slow thermal damage - I would want to know about
> it.
There is already a mechanism where people can opt in or out of being
notified if an assignment is due to expire. Is it reasonable to ask
that this may also be used to notify the user if/when it is
discovered that they have submitted a result which has turned out to
be incorrect?
There are two practical difficulties with this approach:
(1) the server doesn't know: George discovers discrepancies when he
processes PrimeNet transactions into his master database;
(2) by the time the discrepancy is found, some considerable time may
have elapsed (when are exponents in the 12M range going to get
routine double-checks?) and so the reliability or otherwise of the
hardware involved in the original test may well be a moot point.
>
> I deal with altogether too many people on other mailing lists and
> newsgroups who believe that it is normal for their machine to take two
> attempts to make it through a 25-minute kernel upgrade.
Um, upgrading a kernel is essentially nothing worse than a reboot!
But yes, there are some people out there with _very_ dodgy hardware.
> Granted, a
> 5-week GIMPS run is a more stringent criterion, but AFAIK most
> machines /should/ be able to survive without more than 1-2 errors a
> year (I've had two since I started last January).
I agree entirely, though there are causes of errors which are not
related to hardware problems per se. Seriously noisy utility power
supply and memory corruption due to badly behaved applications
running on insecure operating systems probably claim a fair
proportion of the victims.
Regards
Brian Beesley
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