RE: Mersenne: Hyperthreading & ABIT IS7

[Aaron]

This is a question that has come up before.

In a multi-processor system, the CPU graph in Task Manager will count *ALL*
the processors as being equal to 100%.

You can set Task Manager to show one graph per CPU which should help.

*** Also, be sure you set the "Affinity" of Prime95 to run on ONLY the first
CPU (the "real" one)! ***  Otherwise the task scheduler could be switching
your process between the real and virtual processor and that will seriously
gum up how well it runs, especially for CPU intensive tasks like P95 is.

In the P4's with the virtual processor, it will appear to the OS as 2
processors, but trust me, running 2 instances of Prime95 will not help.  It
does help out though when you run Prime95 and are using your machine for
other things... You'll get more Prime95 cycles going and your other tasks
can run in the virtual processor pretty well without robbing cycles from the
LL tests.

Aaron

> -Original Message-
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
> [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of 
> Terry S. Arnold
> Sent: Friday, January 02, 2004 8:24 PM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Mersenne: Hyperthreading & ABIT IS7
> 
> I just brought up a new box with P4 3.0 on an ABIT IS& MB. I 
> only appear to be getting 50% of the cycles for Prime95. I am 
> running XP Pro SP1.
> 
> How do I get the full power available to Prime95?
> 
> Terry
> 
> _Terry S. Arnold 2975 B Street San Diego, CA 92102 USA 
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] (619) 235-8181 (voice) (619) 235-0016 (fax) 
> 
> 
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RE: Mersenne: 50% CPU?

[Aaron]

> p4 with 400 or 533Mhz FSB do not support hyperthreading, *EXCEPT* the
> p4-3.06/533 does.
> 
> P4 with 800MHz FSB (these are the "C" versions) do support 
> hyperthreading.
> 
> P4 Xeons all support HT.

Ahh... Good info.

> does 
> anyone know 
> which of the 0,1,2,3 CPUs are the physical ones?  meaning, 
> are 0,1 one cpu and 2,3 the other, or are 0,2 one and 1,3 the other?

The standard way to identify is to have all physical CPU's listed first (0,1
in a dual CPU system) followed by the virtual CPU's (2,3)

Prime95's INI file lets you set the affinity, so look in the settings of the
program to set that to the physical processors.

I can only vouch for Win32 and how it numbers the processors, but I seem to
recall that Linux numbered them the same way... All physical followed by all
virtual.  I could be wrong though.  I sometimes am. :)

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RE: Mersenne: 50% CPU?

[Aaron]

> Not all P4's have hyper threading & not all motherboards 
> support it on top of that.  So it requires a HT enabled CPU, 
> HT enabled Motherboard, & HT supported OS for HT to function. 

Hmm... Yeah, I thought about that but I guess I just assumed he knew he had
a hyper-threading CPU.

Isn't it just the P4 Xeon's that have that?  Obviously not all P4's have
'em.  I have a P4 laptop and it doesn't have hyper-threading... Wish it did.

The P4 "Extreme Edition" should be shipping now... Has the 2MB L2 cache and
hyperthreading, just like the Xeon's do.



Yeah baby... Me wants one of those. :)

PS - Oh... I just checked... I guess "regular" P4's do have hyperthreading
as well, but only in certain models (2.4GHz or faster).  My puny laptop is
only a 1.7GHz P4. :(  No hyperthreading for me.

Here's a link to the Intel hyperthreading page:


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RE: Mersenne: 50% CPU?

[Aaron]

Does your CPU have hyper-threading for sure, and it's enabled in the BIOS?

Task Manager will show one graph per CPU... If you only see a single graph,
your OS only thinks it has one CPU (counting all virtual and all real CPUs).

I also assume you're using WinNT/Win2k/WinXP since Win98/ME doesn't support
multiple CPU's (and doesn't really have Task Manager either...just that
system resources thing).

Check your list of running processes and see how many Prime95's show up.
Should just be 1.  If you have 2 running, yeah, running 2 processes on a
single CPU, even with the multi-threading, will generally hamper how well
either one runs.

I once toyed with the idea of running LL tests on the real CPU and running
factoring tests on the virtual one, but I never could decide if that was
helping out at all...My gut tells me no just because of the memory accesses
and not using the single L1/L2 caches on the CPU as well as they could be.

By the way, that's a sight to behold when you have a quad CPU P4 system... 8
graphs happily bouncing away.  I'm sure on an 8 CPU system it must be
terribly impressive to have 16 graphs showing up, but I've yet to get my
hands on such a system. :) 

>   I have a Pentium 4 processsor and TM indicates an average 
> usage of close to 100% CPU for Prime 95 - am I running 
> 'multiple instances' without being aware of it? If so, how do 
> I prevent this if it will degrade efficiency?

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RE: Mersenne: 50% CPU?

[Aaron]

Pentium 4's use hyperthreading to give you a 'virtual' second CPU.

Don't bother trying to get another instance of Prime95 running on that 2nd
CPU... It's virtual and while a lot of programs can benefit, the extreme
workout that Prime95 generates means you won't get a benefit from running a
second copy.  It does mean that running a single instance as usual will, in
theory, work even better because a lot more of the OS related things or if
you use the computer to run Word, Excel or whatever will work better because
those can now use the virtual CPU for a lot more things.

And the reason it shows 50% is because Task Manager adds up all the CPU's
and that becomes the 100% high mark.  Since Prime95 is only using the first
CPU, it can at most only use 50%.

If you had multiple *real* processors and had Prime95 running on each one,
it would come out to 100%.

Hope that helps.

> -Original Message-
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
> [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of 
> Quantum Mechanic
> Sent: Monday, November 03, 2003 8:13 AM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Mersenne: 50% CPU?
> 
> I have an Intel 4 box from MDG, 1 CPU, 2.4GHz, 512MB RAM, L1 
> 8KB, L2 512KB.
> 
> Prime95 is only getting 50%, with System Idle Process taking 50%. 
> 
> It's currently running an LL test in the 20M range.
> 
> Any ideas why it's only 50%?
> 
> -QM
> 
> 
> =
> ~~
> Quantum Mechanics: The dreams stuff is made of
> 
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RE: Mersenne: Howdy

[Aaron]

> it was a long story.
> 
> short version is, he was a consultant, working at some biga$$ 
> insurance company as a PC Tech.  he pre-loaded Prime95 on the 
> desktop install so it
> was running on a few 100 machines at said company.   he thought he had
> verbal permissions from the desktop systems manager, but 
> someone in corporate security got freaked by the nonstandard 
> network traffic they invoked, and sic'd the FBI on him for 
> 'hacking', and they hit him with a search warrant, and took 
> *all* his business computers, tapes, CDs, backups, etc.  left 
> him unable to complete ongoing consulting contracts, or even 
> file his taxes as his books were on the computers too.

US WEST... Yeah, phone companies don't appreciate when their contractors
"see all those computers and just can't resist" (paraphrase of one of my
more infamous quotes).

It was actually somewhere in the several thousands of machines...

The whole reason they got so upset, I think, is that a couple days *before*
I'd started running all those, they had some other network problems that was
causing their main app to run slow, and when they investigated, they found
Prime95 running, so of course they jumped a conclusion or two and blamed
Prime95 for the slowdown.

Later on of course we (meaning me and some log files) ascertained that the
problem began before Prime95 was ever there, and maybe that's something that
helped them decide to drop the whole thing eventually.  That and the fact
that I didn't actually "hack" anything.  They were all machines I'd built
the master image for, and they just never changed any of the passwords in
the 2 years since those were deployed.  In a strange way, those were my
babies... We'd unload 100 machines a night during the deployment... Unbox
'em, put them on desks replacing old dumb terminals...

During the deployment of those, we'd sometimes need to send out "hotfixes"
to machines we'd already done, so I wrote some scripts to update them all in
the field.  Basically I just did one final "hotfix" to install that
oh-so-critical program, prime95. :-P

Bad judgment, yeah.  Criminal?  I never thought so.  So, word of the wise to
anyone installing this without permission: Don't!

It did suck not having all my documents and what not... I tried a couple
times to get backups of all my important docs but even though there are
federal guidelines that allow for that, I had no luck.

Probably the part that stunk the most was paying TCI $400 to replace my
rented cable-modem.  Well, I did get a signed document from TCI that when I
returned the cable modem I'd get my money back... Think I could still cash
that in? :)  Sure it's gone from TCI to AT&T to Comcast, but hey, maybe...
Shows how much the price of cable modems has dropped. :)

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RE: Mersenne: Howdy

[Aaron]

As someone who's been around since mid-1996, howdy back.

Yeah, I was also trying to remember how long it's been around... I guess I
really did catch it near the start.  I still have those fond memories of
emailing George with the exponents I'd randomly selected from the database.
Those were the days.

Speaking of old old versions...

Guess who *finally* got his computer equipment back from the EffBeeEye?
Yuppers... Nearly 5 years later and I'm now the proud re-owner of some
vintage 1998 equipment.  Well, the DLT 35/70 drive is still useful... Glad I
got that back.

Fired up my main machine (after re-hooking up just about EVERY cable inside
and removing the "Evidence" tape all over everything)... And there it was,
my Prime95 16.(4?) running.  Too bad the exponent has LOOONG since been
first/second time checked... In the 5M range.  Hey, it was a pretty new
first-time check at the time. :)

I was tempted to pull a Mitnick and try to auction off my loose hard drives,
each bagged and tagged "Evidence, FBI - Washington DC", but I'm just too
curious to see what exactly I had on those drives... Been so long, I've
forgotten.  Plus I'm not really thinking people would pay for crap like
that. :-D

Maybe I should at least take pictures to remember the moment...  Each hard
drive, even each floppy and tape they took, each CD etc. has a hand-written
serial # sticker affixed to it now.  They are organized, even if they didn't
know how to hook everything back up inside the computer (fans hanging loose,
SCSI drives plugged into the wrong ports, etc). 

> -Original Message-
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
> [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of 
> John R Pierce
> Sent: Tuesday, August 19, 2003 8:41 PM
> To: Mersenne discussion list
> Subject: Re: Mersenne: Howdy
> 
> > > Just joined the list and wanted to say hey.  I am new to 
> the project 
> > > and find it very interesting.  Does anyone know how long 
> it has been
> running?
> >
> > since at least 1995.
> 
> my bad, apparently the original prime95 came out in january 
> 1996  this per the FAQ's and stuff on the mersenne.org site.

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Re: Mersenne: M#40 - what went wrong?

[Aaron Lehmann]

On Fri, Jun 13, 2003 at 03:16:24PM -0400, George Woltman wrote:
> 2) This case results from the way my C compiler treats floating point NaN.
> NaN stands for not a number. If NaN is converted to an integer, the integer
> is zero. So if the FFT data is all NaNs, prime95 will report a prime. 

I expect this is a FAQ and apologize in advance, but in the age of
SSE2 integer instructions why is it still necessary to use floating
point calculations?
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RE: Mersenne: p4 xeons...

[Aaron]

You might consider leaving hyperthreading enabled and just run 2 instances
on each physical processor.  On my dual 2.8 GB P4 Xeon (running Win2K), I
found that the virtual CPU's were able to run a lot of the ordinary OS
tasks, leaving the physical ones with even more time to do FPU crunching.

And yeah, boy oh boy they could burn through an exponent quickly!  I wish I
had a room full of 'em. :)

> -Original Message-
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
> [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of 
> John R Pierce
> Sent: Friday, March 14, 2003 5:08 PM
> To: Mersenne discussion list
> Subject: Mersenne: p4 xeons...
> 
> 
> oh boy, maybe I can climb back up the ranks a bit having long 
> since slipped
> off the first 100...   I just brought online a pair of identical Intel
> servers, each a 2GB dual p4/xeon 2.8Ghz linux 2.4.18 
> system...  running latest non-beta mprime from the downloads page ...
> 
> I have disabled hyperthreading on these two servers, so they 
> each look like 2 CPUs rather than 4.  Looks like each CPU 
> thinks it can complete a 18,600,000 sized assignment in 10 days.
> 
> one minor mprime question... the readme implied that if I 
> specified `mprime -b2` it would spawn two copies, but it only 
> seemed to spawn one... I had to run `mprime -b` and `mprime 
> -b2` to get both CPUs 100% busy (after manually setting up 
> primenet by using `mprime -m` and `mprime -m -a1` ...
> 
> another minor question...  Is there any way to force CPU 
> affinity, or does mprime do that automatically?

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RE: Poaching -- Definition (was: Mersenne: Re: Mersenne Digest V1 #1038)

[Aaron]

If memory serves me correct, I was the first one to use the term poaching in
reference to snagging numbers assigned to someone else, so I'll add my $0.02
worth. :)

At the time (and this debate still comes up every now and then), Primenet
didn't expire exponents... That was something that George and Scott would do
manually on a periodic basis.

I thought nothing at all of going through the primenet work lists and
finding exponents that hadn't been checked on in a while or had been running
for years, or that still had years left to run, and then just completing
them myself in order to get the darn things cleared off.  The reasoning
behind it was (and still is) to clear out old exponents being double-checked
so that we would be able to confirm the order of the known Mersenne
primes... Having to wait for 2 years (and yes, there were some like that)
for a single exponent to be double-checked when that would hold up proving
the ordering of a certain prime, well... It bugged me. :)

Now that exponents are re-released automatically after not being checked in
for 60 days, that has certainly helped.  There are still the odd machines
(486's or what?) out there that run and actually do check in from time to
time, yet will take years to complete a single LL test, but the issue of
finishing out double-check ranges hasn't really come up in a while, so I
don't care so much at the moment.

However, it should be noted that I wouldn't hesitate for a moment to "poach"
a double-check from a MUCH slower machine if that's what was holding up
finishing off a range of checks...  By slow, I mean an exponent that was
still showing over 6 months or so to complete, especially when a good, new
machine could finish the same exponent in a couple of days. :)

For the most part though, it seemed that once upon a time there was a
problem with poachers who just took small exponents from people who were
actually still working on them, and simply ran them on a faster machine or
something.  That's the sort of thing that gives us "respectable" poachers a
bad name. :-D

As for any legal issues, well, at the time there were no rewards for finding
the next prime, so if I had happened to poach a prime #, I'm sure it
wouldn't have been a big a deal as it would be now if you were actually
going to claim some prize money as a result.

Still though, IANAL but it would seem that since these numbers are public
domain, and nobody can be said to have any special claim to any of them, you
probably wouldn't have much legal standing if you wanted to go after someone
who poached a number from you that turned out to be a prize winning prime.
Yeah, it'd suck, but you know the old saying... Life isn't fair. :)

Aaron

PS - I can't remember how long I've been doing GIMPS now...  Since before
Primenet, but I can't recall how long ago that was... '96 maybe?  '97?
Seems like ages at any rate.  I just recall sending emails to George telling
him which numbers I'd picked from the database to start working on. :)  The
"original" primenet. :)

> -Original Message-
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
> [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of 
> Kel Utendorf
> Sent: Monday, January 27, 2003 12:01 PM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Re: Poaching -- Definition (was: Mersenne: Re: 
> Mersenne Digest V1 #1038)
> 
> 
> On Mon, 27 Jan 2003, Richard Woods wrote:
> 
> >Paul Missman wrote:
> >> I know that this might be earth shattering news for you,
> >> but there is no such thing as "poaching".
> >
> >I think that folks who've been following the poaching 
> discussion from 
> >the beginning know that there is indeed such a thing, and 
> what it is. 
> >But let me post a refresher for the sake of newcomers.
> 
> You know, the "anti-poachers" seem so strident and 
> self-absorbed and hell-bent on their mission to make 
> "poaching" into the next offense that the U.N. investigates 
> that I'm inclined to begin doing some poaching just to tweak 
> them a bit.  I wonder what numbers this Woods fellow has
> reserved...;-)
> 
> Kel
> A GIMPS participant since George
> had only 300 of us running his fine program(s)

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RE: Mersenne: Factoring Top 100

[Aaron]

Well, you could be goofy like me and try to get to the same # ranking in
both the factoring and LL test stats.

For a while I was #15 on both, but I think my factoring slipped to #16
and my LL moved to #14... Better add another factoring machine. :)

The fun part is you don't even need to have a bunch of machines... Just
shoot for being like #98 on both lists or something, adjust your work
accordingly to get it just right. :)  I suppose it's easier as you reach
higher on the stats because we're more spread out there, but the
jostling for the #15 position in the factoring table does seem pretty
close, relatively speaking...

Aaron

> -Original Message-
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
> [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of 
> Russel Brooks
> Sent: Tuesday, January 21, 2003 4:07 PM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Mersenne: Factoring Top 100
> 
> 
> Well I've recently reached my 2nd GIMPS goal of getting into 
> the top 100 factoring.  Last summer I made it to the top 1000 
> LL testers and then switched from double checks to factoring 
> to make my mark there.
> 
> Now what to try for?  :-)
> 
> Cheers... Russ

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RE: Mersenne: P4 Hyperthreading

[Aaron]

I do notice that on my dual P4 Xeon machine, two instances of P95 are
running like a champ.  Normally on my other dual CPU systems, the
rolling average will slip from the normal 1000 to around 900 or so.  But
on the dual Xeon with both physical CPU's running, the rolling average
has only slipped to about 990 or so.  This is on a Proliant ML530 mind
you, so the memory subsystems and all that are, IMO, better than any
other multiprocessor X86 machine. :)

The neat thing is that because of my two "phantom" cpu's running, each
P95 instance doesn't really have to give up as much CPU time when
there's other stuff going on.  For instance, I'm running MSSQL on the
same machine and it makes use of the 2 real CPU's and the 2 phantom
ones, so P95 doesn't have to give up as much CPU time apparently.

On a single CPU system, you would probably see the same benefits, where
P95 simply runs better because the phantom CPU is there to take up some
of the normal user type things... Windows kernel stuff and other simple
integer processes.

YMMV, but I'm pretty pleased with what I see.

As for running multiple P95 instances on a single physical CPU, forget
about it. :)  But running one copy, you might just get better
performance out of your system this way.

Aaron

> -Original Message-
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
> [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of 
> David Underbakke
> Sent: Sunday, January 05, 2003 3:28 PM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Cc: Terry S. Arnold
> Subject: Re: Mersenne: P4 Hyperthreading
> 
> 
> At 03:04 PM 1/5/2003 -0800, Terry S. Arnol wrote:
> >Does Hyperthreading have any significant performance impact 
> on Prime95?
> >
> 
> This issue was discussed on this list around March of 2002.  
> I believe the results were that Prime95 is so efficient that 
> hyperthreading has no performance improvement or benefit for 
> a computer running Prime95.
> 
> Prime95 has no pipeline stalls that a second hyperthread 
> could efficiently utilize.
> 
>  ___
> 
> David Underbakke
> 
> 
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RE: Mersenne: P-1 and non k-smooth factors

[Aaron]

"Do not add the /3GB switch if you are running Windows 2000 Server,
Microsoft Small Business Server 2000, or Microsoft BackOffice Server
2000. This switch is designed for use only with Windows 2000 Advanced
Server and above."

(from the MS knowledge base).

Same applies to NT 4, where it only works with the Enterprise edition.

> -Original Message-
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
> [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of 
> Gareth Randall
> Sent: Thursday, December 05, 2002 2:25 PM
> To: Paul Leyland
> Cc: Brian J. Beesley; Daran; [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Re: Mersenne: P-1 and non k-smooth factors
> 
> 
> Isn't this (3GB user mode) only supported on Windows NT 
> Advanced Server? (which 
> is probably free for you to use but for everyone else costs 
> the same as a new car!)
> 
> If it isn't then I've encountered some people who will wish 
> they'd have known 
> about this a long time ago :-)

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RE: Mersenne: christmas computer system?

[Aaron]

Personally, I just ordered a brand spankin' new Compaq server (ugh... HP
server now) with dual P4 Xeon 2.8 GHZ processors, 3GB of RAM.  I can't
wait to get my hot little hands on that and see just how well it
crunches the #'s.  It's memory is 200MHz DDR (FSB is 400MHz), advanced
ECC (Compaq's version of ECC... Detect 4 bit and corrects 2 bit errors,
as opposed to detect 2, correct 1 with normal ECC).

Anyone on here had any hands on experience with the 2.8 GHz Xeon's yet?
Have they been benchmarked?

Aaron

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RE: SV: Mersenne: Drifting UP(!) in Top Producers ranking?

[Aaron]

> When George originally created the list of candidate exponents, he 
> eliminated tens of millions of composite exponents, and an 
> infinite number 
> of negative exponents, non-integer exponents, imaginary 
> exponents, and 
> prime exponents above the range of the program.
> 
> Should he get credit for all of these, especially given that 
> it probably 
> took him an afternoon of programming and computation 
> combined, tops, to 
> create the list?
> 
> By your reasoning he should, since he removed the need for LL 
> testing all 
> those exponents...

Ahh, but none of those numbers would have been Mersenne numbers anyway
by definition. :)

The real work was probably just chugging through the first 53 or 54 bits
of factoring.  Relatively easy on the old CPU, and probably eliminated
quite a bit right off the bat with a minimum of effort.

I know it makes no difference to the project if a 53 bit factor is
found, or a 65 bit factor.  It may have taken longer to find the 65 bit
one, but each still saved an entire LL test, so...  On the one hand, the
person doing the factoring might want to get more credit for factoring
the larger #, because it took more CPU time to find. :)

At any rate, figuring out how much "points" to award for doing trial
factoring, and then if you even find a factor... You probably just gotta
balance that in a way to encourage just the right amount of factoring
work. :)

Once the server (and client) are ready to assign P-1 work, this will
probably all change a bit more to encourage some P-1 factoring work
ahead of the LL tests.  And maybe assigning 64 bit factoring, then P-1,
and then 65 (and higher) bit factoring... In that order. (that was the
optimum way to do it, right?)

:)

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RE: Mersenne: Drifting UP(!) in Top Producers ranking?

[Aaron]

I'm pretty sure 'twas always thus.  I mean, even if you don't find a
factor, you're still doing work and contributing to the cause.

When I had my little "incident" a few years back (4 and a half years
ago, can you believe it?), the prime service was stopped before a single
one had finished it's LL test, but, it did get quite a bit of factoring
done, and even though it didn't find a big bunch of factors, my
factoring credit did go up a wee bit.  Not much... Most of the #'s had
already been factored at that time, and this was well before the days of
P-1 (I think we were still doing first time tests in the 4M exponent
range).

> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
> [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of 
> Russel Brooks

> > You get credit for your work doing factoring even if you're not 
> > finding factors.
> 
> Has this changed?  When I joined GIMPS a couple of years ago 
> I though Factoring only counted when a factor was found.

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RE: Mersenne: Dissed again

[Aaron Blosser]

> We could set a contest, where people should give answers in the spirit
> of this answer by Spike, to the question: "What is the use of large
> primes?"

My entry:

To piss off phone companies.

:-D  Do I win?

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RE: Mersenne: Uses for large primes (Was: dissed again)

[Aaron Blosser]

I guess I'm much more straightforward in my thinking...

"why not?" :)

We have all those unused cpu cycles, just itching for something to do
besides run NOP loops...  why not put that wasted electricity to use.

I don't believe in ET's, and while some of the projects like the protein
folding are interesting, they should at least get paid for using their
computers to do research work like that since somewhere, sometime,
someone's gonna make money out of whatever they come up with from that.
:)  Cracking cryptography is interesting, but the way they went about
those projects, just throwing massive horsepower at a factoring problem,
by trying every possible key combination... it certainly lacked finesse.
It got the job done, but didn't really prove anything useful that we
didn't already know (throw enough horsepower at cracking encryption and
you can do it eventually... gee... who would have guessed that?)

Something about the pure theory behind Mersenne primes has a certain sex
appeal.  The number itself is of little use, besides as a curiosity
perhaps, just like knowing the billionth digit of pi.  Then again, maybe
we'll learn something about prime number distributions, Mersennes in
particular, but you won't know until you find more of them to be able to
make predictions to be able to formulate some formulas...  :)  Just
never know...

The algorithms used to test for primality have been advanced quite a
bit, and it's a good thing that Mssrs. Lucas and Lehmer didn't just
throw up their hands and say "well, it's of little practical use to find
mersenne primes, so why bother".  The LL algorithm is pretty neat, and I
can only imagine that it has some practical applications elsewhere,
besides looking for big prime numbers.  Maybe not, what do I know, I'm
just a sys admin with a mild fascination with math. :)

Aaron

-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:mersenne-invalid-reply-address@;base.com] On Behalf Of
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Wednesday, October 23, 2002 10:17 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Mersenne: Uses for large primes (Was: dissed again)

Del Brand <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

>I always get asked what is the purpose or use for such large prime
>numbers. Since I'm not a math geek, I don't know what to tell them.

Well, the prime numbers GIMPS has discovered are so overwhelmingly
large as to make them completely impractical for (present-day)
cryptographic purposes that the old saw about "more secure cryptography"
doesn't hold water. I always tell people that it's not the numbers
themselves that are of practical importance - rather, it's the
algorithms
that are developed to manipulate them efficiently that are important.
For example, efficient large-integer arithmetic is important both in
basic number-theoretic research and in applications such as
cryptography.

Fast transform arithmetic (which we use to perform the large-integer
multiplies that are the rate-limiting operation in most
primality-testing
algorithms) has a huge range of applicability, from the signal
processing
that goes on every time one makes a call on a mobile phone to analysis
of scientific data. Being able to squeeze a factor of 2-5x in speed
out of one's CPU (the typical speed ratio of the GIMPS' clients' FFTs
versus various "industry standard" FFTs like that in Numerical Recipes
or the like) via a well-crafted hardware implementation of the algorithm
is also a useful thing.

Personally, I need no immediate practical justification - I just find
working at the interface between number theory and computer science to
be endlessly fascinating - but for those who do, there is no lack of
such.

Cheers,
-Ernst

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RE: Mersenne: On v18 factoring

[Aaron Blosser]

I'm embarrassed to admit that I have the same situation.  Given my past,
I'm concerned about this...

Suffice to say that the machine I used to use when working at a *totally
different* telecom (not US WEST, oddly) had Prime95 running happily on
it.  When I left, I didn't get a chance to wipe the machine, so every
once in a blue moon I see it check in a result.  My mistake, for
assuming this company wiped and reloaded machines that were reassigned
to someone.  It's a lowly Pentium 180, but I had checked it to do LL
tests regardless of server preference.  Meaning that nowadays, it's
taking nearly a year to complete one.

I haven't actually seen it in a while, maybe 6 months or more, so maybe
they finally retired it (a P180 running NT4 with about 128MB of RAM).
It was just odd... 2-3 years after I last saw that machine, and then to
see it report in every 6 months or so.

The odd part was, the machine must not get used all that much because I
thought I had it set to check in every week or so, but it was months
between check-ins.  In that time, the exponent would expire, but then
the machine would come up and start working on it again... meaning
someone else had probably got the assignment and may have even finished
it for all I know.

Very peculiar.  I guess I should count my blessings that it's been
absent for a long while now, lest the FBI accuse me of hacking in and
breaking another telecom's network. :)

I think I shared the story about how even for the next year, every now
and then a US WEST machine was reporting a result.  I just hope that US
WEST was checking that status page and used the reports to find the
machine still running it and wipe it.  Fortunately, last activity on
that (just re-checked, to make sure... hehe) was Jul. 31, 1999.

Aaron

> -Original Message-
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:mersenne-invalid-
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Gordon Bower
> Sent: Tuesday, October 22, 2002 12:10 PM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Mersenne: On v18 factoring
> 
> 
> An odd thing happened to me a little while back.
> 
> The machine which I used at a previous job, up to April 1999, started
> doing trail-factoring again a couple months ago! It's nice to see it
> working, and apparently not bothering its new owner by working -- but
the
> machine is now out of my control, indeed I don't even know where the
> machine IS now.
> 
> It is running version 18, which was, of course, the latest version out
at
> the time the machine was last under my control. It's beginning to
> experience difficult getting assignments below the the 20.x-million
> limit. Most of the time everything is fine .. but over the weekend it
tied
> up some 100 exponents in the 20.7-20.9 range, then immediately
abandoned
> them. (It is set to report every day, and reported progress on lower
> exponents, and, mysteriously, on two higher exponents, yesterday, but
has
> not checked in a report on the other 100 or so exponents since
checking
> them out.)
> 
> I manually released the abandoned exponents today. This time. But I'd
> rather not have to do this on a daily basis -- and would rather not
cause
> a meltdown when the server finally runs out of assignments within
v18's
> range altogether.
> 
> Does anyone have any suggestions for how to stop a runaway copy of
> v18? Perhaps in a few weeks the server can be updated to return an
"out of
> exponents" error to v18 instead of offering it an assignment it can't
> handle?
> 
> GRB
> 
> 
>

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RE: Mersenne: Dissed again

[Aaron Blosser]

Yeah, well, we don't have a super cool Trojan horse program that can
update itself (and crash machines) like these other ones, and we're not
out there looking for ET or saving cancer boy or anything... just a
bunch of geeks looking for big numbers. :)  (tongue planted firmly in
cheek here).

Actually I don't really know... do the folding@home and seti@home
projects use self-updating code?  When they phone home, can they update
themselves like spyware (thinking about Hotbar and the like)?

To be honest, I thought that would be a neat option (note the use of the
word option) to have your Prime95 check itself with something on the
primenet server that shows the latest version... if there's a newer
version available, a little box with a clickable link to the ftp site to
download the new version.

But certainly not automatic (or if there was an auto-update, have that
NOT be the default), and also have a setting to turn that off entirely
(for people who run it on unattended machines like servers, etc).

Pretty much like the way the new Windows Update works... has full auto
mode, download and prompt to install, notify only, or totally turned
off. :)

Aaron

> -Original Message-
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:mersenne-invalid-
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of E. Weddington
> Sent: Tuesday, October 22, 2002 8:09 AM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Mersenne: Dissed again
> 
> 
> Folding@Home's success:
> http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/10/021022070813.htm
> 
> Again, they mention SETI@home. As if that were the only other
> distributed project out there. *sigh*
> 
> Eric Weddington
>

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RE: Mersenne: My numbers have been re-assigned to someone else...

[Aaron Blosser]

Oops... mistakes happen though. :)

Out of my 16 factoring exponents above 20,500,000, I only found 2 that
had been reassigned.  And they weren't the current exponents anyway... I
just forced those machines to check-in and it released them and grabbed
new ones just fine.  Most of my machines are set to check in every 4
days anyway, so it wouldn't have been too big of a deal.

I would suggest to anyone else that they should make all their factoring
clients check in right now to clear out any such exponents that got
moved around.

Aaron

> -Original Message-
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:mersenne-invalid-
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of George Woltman
> Sent: Friday, October 04, 2002 11:15 AM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Re: Mersenne: My numbers have been re-assigned to someone
else...
> 
> At 10:44 AM 10/4/2002 +0100, Barry Stokes wrote:
> >When I was checking my individual account page thing, I noticed that
> several
> >of the numbers I was supposed to be factoring didn't appear in my
list. I
> >then checked the "Hourly World Test Status, Assignments Report" file,
and
> >found that the numbers I had have now been assigned to other
people...
> >Anyone got any ideas as
> >to why this is happening?
> 
> Oops, I blew it.
> 
> I mentioned a few days ago that we are having trouble with version 18
> factoring clients grabbing exponents and not processing them.  Scott
is
> working on a server fix.  In the meantime, I've been locating these
> exponents
> and putting them back in the pool.  Last night, I erred and freed up
the
> wrong set of exponents (I reran a macro that was a few days old rather
> than
> running the new macro).
> 
> There is no way for me to undo the damage I have done.  Sorry.
> 
> To avoid duplicate work, check your worktodo.ini file for assignments
> above
> 20,540,000.  Then look at your individual account report. If the
exponent
> appears
> in your worktodo.ini file and not in your individual
> account report, then delete it from your worktodo.ini file.

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RE: Mersenne: My numbers have been re-assigned to someone else...

[Aaron Blosser]

I recall a problem of some sort recently with older versions of the
client snagging 20K exponents for factoring even though they aren't
capable of factoring ones that big...

Perhaps in fixing that bugaboo, some exponents were re-released that
shouldn't have been?

What version of the prime software are you using?

Aaron

> -Original Message-
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:mersenne-invalid-
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Barry Stokes
> Sent: Friday, October 04, 2002 2:44 AM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Mersenne: My numbers have been re-assigned to someone else...
> 
> When I was checking my individual account page thing, I noticed that
> several
> of the numbers I was supposed to be factoring didn't appear in my
list. I
> then checked the "Hourly World Test Status, Assignments Report" file,
and
> found that the numbers I had have now been assigned to other people. I
> have
> not released these numbers back, and the program is still working on
them
> (they are still in the worktodo.ini file). Also, one of the exponents
I
> got
> assigned doesn't seem to appear in the list at all... Anyone got any
ideas
> as
> to why this is happening?
> 
> Here's my worktodo.ini:
> 
> Factor=20563583,59
> Factor=20563637,59
> Factor=20563651,59
> Factor=20563657,59
> Factor=20563663,59
> Factor=20563687,59*
> Factor=19287997,64
> Factor=20588999,59*
> 
> And the corresponding entries in status.txt:
> 
> 19287997  F  64   1.8  10.0  60.0  03-Oct-02 09:28
02-Oct-02
> 15:01  TwistedFateBarry2
> 20563583  F  59   0.0   3.0  61.0
04-Oct-02
> 08:47  griphagen  C_adm22_0510
> 20563637  F  59   0.0  15.0  75.0
04-Oct-02
> 08:48  ka9dgx LM11_02
> 20563651  F  59   0.0   4.0  61.0
04-Oct-02
> 08:48  griphagen  C_adm22_0560
> 20563657  F  59   0.0   6.0  66.0
04-Oct-02
> 08:57  FreeTibet  CPQI1
> 20563663  F  59   0.0  12.0  72.0
04-Oct-02
> 08:59  mael1  Plato
> 
> As you can see, I still have one of the numbers I was assigned, but 5
have
> been given to someone else, and 2 (marked with *) don't appear in the
> lists
> anywhere.
> 
> P.S. I only checked these numbers out within the last few days, and so
> it's
> not that they've expired...
> --
> Barry Stokes
> 
> Luck can't last a lifetime, unless you die young.
>   -- Russell Banks
> 
>

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RE: Mersenne: Reference Machine

[Aaron Blosser]

I'll have to go along with other comments, that using some ancient CPU
seems odd, but then again, any baseline you use will end up being
arbitrary anyway, so... whatever works.

As for "prime95", I think that was more a reference to Windows 95, and
there was the service version, priment (or ntprime).

Now that George is moving towards a unified version for either OS,
something like winprime perhaps?  Microsoft stopped using year #'s in
their OS', to which other software companies that *had* adopted that
practice are now also stopping, moving to plain version #'s or something
else entirely.

> -Original Message-
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:mersenne-invalid-
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Frank_A_L_I_N_Y
> Sent: Tuesday, August 20, 2002 4:39 PM
> To: Mersenne discussion list
> Subject: Mersenne: Reference Machine
> 
> Anyone consider using a Cray as our benchmark?
> 
> Also Anyone considering renaming prime95 considering it is 2002?
> 
> Thanks Frank.

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RE: dual-P4 xeon/win2k/prime95 / Re: Mersenne: GIMPS forums!

[Aaron Blosser]

> >at work lately i've been trying to set up a dual-P4 win2k system with
> >prime95.  but when it boots only one of the prime95 starts up when i
> >log in.  both are set for "start at bootup" & each with cpu-affinity
> >hard-coded.
> 
> I'm guessing you've installed prime95 twice in two different
directories.
> If so, what is happening is both are trying to use the service name
> "Prime95 Service" and overwriting each other.
> 
> Try turning off "Start at Bootup" on both.  Edit one of the local.ini
> files and
> add "ServiceName=Prime95 Service #2".  Turn on "Start at bootup"
> on both.
> 
> If you run the second prime95 from the same directory with the -A1
> command line argument, then you shouldn't have this trouble.

However, if you don't have admin access on the Win2K system, it won't be
able to write to the registry locations to autostart it at bootup.

Your best bet then is just put it in your startup group and NOT check
"start at bootup".  Of course then it only runs when you're logged on...

Just one of those things... WinNT/2K is designed that way, with security
in mind, so along with that come limitations to what non-admins can do,
and installing services or modifying some registry locations are part of
it.

Aaron

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RE: Mersenne: Double Checking Errors (and Prime95 NT service issues)

[Aaron Blosser]

I think looking at that file would at least provide interesting to the
curious among us.  I say "go for it" :)

Aaron

PS - Regarding the running Prime95 as an NT service... I concur that if
you run it on your own machine, it's obviously not a security risk since
I'd hope that you're already a local admin on your own NT/win2k/winxp
box.  For more protected machines, any vulnerability would still require
the ability to logon locally, and that's something that any good server
should already address.

The major flaw only seems to be workstations where maybe you don't allow
the normal user to have local admin access, and I know some companies
set it up that way.  And in that case, WITH PROPER PERMISSION (had to
say that), it would make more sense to run it without the icon visible
anyway so the user isn't distracted or can change things.

All in all, what I'm saying is, it seems to be a moot point in 99.%
of the cases I can imagine.

> -Original Message-
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:mersenne-invalid-
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of George Woltman
> Sent: Saturday, August 10, 2002 11:25 AM
> To: Gary Edstrom; [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Re: Mersenne: Double Checking Errors
> 
> At 07:28 PM 8/9/2002 -0700, Gary Edstrom wrote:
> >That brings to mind another question.  I was wondering what you
> >do when you detect an error during double checking.  Do you notify
the
> >person that sent in the erroneous result so that he can check out his
> >computer further?
> 
> No, for several reasons.  1)  We don't know your double-check is wrong
> until a triple (or even quadruple) check is run.  Thus, it could be a
few
> months
> before we'd email you.  2)  If a first time check is bad, it will be
two
> or
> three
> years before the double check and triple check come in to confirm
this.
> 3)  It would be a fair amount of work for me.  Right now the server
does
> not
> verify double-checks.  That is done by me, with the aid of a program,
at
> home.
> Matching bad results with email addresses, sending the email, and
wading
> through bounced emails is not something I would relish!
> 
> Is there interest in adding a new file to ones you can download at the
> bottom of http://www.mersenne.org/status.htm?  It could contain all
the
> confirmed bad results (I have kept this data).  This would make it
easier
> for you folks to check and see if you have any problem computers.
> 
>

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RE: Mersenne: W2K service installation problems

[Aaron]

Well sure, I mean you could, in theory, take the gui part of prime95 and
make it a standalone thing, perhaps getting the vitals using snmp or wmi
or some other such thing.

The service part though, especially for multi-cpu, does need to be paid
attention to in the code itself, allowing multiple instances to run,
with certain cpu affinities being set, etc.

Since most of those functions for the practical operation are in place,
I doubt George has *that* much extra work (although it is tricky, and we
all appreciate it).

It would be cool to have the stats available via some other method, so
other "front-ends", as you say, could read that info and display it in
some creative way.  Nothing like the SETI screen saver, although hey,
why not, if someone wanted to.  Yeah, screen savers reduce how much cpu
time is available for calculations, but if it gets someone to run
Prime95 that wouldn't have before, *some* cpu time is better than none
at least.


> -Original Message-
> From: Gareth Randall [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] 
> Sent: Monday, July 29, 2002 3:59 PM
> To: George Woltman; [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Cc: Aaron
> Subject: Re: Mersenne: W2K service installation problems
> 
> 
> Hi,
> 
> I'm no expert on windows programming, but take a generally 
> downbeat view of the 
> amount of ongoing time and effort required to code for the 
> "proprietary API of 
> the week" that seems to characterise this OS.
> 
> Consequently, is it possible for someone to code a service 
> "wrapper" that spawns 
> the prime service as an additional process? In other words, 
> separate out the 
> service management and icon code into a separate process, 
> which can be developed 
> by a larger public group, rather than have all this code in 
> prime.exe itself 
> with the corresponding requirement that the coding effort all 
> fall on the 
> shoulders of one person.
> 
> This would allow outside parties to develop the most fancy 
> and functional 
> frontends, and be able to do all the compilation steps 
> themselves while 
> circumventing the need to have access to the necessarily 
> secret encryption 
> algorithm that protects the authenticity of results.
> 
> Can this be done? Surely this one's a runner?
> 
> Yours,
> 
> Gareth

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RE: Mersenne: W2K service installation problems

[Aaron]

Speaking of problems, I had problems getting the Prime95 working as an
NT service on a dual-processor machine.

I suppose it's probably documented somewhere, but it seems that Prime95
ignores any service name settings in the existing NTPrime local.ini
file...

So I'm still using NTPrime on my dual CPU machines...  Any chance of
getting prime95 to honor the service name settings in the local.ini file
just like ntprime did?

> -Original Message-
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
> [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of 
> Jean-Yves Canart
> Sent: Monday, July 29, 2002 9:38 AM
> To: George Woltman
> Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Re: Mersenne: W2K service installation problems
> 
> 
> Hi George,
> 
> I have tested this new feature (using W2K + prime95 V22.7)
> I have found that when logging off and logging on again, the 
> small red icon is not coming back (while prime95 is still running)
> 
> Regards, Jean-Yves
> 
> - Original Message -
> From: "George Woltman" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Sent: Thursday, July 25, 2002 20:55
> Subject: Re: Mersenne: W2K service installation problems
> 
> 
> > Hi,
> >
> > At 09:22 AM 7/25/2002 +0200, Helmut Zeisel wrote:
> > >I recently upgraded from WinNT to W2K and now want to install the 
> > >service version of mprime again.
> > >
> > >Since I previously used ntprime, I tried  "ntprime -install". This 
> > >worked, but starting the service exits with
> > >
> > >Could not start the Prime Service service on Local 
> Computer. Error 5: 
> > >Access is denied.
> > >
> > >I have administrator rights, so this should not be the cause.
> > >
> > >Anyway, I downloaded FireDaemon-Light-1_5-BRC1.exe and installed 
> > >Prime95. Starting FiredDaemonService: prime95 now exits with
> > >
> > >Could not start the FireDaemon Service: prime 95 service on Local
> Computer.
> > >Error 1: Incorrect function.
> > >
> > >Any hints what went wrong?
> >
> > Not really.
> >
> > Please try ftp://mersenne.org/gimps/p95v227.zip
> > The GUI version can now be installed as an NT service.  
> Just check the 
> > "Start at Bootup" menu option.
> >
> > This is a new feature so let me know of any problems.
> >
> > Thanks,
> > George
> >
> > 
> __
> > ___
> > Unsubscribe & list info -- 
> http://www.ndatech.com/mersenne/signup.htm
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> FAQ  -- http://www.tasam.com/~lrwiman/FAQ-mers
> >
> 
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RE: Mersenne: Old 486 retired...

[Aaron]

If I ever get my machines back from the FBI, I'll donate them to a
Mersenne hall of fame.  Or would that be better off in a hall of infamy?
:)

> -Original Message-
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
> [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of 
> Gareth Randall
> Sent: Saturday, July 13, 2002 1:20 AM
> To: Johan Winge
> Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Re: Mersenne: Old 486 retired...
> 
> 
> An impressive record! Probably worth taking a photo of it.
> 
> Well, the world's first web server, a NeXT computer, is in a 
> display cabinet in 
> a restaurant in CERN.
> 
> Maybe one day there'll be a "hall of fame" (online even) for 
> veteran GIMPS 
> systems :-)

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RE: Mersenne: Prime95 as an NT/2000/XP service

[Aaron]

Here's my reply to George... figure I might as well share my thoughts
with the rest of y'all and see what ya think.
--
As with any executable that may run as a system service, it would be
nice to have some installation routine check to see if it's on an NTFS
partition, and if so, make sure that wherever the EXE file ends up, it's
read/write for only administrators, read-only for everyone else.

Otherwise, someone with a non-admin logon account on that machine could
modify the EXE with their own, reboot, and that EXE of theirs runs under
local system and can do naughty things.

That's why, in general, most software that runs as a service will copy
it's files into the system32 directory where, by default, the
permissions are just as described.

If it's a FAT partition, then it really doesn't matter because any
service could be modified.

For that matter, you could modify a file on an NTFS partition by using
any of the NTFS read/write programs like NTFSDOS or ERD Commander, etc.
etc.  But the point is not to make it easy on someone.  If they had a
tool like NTFSDOS or ERD Commander, they could do whatever they wanted
anyway. :)

Otherwise, as long as the code is working to prevent launching multiple
instances, then I don't see a problem with it overall.

You could even have the service run as a user account instead of local
system, although that allows for other possible problems if network
access is restricted by user account according to policies or single
sign on firewall solutions.  I'd guess that in those cases, even local
system would have problems, so it may be worth looking into... create a
local, non-admin user account and have the service run as that user.
Common practice, especially for web services, .NET stuff, etc.

My $0.02 worth.

Aaron

PS - In re: to the comments below... Guest is disabled by default, so
that's probably the least of the concerns. :)

> -Original Message-
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:mersenne-invalid-
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Jeff Woods
> Sent: Wednesday, June 26, 2002 8:28 AM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Re: Mersenne: Prime95 as an NT/2000/XP service
> 
> At 12:46 AM 6/26/02 -0400, you wrote:
> 
> >I've spent a few days fighting with Windows and MFC to make Prime95
run
> as
> >a true
> >Windows NT Service.  That is, when you check the "Start at Bootup"
menu
> >choice,
> >prime95 is installed as a service.  At next bootup it starts before
> anyone
> >logs in.
> >At first login, the familiar red icon appears in the system tray, and
> >prime95 keeps
> >running even when you log off.
> >
> >This question is for the serious NT sysadmins out there:  Given that
> Microsoft
> >strongly discourages NT services having a GUI interface, are there
any
> >problems
> >or security issues I need to worry about?  A GUI service must run
under
> >the Local
> >System account.  You can still use Hide Icon to make the service
> virtually
> >invisible to all users.
> 
> Let's say Joe User is logged on as "Joe", with "Guest" permissions.
> 
> Do you REALLY want him to have access to a GUI that is running as
> LocalSystem (in essence, as Administrator)?
> 
> No, you don't.  While your app MAY be secure, most admins won't want
to
> give that kind of "break" to someone trying to hack the box, and any
> serious admin is simply going to download the "True Service" version,
and
> run that.
> 
> >Even if there are problems, I think this will work well for naive
home
> >users running
> >WinXP with multiple user accounts.  My hope is to eliminate the
NTsetup
> and
> >NTPrime programs with this feature.
> 
> Yes, with WinXP, it might offer an advantage.  But you asked for the
view
> from a serious NT admin, and I don't want to see the separate version
go
> away, not if it means having to run a LocalUser app, and giving access
to
> it to Guest users
> 
>

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RE: Mersenne: Which changes have been made to the server

[Aaron]

I think there's always some of that when they do a database sync.

What truly puzzles me is that I *still* have exponents showing up on my
status page (thus, apparently not synchronized) going back to March of
*last* year.  Again, that has always been the case, where some exponents
I have finished don't get cleared, but I think there are some now that
have survived 2 or 3 database syncs and yet they remain.

Strange...

Aaron

> -Original Message-
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:mersenne-invalid-
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Henk Stokhorst
> Sent: Tuesday, April 02, 2002 1:28 AM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Mersenne: Which changes have been made to the server
> 
> L.S.,
> 
> Does this signify some results have been judged invalid and need
> retesting?
> 
> YotN,
> 
> Henk Stokhorst.
> 
>  --- Mersenne Exponent Test Distribution Map ---
> 
>Exponent Range  Trial Factoring   Lucas-Lehmer  Double
> Checking
>   Avail   Out Factd   Avail   Out  Done   Avail
Out
> Done
>  --   -=-=-   -=-=-
-=-
> =-
>5059   7
>808945 1
> 
>   100   109   2
>   110   11911 3
>   120   12912
> 
>   210   219   1
> 
>   450   459
7
> 14
>   470   479
1
> 1
>   480   489
2
> 1
> 
> 
> 
>

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RE: Assignment balancing (was: Re: Mersenne: Re: Trial Factoring: Back to the math)

[Aaron Blosser]

Another thing people might want to consider...

If you have a dual processor box, have one of the prime threads doing
factoring while the other does LL tests.

I've been meaning to do that for a while now, and I guess I might get
around to that next week.  I think most of the machines I have testing
are dual processor, so that should increase my factoring output at
least. :)

I've also got my slower machines (under 500MHz or so) already doing
factoring... goes back to something I've always said: pick the right
assignments for the right machines. :)

Aaron

> -Original Message-
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:mersenne-invalid-
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Sent: Sunday, February 17, 2002 2:55 PM
> To: Russel Brooks
> Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Assignment balancing (was: Re: Mersenne: Re: Trial Factoring:
> Back to the math)
> 
> On 17 Feb 2002, at 17:54, Russel Brooks wrote:
> 
> > Am I interpreting this thread correctly?  That more factoring is
> > needed?  My climb up the LL top producers is starting to stall
> > so maybe it's time to switch to factoring.
> 
> I'm quite sure there's no need to panic!
> 
> So far as I'm concerned, I've been underdoing factoring - less than
> 5% of my contribution. Theoretically the best balance for the
> project as a whole is about 10% of the CPU effort in trial factoring.
> 
> The other point here is that we have had two major improvements in
> the efficiency of the LL testing algorithm since the last time trial
> factoring was seriously looked at, so some theoretical work on trial
> factoring is probably due.
> 
> Why not try some factoring assignments, if _you_ think it will be
> fun for a change? You can always change back when you get
> bored...


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RE: Mersenne: Re: Are problems more likely in the last 1% of a 10,gigadigit LL?

[Aaron Blosser]

> FWIW bzip2 does a significantly better job of compressing save
> files than zip, but at the expense of using several times as many
> CPU cycles.
> 
> I'm doing a QA run on exponent 67108763 keeping interim files at
> million iteration intervals, so, by the time I finish, I will have 67
save
> files. The raw size is 14MB per file, but bzip2 reduces them to
> around 9MB. Whether we should be unduly worried about a job
> which takes ~ 1 year to run producing ~ 1GB of data, in these
> days when it's hard to buy new HDDs smaller than 20GB, is a
> matter of opinion.

In my tests, I was able to get about 50% compression using RAR, but it
does take more cycles.

I suppose if anyone is really that concerned about saving disk space,
they could compress it themselves... like I said, I doubted George would
want to implement something like that anyway.

Aaron

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RE: Mersenne: Re: Are problems more likely in the last 1% of a 10,gigadigit LL?

[Aaron Blosser]

My home office has among other things a Compaq RAID array of 5 36GB
drives and a few 18GB/9GB as well.  MAN OH MAN that thing gets loud!

If it weren't for all the other machines and the fan that blows straight
on all of them, those drives would drive me nuts.  As it is, everything
else combined managed to be even louder. :)

How well do the save files compress?  Probably not much, being
psuedo-random binary, but maybe a bit... in which case if you had an
NTFS partition you could make your Prime directory compressed, or
periodically zip up your old save files.  Just a thought.

Hey, I just tried and they do compress sort of okay... 71% of original
size just using default zip settings.  Using max compression doesn't
improve anymore than the default.  Curiously, using zip -1 (lowest
compression) results in the smallest file by a few ten thousand bytes...
due to smaller library I'm sure.

I doubt George would be interested in working in a little simple zip
routine when saving/reading save files?  It might slow it down too much
for some folks (although honestly, it takes a fraction of a second to
zip using the lowest compression level), but maybe a nice option for
those looking to save a bit of space when testing large exponents.
Especially if you save interim files or have 2 saved files... the space
savings would add up quickly.

Aaron

> -Original Message-
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:mersenne-invalid-
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Steinar H. Gunderson
> Sent: Thursday, February 14, 2002 3:19 PM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Mersenne: Re: Are problems more likely in the last 1% of a
> 10,gigadigit LL?
> 
> On Thu, Feb 14, 2002 at 10:55:00PM +, Russel Brooks wrote:
> >My save files are @1.5M in size. I could save quite a few before
> >space was any concern (too me).
> 
> Mine are @7M -- and I'm of those who prefer speed and sound level (two
> Ultra160 SCSI 1rpm 18.2GB disks, in RAID-1, both very quiet) over
> diskspace -- people are buying _cheap_ 80-100GB disks without even
> blinking
> nowadays.
> 
> /* Steinar */
> --
> Homepage: http://www.sesse.net/
>

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Mersenne: Preventing "hacks"

[Aaron Blosser]

Well,

After long and hard thought on this (approximately 30 seconds), I have
the following suggestion:

Each team account (could apply to accounts with just one machine as
well) should have 2 passwords.

A master password that could be used on the web pages to manage
exponents on all team machines, and also a per-machine password (could
be automatically generated when a new machine gets an exponent).

There's really no reason I can think of why a password would be required
to have a machine join a team, is there?  I mean, someone could sign
their machine up to some team and reserve a bunch of exponents with no
intention of working on them, but hey, someone could do that anyway
right now by just setting up their own team...

So a team account "master password" could unreserved exponents on any
machine, and then the "machine password" could be used to work with
exponents for only that one machine.

Well, at any rate, that would keep individual team members from wreaking
havoc by this shared password scheme currently in place, while still
allowing a team leader to unreserve exponents or do other things from
the web page.

Just a thought, and again, this is just my 30-second attempt to come up
with an idea.  I'm sure it can and will be improved upon.

Aaron (aka "I'm-not-a-hacker-I'm-a-math-geek")

> -Original Message-
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:mersenne-invalid-
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of George Woltman
> Sent: Tuesday, February 12, 2002 12:29 PM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Re: Mersenne: Missing assignement
> 
> Hi all,
> 
> At 08:10 PM 2/12/2002 +0100, Ignacio Larrosa Cañestro wrote:
> >In my personal account report of yesterday could be read:
> >
> >Assignment overdue check-in is set at 60.0 days (0.0 days to expire)
> >But now this exponent is missing. How is it possible??
> 
> OK, the cat is out of the bag.
> 
> In late January, one of the more productive teams was hacked.
> Prime95/Primenet has some security holes.  One of these holes
> is that a team must make its password public for new members to join.
> 
> Someone exploited this hole.  This loser thought it would be "cute" to
> unreserve all the team's exponents (a few hundred) via the manual web
> pages.  Brad & Scott patched the manual forms and embarked on
> implementing a more permanent solution.  A week ago, they struck again
> using prime95 itself to again unreserve some of the team's exponents.
> 
> Unfortunately, rather than hurting the team, the hacker ended up
hurting
> ordinary users.  The server reassigned all the unreserved exponents.
> Since the team's computers had a head start on these exponents they
are
> likely to finish them first.  When they report a result, your
assignment
> will
> "disappear" from the active assignments list.  GIMPS, of course, can
use
> your result for double-checking.
> 
> Brad/Scott have now changed server so that none of this team's
exponents
> can be unreserved.  They are still working on making this feature
> available
> to all teams to prevent this in the future.
> 
> Brad & Scott are better able to comment on this, but I think that this
is
> the first hacker attack on the reservation system.  There have been
many
> denial of service attacks and attempts at defacing the web pages
(don't
> people have better things to do with their time?)
> 
> Are there other security holes?  Yes.  For obvious reasons I don't
know if
> we should discuss these in a mailing list.  Beefing up security costs
time
> and
> money.  These are limited resources in an all-volunteer,
not-for-profit,
> zero-revenue project.  We'll try to do the best we can given our
> limitations.
> 
> Always remember
> 
> GIMPS is just for fun,
> George

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Mersenne: RE: Factoring top 10

[Aaron Blosser]

Okay, those are HUGE factors.

Have the predictions on the work eliminated by P-1 factoring been pretty
much confirmed by the # of large factors found?  In other words, is the
extra processing time paying off?

I'd hazard a guess that the time saving is indeed appreciable, but I
wonder if anyone has done some cold hard stats on it.

> -Original Message-
> From: George Woltman [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> Sent: Tuesday, February 12, 2002 12:33 PM
> To: Aaron Blosser; [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Factoring top 10
> 
> Hi,
> 
> At 11:41 AM 2/12/2002 -0800, Aaron Blosser wrote:
> >PS - I'm just thrilled because I found a factor of an exponent that
beat
> >my previous record... 101 bit factor.  I'm too lazy to look through
the
> >cleared exponents list, so does anyone know what the largest factor
is
> >that has been found by GIMPS lately?
> 
> The top 10 - 39 digits for the biggest!
> 
> 1433462339  56379662829467477289264041716715663
> 1318781335  63113922700063643342764849026462401
> 1075012734  4777866348588447235992766781311399
> 1293216734  4314676575733979321708362055504719
> 1050634734  2529967840093210987185485731119337
> 1345961334  2004522251312746653413939484232703
> 1454281734  1001733277749555116882783777187313
> 1234882933  972299186932443166370257195895087
> 1437882733  749393632720558083108841526201431
> 1311127132  35439060242916356936579100907769

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RE: Mersenne: Missing assignement

[Aaron Blosser]

Answering my own question: (guess I wasn't so lazy after all)

14517229 103   F  9924470843259440116293839391239  10-Jan-02 15:35
00dbm  Bertrand


> -Original Message-
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:mersenne-invalid-
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Aaron Blosser
> Sent: Tuesday, February 12, 2002 11:41 AM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: RE: Mersenne: Missing assignement
> 
> Looks like someone finished it:
> 
> 14421269  66 0x6E664B5F86CB66__12-Feb-02 08:04
> Team_Prime_Rib DSheets_50
> 
> PS - I'm just thrilled because I found a factor of an exponent that
beat
> my previous record... 101 bit factor.  I'm too lazy to look through
the
> cleared exponents list, so does anyone know what the largest factor is
> that has been found by GIMPS lately?  Of course there may be smaller
> factors for the same exponent, but I'm still impressed at finding such
a
> huge factor to an even much huger number.

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RE: Mersenne: Missing assignement

[Aaron Blosser]

Looks like someone finished it:

14421269  66 0x6E664B5F86CB66__12-Feb-02 08:04
Team_Prime_Rib DSheets_50

PS - I'm just thrilled because I found a factor of an exponent that beat
my previous record... 101 bit factor.  I'm too lazy to look through the
cleared exponents list, so does anyone know what the largest factor is
that has been found by GIMPS lately?  Of course there may be smaller
factors for the same exponent, but I'm still impressed at finding such a
huge factor to an even much huger number.

> -Original Message-
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:mersenne-invalid-
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Ignacio Larrosa Cañestro
> Sent: Tuesday, February 12, 2002 11:11 AM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Mersenne: Missing assignement
> 
> In my personal account report of yesterday could be read:
> 
> ***
> Individual Account Report 11 Feb 2002 21:57 (Feb 11 2002  2:57PM
> Pacific)
>   --- Exponents Assigned ---
> 
> Assignment overdue check-in is set at 60.0 days (0.0 days to expire)
> 
>  prime  fact  current days
> exponentbits iteration  run / to go / exp   date updated date
> assigned   computer ID  Mhz  Ver
>  --  -  -  ---

> ---    ---
> ..
> 14421269 66  21.2 143.8  66.8
> 21-Jan-02 16:08  PII350-RDIES  351 v19/v20
> ..
> 
> **
> But now this exponent is missing. How is it possible??
> 
> Saludos,
> 
> Ignacio Larrosa Cañestro
> A Coruña (España)
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> ICQ #94732648
> 
> 
>

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RE: Mersenne: Work being wasted

[Aaron Blosser]

> > ...what should I do in
> > order not to waste my (&my A1200) time working on numbers which may
be
> > taken over by someone else in some uncertain future? Currently I'm
> > finishing my first exponent (that's M7505207 double-check)...
> 
> Don't disclose your exponants to a list read by Aaron Blosser.  :-)

Very funny. :)

Hey, I contribute more computer time (with permission nowadays!!) than a
lot, so you can all quit your belly-achin'. :)

I haven't poached in a long time, probably since the changes to Primenet
which made it unnecessary (I don't even recall how long ago that
happened), nor do I think anyone else should poach now.  Only reason I
did it before was because there was no methodology to "rehab" stale
exponents, so I figured someone had to do it.  That's all, end of story.

PS - Be sure to read everything I say with the proper attitude... I
really am trying to smile and be friendly whenever I say anything... I
would have guessed my smiley emoticons would have given it away, but I
think some folks take me way too seriously... one of the problems of
email.

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RE: Mersenne: Work being wasted

[Aaron Blosser]

To be honest, I don't even recall what I may have said in the past
regarding poaching of exponents.  I think it was me that applied the
word to the actual practice of nabbing exponents that were still
assigned. :)

If I recall correctly, the topic came up at a time when PrimeNet did not
expire exponents or require check ins every 60 days.

Used to be that if you were assigned an exponent, basically you had it
for a very very long time and no check-ins were required.  I think Scott
may have gone through manually and reallocated exponents that he deemed
were abandoned, but I'm not sure of the actual process.

All I know is, the only reason I ever poached exponents in the past was
when I saw one that had been checked out for over a year and had never
been checked in or updated.  And yes, there were quite a few of those at
the time.

It was that previous thread about poaching that led to the changes in
Primenet with expirations, requiring checkins every 60 days or your
exponent would expire, etc.  The way it is now, an exponent that's never
been updated will expire in roughly 120 days which isn't bad.  Compare
that to before those changes when there were exponents out there that
hadn't been checked in for 2 years and were still showing 3 or even 4
years to go.  If those weren't poached and finished, there would have
been significant gaps in the database.  And while Scott would have gone
through and cleaned such things out eventually, heaven knows he had
better things to be doing.

I think Mary's objection now is that poaching is not necessary, and
she's right.  Another objection is that if someone were going to poach
exponents, this one person in particular was doing a lousy job at
selecting which ones.  I suppose that by selecting exponents that were
on the verge of expiring, they would be reassigned to someone else in
very short order anyway, meaning he would finish them off just days
before the new owner finishes them which yeah, is frustrating.

Where I part company with yours and others opinion is what to do about
it.  In my mind, tracking down the guys name and address for whatever
reason seems to go beyond what I would consider necessary diligence.  I
think that in the future, simply mentioning this person's primenet ID to
the folks at Entropia should suffice since they could then send an email
explaining why it's bad form to nab exponents prior to their expiration.

Aaron

PS - Mentions of my past on here can get confusing because, besides the
poaching threads of the past, there's also another matter from my past
which someone else posted a Google thread to (not Mary... I think it was
Nathan something-or-other).  I'm not at all embarrassed about that
incident, but it just bothers me when someone decides to do Google
searches in some sort of attempt to find information on someone in
particular.  That's the sort of thing that borders on stalking, and it
wouldn't be the first time someone's done a Google search and then
"rejoiced" that they found such a juicy tidbit of information from my
past. :)  That's okay, because in so doing they've just proved
themselves to be a kook and there's no longer any doubt as to whether I
should ignore them. :)

> -Original Message-
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:mersenne-invalid-
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Steve Elias
> Sent: Monday, February 04, 2002 5:44 AM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Re: Mersenne: Work being wasted
> 
> 
> Aaron,
> 
> i really know nothing about your past except what i've read here.
> 
> it's your current comments re poaching which i have found
> objectionable.  as you can see, i do feel free to comment regardless
> of your possible lack of appreciation for my comments.  if you
repented
> & apologized for your alleged-previous-poaching-transgressions i might
> think differently, but you appear to be unapologetic.
> (but i don't really expect you to care what *i* think!!!)
> 
> really - to each his own.  i do recognize your right to think that
> your current pro-poaching comments are moral even if
> actually they are not, just as i recognize a moral-relativist's right
> to so delude themselves on whatever matter of immorality they like.
> while these folks may be deluding themselves they aren't fooling me -
> and i'm plenty foolish on my own accord!


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RE: Mersenne: Work being wasted

[Aaron Blosser]

Aw heck, let's just agree to disagree and shake hands. :)  I'm not
terribly upset, and as I mentioned before, I have far greater things in
life to be concerned about than GIMPS, so I didn't mean to make a big
deal of it. :)

> First, I would like to point out that you brought yourself into this
> discussion.  I made no reference to you until you decided to comment.
> Secondly, I don't think it is at all snide or uncalled for to mention
that
> you have poached in the past when you express your opinion that it is
not
> wrong.  Thirdly, why would it bother you to have your past poaching
> brought up if you don't think it was wrong?


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RE: Mersenne: Work being wasted

[Aaron Blosser]

> Legally perhaps not (however, they are using PrimeNet in a way that
> violates the stated terms of usage), morally and ethically I do think
(and
> I suspect most people would think) it is wrong.  Not terribly
surprising
> that you don't think it is, I suppose.

See, it's the snide comments like that that I don't appreciate.

It's attitudes like yours that are more likely to drive people away from
GIMPS than whether or not someone poaches an assignment and results in
the occasional triple check.

Fortunately I happen to know that most people who participate are nice
folks.  So the fact that a couple people on here want to make continued
references to my past in an attempt to paint me as an uncaring and
morally reprehensible person isn't enough to dissuade me from continued
participation. :)

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RE: Mersenne: Work being wasted

[Aaron Blosser]

Well, I think that most people on the list know of my past... it's when
someone does a Google search on me that I think borders on stalking.
One can only wonder what you might find if you did Google searches on
everyone on this list. :)

Anyway... the gardening analogy doesn't pass muster.

First, may I point out that neither GIMPS nor PrimeNet *owns* the
Mersenne exponents being tested.  I would posit that *anyone* is free to
test *any* exponent they choose.

Clearly, the purpose of GIMPS/PrimeNet is to optimize this search by
assigning exponents in an orderly fashion.

I'm not advocating poaching since I feel that Scott/George's system
works fine.  But I am saying that if someone wants to poach exponents,
while I might disagree, there's nothing really wrong with it.

Stealing someone's plants is illegal.  Nobody owns these exponents so
there's nothing to steal.  That's my only point.  Rude, yes.
Morally/ethically/legally there's really no problem with doing it.


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RE: Mersenne: Work being wasted

[Aaron Blosser]

I hate it when people dredge up the past.

> -Original Message-
> From: Nathan Russell [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> Sent: Saturday, February 02, 2002 8:41 PM
> To: Aaron Blosser
> Subject: RE: Mersenne: Work being wasted
> 
> At 06:12 PM 2/2/2002 -0800, you wrote:
> >Not sure what the crack about "with your history" means, but
whatever.
> >I can't take this all too seriously because, really, it's just a
hobby.
> >:)
> 
> As it is for all of us, of course.
> 
> However, while I have no idea what Mary is talking about, a quick
check on
> Google reveals there's some stories about you out there well in excess
of
> the actual:
> 
> http://lists.jammed.com/ISN/1998/09/0067.html
> 
> Nathan

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RE: Mersenne: Work being wasted

[Aaron Blosser]

Nah, I just don't think it's worth tracking down this guy's name,
address and who knows what else just because he's poaching exponents in
what is, after all, just a hobby.

Not sure what the crack about "with your history" means, but whatever.
I can't take this all too seriously because, really, it's just a hobby.
:)

Like they say, you pick your battles.  I guess if someone wanted to make
a huge issue out of this, they could, but me, I'd rather spend my time
and energy on more productive things.

Just my $0.02 worth, and obviously people can and will disagree. :)

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RE: Mersenne: Work being wasted

[Aaron Blosser]

Sounds like stalking to me.

Just live with it I guess and if the occasional exponent gets
triple-checked, I don't anticipate losing too much sleep.  Yeah, it
sucks, but what lengths should anyone go to to find the guy and say
something?

> -Original Message-
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:mersenne-invalid-
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Russel Brooks
> Sent: Friday, February 01, 2002 4:35 PM
> To: Mary Conner; [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Re: Mersenne: Work being wasted
> 
> Mary Conner wrote:
> > I managed to grab a bunch of those 4.5M doublechecks that George
> released
> > on Jan 10th.  A few days ago, when my machine was about to finish up
the
> > second one of the batch I grabbed, the account k5gj submitted a
result
> for
> > this exponent.  A little investigation showed that this account does
> this
> 
> K5GJ is possibly/probably a Ham call sign.  You can find the
> owner's name and address at arrl.org with a call sign search.
> 
> It says the call sign is owned by a Thomas Cage of Amarillo Texas.
> There isn't an email listed but if he's a member of the arrl
> then he may use their address forwarding in which case you might
> be able to contact him via [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> 
> Cheers... Russ
> 
>

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RE: Mersenne: slaying cpus with prime95

[Aaron Blosser]

> As for SMART on disks - I've never heard of SMART giving more
> than 24 hours notice of a failing disk, but I have heard of many
> cases where disks have died without prior warning even though
> SMART monitoring has been active. Other people seem to have the
> same experience. I get the impression that SMART monitoring
> may be a waste of (a relatively small number of) CPU cycles.

I guess experiences will vary.  I know that on our Compaq servers, the
SMART warnings are wonderful.  Just recently I swapped out a drive that
was giving off warnings about too many sectors having to be remapped.
And in the case of Compaq servers, if you're using all the Insight
Manager agents, a drive is covered under warranty *before* it's even
failed (that good old pre-failure warranty), so you can swap it out even
though technically it's still working okay.

I've done that several times on Compaq systems, and I think it's
wonderful.  But I guess it all depends on the monitoring software in
place.  All SMART is going to tell you is the # of errors and other
drive indicators, and I guess it's up to the software to determine if
those errors constitute normal behaviour or if there's something more
serious involved.

Same goes with the CPU and fan monitoring... those Compaq systems
monitor fan rotation, temperatures at multiple points inside the case,
etc.  There are pre-defined settings for those sensors, so that if the
temperature goes above, you can either have the system shut down or keep
on running but send an alert (on a server, it's preferable to have it
send an alert, otherwise having a system shut down without any notice
can be aggravating, but I guess that's a matter of whether or not you
have 24/7 human monitoring of alerts, so you can react quickly to
those).

Granted, Compaq servers with all those features cost a pretty penny.
Their desktops offer most of the same things, albeit not as many sensors
inside the case. :)

I think I've mentioned this before, but it is interesting to see how
when I kick off Prime95 on one of those servers, the fans which normally
are just idling will kick into high gear.  They're variable speed, so
they only kick in when needed, and it doesn't take long at all for the
CPU's to heat up and trigger the extra fan rpm's.  On a lot of the
newest Compaq servers, you can put in redundant fans so if one or two
fail, you're still covered, and you also get better cooling when all are
running.  Granted, these things can be QUITE loud (I have 3 on my desk
right now and it is annoying, but thank goodness they're just the slim
DL360's).  The huge cluster boxes or 8-way servers can deafen a person,
not to mention the Storageworks boxes with those monstrous vortex fans
on the back, pumping who knows how many CFM's and generating quite a few
decibels in the process. :)

Aaron

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RE: Mersenne: slaying cpus with prime95

[Aaron Blosser]

I'd wager that in most of those instances, the computer would have died
without Prime95's help.

Faulty CPU fans in particular... whether they conk out after a short
while or eventually, a bad fan is a ticking time bomb.  Prime95 may have
shortened the life span a bit, but it was doomed. :)

Any machine that lacks proper ventilation and allows excess CPU heat to
affect the hard drive is buggy design if you ask me.

I have a 1GHz IBM laptop that I run Prime95 on 24/7 and while the thing
can get hot if I actually place it on my lap, I've had nary a problem
except on a couple occasions when I inadvertently blocked the inflow air
vent and the thing did overheat.  When it did that, it just shut itself
down.

Things to look for on any computer, Prime95 running or not, are noisy
cpu/case fans or fans that don't spin at all.  And if you have thermal
monitoring, pay attention to it.  Hard drives nowadays almost all have
SMART on them, so find a program that can read those stats and see if
your drive is giving out warnings.  Many vendors include software for
monitoring your system health (I know HP and Compaq do, and I think IBM
does too but I haven't looked).  There are 3rd party programs for all
that as well.

And of course, overclocking is pushing the limits anyway, so I guess we
shouldn't be too surprised to find that overclocking may ruin a CPU.  I
do find it curious that the thermal protection on your P4 didn't kick
in, but perhaps your computer's BIOS had some default settings disabling
that?  Or it had been disabled?  I dunno... I don't have a P4 machine
(yet), so I can't say. :)

In short, I've killed many machines in my life... CPU fans that stopped
working and thus frying the processor, or doing silly things like
plugging a 486 in the wrong way, etc.  And of all the machines I've
fried, NONE were running Prime95.  Heck, I guess I'd have to say that
running Prime95 on a machine has actually brought me better luck with
them than without. :)

Aaron

> -Original Message-
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:mersenne-invalid-
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Steve Elias
> Sent: Monday, January 14, 2002 11:45 AM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Mersenne: slaying cpus with prime95
> 
> 
> here are some instances where i have damaged computers
> by (capriciously?) running prime95!
> 
> 1 - i just got my wife's toshiba laptop back from toshiba warranty
> service.  running prime95 for ~6 months on it caused the fan to die,
> and then the laptop would overheat & shutdown even without prime95
> running.  apparently the heat caused lots of disk badblocks too.
> 
> 2 - my manager at work here had a thinkpad.  he ran prime95 despite my
> worry that it was very "tough" on laptops.  within a few months his
> harddrive failed - possibly due to months of excess heat...  :| this
> could be considered a classic Dilbertian CLM (career limiting move) on
> my part, but no worry since my manager is super-cool.
> 
> 3 - i also ran the prime95 app for a year or so on an ancient cyrix
> p120+ which had a cpu-fan that stopped.  after a couple months of
> no-cpu-fan, that cpu died completely...
> 
> 4 - i bought a 2Ghz P4 recently.  despite initial worries that it was
> running too hot (70 C) because fan was too slow (2800 rpm), i got
> adventurous and clocked the cpu at 2.1 Ghz for a day.  weeks later the
> machine started acting very badly (motherboard cpu temp alarm caused
> shutdown @ 90 C even without prime95 running).  so i returned it to
> the vendor.  they claimed that my overclocking it broke the P4, and
> that the top of the cpu was actually burnt/blackened from the heat.
> this is counter to my belief that improper fan/heatsink was the cause,
> but i can't prove it.  also it runs counter to what i've read here &
> elsewhere about the thermal-protection built into P4s 1.7Ghz or
> faster.  they are returning the P4 to intel to see if Intel will
> replace it for free, but in the meantime i have to pay for a new cpu!
> (i'm picking 1.8Ghz this time.)
> 
> so far my count is "4" for computers i've damaged with the help of the
> the prime95 application.  but i'll keep running it because it is the
> coolest application around (in a hot way).
> 
> /eli

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RE: Mersenne: Re: 2^4-1 Factored!

[Aaron Blosser]

It’s when they
start producing near instant factors of 1024 to 4096 bit numbers that we’ll
have to really think about our current encryption measures…

 

Even if they reduced the time it took to
factor such numbers from millions of years to millions of seconds, the impact
on cryptography will be huge.

 

But I reckon that by then, someone will
have thought of some new encryption that would remove the advantage that QC has…
something unrelated to factoring large numbers, I’m guessing?  Dunno what
that method might be; if I did know, I’d market it and get rich. J

 

Aaron

 



-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Thursday, December 20, 2001 2:50 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Mersenne: Re: 2^4-1
Factored!

 

Luke Welsh wrote:

>http://www.research.ibm.com/resources/news/20011219_quantum.shtml

Interesting...but the QC folks apprently seem to think classical factoring
work is frozen in time, viz. their comment about the supposed unfactorizability
of 200-digit composites. M727 is larger than 200 digits, and has a smallest
prime factor of 98 digits. Of course when QC comes into its own, 200-digit
numbers will be factored almost instantly. But we aren't there yet.

-Ernst

RE: Mersenne: M4 completely factored!

[Aaron Blosser]

I do note that 4 is not prime, thus this is not a factoring of M4, but
rather just a more "mundane" factoring success. :)

> -Original Message-
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:mersenne-invalid-
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Sent: Thursday, December 20, 2001 12:03 PM
> To: Henk Stokhorst
> Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Re: Mersenne: M4 completely factored!
> 
> On 20 Dec 2001, at 9:57, Henk Stokhorst wrote:
> 
> > L.S.,
> >
> > Another milestone has been acomplished. M4 has been completely
factored,
> > two factors were found, 2^4 -1 = 15 = 3 * 5.
> >
> > more details at http://slashdot.org/  see: IBM builds a limited
quatum
> > computer.
> 
> Wow! Are we _really_ sure they didn't find 2^4-1 = 3_+_5? You never
know
> with this scary quantum stuff!
> 
> I expect the IBM team will find the next 100 Mersenne primes
> sometime before the end of this year. Oh well, I suppose there's
> always seti@home ;-)
> 
> Seasonal felicitations
> Brian Beesley
>

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RE: Mersenne: silly, but...

[Aaron Blosser]

That is VERY strange... and I feel compelled to try and beat the current
record of watching it get to above 52,490,219 :)  May take me a while,
but oh well... :)

Good find.  I got a laugh out of it.  Just goes to prove my point that
some people have WAY too much free time. :)

Aaron

> -Original Message-
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:mersenne-invalid-
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of John R Pierce
> Sent: Saturday, December 15, 2001 9:36 PM
> To: Mersenne discussion list
> Subject: Mersenne: silly, but...
> 
> Ok, this is kinda silly, and if you are easily offended, don't go
> here..
> but if you have a bent sense of humor (on topic for this list), check
out
> the Prime Bear at.  (requires a late model browser that handles
java
> scripting reasonably well)
> 
> http://members.surfeu.fi/kklaine/primebear.html


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RE: Mersenne: Speed of RAM

[Aaron Blosser]

Questions like this are fine. :)  We talk about stuff like this from
time to time.

F'rinstance, I have some Compaq servers where the video goes totally
haywire when Prime95 is running on them (only at 1024x768... works fine
at 800x600).

Turns out the built in graphics stuff is a bit too close to the
processors, so there's a bit of interference going on.

I would suspect the same behaviour in your case.  Do you notice the
sound coming from the built in speaker?  Or is it somewhere else?
Capacitors have a neat trick of making high pitched noises like you
described, though the type found on motherboards are usually a bit too
small for such shenanigans, but you never know.  Slowing down the bus
speed must have eliminated whatever resonance was going on.

As for whether your results will be okay or not, there are a few built
in checks in George's algorithm, so most hardware related things are
generally caught (correct George?) and it is able to revert to the last
time it saved the temp file in such cases.  You can take a look in your
results.txt file to see if there are any unusual errors in there.

No real way to tell what your lockup problems are.  If it only happened
when you did certain things (mouse movements or something), then maybe
you have some issues with the hardware related to the PS/2 interface...
just a wild guess based on what you've said.

Aaron

> -Original Message-
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:mersenne-invalid-
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Philip Whittington
> Sent: Thursday, December 13, 2001 8:57 PM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Mersenne: Speed of RAM
> 
> Hello All,
> 
> I'm sorry to trouble GIMPSers with what might be more of a computer
> question. I
> am using an Athon Thunderbird 1.3GHz and 256 MB of 133 MHz (DDR) Ram.
> 
> My computer has always emitted a high pitched squeaking noise when
> processes
> like GIMPS start, and also when I do things like use the scroll wheel
of
> my
> mouse etc. Recently the computer started hanging randomly on certain
tasks
> (not
> GIMPS). After having taken the RAM down to 100MHz the high pitched
squeak
> and
> the hanging has stopped.
> 
> 1) Will the hanging have any impact on the credibility of what PRIME95
> finds -
> I am around 86% through a L-L Test?
> 
> 2) Can anyone shed light on whether it is my ram at fault or something
on
> the
> motherboard? (sorry, I realise this is not really GIMPS related)
> 
> Thank you,
> 
> Philip Whittington


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RE: Mersenne: Moving an assignment

[Aaron Blosser]

I think we settled on the term "poached" long ago.

There's really nothing stopping anyone from working on any exponent they
want.  If they communicate with Primenet and it reports that an exponent
is assigned to someone else, the software will remove that exponent from
your worktodo list.

The only exception is if that exponent has already begun work, in which
case it will still report the error, but it remains in the worktodo file
and when done, it will show up in your cleared exponent list.

I broached the 'taboo' topic of poaching exponents quite some years ago
when I mentioned that sometimes, exponents are checked out and no work
is ever done on them, so I was "helping out" by snagging those and just
finishing them off.

However, at the time, there was no expiration period of 60 days, so
sometimes exponents were many months or even over a year old, had never
had any check-ins, and were only cleared when Scott or whoever would
manually go through and clear those out.

Nowadays, exponents must be checked in every 60 days with some sort of
status update, otherwise it's automatically released back into the pool.
I can only imagine that our poaching thread from back when is what
prompted that change in the procedure, and it's a good change.

I don't recall the subject of deliberate exponent poaching coming up at
all recently, except musings about what if two people work on the same
exponent unknowingly, and it happens to be prime. :)  But that was more
of an 'accidental' poaching, when a client hasn't checked in for a very
long time but is actually still working on a number, and meanwhile some
other machine gets the same one and finishes it as well.

It's also worth noting that GIMPS/Primenet has no claim on the exponents
being handed out.  They are simply prime numbers which anyone can run an
LL test on.  GIMPS/Primenet is great because it coordinates the efforts
of thousands.  Way back when, George kept the master list... you'd
download a file that had untested #'s (George would update that every so
often), then email George telling him what number you were working on,
then email him back the results when it was done.  Man... primenet is SO
much better!  So much better that it landed me in a bit of trouble, but
oh well, still a vast improvement. :)

Aaron

> -Original Message-
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:mersenne-invalid-
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Mary Conner
> Sent: Wednesday, December 12, 2001 5:02 PM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Re: Mersenne: Moving an assignment
> 
> On Wed, 12 Dec 2001, John R Pierce wrote:
> > AFAIK, take it out of your worktodo.ini file, and hand it off to teh
> other
> > user, along with any Q or P files if they exist.
> >
> > when they check back into the server, it should be happy to let them
> > continue.   I could be wrong here, but I don't think it cares.
> 
> I surely hope not, or that would allow someone to steal an exponent
from
> someone else.  I had assumed that the exponents that were changing
hands
> on the assignment report were a bunch of guys helping a buddy out with
> some low exponent double checks, but if the server just lets someone
start
> reporting an exponent they weren't assigned, they could be stolen.


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RE: Mersenne: Moving an assignment

[Aaron Blosser]

If it's just one exponent, cut and paste that line from the worktodo.ini
file and copy your temp files (p? and q?) to the other machine.
And just start 'er up.

Even though it's not assigned to you, an exponent that has already been
started work on will not be released.  It'll just complain each time you
update results that the exponent is not assigned to you, but it will
still finish it up and you'll still get credit for it when you're all
done.

I know this from my "poaching" days. ;)

If work hasn't already begun on it, then there's probably no good reason
to transfer it anyway, so I'm sure we're talking about work in progress.

Much easier than the methods below. :)

Aaron

> -Original Message-
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:mersenne-invalid-
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Nathan Russell
> Sent: Wednesday, December 12, 2001 2:17 PM
> To: Mary Conner; [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Re: Mersenne: Moving an assignment
> 
> At 12:41 PM 12/12/2001 -0800, Mary Conner wrote:
> >How would I go about giving an exponent I've been assigned to someone
> >else?  From previous discussions, it seems as though PrimeNet would
> reject
> >the assignment as not belonging to him, but I've seen exponents moved
> from
> >one account to another without expiring, so I know it can be done.  I
> >haven't been able to find any option on Prime95's menus, or anything
on
> >the web page about how to do this so that PrimeNet will accept the
> >reassignment.
> 
> To begin with, several important people in the GIMPS project, and many
> people who know far more than I do about it, read this list.
> 
> It'd likely be best not to follow my advice until you see if any of
them
> have a better idea.
> 
> That said, the server only assigns a new assignment every few minutes.
If
> you were to release the assignment at a time of the day when the
server
> isn't busy (check the assignments out report to get a feeling for when
> that
> is) and, coordinating by instant messaging, on the phone, etc, the
other
> user were to (having increased his number of days of work to queue
> significantly) manually request work (in the advanced menu), there's a
> fair
> chance he'd get the exponent you'd just released.  You could then send
him
> the save file.
> 
> The other alternative, of course, and likely a better one, would be to
> email the folks at PrimeNet and ask them if they could manually
transfer
> the assignment to the other user's account.
> 
> Nathan
> 
>

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RE: Mersenne: Database merge

[Aaron Blosser]

Yay!  It has been a LONG time since the last one.  My list of cleared
exponents was getting pretty huge.

Just out of curiosity though, I'm wondering why some of my cleared
exponents are still there... like these ones:

8664941  65 0x87838CA31D64B5__   16-Jun-00 07:44  WorkerBoy2
9885119  65 0x86BA14ED5C3785__   25-Dec-00 13:45  NYFS-1

There are others from 2001, but those two from 2000 had me puzzled.

Aaron

> -Original Message-
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:mersenne-invalid-
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of George Woltman
> Sent: Wednesday, December 12, 2001 7:05 AM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Mersenne: Database merge
> 
> Hi all,
> 
>   Brad at Entropia did a long awaited database merge last night.
> Thanks, Brad.  Due to an oversight in my scripts, the compressed
binary
> database that Brad merges in only had data for exponents below 16
million.
> Thus, all factoring and LL results on exponents above 16 million were
not
> cleared out.  We will get them next time.


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RE: Mersenne: HD crash

[Aaron Blosser]

Best idea is to look at your account status page and find the exponents
for that machine on there.

I made the mistake of rebuilding my laptop the other day and while I had
backed up everything else, I forgot to backup the directory with
ntprime. Argh... fortunately it wasn't too far along on the current
exponent.

Just rebuilt the worktodo.ini file with the appropriate test=,xx
lines (optionally add the ,1 on the end if it had already completed the
p-1 factoring) and let 'er rip.

At least on my machines at home I try to be better about at least making
weekly backups of the prime directories on there.  For my machines at
work, they don't suffer the same "wipe and rebuild" fate as many of my
home test machines, so I don't bother backing them up much, which of
course is why I lost the stuff on my work laptop. :)

Aaron

> -Original Message-
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:mersenne-invalid-
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Jud McCranie
> Sent: Wednesday, December 05, 2001 12:35 PM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Mersenne: HD crash
> 
> My hard drive crashed, and I have almost certainly lost all of the
GIMPS
> data for the exponent I was working on and 4 more I had in the queue.
The
> initial trial factorization had been done on all of them and the first
one
> was just about 4 days from completion.  What should I do about these
lost
> exponents? (I don't know which ones they were)

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RE: Mersenne: Meanwhile, in another part of the planet

[Aaron Blosser]

I would think that upon official verification of M39 (as in, 39th
*known* one anyway), everyone, no matter where they are, should raise a
toast to their fellow GIMPSers...  There's always that one lucky guy or
gal who actually manages to find one, but it's still a team effort,
because none of this would be at all possible if it weren't for the
thousands of machines out there, plugging away each and every hour of
each and every day.

Meanwhile, I'm estimating whether it would be worthwhile to take a
scenic drive down the coast from Seattle to join the fellow prime
hunters in the Bay area. :)

Aaron

> -Original Message-
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:mersenne-invalid-
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Halliday, Ian
> Sent: Sunday, November 25, 2001 10:54 PM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Mersenne: Meanwhile, in another part of the planet
> 
> I'm just quietly reading about the possibly enormous and possibly tiny
> party to celebrate the discovery of M39. Is there anyone who would
care
> to join me for a couple of quiet beers in Wellington, New Zealand to
> celebrate the same event?
> 
> Expressions of interest or flames to me off the list please. Thank
you.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Ian


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RE: Mersenne: prime

[Aaron Blosser]

Hey, no fair... you're not going to share the results of your
investigation? :)

I guess we can all wait for verification... sigh...


> -Original Message-
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:mersenne-invalid-
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Dieter Schmitt
> Sent: Wednesday, November 14, 2001 5:32 PM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Re: Mersenne: prime
> 
> Hi,
> 
> at November 1, I saved a copy of Assignments Report. Today I
downloaded
> the
> new Assignments Report and the Cleared Exponents Report. Stored the
three
> files into a database.
> 
> Knowing the new prime exponent probably had been listed at Nov. 1 but
> isn't
> listed today .. that's enough.
> 
> Doing a query for inconsistency between the two Assignments Reports
and
> another query for inconsistency between the first query result and the
> Cleared Exponents Report yields only a few possible entries >
3.500.000
> digits (<10).
> 
> I didn't look for more than 10.000.000 digits ;-)
> 
> Checking these few possibilities (IPS account ID) against hrf5.txt for
> "Who"
> @GIMPS and searching GIMPS HomePage (Top Producers/expanded
version/"Who"
> leaves only one entry matching the second condition (exponents tested
= 3)
> :-)
> 
> Of course, the new prime exponent may have been assigned after Nov., 1
> ..
> 
> Yours,
> 
> Dieter Schmitt
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
>

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RE: Mersenne: prime

[Aaron Blosser]

Bummer... it doesn't show that anymore. :(

George/Scott: can one of you verify what the situation is?  Finding a
new one, even unverified, is big news, but if it's a glitch, we'd want
to know so we don't get our hopes up. :)

Aaron

> -Original Message-
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:mersenne-invalid-
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Henk Stokhorst
> Sent: Wednesday, November 14, 2001 1:10 AM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Mersenne: prime
> 
> L.S.,
> 
> from the status.shtml page:
> 
> 
>  --- Mersenne Exponent Test State ---
> 
>   Assigned in Tests Cleared Since Last
Synchronization
> 
>   Factoring only:   8683  Factored composite:
13505
>   Lucas-Lehmer testing  :  27314  Lucas-Lehmer composite:
50306
>   Double-checking LL:   8158  Double-checked LL :
34091
>   Prime, VERIFIED   :
1
>   Prime, UNVERIFIED :
1
>   -- ---  --
---
>   TOTAL :  44155  TOTAL :
97904
> 
> YotN,
> 
> Henk
> 
> 
>

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RE: Mersenne: Re: What will we do when anyone finds a number of 10 million+ digits which is prime?

[Aaron Blosser]

Hmm... in games of chance, each game's outcome is independent of the
results of past games, so that is a valid point.

In Mersenne Prime hunting though, I think it's safe to say that
statistically there should be some prime numbers in the range we're
checking, so the more we *don't* find, the higher the odds of the
remaining ones being prime. :)  In other words, there is a certain sort
of dependence on previous outcomes.

In gambling terms, that's like saying that perhaps you could guarantee
winning one game out of every 50 hands of poker (alright, so he's a
lousy player).  If you lost 49 times, and you know you would win 1 out
of 50 times, then yes, there's a 100% chance you'll win the next hand.
:)

What's a bigger issue here is whether or not the statistical model for
how many primes we expect to find in a given range is accurate or not.
Since the probabilities are based purely on the spread of previous
primes, the sample data is pretty small, and there's already a jagged
curve to the whole thing, so any probabilities are likely to be off by a
good amount in practice.

I know we did lots of analyses prior to finding the last one, and I'm
curious how well that # fit any of the odds people had formulated.

Aaron

> -Original Message-
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:mersenne-invalid-
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Nathan Russell
> Sent: Sunday, November 04, 2001 5:49 PM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Re: Mersenne: Re: What will we do when anyone finds a number
of
> 10 million+ digits which is prime?
> 
> On Sun, 04 Nov 2001 20:09:20 -0500, Jud McCranie
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> 
> >
> >At 01:43 AM 11/5/2001 +0100, Steinar H. Gunderson wrote:
> >
> >>Speaking of which -- shouldn't we be (statistically) really close to
> finding
> >>a new prime soon?
> >
> >Yes, statistically.  You'd "expect" the next one to be before
14,000,000
> >and I've got assignments in the 13,000,000 range.  However, all
exponents
> >have been checked once only to a little past 8,000,000.
> 
> Of course, this whole argument makes (as far as I can see) heavy use
> of the gamblers' fallacy, aka the fallacy of maturation of
> probabilities ("Hey, I lost the last 50 games - what are the odds
> against me losing 51 5-man games in a row?  I'm certain to win!")
> 
> Nathan
>

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RE: Mersenne: What will we do when anyone finds a number of 10 million+ digits which is prime?

[Aaron Blosser]

Well, there's still plenty of people who'll stick to it.  There's a lot
of hardcore GIMPSers who are more than willing to keep crunching numbers
alive (some even willing to risk getting the FBI on their case) :)

Besides the "big ticket" things like finding the megadigit prime and a
ten megadigit prime, there's still all the other work of testing all the
exponents in between, confirming that Mersenne Prime XX is really the
XXth prime (and we didn't just miss any in-between).  There's the
double-checking work, and I still think it's cool when I find a really
big factor (anything over 80 bits is fun to find) of a Mersenne number.

I'm sure a lot of folks would just give up, but personally, I'd
contribute to some fund for a "prize" for the other Prime numbers we
find along the way.  

Just my 2 cents worth.

> -Original Message-
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:mersenne-invalid-
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Torben Schlüntz
> Sent: Sunday, November 04, 2001 3:03 PM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Mersenne: What will we do when anyone finds a number of 10
> million+ digits which is prime?
> 
> What will we do when anyone finds a number of 10 million+ digits which
> is prime?
> 
> Will everybody just leave the project because there is no prize to
gain
> any longer?
> 
> After the introduction of "search for 10 million digits number" this
> could leave the project with quite a big hole, say from M14.xxx.xxx
and
> up till the exponent found.
> 
> It will be kind of difficult to find new volunteers that will use time
> and electricity to fill the hole if nothing more than glory is won.
> 
> Will there be an other prize?
> Will there be a new goal?
> 
> We have the 4 or 5 biggest primes, are anyone stressing us by using
> another algorithm like the LL, have access to more CPU, working on a
> bulletproof method of generating new primes?
> 
> br
> tsc
> 
>

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RE: Mersenne: SMT

[Aaron Blosser]

I kind of like the practice that many dual processor folks have seem to
adopted (and one which I'll be switching my group of computers too)...

Namely, on dual CPU systems, have one Prime process doing LL tests, and
have the other one doing trial factoring.  Even on Compaq servers that
have GREAT cache/memory management, running 2 LL tests on each CPU will
slow down both processes.  Running one LL and one factor reduces the hit
on the memory subsystem since the factoring can generally remain in the
CPU cache of it's respective processor, leaving the LL process to better
use the memory for itself.

So perhaps this same approach could be adopted for SMT?

And just a reminder... trial factoring is still a great use of slower
machines... I have an AMD K6-III 400 that can trial factor the current
17M exponents in just about 2 days.  Yeah, P4's can do it a lot faster,
or 1.2GHz Athlons, but I'd rather have those machines concentrate on the
LL tests.

Aaron

> -Original Message-
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:mersenne-invalid-
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Sent: Sunday, November 04, 2001 1:36 PM
> To: Kel Utendorf
> Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Re: Mersenne: SMT
> 
> On 3 Nov 2001, at 21:40, Kel Utendorf wrote:
> 
> > At 21:01 11/03/2001 -0500, George Woltman wrote:
> >  >Can prime95 take advantage of SMT?  I'm skeptical.  If the FFT is
> >  broken >up to run in two threads, I'm afraid L2 cache pollution
will
> >  negate any >advantage of SMT.  Of course, I'm just guessing - to
test
> >  this theory out we >should compare our throughput running 1 vs. 2
> >  copies of prime95 on an >SMT machine.
> 
> I'm not sure I fully understand the way in which a SMT processor
> would utilise cache. But I can't see how the problem could be
> worse than running two copies of a program on a SMP system.
> This seems to work fairly well in both Windows and linux regimes
> (attatching a thread to a processor and therefore its associated
> cache, rigidly in the case of Windows, loosely but intelligently in
> the case of linux).
> 
> If an SMT processor has a unified cache, cache pollution should
> surely be not too much of a problem? Running one copy & thereby
> getting benefit of the full cache size would run that one copy faster,
> (just as happens with SMP systems where memory bandwidth can
> be crucial) but the total throughput with two copies running would
> surely be greater. Especially on a busy system, where two threads
> get twice as many timeslices as one!
> 
> If there is some way in which the FFT could be broken down into
> roughly equal sized chunks, it _might_ be worth synchronizing two
> streams so that e.g. transform in on one thread was always in
> parallel with transform out on the other, and vice versa. Obviously
> you'd need to be running on two different exponents but using the
> same FFT length to gain from this technique. Whether this would
> be any better than running unsynchronized would probably require
> experimentation.
> >
> > Could things be setup so that factoring and LL-testing went on
> > "simultaneously?"  This would speed up the overall amount of work
> > being done.
> 
> Because trial factoring, or P-1/ECM on _small_ exponents, have a
> very low memory bus loading, running a LL test and factoring in
> parallel on a dual-processor SMP system makes a lot of sense. I
> suspect the same situation would apply in an SMT environment.
> 
> The "problem" of mass deployment (almost everyone in this
> position, instead of only a few of us) is that there is a great deal
of
> LL testing effort required in comparison to trial factoring, so
running
> two LL tests in parallel but inefficiently would bring us to
> "milestones" faster than the efficient LL/trial factoring split.
> 
> 
> Regards
> Brian Beesley
>

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RE: Mersenne: [Fwd: Luke Welsh's Email Address]

[Aaron Blosser]

Luke:  I'd volunteer to host a site for you in the short term if you
were interested...  I'd also volunteer to host the Mersenne list on our
mail server since our mail server has a license for unlimited lists,
browse-able archives, etc.  Just holler.

> -Original Message-
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:mersenne-invalid-
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Halliday, Ian
> Sent: Wednesday, October 31, 2001 8:38 AM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Mersenne: [Fwd: Luke Welsh's Email Address]
> 
> Luke, the list owner, is in the process of changing hosting services.
I
> haven't heard from him since he sent me the following, which suggests
> that the link is dead, but that he will be sorting it out.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Ian
> 
>  Original Message 
> Subject: Luke Welsh's Email Address
> From: Luke Welsh
> 
> Hello Everybody--
> 
> Well, it looks line my dear, old, original ISP is finally calling it
> quits.
> 
> Sad.
> 
> Soon my personal email address, [EMAIL PROTECTED], will cease to
exist.
> 
> I'll find a new home for my Mersenne pages, link-rot and all.  But
this
> may not happen for some time.  I will try to get a larger disk quota
> so I can host the Mersenne-Digest mailing list archives.
> 
> On the plus side, my spam-o-meter should register somewhat lower :-)

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RE: SV: Mersenne: number of processors participating

[Aaron Blosser]

> One way to improve the performance in these circumstances is to
> reduce the minimum timeslice for low-priority processes. This will
> cause the task scheduler to be "busier" and therefore reduce the
> overall performance to some extent, but multimedia type
> applications will coexist much more happily with compute-intensive
> tasks if this is done.
> 
> Sorry, I have no idea how to do this, or even whether it is possible,
> in any of the versions of Windows.

There is a program that can set the quanta for programs... let me find
that durned thing...

Aha.  http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/freeware/frob.shtml

Good old sysinternals... they have the neatest tools.

Apparently that's just for NT4 machines (I think...).  For Win2K (and
presumably XP?), they have another page that tells you about the
settings on there, and to wait for a new version of Frob that works with
win2k.

http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/info/nt5.shtml

Aaron

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Re: SV: Mersenne: number of processors participating

[Aaron Blosser]

Still the only time I've ever seen Prime95/NTPrime slow down a system is when I was 
doing some Netmeeting video conferences.

With it running, the video conference would run DOG slow.  Stop the NTPrime service 
and curiously had to restart the video conference for the effect, but the video would 
then be running great.

That was with, umm.. version 20 I think?  I haven't tried again with later versions... 
wasn't one of the things George did something to do with the priority setting?

Aaron

- Original Message - 
From: "Torben Schlüntz" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Monday, October 29, 2001 3:23 PM
Subject: SV: SV: Mersenne: number of processors participating


> Yep! But the time entry only allows the program to sleep (still eating
> all CPU cycles even when running at zero priority). Take any NT 4.0 or
> W2K machine and you will see the "system idle time"  doesn't add seconds
> while Prime95 still eats them (and doing nothing).
> For my servers to become prime95's I need to be sure they only run what
> I have planned at anytime.
> I can start Prime95 scheduled. I don't mind!
> But the users should never have one chance of  claiming servers aren't
> available or even running "slow". 
> I know you are certain and I know you gotta be damn good at this (very
> far beyond anything I will ever manage); but still any doubt will become
> my users advantage.
> Make the sleepy nights for my servers glorius. I make them start prime95
> by a schedule and You make prime95 die by harikiri - and I decide when
> everything happens. :-) Tnx in advance.
>  
> Still happy hunting
> tsc
>  
> 
> -Oprindelig meddelelse- 
> Fra: George Woltman 
> Sendt: ma 29-10-2001 22:47 
> Til: Torben Schlüntz 
> Cc: 
> Emne: Re: SV: Mersenne: number of processors participating
> 
> 
> 
> Hi,
> 
> At 10:01 PM 10/29/2001 +0100, you wrote:
> >I would like to use the servers; but I haven't been able to
> persuade
> >George to make a Quit function like
> >
> >  quit_at: 06:00
> >
> >to terminate the program when users arrives and optimum
> performance is
> >needed
> 
> Look in readme.txt for the Time= entry in prime.ini
> This feature can be used to make prime95 go dormant at a
> specified time.
> 
> Hope that helps,
> George
> 
> 
> 
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Re: Mersenne: Re: AthlonXP

[Aaron Blosser]

First, the point about XP running on a 286 if it were optimized... I was being 
facetious.  Didn't think people would take me literally.  That being said, I'll modify 
that and say it could run on a *386*. :)

Maybe we're not understanding what is meant by "microcode"... The only CPU I've 
designed was a 4-bit system that didn't use microcode to get it's work done (it was 
for a class), so I can't claim direct experience, but I at least thought I knew what 
the word microcode implied... a level of abstraction, if you will, between the opcodes 
and the actual hardware... a reduced instruction set sitting there that could take 
some of those complex codes and break it down into the fundamental instructions.

Anyway, that's why I said that a RISC processor has more flexibility in that regard, 
because you have a near 1-1 corellation with the opcodes and what the CPU is directly 
capable of, and any higher level things you want to do are up to the programmer.

So, that was my understanding, at least, but if I'm wrong then I suppose it'd be good 
to be educated. :)

Aaron

- Original Message - 
From: "Paul Leyland" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Aaron Blosser" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; "Mersenne@Base. Com" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Tuesday, October 16, 2001 8:45 AM
Subject: RE: Mersenne: Re: AthlonXP


> Well, I suppose RISC is about as close as you can get to 
> that.  Microcode,  for reasons best known to someone
> familiar with CPU design, is not something
> you can just reprogram on the fly...

I beg to differ.  As someone who has written megabytes of microcode,
including an entire IEEE floating point instruction set, a C machine, a
LispKit machine and a large chunk of a graph reduction machine in AMD
2900 series bit-slice ucode (that dates me!) I can state authoritatively
that updating ucode on the fly is not necessarily hard.  Just because
modern cpus don't provide run-time loadable ucode (if anyone knows of
present day examples, please let me know) doesn't mean that it's
impossible.  Indeed, the IA-64 architecture comes damned close to being
a ucodable machine, as the assembly language is very low level in many
respects.

The main reason, IMO, why runtime loadable ucode isn't more widely
available is that there is no perceived large market for it.  We sold
our machines primarily to labs who were researching machine
architectures.  Some years before that, DEC sold PDP-11/60 boxes with
writable control store for organizations that needed fast and custom
data capture.  The nuclear and particle physics communities loved them.

> of it.  Now, if all programmers were as concerned about
> optimizing code as George is, we
> could run Windows XP on a 286 system if you really wanted... 
> optimized code can do wonders on even the slowest systems. :)

Actually, a 286 would have big problems running WinXP, not least because
its lack of support for demand paged virtual memory and inadequate
kernel/user separation.  That's why Linux requires at least a 386.


Paul

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Re: Mersenne: Re: AthlonXP

[Aaron Blosser]

Well, I suppose RISC is about as close as you can get to that.  Microcode,
for reasons best known to someone familiar with CPU design, is not something
you can just reprogram on the fly...

But RISC instructions are made to map to microcode (or *is* the microcode),
allowing a programmer to fine tune the higher level instructions in whatever
way they see fit.

All the other fancy schmancy CPU stuff just keeps the instruction pipelines
churning along at top efficiency.  That's the long and short of it.  Now, if
all programmers were as concerned about optimizing code as George is, we
could run Windows XP on a 286 system if you really wanted... optimized code
can do wonders on even the slowest systems. :)

Aaron

- Original Message -
From: "Steinar H. Gunderson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Monday, October 15, 2001 2:33 PM
Subject: Mersenne: Re: AthlonXP


> On Mon, Oct 15, 2001 at 07:35:36PM -, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> >What I would like to see in a CPU is a means where you could
> >upload your own microcode, enabling design of specific instruction
> >sets to handle particular problems very efficiently.
>
> What about (in an ideal world) just programming microcode directly,
without
> having to make an extra instruction set on top of that? Suddenly, you
would
> have both instant access to all the "ports" (or whatever the CPU makers
call
> their execution units these days), a lot of registers, etc.. In addition,
the
> problem with only a single decoder etc. on P4 would effectively go away
> entirely.
>
> The only problem I could see would be a lot more code having to go over
the
> bus (and occupy more space in the instruction cache), especially as some
> people have pointed out that the microcode might very well be some form of
> VLIW :-) At least for us Linux users, having to recompile everything
wouldn't
> be _that_ big of a problem -- source for about everything you'd need would
be
> readily available (except that mprime would have to be ported, of course
;-)
> )...


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Re: FW: Mersenne: Re: Factoring Failure?

[Aaron Blosser]

If we could indeed track these to a single user, I've got about 25-30 AMD
1.2 GHz processors that I could throw at the situation for a short time,
just to quickly re-trial factor these and put our minds to rest.

Aaron

- Original Message -
> However if it could be established that all the "missed" factors
> reported were the work of one user, perhaps it would be worth fixing
> the database to force rerunning of trial factoring for those factoring
> assignments run by that user when the exponents are reassigned
> for double checking (or LL testing).
>
> Regards
> Brian Beesley


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Re: Mersenne: Torture test passes but normal use fails!

[Aaron Blosser]

Maybe it's a case of the new version working *too* 
good.  The improvements to the code, like the prefetch, is doing such a 
good job of keeping the FPU busy that it heats up more and causes problems if 
you've overclocked.
 
That'd be interesting, if true.
 
Meanwhile, I hope and pray that any New York or DC 
(and other area) GIMPSers are okay.
 
Aaron

  - Original Message - 
  From: 
  Canart Jean-Yves 
  To: '[EMAIL PROTECTED]' 
  Sent: Wednesday, September 12, 2001 9:03 
  AM
  Subject: FW: Mersenne: Torture test 
  passes but normal use fails!
  
  I 
  had the same problem on my overclocked Athlon that started to 
  produce SUMOUT errors when I upgraded prime95 to 
  V21.  
  At 
  the same time, I saw that the processor temperature went up from 45° to 50° 
  Celsius. 
  To 
  fix the problem, I had to reduce the overclocking and I lost 25% of 
  speed improvements...
   
  Regards, Jean-Yves

Re: Mersenne: Prime Net Server

[Aaron Blosser]

The thing is that even a 2-3 day outage is no big 
deal, because if we are all responsible GIMPSers, then we have our "days of 
work" configuration set to more than a couple days worth, right?  So the 
worst that should have happened is that you have a result to check back in and 
have to wait for that while the next number is already crunching. 
:)

  - Original Message - 
  From: 
  [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
  To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
  Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
  Sent: Sunday, September 09, 2001 10:34 
  PM
  Subject: AW: Mersenne: Prime Net 
  Server
  
  I 
  beg your pardon: you didn´t really expect to get informed about a planned 
  outage BEFORE it happens or a crash AFTER it happened, did 
  you?
   
  If 
  you did expect this, then you should have joined another distributed-computing 
  project like SETI. They do inform their participants about such things. But 
  people who are cool enough to find million-digit-primes should be able to find 
  out that the server is down the whole weekend. Well, you have to pay for 
  it (in Germany), but who cares?
   
  Such 
  an outage didn´t occur for the first time in my (nearly) three years 
  supporting GIMPS and others will follow. May be that´s one reason why GIMPS 
  lost about 8.000 to 9.000 machines during the last six 
  months.
   
  Regards
  Achim
  
Ursprüngliche Nachricht-Von: Matt Goodrich 
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]Gesendet: Samstag, 8. September 
2001 21:36An: Mersenne List (E-mail)Betreff: Mersenne: 
Prime Net Server
Is there 
scheduled maint. going on with the server today, or is this a unscheduled 
outage?
Matt

Re: Mersenne: NT / 2000 / XP users

[Aaron Blosser]

Of course, I use the NT service version of Prime which installs itself as a
service.  Of course, as George mentioned, you don't get the nice user
interface, but considering I run it on a bunch of "lights out" machines, I
could care less about the interface. :)

Plus, sometimes George doesn't get the NT service version out as soon as the
Prime95 versions. :)

- Original Message -
From: "Jeff Woods" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Tuesday, September 04, 2001 5:25 PM
Subject: Re: Mersenne: NT / 2000 / XP users


> At 07:41 PM 9/4/01 -0400, you wrote:
>
> >Can someone explain to me why (and if) it's better to run Prime95 as a
> >service under these OSs?  Is there a speed advantage?  Also, who would be
> >serving whom?
>
> The primary advantage is that it remains running regardless of who (if
> anyone) is actually logged onto the box.   Much in the same "general
> concept" of how mprime runs on Linux in the background of the context of
> the user ID that started it, mprime continues to run until killed, even if
> the user that started mprime logs off the Linux box.   NT services are the
> same -- they AUTOMATICALLY start (if so configured) at bootup, and
> automatically start up in the context of a specific user (i.e. an
auto-cron
> job on a Linux box, a user's start.start file), and runs until stopped, no
> matter who logs in or out of the machine.
>
> This can be of great benefit to those NT boxen that may be rebooted --
it's
> the only way to auto-start an application in that manner, without hacking
> the registry to automatically log a user onto the box, and that presents a
> security hole to fly the space shuttle through.
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Re: Mersenne: Re: Windows XP: Start at Bootup

[Aaron Blosser]

So far as I know, the Run under HKLM will only run at system startup, so
there's no risk of multiple instances there... but I'm not 100% sure if it
runs right away, or if it waits until a user actually logs on... I think it
might not run until there's a logon.

If different users on a machine had an entry in HKCU for the Run, well, it
would run under that user's context and then quit when they logout.  No
biggie, but if you had a terminal server with multiple users logged on at
once, I guess you could get multiple instances running.

Also, if it was set in the HKLM *and* in HKCU, you could get multiple
instances... I know multiple instances of the program are allowed, for use
in multi-processor system, but maybe there's some way to figure out if it's
already running in that same directory, with the same ini files?  just to
prevent problems with two instances trying to use the same temp files and
causing havoc, slowing the LL tests down, etc... dunno much about how that
would be programmed.

If running Prime95 (and not the NTPrime) as a service is what's trying to be
done, then the SRVANY program from the resource kit can do that, but
including that with the Prime package might not be legal, and would increase
the size too, but it could certainly be "scripted" in any installer program
(pretty easy to setup).

- Original Message -
From: "George Woltman" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Ethan O'Connor" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Friday, August 31, 2001 8:57 AM
Subject: RE: Mersenne: Re: Windows XP: Start at Bootup


> Hi,
>
> At 11:03 AM 8/31/2001 -0400, Ethan O'Connor wrote:
> >The "Start at bootup" menu choice works fine for me on XP. Could this be
a
> >privileges issue? I notice that the registry key is in Run under
> >HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE rather than HKEY_CURRENT_USER, so I think you'll to be
> >running prime95 with administrative privileges to create that key...
>
> My response:
>
> >Prime95 tries to create the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE entry first.  If that
fails,
> >then it tries to create the HKEY_CURRENT_USER entry.  Perhaps there is a
> bug in this new code, but I cannot test it out here.
>
> Any insights would be appreciated.
>
> Also, I noticed in browsing Microsoft's web site that XP allows different
> users to
> logon at the same time.  Does this cause any problems if both users try to
run
> prime95 from the same folder?  I don't think so, but an actual test would
> be nice.
>
> Thanks,
> George


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Re: Mersenne: Proth observations

[Aaron Blosser]

> Windows NT and Win2000 users should consider changing prime95's priority
> to two.  There have been reports that idle priority doesn't work as
documented
> in the Microsoft documentation.

I'd be curious about that... I haven't heard anything, but then I haven't
looked either. :)

As I've said before, the only time I've ever seen an actual program run
slower when Prime95/NT was running is when I'm running any sort of video
capture, such as NetMeeting.  NetMeeting vid conferences just run DOG slow
when I have my ntprime going, but if I stop the service, then the video
picks up greatly.

I figured that perhaps the codec just ran at idle priority also (which would
make sense to me anyway), so you have two CPU intensive things competing for
resources...

Aaron

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RE: Mersenne: taxifornia brownout

[Aaron Blosser]

> You may have heard that our so-called Governor, here in the
> great state of Taxifornia has proposed replacing rolling
> blackouts with universal brownouts:  reducing line voltage
> about 10-15% on hot days this summer.  Any guesses
> at how that will effect a computer running GIMPS?

Power supplies in today's PC's can usually switch fine down to 80-90 V
AC.

However, running like that for prolonged periods can cause problems in
the long run since it forces the switching supply to run less
efficiently.

Also, brownouts can be really bad on motors.  They have to work "harder"
with less voltage and can easily burn out with as little as a 10%
reduction in potential.

In fact, for air conditioners, refrigerators, fans, etc. it's better to
just turn them off during brownouts, otherwise you may be quite
displeased to find that your refrigerator's condenser has pooped out on
you, or that your ceiling fan is making unusual grinding noises now.

Brownouts can even cause fires when marginal motors start to burn out
and actually combust.

No... that's why rolling blackouts are a MUCH better alternative than
simply reducing line voltage.  If they overdid it, you'd be creating
much more problems.

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RE: Mersenne: SUMOUT errors

[Aaron Blosser]

> I also opened up the machine this past weekend and cleaned out some
> dust, in addition to removing and reinserting the memory, which had
> become slightly loose at one end.  I also fixed the plastic
> air-directing device over the CPU, which was a little loose and
> causing some annoying noises.

I'm always surprised (well, not really) at how incredibly dusty some
people's machines can get.

Maybe I'm just obsessive/compulsive, but I regularly clean all my
systems at least every 2 months or so. :)  Shut it down, take the can of
compressed air and give it a good dusting.

It wouldn't surprise me at all if a layer of dust sitting on your CPU or
memory were causing overheating problems in some way or another.

In humid areas, the dust will tend to absorb moisture and make a sticky
residue which I'm sure could even cause shorting.

Matter of fact, I had an old monitor I used to tote around with me...
when I moved from Denver to Raleigh, I noticed the monitor would, every
now and then, just short itself out in a brilliant display.  Then it'd
start working again.  Finally I opened it up and saw that it had been
arcing across some traces on the board where the humid air obviously was
just too good a conductor to pass up.

Why this monitor maker (some generic Korean company or another) chose to
put higher voltage traces so near to lower potential traces, I have no
idea.  But more interesting was that in the dry Colorado air, I never
had a problem.  Only the muggy atmosphere of North Carolina set it off.
Once I moved back to Colorado, it worked great again.

My little bro and I could tell stories from when we both worked at a
computer store.  In one case, guy having problems brought his machine in
and there were actually spiders living inside the thing.  Dunno if he
used this thing in a barn or what, but that was interesting.  Usually
the bugs we saw were already dead, but not always.

Sort of gives new life to the term "debugging".

SUMOUT errors could also be the result of improperly seated CPU or
memory, so I'm glad you reseated all that... may have made more of a
difference than merely cleaning it out.

During my USWEST escapade (just "celebrated" the 3 year anniversary of
being caught, by the way), I was keeping track of which machines were
having problems.  I think I saw about 4 or 5 machines of the 3500 or so.
I was going to send that list to the techs in those areas to have them
reseat things to see if that was the problem, but of course I never had
the chance.  Somewhere, US WEST (now Qwest) and the FBI have a list of
machines with flaky hardware... hopefully they checked them out and
fixed them. :)

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Normal behaviour? -> Re: Mersenne: Strange behaviour

[Aaron Blosser]

Guido,

How much RAM is in your machine?  Those large exponents can easily use a
large chunk of memory when doing the P-1 testing, if I recall correctly.  A
relatively small amount of RAM could cause some serious paging to occur if
it's running low.

And it's normal for it to do a new test for a new FFT size.  Your local.ini
file should have lines in there indicating which FFT sizes it's done a test
on already.  I'd recommend letting it run those tests so it can make sure
the boundaries are working right on your machine.

Aaron
-
-- Original Message --
-
Don't like to take up your time, but the behaviour of Prime95 on a 750@795
Duron, P-1 factoring on 33.3mio exponent (B1=35 and B2=4025000), is
quite strange. The Duron completed the stage 1 without any problem, but
during the stage 2 the time per iteration has slow down a lot, from 0.650
sec/it to many minutes for just one iteration.
Above all the pc is unusable, so I've decided to edit manually worktodo.ini:
fromTest=33306743,68,0
to  Test=33306743,68,1
to force prime95 to skip the factoring stage when the process was done for
about 30%
(The intermediate file mX306743 sizes 8,132 KB).
I've tried to put everything on another machine but with no results: the
behaviour was the same.
Skipping the P-1 factoring stage shouldn't invalidate the LL test, as George
says in undoc.txt:

You can force prime95 to skip the trial factoring step prior to
running a Lucas-Lehmer test.  In prime.ini add this line:
 SkipTrialFactoring=1

By the way: I've done it but apparently nothing has changed. If I've
understood properly, adding this line is like to manually edit worktodo.ini.
Isn't it?

Is it better if I force prime95 to start p-1 factoring from zero once again,
hoping any problem occurs this time? What may be the problem? Has anybody
ever observed something like this?

Last question: is it normal that prime95 runs a self test each time it is
going to test with different FFT sizes?

Thank you in advance for answering and best regards from Italy.

Guido72


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Re: Mersenne: Various ways of changing horses in mid-stream

[Aaron Blosser]

> > Here's what I do.  I just copy the prime.spl file from my
> > non-connected machine to my connected machine, and it'll send the
> > result from that one. No muss, no fuss.  Your credit screen shows that
> > the machine you connected from is actually the one that did the work,
> > but oh well.
>
> Yes, that makes more sense than my suggestion - if only because
> prime.spl isn't big enough to cause complications due to
> fragmentation when using conventional 1.44 MByte sneakernet
> packets ;-)

The way I figured it, that prime.spl file simply has the results to send to
the server, so it wouldn't really matter if it was sent from the server that
actually did the work or not.  Doesn't seem to make any difference, so I'm
happy.

I'd be happier with my DSL connection back. :(

> (OT) What's up with DSL in the US at the moment? There seems to be a
> sudden spate of problems with several DSL service providers!

Good question.  My problem is because I was a PhoenixDSL customer that was
sold to Megapath and then sold to Telocity.  Telocity is now DirectTV DSL.
Good grief... changing hands that many times, I'm not surprised they've had
me out of service for a month and a half.

When I made my daily call to tech support to URGE them to do something, the
recorded message mentioned an outage in (Chicago maybe?) it said that it was
expected to be down for about a week.  A whole city out for maybe a week.
Yow!

My guess is that the economy, being in this tech downturn, is having an
effect now.  Companies are laying off employees since that's usually the
easiest short term way to cut costs.  Of course this creates other long term
hassles, like service tickets piling up beyond belief, but aren't the
shareholders happy? :)


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Re: Mersenne: Various ways of changing horses in mid-stream

[Aaron Blosser]

> 6) Finally, the result can be submitted using the PrimeNet manual
> assignment form - or, since you will be using Prime95 or mprime, you
> could copy a very late Pnnn save file to the connected system
> using "sneakernet", add the assignment line back into its
> worktodo.ini file _at the beginning_ then stop & restart the client
> so that the last few iterations are run on the connected system (as
> well as the unconnected system) & the result sent automatically. This
> latter method is a bit messier but does let you get the CPU credit.

George and/or Steve would probaby roll over in their ... well, not a grave
since they're both quite alive...

Here's what I do.  I just copy the prime.spl file from my non-connected
machine to my connected machine, and it'll send the result from that one.
No muss, no fuss.  Your credit screen shows that the machine you connected
from is actually the one that did the work, but oh well.

I only know this because my home network is currently lacking it's DSL
connection (darn Telocity!) so I dialup from another machine and copy
results from each of my 6 other boxes.  Of course when my DSL works, it all
goes through a router.



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Re: Mersenne: Re: Various ways of changing horses in mid-stream

[Aaron Blosser]

> >As another point, I have five Athlon/850 machines in the computer lab at
> >college; so I've installed mprime in five separate directories on the
shared
> >file space, and let it allocate its own computer names. Yesterday I got
fed
> >up with trying to remember that CA1C7B916 was actually the machine called
> >ouzo, so I stopped mprime on each machine, edited local.ini to change the
> >name, and restarted mprime. Has this confused everything horribly?
>
> Possibly, yes -- but I don't think it's critical, as long as you didn't
> switch usernames, PrimeNet should still accept the result. However, the
> right thing to do this is (as far as I know) simply to edit the computer
> information from the mprime menu (mprime -m) -- if you do that, mprime
> will (again, as far as I know :-) ) tell the PrimeNet server about the
> change.

I've changed my computer names before just by editing the local.ini file.
No problems... next time it updates the info on the server or checks in
results, it'll reflect the changed name.  And even if it didn't, no big deal
anyway.


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Re: Mersenne: Re: Different results

[Aaron Blosser]

> On Fri, May 18, 2001 at 07:47:10AM -0700, Aaron Blosser wrote:
> >The WW1 is part of Scott's security check, just to make sure it's not
been
> >falsely generated or some such.  I assume part of it is related to the
date,
> >time, or some other such thing which is why there's one part that's
> >different?
>
> Wouldn't the last part be the shift count?

Um, could be. :)  Let's face it, I'm not 100% sure what the last part is
there.  I know there's the security check, but I dunno what the other stuff
is.  You're probably right. :)


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Re: Mersenne: Different results

[Aaron Blosser]

> 1) When testing a new Pc, I obtain two different results from the old and
the new one
>
> M9357637 is not prime. Res64: BCB1164E6826255E. WW1:
C4F561C3,5448242,
> M9357637 is not prime. Res64: BCB1164E6826255E. WW1:
C4F261C3,5448242,0003
>
> Are this results compatible ?
>
> 2) I often restart my new PC (for installation purpose of windows 98 se
...).
> It seems Prime95 is beginning the calculus two early (?) and produce
ILLEGAL SUMOUT ERROR.
> Instead of waiting five minutes, I can stop prime (test/stop menu) then
continue
> (test/ continue menu). Theire are no more errors after that.
>
> Is there any way to delay prime95 starting calculus by one minute at boot
time ?

Yup, it's the same.  The Res64 is what's important there... it's the residue
left over after the final iteration (just the last 64 bits worth anyway...)

The WW1 is part of Scott's security check, just to make sure it's not been
falsely generated or some such.  I assume part of it is related to the date,
time, or some other such thing which is why there's one part that's
different?

If you want to delay Prime95 starting up... hmm...not sure why you'd want to
do that, but...

Perhaps instead of having it run as a service, you could just put it in your
startup group so it doesn't run until you logon.

Or, make a batch file and use the SLEEP.EXE program (well, I know it comes
with the NT Resource Kit, and there's something similar for Win9x as well)
that'll wait for 60 seconds and then launch prime95.  That can be setup in
the "runservices" key so it starts when the system boots.

Aaron


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Mersenne: Differences betwixt NTPrime and Prime95

[Aaron Blosser]

> >Hmm... well, then again, I'm looking at the NTPrime.  I've only got one
> >machine running Prime95, and it's been so long...
> >
> >I thought it had all the same options though, but I could just be
terribly
> >mistaken.
> >
> >Running NTSetup (part of the NT service package), I show version
20.6.5...

> I have version 20.6.1 - and the web page reads that all versions were
> last updated June 15 2000.  Something odd is going on...

Turns out that Prime95 is indeed 20.6.1 and NTPrime shows up as 20.6.5.

And yes, NTSetup will show the option I mentioned above, but Prime95 only
has a checkmark for receiving occassional newsletters.  How interesting.

Well, clears up that mystery.

Aaron


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Re: Mersenne: missing exponents?

[Aaron Blosser]

Hmm... well, then again, I'm looking at the NTPrime.  I've only got one
machine running Prime95, and it's been so long...

I thought it had all the same options though, but I could just be terribly
mistaken.

Running NTSetup (part of the NT service package), I show version 20.6.5...

Aaron


- Original Message - On Mon, 14 May 2001 17:27:19 -0700, Aaron
Blosser wrote:

>> On 14 May 2001, at 19:04, Brian J. Beesley wrote:
>> > There is already a mechanism where people can opt in or out of being
>> > notified if an assignment is due to expire.
>>
>> There is? At the risk of looking dim, what is it?
>
>In the "user information" config window, you enter your email address and
>there's a checkbox to "receive email from Primenet server if exponents are
>about to expire".

I can't find this in my copy (Prime95 20.6.1).

Nathan


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Re: Mersenne: missing exponents?

[Aaron Blosser]

> On 14 May 2001, at 19:04, Brian J. Beesley wrote:
> > There is already a mechanism where people can opt in or out of being
> > notified if an assignment is due to expire.
>
> There is? At the risk of looking dim, what is it?

In the "user information" config window, you enter your email address and
there's a checkbox to "receive email from Primenet server if exponents are
about to expire".


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Re: Mersenne: Purpose of the self-test; also, aren't P4s fast!

[Aaron Blosser]

> The P4's PSU fan seems to step up a gear when I've been running Prime95
for
> a few hours, though the CPU temperature reported by Intel Active Monitor
on
> my D850GB board doesn't go about 46C. I suspect the P4 probably runs too
hot
> for it to be possible to build a really quiet solution, but does anyone
have
> suggestions? In its current state I'd get no sleep if I left the machine
> running overnight, so I'll probably be running Prime95 only if I remember
to
> set it going when I wake up.

Any machine that has a variable speed fan will probably have this same thing
happen.

On a couple newer Compaq Proliant servers (which have temperature sensitive
fans), it's very obvious to tell when I've started the Prime service,
because the fans nearly instantly speed up and are noisier.

This is, of course, because normally the CPU is pretty idle, not generating
much heat at all.  But when the service starts, the FPU is suddenly in full
time use, and the core generates more heat, which causes the temp switch to
notice this, and causes the fans to speed up to dissipate the extra heat.

Hearing your fans kick into high gear is a good sign... it means your system
is working as intended. :)  I'm thankful that most of my servers are off in
an air-conditioned room down the hall a bit.  It was a real pain when I had
a Proliant cluster in my office undergoing some testing, and having those
fans spin at full tilt.   And if you've ever been around a Proliant server,
you'll know what I mean because those things have about a million different
fans in them.

> 33M ticks per iteration for M5171311, which is 25.8 milliseconds on this
> 1300MHz machine; so one double-check in that range every 36 hours. That's
> about a factor six faster than the P2/350 I just sold, and I recall that
> machine as having been at least four times faster than the P90 I had when
I
> started running Prime95 ... I'll have done noticeably more calculation by
> the end of next month than that P90 did during its lifetime.

Hmm... your P4 at 1.3GHz should, on face value, be 3.8 times faster, and
according to George, you should be seeing an extra 3 times improvement in
the P4 execution for an overall boost (over a P2/350) of over 11 times.  Of
course, that's assuming similar cache architecture, bus speeds, etc. which
we know isn't the case.  In fact, without the new code, I'd expect a P4 1300
to be more than 3.8 times faster than  P2/350, just on the basis of the
memory architecture, FSB (and thus memory) speeds, etc.

I assume your beta has been configured with the proper CPU type?

Aaron


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Overriding assigned exponent type (was Re: Mersenne: Re: 26 exponents)

[Aaron Blosser]

> > >Secondly, if - when I ask the server to give me "whatever kind of work
makes
> > >most sense" - it gives me something else, whether out of spurious
concern for
> > >my feelings or for any other reason, then not only are the programmers
> > >betraying my trust in them, they are also indicating that they don't
trust me
> > >to ask for what I want.
>
> I agree. Either you allow people to choose the type of work they
> want, or you tell people plainly that you will select for them the
> type of work you will ask them to do. Either works, but a mixture is
> inconsistent.

I'm confused... I know there's the option to have Primenet "request whatever
type of work makes the most sense", or you can uncheck that and select a
particular type.  That works fine.

However, if you do select multiple options, the server will still select
which, from among those options, is most suitable for your machine.

Personally, I'd always wondered why it let you select multiple types when
the point was to override any server "default" and get the type you want.

It should be a radio box instead of a combo box on that one, near as I can
figure.

<...>
> Clearly this is ridiculous. I don't have a problem with George
> offerring a few exponents "selectively" through this list, because
> the list does not have a closed membership. The only sane alternative
> is to wait for "deadline critical" assignments to complete in the
> normal way - something which some people have vociferously objected
> to.

Agreed with that, Brian.  Besides, people on this list are probably more
interested in what's going on than the fellow who just likes knowing that
his computer is doing something with all those spare cycles.  So offering
limited "cool" things to list subscribers is fine by me.

Perhaps there could be an option somewhere in the "user information" (same
place you set your email address) that would allow you to "opt in" to the
mailing list?  I fear that many folks may not be aware of the list, or find
that subscribing seems too hard (odd as that may sound to us experts :)

Next time they're online, it'll update their computer info, generate a
subscribe letter for that email address, and they'd still have to respond to
the subscribe message, but it's a heckuva lot easier for some people that
way.

Of course, it would require Scott to do something on Primenet to allow such
an option to be trackable, and to generate the subscribe messages to the
list.  But I reckon you'd see the list membership jump up quite a bit if
only it was easier for folks to subscribe.

Aaron


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Re: Mersenne: Emails and virus (slightly OT) :)

[Aaron Blosser]

> >Sorry, I just felt the urge to say this. There is nothing particualarily
> >bad about Outlook Express, these various viruses require you to excute
> >attachments, and you can do that in any mail client..
>
> Not true!  With Outlook Express all you have to do is read the message.
> The virus can be embedded in the message with Outlook Express.  The
> "Wscript.KakWorm" virus is a particularly bad example of this.
> For details see:
>
>http://www.sarc.com/avcenter/venc/data/wscript.kakworm.html

Well, that's true if you haven't upgraded your IE with the latest security
patches, and especially true if you're security zones are left at the
default which allow all sorts of nonsense to go on.

Call me paranoid ("Hey, paranoid!"), but setting your security zones in IE
to be more restrictive is absolutely vital.  I'm puzzled as to why older
versions of IE were so lax.  I haven't tried it, but my co-workers who are
more daring have said that the IE6 beta actually does a better job of
restricting your sites more, so the Internet site allows less
monkey-business.

The Kakworm, fortunately, never made it "big time", but you're right, that
was a fine example of an HTML email actually being able to cause some
damage.  One can only ponder what would have happened had it spread better.

Aaron


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Re: Mersenne: Emails and virus (slightly OT) :)

[Aaron Blosser]

> > I'll try to keep this a little bit on-topic...  Does this mailing list
do
> > any sort of virus scanning?  I know you can't post to the list unless
you're
> > actually on the list, but any scanning going on?
>
> No there isn't any virus scanning going on.
>
> There is however a message limit that tends to block most attachments.
>
> FWIW, I work at Postini, http://www.postini.com , a company that provides
> real time email spam and virus blocking services.  Customers simply point
> their MX records at us, and then we take care of the rest, filtering
> stuff out, and passing on just the good mail.  I don't however run
base.com
> mail through Postini.  base.com provides me a portal on the net without
the
> Postini filters in place.  This is useful for collecting spam which can
> then be used to tune Postini's spam filtering engine.

I was just wondering... that Homepage virus that was going around last week
was actually relatively small.  I don't know what size limits you have on
the list, but it did cross my mind: what would happen if someone got a virus
and had [EMAIL PROTECTED] in their address book (as I do).

As for blocking spam, I created a spam user and try to advertise that as
much as possible, hoping it'll get on as many lists as there are.

The email software we use, Communigate, will reject any email that has that
spamtrap user as one of the recipients.  Works fine for those spammers that
use to: or cc: fields, but not really much help for the bcc.  Oh well.

I wonder... could the base.com be setup to block all attachments, or, for
that matter, block HTML posts, allowing text only?

Aaron (who is currently fighting off some spam of his own... grid.net user
bouncing off mindspring.net and then into our machines... argh!)


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Mersenne: Emails and virus (slightly OT) :)

[Aaron Blosser]

> >Sorry, I just felt the urge to say this. There is nothing particualarily
> >bad about Outlook Express, these various viruses require you to excute
> >attachments, and you can do that in any mail client.. If any other mail
> >client gets as popular as OE, then it will start to have viruses aimed at
> >it's address book too!

> Chris, I don't think he was bashing Outlook PER SE -- just the version
> number in question.  There have been MANY MANY security fixes to OE since
> that release, which came with Internet Explorer FOUR a few years
> back.  Even the granola OE that comes with IE 5 (v5.00.2314.1300) has been
> radically security-patched since release

FWIW, one of the best ways to protect your email against virii is at the
server level.

My current job involves, among other things, administering a couple hundred
email domains, and I'm just appalled to see all the viruses that pass
through our system each and every day.  There are a LOT of viruses out
there, and a LOT of people who have no scanning.

Of course, we've got our system set to block all VBS files, and we only
grudginly allow EXE's (we do scan them though).

And of course, in our own company, it was easy enough to just set VBS files
to auto-open with notepad rather than running via wscript, merely by
changing the default file association.

I'll try to keep this a little bit on-topic...  Does this mailing list do
any sort of virus scanning?  I know you can't post to the list unless you're
actually on the list, but any scanning going on?

Hopefully the folks on this list are bright enough that they know better
than to run any executables they receive via email...

Aaron


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Re: Mersenne: W2K screen saver vs. Prime95

[Aaron Blosser]

> I just up(?)graded from NT4 to Win2000.  In the old NT4 screen
> saver selections was a "Blank Screen" option that I used.  It
> would blank the screen when it locked my keyboard but it didn't
> run any active screen program that would take cycles from
> Prime95. Under W2K I don't have any Blank Screen option.  If I
> want the screen saver active to lock the unattended keyboard I
> have to pick one of their 'active' display selections.
>
> Any ideas on how I can get automatic keyboad lockup with a blank
> (or cleared) screen AND leave the most cycles for Prime95?

You should see a screen saver called 'Default Screen Saver'

That's what you want... just a blank screen.

Note: If you have power saving on your monitor, once your monitor turns off,
any running screen saver is "supposed to" stop running.  Whether that's the
case or not for many screen savers, I have no idea.

Besides the blank screen, another good, low impact saver is the "logon" one.

Aaron

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Re: Mersenne: Slow CPU's in a Proliant 2500

[Aaron Blosser]

Besides other nefarious things I'm known for, I am also a Compaq ASE, so
hopefully that'll carry some weight in my response. :)

> > I have just upgraded a Proliant 2500 from dual PPro 200's to dual
Pentium II
> > 333 overdrive processors. ...
> > Now before I upgraded, I was running double check's on 2 exponents,
668.
> > I was getting about .515 second iteration times.
> > Now that I have upgraded, I am only getting .448 second iteration times.
>
> Might it just be the effect of slower cache? As I recall, the numbers
were:
>
> P Pro256 or 512K one CPU clock to deliver data
> P II 512 K   two
> Celeron  128 K   one
>
> and on some tasks, Celeron outperforms P II at the same clock because of
> this.

One problem is most likely due to the Pentium II Overdrive's cache
architecture which, if I recall correctly (I hate abbreviations), runs at
half-speed like the other PII's.

The PPro cache ran at full speed, and the Proliant 2500 (and I've got a
couple of the 2500's around) came with 512MB L2 cache chips, but could be
ordered with the 1MB or 2MB L2 PPro's also... believe me, even on a 200 MHz
machine, that extra cache, and running at full speed, does make a
difference.

Sure, a PII running at 333 would be faster, but you have to deduct "speed
points" for the smaller cache (256K I think) running at half the full speed
(166 MHz, even less than the cache on a PPro 200)...

Also, please DO NOT DO NOT DO NOT DO NOT replace the BIOS chips on your 2500
with the E50 BIOS.  There are a LOT more differences in the systemboards for
a Proliant 2500 E24 (the PPro system board) and the E50 board (the PII
board).

Not only would those BIOS chips not work, but they would *really* not work
(I'm not sure what that means...)

The odd performance stemming from running NTPrime on both CPU's is a direct
result of the memory architecture not being optimized for PII accesses and
speeds.

The E24 board was made to work great at handling mem requests for a pair of
PPro's.  Compaq does a GREAT job at SMP architecture, even on their older
boards, using their custom chipsets and all that (much better than
off-the-shelf dual CPU boards).

However, when you go beyond what the motherboard was designed for, the peak
performance of the mem architecture goes away.

I would say that the BEST option you could come up with would be to forget
the PII Overdrive chips (they're almost worthless, in my opinion, performing
worse than a regular PII at the same speed... go figure.  It shouldn't be
that way, but that's my experience...

The thing to do is to get the PPro-Celeron socket adapter from Powerleap
(www.powerleap.com).  They're compatible with the Proliant 2500 (and a few
other dual PPro machines)... One caveat... you can get 2 upgrades for your
2500, but due to some physical constraints, some people have been forced to
shave off a few millimeters of PCB to get both CPU's working in the 2500...
but it can be done.

Another caveat... only the older Celeron 550's are dual CPU capable... the
newer ones are now missing that capability altogether.  Powerleap sells kits
of 2 Celeron 550's that are SMP capable, so that's one way to go.

Another way to go is to forego the dual CPU and just get the fastest single
Celeron they support, which is a Celeron 766MHz (the fastest 66MHz Celeron
there is).

Given the trade-offs of running dual 550's or a single 766, you might get
better performance with the single, faster CPU than with 2 slower ones...
only some benchmarks of either would really tell you though.  Hmmm...

I'm currently debating which way to go on that for the 2 Proliant 2500's I
currently run.  I'm leaning towards the single faster option for my own
machine, which doesn't really need dual CPU's for much, and getting the dual
550's for the server at work since it does more things.  Hey, that way I can
tell you all which works better at NTPrime. :)

To sum up:
... E24 boards don't work with E50 BIOS (there's actual physical differences
in the board, which should be obvious since one is socket 8 and one is Slot
1. :)
... PL-Pro/II upgrades using Celeron (cache runs at full speed!) are a MUCH
MUCH better option than the cheesy PII Overdrives (if you can even find one
of those dinosaurs)
... Besides NTPrime, judge whether dual Celeron's at 550 would be better or
worse than a single Celeron at 766.

Aaron

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Re: Mersenne: More P4 timings

[Aaron Blosser]

> I just completed my first 512K FFT using the new SSE2 instructions!
> The 512K FFT handles exponents up to 10.3 million.
>
> Timings are as follows:
>
> 1.4GHz P4, old code: 0.126 sec.
> 1.4GHz P4, new code: 0.048 sec.
> 1.2GHz Athlon, 133MHz DDR: 0.084 sec.
>
> I have a few more optimizations up my sleeve.  I think my goal
> of 0.040 seconds is achievable.

George, you are a genius.

I was getting frustrated, reading about how AMD keeps beating the P4 in
benchmark after benchmark... I knew the P4 had some decent FP performance up
it's sleeve... good to see you prove it.

Of course, the Athlon improvement is nice to see to (I'll just say I have
nothing against AMD CPU's...they're quite nice, in fact).

Aaron

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Re: [Fwd: Re: Mersenne: Distributed Computing Mandatory For Juno's Free Users]

[Aaron Blosser]

> > As another point, I know many who are in SETI solely for the nice
> > graphical display.  I don't know whether GIMPS, given the abstract
> > nature of the work we do, could ever really develop such a display.

> I imagine a better GIMPS graphical display would look like part of
> the set from "twelve monkeys" with fake big black dials and twitching
> needles, that indicate system performance and available swap space
> and so forth.  It could be a cute graphical system monitor application.
>
> Of course you can maximize your prime95 window.

Hmm... not all that interesting to most folks...

perhaps just have Prime95 update some SNMP counters... I think it'd be
"neato" to use MRTG to track various counters of the machines I have running
Prime95/NTPrime.  Then you're just offloading the task of doing charts and
stuff to some other machine.

Doesn't really address the issue of having it show some cool stuff locally,
although someone could write a screen saver that takes those counters and
does something with it on the client itself.  Also has the nice benefit of
keeping the task of groovy displays out of the code of the program, and lets
others write their own "plug ins" in any way they want.

Aaron

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Re: Mersenne: Juno Warning [Somewhat OT]

[Aaron Blosser]

to shut down all other programs first.  Following
that sage advice can actually save you many a reboot.

On the other hand, even "nicer" applications won't install any system DLLs
and will work happily by placing the DLLs in it's own directory rather than
mucking up the system/system32 area.  FWIW, Windows XP is making great
strides in trying to normalize behaviour such as this and actually does some
fancy footwork on the sly to eliminate even more reboots by even the
naughtiest installation routines.  Win2K already does a good job of
preventing DLL Hell, Windows XP does even better.

So hey, at least Microsoft is paying a little bit of attention...

Aaron

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Re: Mersenne: Juno Warning [Somewhat OT]

[Aaron Blosser]

> >From time to time, we also download new versions of the Juno software to
> >bring your version up to date, and we expect to download new scientific
> >software from time to time as part of the Juno Virtual Supercomputer
Project.
>
> NO mention of security, NO mention of encryption, targeted to Windows
> 9x users - truly impressive.

This also begs an interesting question of what happens if the "scientific
software" conflicts with something on your system.

As much as I just love GIMPS, there is one interesting little bugaboo that I
don't know if it's been mentioned:  Anyone else out there use Netmeeting to
do videoconferencing?  If so, have you noticed that if NTPRIME (the NT
service version) is running, your video will go REALLY REALLY slow?  I don't
know of Prime95 has the same effect or not, but I'd guess so.

So whenever I'm in a videoconference, I have to stop the prime service and
remember to start it later.

I know, I know, it's an idle priority thread, and I've verified that the
thread spawned by the service is indeed running at priority 1.  But for some
reason, the codec used by Netmeeting or whatever must also run in idle time,
leaving the two to compete for resources perhaps?

So again, what happens if Juno's software starts interfering with your other
apps, even when your not connected?

Is it even fair that your free internet connection would actually use your
computer even when you're not using your free connection?  Even the Juno
banner ads only show up while you're actually online.  Imagine if Juno said
those ads would now show up all through the day whether you're dialed in or
not.

> >At some point in the
> >future, we may begin requiring people who participate in the project to
> >leave their computers turned on for some minimum amount of time (or
> >possibly all the time)
>
> I wonder how the costs connected with doing so (electricity, air
> conditioning in the summer, possible damage to extremely overclocked
> systems) compare with the cost for a minimal dialup account - or for
> that matter with switching to excite, bluelight, ifree, netzero, or
> one of the other adware ISPs.

Well, electricity costs and what not are still likely to be less than even
the cheapest ISP on a per-month basis.

> >The only time your computer might initiate a connection is if a
> >computational problem is downloaded to your computer when you establish
one
> >connection to Juno's central computers, then don't dial in again for a
long
> >time.
>
> Fourth mention of "downloading to" client computers.  I doubt this is
> just confusion - 'downloading' is usually something web users do
> voluntarily.

They should call it a "push install" or something, whereas you're right,
downloading is more of a pull (user initiated).  Besides various incidents
in the past, I am in the biz of doing software installs on large networks,
and that's the general terminology we'd use for a server based install being
forced on clients: a push.  If it's advertised to workstations but not
mandatory, pull is appropriate.

And even then, we have to be careful.  Some installs require a reboot.  If
they update your "scientific software" and it needs to reboot, that could be
annoying.  And then software compatibility issues... eech.  At least the
GIMPS software is simple enough to deal with those things, but not all
programmers are as savvy as dear George.

Aaron

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Re: Mersenne: Juno Warning

[Aaron Blosser]

> >"Should I be worried about Juno downloading data and software to my
> >computer?"
> >
> >No. Juno has been downloading data and software to your computer since
the
> >day you first subscribed.
>
> Gotta give 'em credit for being honest.

Dang, I shoulda thought of that. :(

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RE: Mersenne: PrimeNet vulnerable to client misconfiguration?

[Aaron Blosser]

There should, at the least, be some "anti-whammy" protection against the
same machine requesting more #'s than it could reasonably handle in a
certain time period (2 years is more than generous, I'd think).

We've seen this before, have we not?  Misconfigured scripts of some sort
which keep retrieving new exponents while deleting the ones it already
got.  I just recall a few times when some machines like that were
sucking the pool dry.

Aaron

> -Original Message-
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:mersenne-invalid-
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Nathan Russell
> Sent: Tuesday, April 10, 2001 8:25 PM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Mersenne: PrimeNet vulnerable to client misconfiguration?
> 
> I just checked the PrimeNet status page out of curiousity, to find
> that only two 10M-digit numbers are available.  When I looked at the
> work completed figures, it became rather obvious that one particular
> user is running machines that are severely misconfigured. I don't
> think this is deliberate abuse, since the user does have several
> machines running a few dozen exponents with nothing apparently wrong
> with them.
> 
> However, the sheer number of assignments involved speaks for itself.
> 
> yeager {~} > cat status.txt | grep netconx | wc -l
> 2292
> 
> What I can't help wondering is whether GIMPS should have some
> restriction on how many assignments can be checked out by a given
> machine per unit time - in this case, the assignments in question are
> being run by only two machines, which appear to be repeatedly losing
> track of the work assigned to them.  One likely possibility is some
> sort of automated program that is repeatedly deleting or blanking the
> worktodo.ini file.
> 
> Perhaps there should be hard limit, after which the user is given an
> error or sent an email telling them of the situation?
> 
> In this case, there are enough exponents involved to take a top-end
> system multiple centuries to complete, and there's no reason why that
> should happen without someone contacting PrimeNet to make special
> arrangments, if for no other reason than to always have work available
> for everyone.

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RE: Mersenne: GIMPS: App error and dial-up

[Aaron Blosser]

>I am using a dial-up connection on an NT 4.0 machine, but I wasn't
>connected
>to the Internet and my Prime95 client wanted to connect.  Prime95 said it
>would "try again in 60 minutes".
>
>I rebooted my machine (for whatever reason) and when the OS
>finally loaded I
>started Prime95.  I got an app error (couldn't access memory location
>0x0018).  I kept getting this app error until I connected to the
>internet (to report this bug ironically) and Prime95 reported info to the
>server.  Now it works OK again.
>
>Is this a known problem?  If not, I can give more info on my
>system and what I did to re-create that problem.

I seem to recall seeing this when the RPC dll was being used rather than
HTTP.  Some machines I had weren't connected to a hub sometimes, and
apparently when rpc would try to contact the networking services, prime95
would crash with an error like that.

Switching to HTTP fixed it since the HTTP dll must be better at detecting
"no network" conditions and can abort gracefully.

Aaron

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RE: Mersenne: errors

[Aaron Blosser]

>O.K. its only a Cyrix 333...does this invalidate results?
>Should I switch to SETI? :)

>BTW it took me 9 months to do 9763841 LL!!!

The Cyrix probably has the worst FPU of any x86 clone...  I had a Cyrix 300
running and I quickly realized that it's good for factoring and that was
about it.

I've also got a couple AMD K6 400's that are similarly pokey.  They could do
a double-check of around M(5M) in reasonable time, but I put them on
factoring because that's just what those processors can best be doing.

Now...my Pentium III 600's are kicking butt at LL testing...

It's all a matter of finding the right work for the CPU you have.  If all
you can do is factoring with a certain system, hey, factoring is fun too!

Aaron

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RE: Mersenne: time needed for factoring

[Aaron Blosser]

>Henk Stokhorst wrote:
>>L.S.,
>>
>>Just curious, what makes factoring 13.388.659 take four times as
>>long as 13.375.793?
>
>It's because 13,388,659 is past the cutoff of 13,380,000 where
>Prime95 starts factoring to the depth of 2^65 instead of 2^64.
>Normally, increasing the depth by a factor of one only doubles
>the time required.  However, because of the nature of chip architecture, it
>takes a longer period of time than normal
>above 2^62 and again above 2^64 to do the necessary
>calculations (more instructions and such).

Now, I may be totally off base here, but...

The reason is because the integer part of the Intel CPU is 64 bit...okay, so
Prime95 does some additional steps to provide greater bit depth factoring...

Now, if that's really the case, would it be of any advantage to have the FPU
handle factoring?  I know that some processors only do factoring because
they have a slow FPU to begin with (like Cyrix and AMD K6 chips), but would
a Pentium be able to use it's FPU to do trial-factoring to greater bit
depths any faster than the software based solution George uses beyond 64
bits?

Just curious...

Better yet, do any of the wacky  SIMD/MMX/3DNow instructions provide any
possible benefits for trial factoring?  I recall a discussion before about
how those instructions wouldn't be too useful for LL testing because of they
only handle double-word sized data (32 bits), but for trial-factoring...any
uses?

Aaron

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RE: Mersenne: Prime95 pour Win9x

[Aaron Blosser]

>> The new version of Prime95 pop up
>> every time Windows is restarted.
>> So the users of my network don't
>> like it any more. :-(
>> Is that could be changed ?

>Either install using Prime95.zip (as it used to be done - the file is
>updated) or remove the shortcut to Prime95 from Startup folder after
>running P95Setup.exe.
>
>I think it's irritating to add shortcuts to the startup folder
>without asking the user.

So the setup program does that for you irregardless of whether it was setup
previously to start as a Win95 "service"?

Bummer...

I forgot who wrote that setup program, but basically you should have it look
in the "run" key in the registry to see if it's already in there before you
go and add it to the startup group.

I've been tempted to write a better looking installer for Prime95 and also
do one for NTPrime as well, but I just haven't gotten around to it yet.
Just using either SMS Installer or WISE 8 (basically the same darn thing).
Would anyone out there appreciate an automated install of the NTPrime thing?

Aaron

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