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Lack of News
Sorry for the lack of news updates recently. Alot of stuff going
on behind the scenes here. Hopefully maybe tomorrow (or even later
today) the site will be moving. I am trying to make it as painless
as I can :) I updated the stats for today, but the weekly update
will probably have to wait till tomorrow.
I do have alot of news stockpiled so
get ready when I post next ;) hehehe
New CLI Update
Soon?
Yet again Hiram speaks. This time stating that there will be a new
version 2.4 of the unix clients hitting the shelves. I haven't
really heard of any major bug problems with the unix clients (as opposed
to the GUI clients), but the new update would include some of the
"fixes" that are included in the GUI updated version.
Please
note: There will soon be some version 2.4 UNIX clients appearing
on the download page. These clients are the same source base as
the Windows 2.03 versions (with one additional fix) and therefore have
the feature of not updating the state.sah file so often. A delay of at
least 30 seconds between file rewrites will happen with these v2.4
clients. In fact, it is more like several minutes. These clients
are also completely silent to stdout after they get started, no more %
done messages unless you use the -verbose option.
--Hiram
In response to a follow up question
Hiram stated that he would take a look into user selected HD write
intervals for the updated CLI clients. The decrease in state.sah
updates also effect client add-ons such as SETIWatch and SetiSPY.
What will all of this mean with
respect to processing times for the clients? I just don't
know. I am sure that some benchmaking action on the new version
would put that to rest!
Go Team Go!
Top 40 moves for the day include: UltraMaroon
moving up one spot to take over at #11.
PGS moved into the top 20 by moving up two spots to
#19. OoklaTheMok moved up one
spot to #21.... mzanthrope moved up
one spot to #37. Finally, svdsinner
gained a spot into the 10K club by processing his 10,000th work unit
today!
Week In Review
There were two members who made big moves this week. MrCatbert
lead the way moving up 40+ spots in the second 100 of the team.
Both him and danh (who moved up 30+
spots will find it tougher going in the top 100! SpeedRacer
regained form placing tops in WUs for the week.
C. Eric Smith didn't make it easy for him though coming
within 200 WUs of the top himself.
There were also some major milesones
hit this week. The major milestones broke were from SpeedRacer
who cracked the 20,000 WU barrier, and Tobler
Design who cracked 10,000 WU this week. That is nothing
to sneeze at!. Check out the entire lowdown on the weekly
stats page.
Daily Moves
Yea...I have neglected things for the past several days...but now it is
time for some catch-up! Tobler Design
moves into the top 6 by passing SouthPark Admin Crew. R.
Marvin slips past OrlBamf for #20. PGS
is knocking at the top 20 now moving up two spots to #21. Guidant
passed up The Weeblows for the #26 spot. Del B.
passed mzanthrope and Grimas for the #37 slot. Finally Daryle
A. Tilroe moved up two spots and cracks into the top 40 at
#40! Congrats to All!
Hiram Strikes Again
Hiram hit the newsgroups with a couple of posts recently. The
first post contained a link to a Science
News article on different distributed processing efforts.
The article also included an example of the dangers of installing these
distributed on work machines:
"In
September 1998, computer consultant Aaron Blosser of Lakewood, Colo.,
found himself under arrest, accused of interfering with the operation
of computers at the Denver-based US West phone company. With the
permission of a supervisor, Blosser had installed GIMPS software on
the company's computers to search for Mersenne primes.
Soon
after, computers at US West's facility in Phoenix, Ariz., started to
take as long as 5 minutes, rather than just 3 to 5 seconds, to
retrieve telephone numbers. Company investigators discovered Blosser's
GIMPS program, blamed it for the slowdown, and called in the FBI,
which searched Blosser's home and confiscated his computers.
Blosser
now faces the possibility of a misdemeanor charge of computer fraud
and perhaps a fine and an indeterminate amount of restitution to US
West for the cost of removing the software from any machine he had
installed it on."
Also, in one of the "wish
list" thread on the newsgroups I had posted a reply stating that
the SETI teams do not have the time nor the resources to add in anyone's
pet wishes for the SETI clients. Hiram responded with this post
outlining the porting process, and how he deals with overseeing only 5
of the unix ports:
Here's
what the managing of the porters entails.
There are about 30 porters of the client for the UNIX ports. A port
begins by sending out email to the lot advising them of the
availability of new code.
I do five of the ports myself. The process is automated for
picking up the code and building it on the five platforms.
Simply fire off a small script. Then each of those five ports
has to run through a test work unit. Login to each machine, run
the client, make sure it looks sane, get it started on the test work
unit. When that finishes, a bit of regression testing to verify
that the client is OK on a couple of known problem WUs. Thanks
to all of you for letting us know about particulare WUs that crash the
client, etc.
In about two days, two or three of the other porters have done the
same thing, their test results have been returned, and their client
binaries. They advise me by email. I run a script that
summarizes all returned results into an html page where I can easily
see if everything is passing OK. If that is all right, I package
the binaries into the tar image and place them on the ftp directories
at Berkeley. And set the data base server to accept results from those
clients. I email those porters to advise them to check their tar file
to ensure I packaged the correct items. They respond with an
OK. A couple of days goes by, the tar files have mirrored
to ftp.cdrom.com, I can now remake
the unix.html download page.
Over the next two weeks or so, perhaps two or three other porters will
respond with their completed work. Same process for each of
those.
Now the work begins. Examine the listing of completed clients
and compare it with the clients to be done. Create a list of
porter email addresses for ports not complete. Email that group
to query status. In return, receive some very creative
explanations for delays and completed clients begin to trickle
in. Repeat this process seemingly forever. Identify the
high use clients and hit on the porters that haven't done those
yet. Discover some porters have disappeared, examine email
archives to sift the hundreds of offers from all ya'all to help with
the porting. Establish contact with new porters, bring them up
to speed on the process. Discover that some porters are not actually
programmers. Help them through the difficulties of solving
simple compile problems on their various operating systems.
Discover that a particular client is broken. Redo the process
with the responsible porter. Exchanging emails for all of these
transactions with the porters.
While all that is going on, make it look like I'm still doing my job
at work, getting to aikido practice, gardening, spending time with
family and friends and continue to wonder why I like this volunteer
job so much. Isn't this a great project !
I would like to recommend to everyone new to the project, please read
the FAQ. It really does answer ~ %95 of all the newbie queries
that go by every day in this newsgroup. http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/faq.html
--Hiram
-News
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