:: 09-Jan-1999 07:32 (Saturday) ::

I’m proud to say that DES-TEST-1 was a success; we found the key.

See http://www.distributed.net/pressroom/dbaker-des-test-1.html for
more information!

:: 09-Jan-1999 02:43 (Saturday) ::

For those of you who missed any of the State Of The Test messages, I’ve
posted them at http://www.distributed.net/~decibel/destest1/ Of course, if
you missed them then you should sign up on the announcements list (see
http://www.distributed.net/lists/).

:: 08-Jan-1999 07:30 (Friday) ::

The 9gb uw-scsi drive arrived today and has been installed in
statsbox-ii. I’ll be dropping the data back on tomorrow and resuming
development. Expect a day or so showing DrSpoo around the database,
and then we’ll each dig into things in earnest. Oh, we’re running
-pre2 as well, which Sybase REALLY likes. If any of you out there are
experimenting with the Sybase ASE for Linux release, I highly recommend
the 2.2.0-pre kernel. It’s a good fit. 2.2.0 is looking mighty nice.
Recent kernel improvements have removed the 128mb RAM limitation and
allow Sybase to scale much higher.

I’ve also shipped a 9gb drive off for installation in the keymaster, to
give us more breathing room during DES-III. dbaker should have it in
his hands in about eight hours.

:: 06-Jan-1999 21:07 (Wednesday) ::

We’re having an increasing amount of problems on the keymaster in terms
of stability. Because of this, you may see proxies that appear down or
out of blocks on proxyinfo (http://distributed.net/des/proxyinfo.html) in
situations where it may not be the case. Do not be alarmed. If you
transmit blocks to/from a full proxy, they WILL get processed by the
keymaster at some point in the future.

:: 06-Jan-1999 13:40 (Wednesday) ::

I’m working on AppleScript and Apple Event upgrades for new MacOS clients.

Eventually this will allow for full scripting control of the client, and
if things go as planned, for a “Remote Control” style application (ala
NT’s Remote Cows) for managing networks of distributed.net MacOS clients.

:: 05-Jan-1999 07:27 (Tuesday) ::

Unfortunately, your stats are once again expected to be low.

Combining the issues with yesterday’s master problems and today’s
upgrades to the the far-from-flawless v300 have the master to get
behind almost half a million blocks.

We’re working around the clock to resolve the difficulties, but I
can’t guarantee that the missing blocks will make it into tomorrow’s
run. Even if the master was performing flawlessly, it would be
difficult to flush an additional 250 megs of buffers into it.

Fear not, your blocks have NOT been lost. They’re sitting safely
in a large queue to be processed. Once the master is stabilized,
I will begin having it process that queue. At that point, I’ll
post here with estimates on when you should expect your stats to
even out.

:: 04-Jan-1999 11:33 (Monday) ::

okay, build 300 of the personal proxy for win32 and linux-x86 are
making their way to our mirror sites for downloadability. Builds for
a few other popular platforms will be made available in a few hours.
Please note that these build 300 proxies will not be able to
communicate to upstream servers until they are upgraded to build 300
as well (which will begin to occur today). Drop me a note if you find
any problems.

:: 03-Jan-1999 20:45 (Sunday) ::

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but everyone’s stats are going to be
low today. We had some technical difficulties on the keymaster that caused
it to get severely behind on processing blocks for several hours yesterday.

I’m going to try and slowly feed back the 250,000 blocks that it has yet to
process slowly, but I don’t think nearly all the blocks will make it into
today’s stats run. Fear not, however, none of your blocks have been lost. Any
blocks that don’t make it into today’s stats-run will make it into tomorrow’s.

:: 03-Jan-1999 16:55 (Sunday) ::

well, the DES contest is delayed, so grab and test the latest MacOS clients now at
href=”http://http.distributed.net/pub/dcti/current-client/rc5des-macos-ppc-gui.sit.bin”>http://http.distributed.net/pub/dcti/current-client/rc5des-macos-ppc-gui.sit.bin.
Turning off MP Support if you have only one processor may or may not affect your key rate,
so try it out.

:: 03-Jan-1999 10:43 (Sunday) ::

well, as much as we hate to have to do this, it looks like we’ll have
to postpone the test contest again, but this time until (at least)
Tuesday 9:00 Pacific. The main motivations behind this is that we
still don’t believe that sufficient numbers of people were able to yet
download and install the recently released clients due to their late
release. There have also been a number of last minute technical
details that we have had to worry about. We will also hope to start
releasing the build 300 personal proxies sometime today (Sunday).
We’re hoping that delaying will also give more people the opportunity
to participate since the delay would also move the test contest into
the middle of the work week. Keep your eyes open for later details.