:: 03-Jan-1999 00:22 (Sunday) ::
well, finishing touches on the new proxy code is being handled right
now. There were a few minor issues that we found still needed to be
addressed before we felt confident releasing the new proxies.
The new proxies will begin numbering at build 300 and the most
significant changes are probably unnoticeable to the user, since they
are mostly code restructuring issues that will make it significantly
easier to support additional types of contests in the future. I’ve
tried to keep the ini configuration format mostly the same as the
previous build 280 proxies. You’ll also probably notice changes to
the console messages, but the block-done log format is unchanged,
since that is really the only file that we intend to be machine
parsed. If any of you have written proxy console log parsers, you’ll
probably have to make accommodations for the changed messages.
Another significant change is the fact that support for handling
blocks much larger than 32-bits has been supported. Although even the
v2.7103 clients do not support the ability to request blocks that
large, the clients will eventually be made to require communication
with a build 300 or above proxy. Currently the ability of the build
300 proxies to internally support these larger blocks allows them to
need to make fewer requests to your upstream keyserver.
Additionally, block counting in the new build 300 proxies is now
normalized to represent the actual number of 2**28 blocks. This means
that your block thresholds in your ini file will now truly be an
accurate measurement of the amount of work that you have, rather than
the number of work packets (of varying size).
There have also been changes to allow the new “quick start”
(scheduledupdate) feature in which build 300 proxies and v2.7103
clients will be able to receive the time at which the next contest is
expected to start, and cause your proxies and clients to automatically
attempt a connection if they are in lurk or online mode.
At the request of many, online/offline/lurk/lurkonly modes have been
added to the proxy (lurk/lurkonly only available on win32). SIGALRM
will force a connection, while SIGHUP will only reread the ini file.
A new logrotate type of “startup” has been added, causing the proxy to
rename any previous logs to logname.x (x is the next available decimal
number that doesn’t collide with an existing filename). The
workperiod has been eliminated in favor of “connectperiod” (workperiod
originally controlled a number of timed activities in addition to
connections). The buffer files are no longer mirrored replicas of
memory–they are now truly just overflowed blocks (a configurable
number of key packets are held in memory, default to about 16 or
something).
There are probably tons of other little changes that you’ll notice
after the initial release gets out there. We’ve tried to test things
thoroughly, but I’m sure a number of issues will be discovered during
this upcoming test contest. Keep those clients cracking!