:: 28-Mar-2003 00:18 GMT (Friday) ::

First I’d like to introduce myself. My name is Scott Dodson and I’ve
been working with the help@distributed.net and now more recently the
abuse@distributed.net mail queues.

Recently there have been numerous reports of individuals scanning the stats
web pages for participants who are not on teams and then “spamming” users
asking them to join their teams. This activity is not allowed and will not be
tolerated. If we find the report to be accurate we will remove the address from
the stats database and all work from that ID will not be credited to the team.

If you have any questions about this I advise you to review our legal policy
available at http://www.distributed.net/legal/policy.html and contact
help@distributed.net if you have any concerns.

If you would like to report abuse issues please contact abuse@distributed.net
and be sure to include mail headers from the messages you have received.

:: 27-Mar-2003 13:04 GMT (Thursday) ::

Stats are happy again.

:: 26-Mar-2003 22:55 GMT (Wednesday) ::

OGR stats are coming. At this point there are a few things left to do:

-Either convert stats.sql to output in better form or write code to take
current output and put it in a better form.
-Have another set of eyes audit the code.

Also (not blocking to getting stats up):
-Output “done” list to master
-Clean up code to allow it to be run from another directory
-Documentation

As for the first item, it’s currently giving this:
table_name | function | result | project_id
————+———-+———-+————
ogr_stubs | count | 5364870 | 24
ogr_stubs | count | 20879063 | 25
| pass1 | 2781323 | 24
| pass1 | 14693958 | 25
| pass2 | 380871 | 24
| pass2 | 6678337 | 25

But I’d like to be getting this:
rundate | project_id | count | pass1 | pass2
————+————+———-+———-+———
2003-03-25 | 24 | 5364870 | 2779852 | 379837
2003-03-25 | 25 | 20879063 | 14659776 | 6644832
2003-03-26 | 24 | 5364870 | 2781323 | 380871
2003-03-26 | 25 | 20879063 | 14693958 | 6678337

So if you have the time and knowhow, let me know (or just send code).

BTW, yes those numbers are real for those dates. Sorry if it’s lower
than expected, but remember that we had to throw out quite a bit of the
ogr24 work as it couldn’t ber verified. I’d love to have someone audit
the code and find out that we’re actually much further along than I
thought.

:: 26-Mar-2003 22:39 GMT (Wednesday) ::

Statsrun puked and the normal procedure for rebuilding things isn’t working.
I’ve been drinking, so I’m not going to screw with it right now. :) I’ll look
at it (and hopefully fix it) tomorrow.

:: 18-Mar-2003 22:25 GMT (Tuesday) ::

DOH! I botched the OGR run last night with my manual shenanigans. I’m
re-running right now.

:: 17-Mar-2003 22:58 GMT (Monday) ::

A number of new clients are now available on the pre-release page:
http://www1.distributed.net/download/prerelease.html

:: 16-Mar-2003 18:49 GMT (Sunday) ::

Looks like the teamjoin code (in fact, sybase itself) was using CST and not
GMT. I’ve fixed that problem; I’m going to see if it fixes the team join issue.

:: 16-Mar-2003 18:16 GMT (Sunday) ::

Ok, I might actually work on stats tonight, even though I should be working on
my resume (anyone need a database architect in Austin, TX?). I’m going to put
the statsrun on hold for right now.

:: 16-Mar-2003 18:02 GMT (Sunday) ::

A rather serious bug regarding team joins has been found in stats
(http://n0cgi.distributed.net/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=3182). In a nutshell, any
work you submit on the day you join a team will not be credited to that team.
This also means that if you weren’t on a team and join one, the work for that
day will not be credited to that team.

I’m going to do tomorrow’s statsrun by hand in the hope that I can track
down what’s causing this. This means you can expect tomorrow’s stats to be
late. Additionally, I will at some point correct the database to reflect what
should have happened in the first place. This will probably change a few team
rankings, but I don’t expect it to be major, and more importantly, this means
that the data will reflect what should have happened and that everything in the
database will be in sync again.

More info once I figure out what’s actually broken.

:: 16-Mar-2003 04:07 GMT (Sunday) ::

Andreas Beckmann and I have traced another bug on the new SS 2-pipe core for
x86 processors (currently present on the pre-release 2.9003.481/481a clients
only), in addition to the reentrancy issues already known for some time. From
http://n0cgi.distributed.net/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=3187:

“Aside from the reentrancy issue, this core has a problem whereby signal
handlers on Unix systems can overwrite the core’s local variables, rendering
the results incorrect. A fix brings its performance down to ca. 94% of
DG 2-pipe, and thus the core is being removed from the client until the
author provides a reentrant and signal handler safe version with improved
performance.”

This bug affects uniprocessor machines as well. Since we have no guarantees
about the correctness of results produced by this core, every result returned
by an x86 machine running the 481/481a clients will have to be rechecked. Rest
assured that no stats are going to be rolled back because of this; however,
we do ask that any installations of this pre-release client on x86 machines
be removed. The buggy clients will soon be taken down from the pre-release
download page, and we will be refusing results from these clients after some
time.