staff blogs

distributed.net staff keep (relatively) up-to-date logs of their activities in .plan files. These were traditionally available via finger, but we've put them on the web for easier consumption.

2006-03-28

decibel [28-Mar-2006 @ 02:33]

Filed under: stats — decibel @ 02:33 +00:00

:: 28-Mar-2006 02:33 GMT (Tuesday) ::

Another of the original drives in fritz has died. Fortunately there was no data
corruption like last time, but we’ve decided to keep stats offline until we can
get a new replacement installed. I’m not sure when exactly that will happen,
since I’m currently 8 time-zones away from the machine. I would expect it to be
this week, however.

2006-03-27

nugget [27-Mar-2006 @ 11:54]

Filed under: stats — nugget @ 11:54 +00:00

:: 27-Mar-2006 11:54 GMT (Monday) ::

I’ve got statsbox back up and online, and the raid10 volume is
currently rebuilding. It looks like the drive tray fans on
drives 7 and 8 have stopped working, which may be the source
of the problem. All those SATA drives are crammed in close
together and perhaps the drive weirdness we’ve seen lately is
the result of heat issues from the failing fans.

I’ve got the stats website shut off for now while the volume
rebuilds and Decibel can get a chance to nose around and make
sure that all the data looks sane.

EDIT: crap, drive 7 just disconnected itself again.

2006-03-25

decibel [25-Mar-2006 @ 06:44]

Filed under: stats — decibel @ 06:44 +00:00

:: 25-Mar-2006 06:44 GMT (Saturday) ::

Stats are currently down, and I’m unable to ssh into the box. Since I’m in
Belgium right now, there’s not much I can do, but someone in the states should
be up and able to look at it in the next few hours.

2006-03-24

decibel [24-Mar-2006 @ 09:31]

Filed under: stats — decibel @ 09:31 +00:00

:: 24-Mar-2006 09:31 GMT (Friday) ::

I’ll be updating PostgreSQL on stats shortly; there will be a brief outage.

2006-03-09

bovine [09-Mar-2006 @ 23:47]

Filed under: keyservers — bovine @ 23:47 +00:00

:: 09-Mar-2006 23:47 GMT (Thursday) ::

We have had to take the proxy1.madsn.wi.us.proxy.distributed.net proxy
offline and out of the round-robin DNS for awhile. If you have
hard-coded its name or IP address into your configuration files, then
you will want to make an update to your INI files.

2006-03-07

snikkel [07-Mar-2006 @ 19:57]

Filed under: clients — snikkel @ 19:57 +00:00

:: 07-Mar-2006 19:57 GMT (Tuesday) ::

We are pleased to announce a pre-release client for Mac OS X x86 is now
available!

Eager users interested in helping provide test coverage for this client can
download it from: http://www.distributed.net/download/prerelease.php Please
report any issues by filing a bug at: http://bugs.distributed.net/

So here is the distributed.net take on the Apple switch over performance. A Mac
Mini with a 1.42Ghz G4 benchmarks 15,049,781 Mkeys/s for RC5-72 and 32,176,334
Mnodes/s for OGR-P2. A Mac Mini with a 1.66Ghz Intel Core Duo benchmarks
9,057,090 Mkey/s for RC5-72 and 44,886,648 Mnodes/s for OGR-P2.

PPC x86 x86/PPC performance
——————————————————
RC5-72 15,049,781 9,057,090 -39.8%
OGR-P2 32,176,334 44,886,648 +39.5%

(Comparing the fastest G4 processor shipped in a Mac Mini with both cores of
the fastest Intel Core processor in a Mac Mini)

The dual cores of the Intel Core Duo give it a substantial advantage over
the single G4 in OGR performance. However, the Intel chip is certainly no
match for the powerhouse G4 in RC5-72 performance. With some more
volunteer help we still might be able to further optimize the code for
Intel Core processors. As always we thank our volunteers for contributing
to the projects.