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.

2008-01-24

mikereed [24-Jan-2008 @ 01:59]

Filed under: clients — Mike Reed @ 01:59 +00:00

:: 24-Jan-2008 01:59 GMT (Thursday) ::

Several new client versions have been moved from the pre-release page
to the official release page.

*PC-DOS, MS-DOS [x86] v2.9015.504
*OS/2 [x86] v2.9015.504
*Linux [MIPS/ELF] v2.9015.504
*Linux [x86/ELF] v2.9015.504
*Linux [CellBE] v2.9015.505

Download links for all supported platforms can be found at
http://www1.distributed.net/download/clients.php

Moo!

2008-01-10

bovine [10-Jan-2008 @ 05:48]

Filed under: clients — bovine @ 05:48 +00:00

:: 10-Jan-2008 05:48 GMT (Thursday) ::

Dear friends,

We have recently detected an infrequently occurring bug in the
released CellBE Linux client that is primarily used for PlayStation 3
systems. The bug in the CellBE core only affects OGRp2 results by
sporadically altering the node counts in completed packets sent back
to our servers. RC5-72 results by the same client are not affected by
this bug. No other operating systems or platforms are affected.

An updated client (dnetc505-linux-cellbe) is available on the
pre-release page (http://www.distributed.net/download/prerelease.php)
and will be moved to the official release page shortly. We encourage
all PlayStation 3 and CellBE users to upgrade to the new client as
soon as it is convenient to do so. If this isn’t possible, we
recommend that you disable OGRp2 in your existing dnetc configurations
(http://faq.distributed.net/?file=176).

The nature of the bug allows us to continue to rely on most of the
OGRp2 results that have already been contributed by affected clients.
However, to do so, we must make some back-end accommodations to
require that the secondary validation pass be completed by some other
non-CellBE client. We would like to limit how long we must continue
to perform this burdensome special processing step by encouraging
people to upgrade to the newer, unaffected version of the client.

Results from the affected CellBE Linux client versions will continue
to be accepted until February 16, 2008. After this time, no further
OGRp2 results will be credited to stats from CellBE Linux clients
earlier than version 2.9015-505. Previously credited user and team
stats will not be affected. Thanks for your attention!

Moo!