:: 11-Dec-1998 03:36 (Friday) ::

I’m making lots of progress on the new proxyinfo. It has a much sleeker
design that complies with the rest of the distributed.net site. The table
outlook looks very much like the finger-board at http://www.distributed.net/cgi-bin/dnet-finger.cgi

I’ll include a feature list upon release, which should be this weekend.

:: 01-Dec-1998 05:52 (Tuesday) ::

I’m pleased to announce that my rc5des_416 FreeBSD port has made
it into the official FreeBSD 2.2.8-RELEASE distribution. The release
is currently available at ftp://ftp2.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/2.2.8-RELEASE/

If you’re installing the release and want to have the client setup, select
“misc” from the packages menu and check the box next to “rc5des-416.” If
you’ve already installed the release and want to “build” the client from
the ports, try: “cd /usr/ports/misc/rc5des && make install” as root.

I’ll make an announcement here when 2.2.8 is available on CD from
Walnut Creek.

:: 18-Nov-1998 05:18 (Wednesday) ::

The connectivity problems at the master’s site have been resolved
and the proxy network is now operating normally.

:: 18-Nov-1998 00:59 (Wednesday) ::

The keymaster is currently having some connectivity problems and has
been temporarily shutdown until routing is again stable. No blocks
will be lost and stats will continue to be processed as usual.

Keep in mind that the purpose of all the key server proxies is to be
able to run distributed.net without incident if the keymaster is
turned off or unavailable at any given point of time.

:: 17-Nov-1998 01:00 (Tuesday) ::

For those of you interested, http://www.distributed.net/webstats/ is going
to be off-line until we add another 128mb sdram dimm (bringing it to 256) to
nodezero.

The program, analog, we’re using to analyze web logs is fairly memory
intensive which isn’t a Good Thing(tm) on a box that’s low on ram. As
soon as the ram is replaced, I’ll re-enable the log processor and
post here.

:: 16-Nov-1998 15:25 (Monday) ::

One of the first steps in my DNS/RP/LOC project is complete. The
v27.distributed.net and proxy.distributed.net zones are now generated
by dbakerware(tm).

Rather than distributed.net DNS administrators having to go through
a long and tedious procedure to maintain proxies, now they just
have to edit one file and run dbaker_dns_generate.

You can now obtain all sorts of information via “nslookup” about a
a proxy. For example, “nslookup -type=rp proxy01.hou.tx.us.distributed.net”
will tell you:

proxy01.hou.tx.us.proxy.distributed.net
mailbox = dbaker.distributed.net
text = dbaker.proxy.distributed.net

You could then mail dbaker@distributed.net (change the first . to a @), or
you can do a type=txt lookup on dbaker.proxy.distributed.net for further
contact information.

These features will be automatically implemented into new versions of
proxyinfo and other monitoring programs.

:: 13-Nov-1998 21:53 (Friday) ::

As many of you have noticed on http://www.distributed.net/rc5/proxyinfo.html,
most of the proxies are listed by their proxy.distributed.net address. By
Sunday, I plan for all proxies to have a proxy.distributed.net address
along with the corresponding RP and LOC records. See my TODO list (above)
for more information about my current proxy DNS project.

:: 10-Nov-1998 00:40 (Tuesday) ::

Public web statistics are now available:
http://www.distributed.net/webstats/

:: 04-Nov-1998 01:38 (Wednesday) ::

I have a lot of projects that I’m getting ready to completely
finish and make available. Here’s a time frame on some of my active
TODO items.

Coming soon….

By Friday (11/06/98): Public web statistics for www.distributed.net

By Sunday (11/08/98): Finish initiative for stable distributed.net MXes and mail
that absolutely will never bounce.

By Monday (11/09/98): Completely functional subspace plots
at http://www.distributed.net/statistics/graphs/ including
animation over time and a description explaining how to
read the graphs.

By Tuesday (11/10/98): Finish plan to reorganize distributed.net DNS for usability
with monitoring scripts and contact information. This includes
a time frame on the completion of the reorganization.

:: 01-Nov-1998 23:43 (Sunday) ::

In the past, every time the master finishes assigning a certain subspace,
a master operator is required to generate the new subspaces and set them up
to be distributed. While this wasn’t a big deal 6 months ago when we only
rotated subspaces every couple months, now it is. We’re now rotating
subspaces every 12 or 13 days. This has become a major problem, since it
always seems that the master runs into the end of a subspace in the middle
of the night when all the operators are asleep.

I’ve recently written, tested, and implemented a script which takes
care of this serious problem. Basically, a master operator has to tell
the script which subspace should be assigned next and then when the current
one fills, the script rotates the subspaces and mails all the master
operators.

Now, proxies are less likely to be assigning random blocks because the
master has run out. I’m now working on my #5 project, listed above. More
details as I progress….