:: 23-Dec-1999 07:01 (Thursday) ::

The following clients have been updated/added:

– dnetc-solaris26-x86.tar.gz Solaris 2.x [x86/MT/MMX-CSC]

The following proxies have been updated:

-proxyper311-solaris26-x86.tar.gz Solaris 2.x [311]

Enjoy!
Moose

:: 22-Dec-1999 18:38 (Wednesday) ::

I’ve just uploaded a new x86/Solaris client, which has the MMX CSC core, as
well as being multithreaded (fixes bug #450). I also uploaded a v311 x86/
Solaris personal proxy, which is CSC compatible.

Hopefully they’ll become available soon.

:: 22-Dec-1999 02:41 (Wednesday) ::

Some users have reported a perceived CSC speed drop between b2 and the
-450 release of the Mac client. Michael Feiri, the client’s author,
clarifies that this decrease is only perceived, and that there is no
actual decrease in crunching speed.

“AFAIR in the b2 version we didnt do any yielding during a benchmark,
but rather hogged the entire CPU. Now we do yield during benchmarks,
which is likely the cause for the performance decrease you have seen.
The actual CSC crunchers were left untouched between b2 and b9. So the
normal cracking in the release should be as fast as in b2 because even
in b2 we already yielded during normal crunching.”

:: 21-Dec-1999 21:21 (Tuesday) ::

Looks like things on statsbox are healthy. We had to re-create some
indexes, but everything else checks out ok. Thanks for your patience
as we hammered on the bits.

So, stats are up. Far more importantly, though, the mac client is out! :)

http://n0cgi.distributed.net/cgi/dnet-finger.cgi?user=moose

:: 21-Dec-1999 05:39 (Tuesday) ::

During tonight’s stats run things got extremely unhealthy during the
creation of the rc5-64 overall email rankings table. Sybase consumed
all it’s locks and several processes became deadlocked and refused to
die gracefully. (Heck, they wouldn’t even die screaming).

We spent a few hours poking and prodding, trying to convince the blocking
process to go away to no avail. Unfortunately, the only recourse at that
point was to down the whole server in a rather indelicate manner. (not
quite a kill-9, but pretty close).

Right now we’re sifting through the data now that the server is back
online. We’re trying to determine the scope of the damage (if any)
and get a feel for the situation.

More info as the situation progresses…

:: 21-Dec-1999 03:48 (Tuesday) ::

The following clients have been updated/added:

– dnetc-macos-ppc.sit MacOS [PPC/OS8.x+/CSC]

Happy cracking!
Moose

:: 21-Dec-1999 03:01 (Tuesday) ::

…and out it goes…

ftp://ftp.distributed.net/pub/dcti/current-client/dnetc-macos-ppc.sit

Just about every major issue relating to the Mac OS client I just signed
& uploaded is covered in the Read Me.

And so, after about a month of blood, sweat and code on the part of
Michael Feiri and Don ‘Dakidd’ Bruder, we have a Mac client that builds
from the common code and is easily updated. The Mac port is here to
stay. Next up: a faceless background application…

:: 21-Dec-1999 01:44 (Tuesday) ::

The following clients have been updated/added:

– dnetc-freebsd-x86-elf.tar.gz FreeBSD x86 v2.8004.450 [ELF/MT/MMX-CSC]
– dnetc-win32-x86.zip Win32 x86 v2.8004.450 [MMX-CSC]
– dnetc-solaris-sparc.tar.gz Solaris 2.x [Sparc/UlraSparc/MT]

For those of you who always send me e-mails asking what has changed,
here you go:

2.8000
——

2.8004.450 new: macos port including Altivec core support (twice as
fast as MMX on otherwise comparable hardware)

2.8003.449 chg: win32: client sleeps for 10secs immediately after starting
as service to allow the rest of the system to fire up first
fix: all: not being able to -update if offlinemode
fix: solaris: time stamps/elapsed time on MP boxes
fix: all: clients will again reset work if the core # changes
(functionality was lost in 2.8002.446 – reset if client
version or platform changes was unaffected).

2.8003.448 new: x86: 50% faster CSC MMX core added. ‘6bit – bitslice’
replaces ‘6bit – called’
fix: all: lines in mail/logfile are no longer truncated
fix: all: pause by signal (by user) and pause by filename
are additive, that is, pause remains in effect as
long as either one is in effect.
fix: all: completed/summary time is now elapsed wall clock
time again
fix: x86: Cyrix 6×86 auto-selects CSC core #3 now.
imp: all: threads no longer check external flags for shutdown/
pause state. Flags are ‘pushed’ instead, which reduces
cache footprint.
fix: win32: win95B doesn’t have a ‘Lucinda Console’ TrueType
font, so client avoids it now.
chg: many: DES cores are no longer included
imp: all: benchmarks have greater time precision (no longer
overshoot the end of the bench period)
chg: *nix: client setsid()s and dups std handles to /dev/null
when started with -quiet/-hide
fix: dun config collision with no-networking resolved
(dun was still active even if the networking was disabled)

Happy cracking!
Moose

:: 20-Dec-1999 00:40 (Monday) ::

The following clients have been updated/added:

– dnetc-freebsd-x86-elf.tar.gz FreeBSD x86 [ELF/MT/MMX-CSC]
– dnetc-os2-x86.zip OS/2 [MMX-CSC]

The following proxies have been updated

– proxyper311-os2-x86.zip OS/2 v311

Happy Cracking!
Moose

:: 19-Dec-1999 14:49 (Sunday) ::

I’ve updated http://www.distributed.net/source/ with the latest source
code for the Win32 Log Visualizer (v1.1), the Win32 MooSounds utility
(v1.0a), and the preliminary source of the Java Log Visualizer (v0.9).

The Java Log Visualizer source was predominantly written by Willie Goo
at my request, though I did all of the parsing code and final cleanup
to get it actually working. Compiled versions of the Java Log
Visualizer have intentionally not yet been provided because it is
still a little bit aways from being useful to non-developers, however
I’m making what I have available because a number of people have
expressed their interest in helping with development. If any Java
people are interested in working on this, drop me an email since I
will likely not get too much more progress done on this soon.

I would welcome hearing from people who have suggestions or
development time to contribute to these or any other possible
utilities.