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.

2006-03-07

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.

2006-02-15

nerf [15-Feb-2006 @ 19:09]

Filed under: clients — nerf @ 19:09 +00:00

:: 15-Feb-2006 19:09 GMT (Wednesday) ::

The speeds calculator has been updated to reflect more modern processors.
Note that this is for rough estimates only.

Further note that I have nothing to do with this code other than being
the one to have it in their home directory. All credit for this latest
version goes to Jonathan Smith from the rc5 mail list.

http://www.distributed.net/~nerf/rc5calc.html

2006-01-31

chrisj [31-Jan-2006 @ 11:35]

Filed under: keyservers — chrisj @ 11:35 +00:00

:: 31-Jan-2006 11:35 GMT (Tuesday) ::

We’ve fixed the keymaster issues with RC5-72, and all of our proxies have
filled their buffers again.

Sorry for any inconvenience this has caused.

2006-01-29

chrisj [29-Jan-2006 @ 18:10]

Filed under: keyservers — chrisj @ 18:10 +00:00

:: 29-Jan-2006 18:10 GMT (Sunday) ::

We’re experiencing some problems with the keymaster at the moment. This means
that some of our proxies have run out of work for RC5-72.

As a result, some of you may not be able to fetch new workunits from the
proxies.

THIS IS ONLY AFFECTING RC5-72. Clients running OGR will continue to function
normally, and clients in their default configuration will gracefully fallback
to doing OGR until RC5-72 work is available again.

We’ll let you know more as more information comes to hand. Sorry for any
inconvenience this has caused. We’re working as hard as we can to get the
system back up and running properly.

2006-01-22

decibel [22-Jan-2006 @ 12:35]

Filed under: stats — decibel @ 12:35 +00:00

:: 22-Jan-2006 12:35 GMT (Sunday) ::

I’ll be doing some maintenance on stats today, so there may be some brief
outages.

2006-01-17

dbaker [17-Jan-2006 @ 22:12]

Filed under: clients,keyservers,proxyper — dbaker @ 22:12 +00:00

:: 17-Jan-2006 22:12 GMT (Tuesday) ::

Hi, folks.

As Bovine announced 18 months ago in this plan entry:
http://n0cgi.distributed.net/cgi/planarc.cgi?user=bovine&plan=2004-06-28.08:48
we are shutting down the *.v27.distributed.net DNS entries and finishing the
migration to v2.9 clients. All v27 DNS entries now point to 127.0.0.1 in order
to avoid problems in some of the older clients if the DNS failed to resolve.

All current clients should already be using the *.v29.distributed.net servers,
so this should not impact any clients or proxies. If you haven’t upgraded your
client or proxy software recently, I recommend visiting:

http://www.distributed.net/download/clients.php for clients
http://www.distributed.net/download/proxies.php for proxies

Thanks for your contribution.

2006-01-13

decibel [13-Jan-2006 @ 11:58]

Filed under: stats — decibel @ 11:58 +00:00

:: 13-Jan-2006 11:58 GMT (Friday) ::

Ok, firefox is out-foxing me I guess…

If I enter http://midasnetworks.com/ into the URL field, it pulls the website
up just fine. But clicking on that link is actually broken. Wee.

Anyway, working url is http://www.midasnetworks.com/

decibel [13-Jan-2006 @ 11:39]

Filed under: stats — decibel @ 11:39 +00:00

:: 13-Jan-2006 11:39 GMT (Friday) ::

Fritz has been successfully moved to it’s new home. Since we wanted to minimize
downtime, we used a fast transport protocol (http://lnk.nu/decibel.org/7m1.jpg).
Luckily, the MTU on this protocol was plenty large to allow transporting fritz
without the need to fragment it (http://lnk.nu/decibel.org/7m2.jpg). It’s
doubtful that other transport protocols could have handled this
(http://lnk.nu/slacker.com/7m3).

In any case, thanks again to http://midasnetworks.com for providing fritz with
a home in Austin!

2006-01-12

decibel [12-Jan-2006 @ 15:32]

Filed under: stats — decibel @ 15:32 +00:00

:: 12-Jan-2006 15:32 GMT (Thursday) ::

http://stats.distributed.net will be moving to http://midasnetworks.com in
approximately 2 hours. If everything goes well, downtime should only be 45-60
minutes.

bovine [12-Jan-2006 @ 04:37]

Filed under: stats — bovine @ 04:37 +00:00

:: 12-Jan-2006 04:37 GMT (Thursday) ::

There will be a planned stats outage starting around Jan 12 23:00 UTC,
as we relocate the server to a new hosting facility. We hope to bring
stats back online within a couple of hours. There will be a followup
plan announcement once service has been restored.

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