:: 07-Jan-2000 07:18 (Friday) ::

Ok, everything on CSC should be all set again, hopefully just
in time for us to announce that it’s over tomorrow };8)

(NO, this does NOT mean we found the key yet!) }:8)

:: 07-Jan-2000 06:21 (Friday) ::

-452 is being operated on as I write this; I have binaries on my hard
disk and am banging on them. I’ll detail some bugfixes below, as well as
new developments in the add-on world.

Here’s something cool:

There’s a freeware screensaver available called MacDim, at
http://www.ibrium.se/macdim.html . It launches small modules – basically
applications that are opened via AppleEvents, display their graphics,
and close via another AppleEvent.

We can turn dnetc for the Mac into a MacDim module. :)

Top hackers are planning to work on this, but things like
multiprocessing and bugfixing have higher priority. You’re welcome to
help out. The possibilites are endless – the dimmer could be combined
with the Java log visualizer, an FBA eventually… and the Start&Hide
AppleScript should come in handy.

Let’s put that Windows screensaver to shame! :)

In other news…

Michael Feiri appears to have fixed the reconnect failure bug. “I
switched lowlevel connectivity inside GUSI to MacTCP because in the
OpenTransport variant there seems to be severe connection maintainance
bug that causes the client to lose [its] connection to the outside
world… The result for the endusers is that network IO is now much
slower but on the other hand it seems that the client can now correctly
redial to the internet” when there has previously been a connection.

Also fixed:

– DriversLib no longer needed
– OpenTransportLib ditto
– 68k synced with PowerPC code
– 68k client uses old assembly RC5 code; faster
– modified buffer IO code in an attempt to fix buffer exchange bugs

Coo coo ca choo.

:: 07-Jan-2000 05:19 (Friday) ::

Ok, I finally got back into tally. I’m running the csc em_rank update
right now. In the interest of time, I’m going to shut off http so that
I’m not competing with all of you for CPU time. I promise I’ll turn it
back on as soon as possible!! }:8)

:: 07-Jan-2000 05:06 (Friday) ::

The CSC statsrun isn’t co-operating again. I’m trying to fix it,
but I’m getting 80% packet loss to statsbox. More as the situation
unfolds…

:: 06-Jan-2000 12:55 (Thursday) ::

We’ve gotten a handful of questions recently from people who are
excited about the recent announcement about work verification. I’d
just like to take this opportunity to point people to the existence of
an old document of mine that has been public for awhile that describes
many of the issues involved and some of the methods we had considered.
http://www.distributed.net/source/specs/opcodeauth.html

:: 06-Jan-2000 03:35 (Thursday) ::

The following clients have been updated/added:

– dnetc-aix41.all.tar.gz Aix 4.1 all platforms v2.8004.451

Enjoy
Moose

:: 05-Jan-2000 07:04 (Wednesday) ::

I discovered/realized that the changes made to the psearch code
will end up requiring some changes in the statproc code as well.
This is always a bit of a hassle, since there are two copies of
statproc code, one for each contest. Instead of making the changes
in both places, I decided to make the changes necessary to allow
the two scripts I changed to work for both contests.

Unfortunately I didn’t realize the RC5 statsrun was still happening.

Net result is that the ranking portion of the RC5 code is now re-
running. Unfortunately, I lost yesterday’s overall email ranking
in the process, so everyone will show up as having moved 0 places
overall in tommorow’s stats. The ranking will be back to normal
tomorrow.

Until I get these changes finished, the participant search function
may stop working for a short time after the rc5 statsrun (it will
only stop working for rc5 folks). CSC *should* be ok.

The good news is that I am working on (and making progress on)
allowing Nugget, Bruce, and myself to have small-scale copies of
the stats database that we can tinker with. This should help
eliminate some of these problems that we’ve been having as of late.

Again, thanks for you patience.

:: 05-Jan-2000 04:42 (Wednesday) ::

The following clients have been updated/added:

– dnetc-dos-x86.exe Dos v2.8004.452

2.8004.452 chg: all: .ini option spin off from the generic [parameters]
section into subsections is now complete. phew! Nothing
left except “id”.

This upload was mostly to correct incorrect versoin upload of v2.8004.451

Enjoy!
Moose

:: 05-Jan-2000 03:06 (Wednesday) ::

Well, we’ve finally got the load on statsbox under control again
*knocks on wood*

The problem seemed to be with the participant search script again.
(This is what caused the massive slowdown last time too). The
problem is that in order to allow the most flexible search
possible, the script would search for the string entered anywhere
in the email field. (“*string*”). Unfortunately, Sybase can’t
optimize this query, and it was killing the box. (The data-servers
were using over 80% CPU almost constantly… when the psearch
scripts were down, usage was rarely over 60%).

So, the script has been redone a bit. First, if there’s an @ in
the search term (such as when looking up a complete email
address), the script will attempt to do a “string*” search first,
which Sybase can optimize. If that fails (or if there’s no @),
the script will do a “*string*” search like before, but it will
only retrieve a list of IDs, which it will then use to look up
participant info for the specific project. This is a somewhat in-
efficient way to do things, but it’s brought the load under
control. The only functional difference will be if you try to do
a partial search using a string with @ in it. You’ll end up searching
on “string*” instead of “*string*” like the script used to.

I have a feeling we’re going to be needing faster CPUs in the near
future… anyone want to buy the PII-300s we’re using for a
keepsake? }:8)

One other note… if you typically do a search on your email, you
might want to bookmark your summary page instead… it will come
up faster if you don’t go through the psearch script.

Sorry for the downtime and errors while I was debugging. Everything
seems to be working now.

:: 04-Jan-2000 08:21 (Tuesday) ::

For those who are wondering, I shut down statsbox web access temporarily
to build some additional indexes. We’re seeing a very heavy load right
now, and this should help. I’ll also modify the statproc routines to
build this index nightly in the future.