Should we buy a backup server?
 

I originally proposed it in the "Server Unavailable" section. It sounded like a good idea since the server is down so much. My idea is that it always "serves". That means, it'll be the server when Entropia is down, and help it when it's not. Then you won't have to switch it from busy and not. One server was only $214 on Dell.

My vote is YES, but if we make a place for non-prime95 clients (Mlucas and Glucas).

Guillermo

My vote is... yo.

We should take care of maintenance before we add systems to maintain...

Luigi

Hmm, tough choice here. On the one hand, a backup server would be good since it would pretty much prevent any PrimeNet outages, which would be good for getting and retaining newbies. On the other hand, trying to work that into a server design is a nightmare. See this thread:

[url]http://www.mersenneforum.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=124[/url]

The other thing is that staging work for the v5 server is underway. Therefore nobody is going to bother to try to work it into v4 since, according to [URL=http://www.mersenneforum.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1312]this thread[/URL] the v5 server might be in testing by this summer.

So I'm casting two votes:
YES, if the v5 server is developed and a backup server can be feasibly implemented.

NO, if the v5 server is not going to be developed or implementing a backup server is not feasible.

I wonder if we somehow could get a an intermediate server to distribute exponents, at least we could get new exponents from it.

Then when the main server comes online again the client would register the exponent against that.

PM

[QUOTE][i]Originally posted by gbvalor [/i]
[B]My vote is YES, but if we make a place for non-prime95 clients (Mlucas and Glucas).

Guillermo [/B][/QUOTE]

What are the obstacles for making Glucas work with the current server? Are you saying some server changes would be needed?

Actually, almost a year ago I wrote a code to deal with the primenet server (with the help from K. Kastens). It was really a tricky code to get exponent from primenet manual page and checking in the results.

I don't like the tricky code. The client had to simulate it was a false machine running prime95. You can see this page, there is no place for other clients or machines.

So, once wrote, I had to deactivate the code. :sad:

And now I'm thinking to write a small server code to reserve exponents and get the results. George should give to the server a reasonable pool of exponents and the server should return to George the results in the form more confortable to George. The key way to avoid fake results was the speed of a client, (previously identified by a unique number asigned by the server). Once detected the speed of a client, it could not send results at a rate exceding a threshold.

Security is my headache.

And any idea and suggestion is welcome.

Guillermo.

From what I understand the server (software) goes down when some very old version of Prime95 ( v16 ) using RPC is looking for work in some range and not getting it.
The hardware continues to work.
Some patch to the server code ( reissue some work in the range, or tell this old version to stop ) could fix it. Or a separate task that can give out assignments, would work without changing the current server software.
It is a software issue and not hardware, so throwing more hardware at the problem won't fix it.

I just voted Yes obviously and now it's 50-50. I like how my ideas can be so supported. That SC400 only costs $274 and comes with a 2.26 GHZ P4 after rebates. I think it's weird how it costs less than a desktop.

Having two servers isn't really a solution. You can get fragmentation and duplication of work.

Already, the PrimeNet server on rare occasions will assign an exponent that has already been factored, if the factor was reported manually more recently than the last database sync.

We already have the issue of database syncs between George's database and PrimeNet, together with separate top producer rankings that don't quite match. If you throw in another server, you'd get more syncs and yet another producer listing??
:shock:

Surely there must be a solution. Some authentication mechanism, or perhaps future clients and servers should report and store not just the final residue, but all intermediate residues at every 5% interval of completion, to make faking harder and more quickly detected...


It would be good to know the official position of George and Scott on what it would take for non-Prime95 clients to talk to PrimeNet, and whether PrimeNet v5 is being designed with this in mind...

I started a new thread: [url=http://www.mersenneforum.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1523]Non-Prime95 clients talking to PrimeNet... can it be done?[/url] to specifically discuss the points raised by gbvalor.

With regard to the original question, a backup server might make sense [i]if[/i] clients know about it and if PrimeNet is designed to work seamlessly with multiple servers. Without that, just buying the hardware won't solve any problems, especially if the crashes are caused by rogue clients and a bug in the current PrimeNet server code.

Can we devise a low-tech solution... a script that checks every 15 minutes to see if the server is up and pages someone (literally, with a pager) if it isn't.