Also, there is an account-wide work-type default setting that interacts with the work-type settings; workers without an explicit setting get the default work type enumerated in the account-wide setting. Or used to at least - I can't find that setting now...

[QUOTE=Madpoo;413257]Could be that it thought the CPU was good for nothing more than TF? It's one of these: "AMD Opteron(tm) Processor 6168"[/QUOTE]

That's a five year old CPU. Better than my current desktop at home, actually. It's more than fine for LL.

where is this global preference setting you speak of? And I'm getting it on brand newish Xeons (Ivy Bridge) so it shouldn't be a generational thing.

[QUOTE=aurashift;413281]where is this global preference setting you speak of? And I'm getting it on brand newish Xeons (Ivy Bridge) so it shouldn't be a generational thing.[/QUOTE]

Good question... I see a place where that can go in the table for user info, but can't see anywhere on the site to set it. Weird. Maybe that column in the table isn't what I think it is. LOL

It might be telling that out of 140,000+ user accounts, only 800 have that value set to something besides NULL. In fact, I think what I'm looking at may be the setting that users can check to say they want to get preferred assignments (lowest available). Hmm...

Well, that's weird. Not sure what the thing was I saw in the account update code where it could set the new worker "work preference" to some kind of account default, if such an account default doesn't exist. Maybe it was a planned feature that isn't there yet.

Anyway, back to the investigation. I'll see if I can't find an actual answer for this without bugging George. :smile:

[QUOTE=Madpoo;413306]Good question... I see a place where that can go in the table for user info, but can't see anywhere on the site to set it. Weird. Maybe that column in the table isn't what I think it is. LOL

It might be telling that out of 140,000+ user accounts, only 800 have that value set to something besides NULL. In fact, I think what I'm looking at may be the setting that users can check to say they want to get preferred assignments (lowest available). Hmm...

Well, that's weird. Not sure what the thing was I saw in the account update code where it could set the new worker "work preference" to some kind of account default, if such an account default doesn't exist. Maybe it was a planned feature that isn't there yet.

Anyway, back to the investigation. I'll see if I can't find an actual answer for this without bugging George. :smile:[/QUOTE]

Ahh...I totally missed a *different* per-user setting in the database, and it really is a setting for the default work type for a user.

"fivemack", your default work type is 1 (trial factoring LMH). "aurashift", yours is also 1.

Going back to the 140,000+ accounts, 22,000+ have some default work type set.

Methinks this is a bug. In the code for creating a new user, it's setting this to 1 for all new users even though there's a comment that mentions setting it to "whatever makes the most sense.

I'll email George and James for clarification on what to do about it. I've got details on it and proposed solutions...

:tu: You did a very good job! Hope this is fixed and saves us the future headache.

[QUOTE=Madpoo;413309]Ahh...I totally missed a *different* per-user setting in the database, and it really is a setting for the default work type for a user.
[snip]
Methinks this is a bug. In the code for creating a new user, it's setting this to 1 for all new users even though there's a comment that mentions setting it to "whatever makes the most sense.

I'll email George and James for clarification on what to do about it. I've got details on it and proposed solutions...[/QUOTE]

I seem to recall there was a page that explained the hierarchy of worktype settings as well; might not have been on the same page that changed the setting. This all may have disappeared around the time the assignment recycling rules were modified, but it might have disappeared even further back when the web pages were cleaned up. Apparently it wasn't an often used setting/page.

Many thanks to Madpoo for tracking down the bug!

[QUOTE=Madpoo;413250]
I tracked down the machine fivemack was having this problem with and here's what I can tell from looking at the logs from last week:
Oct 15 @ 20:19 UTC: request to update the computer info (version, cpu details, etc), followed by an update to an existing assignment
Oct 15 @ 22:50 UTC: request to change set the number of worker threads to 12
Oct 15 @ 22:50-22:53 UTC: a bunch of requests to get assignments for workers 1-12
For the rest of Oct 15 the system was returning it's TF results and getting new ones

Flash forward to Oct 17 @ 20:20 UTC when that system sends a bunch of requests to update the individual worker preferences. It's actually @ 20:28 UTC when I see the request come in to set all worker types to "101" (double check).
[/quote]

That's interesting - the server doesn't seem to make a distinction between changes made by the computer's master to its configuration (Oct 15 @ 22:50), automated requests made by the client running on a computer (Oct 15 @ 22:50-22:53), and requests made by the computer's master manually at a Web page (Oct 17 @ 20:28).

[QUOTE=fivemack;413326]Many thanks to Madpoo for tracking down the bug![/QUOTE]

No problem, it was definitely a weird one.

Okay, so here's the long and short of it:

Back in April 2014, the server started defaulting user accounts to "TF LMH" work unless the CPU specified something else. I think this was just a typo or confusion over the fact that in the database, zero means "do what makes sense" and one means "TF LMH", and it was mistakenly set to 1.

Fortunately Prime95/mprime will default to whatever makes sense... if not for that, this would have been discovered much sooner when *all* new users started getting TF work. :smile:

The only time this seemed to rear it's ugly head was when an existing CPU had more workers added... it left them in just enough of an ambiguous state that it picked up that *account* default and passed out the TF work as reported by some of you.

After chatting with George, I've fixed the new account creation code to leave the account default empty, and also changed all the user accounts created since April of 2014 to set that to NULL as well.

On the server, the code that handles what happens when a new worker shows up for a CPU would look for the presence of that "account default", and if it was set (which now it won't be), it would end up using that in most cases.

The preference order stated in the code is to honor the worker-specific setting first, then the account default, then a team default (hasn't been implemented), and then finally "whatever makes sense" if nothing else said otherwise by that point. I think it was more a quirk in the way a new worker versus a new CPU was being handled which made it act funny.

I *think* that a new worker on an existing system might still ask for "whatever makes sense"... I suppose that's better than always asking for TF LMH work though. And that's because adding workers will only tell the server about the new ones, but Prime95 isn't sending the info that says "oh, and set these new workers to type XYZ" at the same time.

If in doubt, when you add additional workers, try also setting their work type specifically. Either in the program "Worker Windows" section, or adding entries to "prime.txt" for each worker section as I noted earlier.

And if you're the type of GIMPSer who really, truly wants to have their account default set to something in particular like double-checking or first-time or 100M, let me know and I can update your account default accordingly.

However, since that account default wasn't really ever setup or implemented, I can't say that it'll actually be around for long. Maybe if enough people showed an interest in it we could make that setting visible on the site somewhere so you can change it. George's fear was that the concept of an account default work type wouldn't be readily understandable or at least not well-used, to the point where it made sense to bubble that setting up to the user settings page.

[QUOTE=Madpoo;413529]And if you're the type of GIMPSer who really, truly wants to have their account default set to something in particular like double-checking or first-time or 100M, let me know and I can update your account default accordingly.[/QUOTE]

I'd really like first time tests, please. Kudos for the work. A+!!1