prime.spl
 

Can anyone tell me exactly what the file prime.spl does?

I've worked out that it disappears when you log onto primenet, and that if your system is closed or crashes without that connection being made it prevents Prime95 from resuming on restart (the LL test on the exponent starts again from scratch).

Who knows more?

:question:

AFAIK, the spl file contains completion dates for exponent updates and residuals etc for exponent completions.

The good news is that you shouldn't have to start over or lose credit!

If you lost data during the connection, you should give George an explanation of what happened and the results.txt file. With your help, he might find and be able to fix what went wrong in the communications, meanwhile he should be able to process your result manually.

[quote="Digital Concepts"]AFAIK, the spl file contains completion dates for exponent updates and residuals etc for exponent completions.[/quote]
The file also appears to be created with just 1 byte whenever you change a CPU setting, including the setting for the number of hours the prog will run each day. After logging onto PrimeNet it's deleted, but if there's no contact and a 1 byte prime.spl remains in the directory then it seems to prevent a restart: the prog fails to read the saved file pxxxxxxx, renames qxxxxxxx but also fails to read this backup and then starts again from 0.

Only fixes seem to be (a) backup pxxxxxxx and qxxxxxxx files in another directory or (b) delete the 1 byte prime.spl file.

If the prime.spl (spool file) exists at all, it means the client needs to contact the server. One byte just means something needs to be updated; anything more than that is a message that needs to be sent. An LL test result is 344 bytes, a P-1 result is about 250 bytes. I believe it also contains error messages (such as roundoff errors) when they turn up, which are also sent to the server.

If you have a permanent connection and Prime95 set to contact the server automatically, you should never see the .spl file... unless, of course, there is some reason why it couldn't connect.

[quote="binarydigits"]If the prime.spl (spool file) exists at all, it means the client needs to contact the server. One byte just means something needs to be updated[...][/quote]
Thanks for the info.

I still don't understand why the present of a spool file should stop the program reading its saved work files, though. Has anyone else had this problem?

[quote="Ian_H"]I still don't understand why the present of a spool file should stop the program reading its saved work files, though. Has anyone else had this problem?[/quote]

I also don't know of any connection between the .spl file and the work files. I have dozens of PCs with no permanent internet connection that have been running for years with a .spl file present more often than not. Now I can't say for sure that this has never happened to me, because I have had a few occasions where machines restarted exponents for no apparent reason. But I am certain that what you describe is not normal behavior.

prime.spl will not stop the client from sarting. Something is borked - maybe try torture test to check the hardware or swap in a fresh prime95.exe

I sneakernet (run without internet connection) and have never seen anything like this, even when the .spl contained 30 or more results.

[quote="PageFault"][...]maybe try torture test to check the hardware or swap in a fresh prime95.exe[/quote]
Tried both of these and the problem is not confined to one machine or one type of machine. But it [b]is[/b] confined to machines running Windows XP and it only happens with a 1 byte prime.spl, not a larger one.

Does prime95.exe try to access prime.spl, or even just check that it's there, when it is called?

If there is a prime.spl when the program starts up then the first thing it will do is try to contact the server, so I am sure Prime95 checks if it's there when called. But how that could affect its ability to read the intermediate work files is beyond me.