Empty results.txt/prime.log files on dual-core

[Graff]

I received my new computer on Friday (a 2.66 GHz dual-core beastie).
I wanted to set up two directories containing Prime95. After quite a
bit of trial and error (attempting to install a second copy of Prime95
instead asked if I wanted to deinstall the first copy; get two copies
running only to have them both fail to restart after reboot; both
restarting after reboot but one or both copies losing their assignments;
etc.), I had two copies of Prime95 running. Both copies are
requesting exponents from and sending results back to the
PrimeNet server.

What is very strange is that the worktodo.ini files in both directories
do not contain the exponents that are being worked. Also, there
are no entries in either the results.txt or prime.log file. Yet both
instances of Primes 95 are obviously communicating with the server.
Presumably related to this is the fact that the throughput listed on
my stats page is still given as 2049.03 P90 CPU hrs/day, which is
what it was before I GIMP'ed the new machine.

My questions are:
1) Why is this happening?
2) How can I fix it to output entries to results.txt and prime.log?
3) Where are the Prime95 instances storing their worktodo.ini files?
Or, alternatively, how are the two running copies managing to
work??
(A search of the C: drive shows only the two empty worktodo.ini
files.)
Any thoughts would be appreciated.

What is very nice is that one core on this machine is over twice as
fast at trial factoring than my 3 GHz Pentium 4 machine :-).

Graff

[potonono]

Do you have read/write permissions for the prime95 folders you set up?

[Graff]

Yes, permissions on the folders should allow me to write to files in that
directory. I have just changed the ownership of the two directories
to see whether that makes any difference. I should know if it works
around 09:00 tomorrow morning.

Graff

[Graff]

No output in the files after the latest exponent finished
trial factoring.

On the plus side, I did see a tab marked Compatability
Files in the directory display. I clicked on it and found
the missing files there. When I get home tonight I'll have
to read up on this new (to me) feature.

Graff

[potonono]

I should have asked on the first message, but based on your responses, am I correctly guessing that you are using MS Windows Vista?

If so, I don't know if I can help much since I'm still on XP, but my only suggestion is to double-check both the attributes and permissions on the folders and files individually.

From Microsoft Technet, "NTFS permissions can be changed using the Security tab (assuming you have it on your edition of Vista and that Simple File Sharing is disabled). Alternatively you can use a command line tool such as cacls.exe to alter permissions. The state of the read only flag on a folder is meaningless, it exists only to allow you to reset the state of all files in the current directory (or subdirectories) if you so choose. Files that are marked as Read Only might be treated as read only by some applications but there is no real guarantee of that (notice that Explorer will quite happily let you delete them)."

[Graff]

I read up on this new (?) feature. Vista doesn't allow untrusted
programs to write to the Program Files directory. If an untrusted
program attempts a write to this directory, the writes are quietly
redirected to a "VirtualStore" directory. I found all the missing
files in this directory.

Still not clear though why my throughput is still as listed as
2049 P90 CPU hrs/day in my PrimeNet reports when I reckon it
should be more like 9000 P90 CPU hrs/day.

Upshot is: don't install Prime95 into the default location under
Vista if you expect to find the data files in the usual place.

Graff

[S485122]

Originally Posted by Graff

Still not clear though why my throughput is still as listed as 2049 P90 CPU hrs/day in my PrimeNet reports when I reckon it should be more like 9000 P90 CPU hrs/day.

The throughput on the status page is based on the past results, it. The P90 CPU years of all the work you turned in is divided by the time you have been in PrimeNet. Adding a machine will increase your throughput after that machine turns in results only.

Jacob

[Graff]

That's what I would have thought would be the case, but both
cores on this new machine have returned at least one factoring
result to the server. One has returned one "no factor to 2^68" and
one "completed P-1", the other has returned six "no factor to 2^68"
messages with another due in about two hours. All three CPUs
(a 3.0 GHz P4 and the two cores of the 2.66 GHz Core 2 Duo) show
up in my PrimeNet report.

Graff

[Graff]

And I should add that the returned factoring results are being
reflected in my total CPU factoring total (increasing at about
0.11 years per exponent).

Graff

[Graff]

Originally Posted by S485122

The throughput on the status page is based on the past results, it. The P90 CPU years of all the work you turned in is divided by the time you have been in PrimeNet. Adding a machine will increase your throughput after that machine turns in results only.

Jacob

I think I see where the "problem" is. The throughput is based on
the total time one has been involved in GIMPS. So my 136.472 P90 CPU
years of work spread over ~ 585 days is ~ 2040 P90 CPU hrs/day.
I was under the assumption that it would be a more current estimate
of the throughput, say averaging over the last week or month.

So my throughput will only rise slowly :-( Currently at 2050.59 hrs/day.
It'll be interesting to see what the throughput rises to when the two
LL tests that are running complete. I'll then use the useful Team Prime
Rib pages to get current throughput rates.

Graff