GIMPS Nub

Hello!
I'm new to the whole GIMPS thing, but I thought it'd be fun to give it a go, so I tried to put the 64 version on my new MacBook. It downloaded ok, but then I started trying to set it up and got a bit lost (and scared…). I thought I answered all the command line questions right (has anyone else found the ReadMe file, em, useless?), but it got to the end of the questions and didn't do anything. It was just sitting there in Terminal. And then my fan kicked on highest speed, temperature skyrocketed and I freaked and shut the computer. Opened it back up, quit Terminal, then went back to Terminal to try to run the mprime file using ./mprime. Repeat blank screen and high temperature. I went into Activity Monitor and it said the program mprime was using 99% of my CPU and over 2GB of virtual memory!! What on earth did I do wrong? Any suggestions? Thank you!!!

[petrw1]

GIMPS software (mprime) is designed to make use of unused CPU cycles (ALL of them)...so definitely your CPU will go to 100% and the Temperature will go up and Fan will kick in high speed whenever it is running.

But only "unused" cycles as it runs at the lowest possible priority setting. The instant you want to run anything else, Prime95 will back off.

I've never used a Mac so beyond that I can add nothing more, other than it sounds like it is working EXACTLY as designed.

Good Luck

[Mr. P-1]

Originally Posted by SayMoi

...over 2GB of virtual memory!!...

It should not use more virtual memory than you have physical..

On first startup it goes into test mode where it exercises your processor and memory. I've not done this for a while so I don't know exactly how this proceeds, but that might explain the memory usage. Also what petrw1 said.

Ok, so in reality I'm just way more paranoid than I ever knew. :) Thank you both for the help! (Oh, and no, Mr. P-1, it definitely wasn't using more memory than I had physical, I just didn't expect it to use nearly that much.)

[ET_]

If you want to see what exactly your program is doing, try starting it with ./mprime -d

Luigi

[cheesehead]

Originally Posted by SayMoi

Ok, so in reality I'm just way more paranoid than I ever knew.

... as well you should be, in this day of ever-more-sophiticated Internet malware!

Someone needs to write up a suitable warning about this sort of behavior, for inclusion in the readme. (I guess I'll do it, right after I finish collecting all the best examples of answers to newbie questions for adding to mersennewiki.)