Linux

[Drooling_Sheep]

I've been using Prime95 under win xp for 6 months now, and i just set up a linux box (i'm new to linux) running mandrake 9.2.

i downloaded mprime.tar.gz and extracted and ran it. as far as i can tell it just got work and ran one self test (1280K) and hasn't done anything since. the only thing that told me it did anything at all was the creation of files. no dialogs or anything popped up. is this normal behavior? if it is is there a way to make it act like windows version and change settings not shown in the .ini's? if it's not normal behavior do i need the staticly linked version?

thanks for your help

[GP2]

The Linux version is a non-graphical version.

You shouldn't need the statically-linked version.

The Windows version usually gets installed so that it automatically starts up each time you reboot. The Linux version doesn't have an install procedure, you have to manually start it after each reboot (or manually set it up to restart each time).

You can tell if mprime is running by running the "top" program. If it's there, and your system is idle, it should be using most of the CPU time.

If it's not running, go to the program's directory and run "./mprime -d"... that manually starts it to run in your current command-line window.

[Xyzzy]

Start it up with

./mprime -m

Then you will get a pile of menus to work with...

Attach or post your results.txt file and your worktodo.ini here so we can look at them...

[Prime Monster]

Start the client with the -m parameter, mprime -m, and you should see output from it.

That it has performed a selftest indicates that it has requested and received an exponent. You can check this by looking for a worktodo.ini file in the same directory as the client.

PM

[GP2]

One other thing:

The server that automatically assigns exponents is a bit flaky, sometimes it's down.

If it happened to be down at the moment you ran mprime for the first time, you wouldn't be able to download your initial allotment of exponents and start crunching. Perhaps that's the problem.

[GP2]

Originally posted by Prime Monster
Start the client with the -m parameter, mprime -m, and you should see output from it.

Uh no, the -d option is for output.

The -m option is for the menu.

[Prime Monster]

Originally posted by GP2
Uh no, the -d option is for output.

The -m option is for the menu.

If you start the client with the -m option and then select option 5: Test/Continue , you will get output to the screen.

PM

[QuintLeo]

To automatically start up mprime with output, I use the following command in /etc/rc.d/rc.local (I run Slackware, you may have to put the line elsewhere in Mandrake, or other LINUX versions - depends on where your startup scripts files are stored):

(cd /Mersenne ; exec ./mprime -d > /dev/tty10 2>&1) &

I don't actually have a /dev/tty10 set up on my machines, so this ends up as an "output only" display, which is nice from a security standpoint.

The same line SHOULD work in cron, but will probably generate an error message about "mprime already running" every time it's run after the first, unless mprime crashed for some reason.

I also "tweek" the display parameter so that I get a line of output about once an hour on each machine, but that's personal preference.

I deliberately set the keep amount of work onhand parameter high - usually 60 or 90 days on most of my machines - 'cause sometimes a machine will finish a factor, not be able to contact PrimeNet (server or connection down problem), crunch through a trial factor on it's next worktodo entry in a day or less, and then need *another* factor to work on. I've had a couple cases where my faster machines ran out of work during extended PrimeNet downtime, if I didn't do my best to keep 3 factors available in worktodo.

As far as the type of work to do - the defaults work out pretty well, and get updated every so often as new versions of Prime show up.

[Drooling_Sheep]

Thank you all very much.

it works now