nfsnet.org updates

[Nichtwahr]

How often does nfsnet.org get updated? It seems a few months out of date; the only announcement I've seen for the most recent factorizations has been the latest page of the Cunningham book on Sam Wagstaff's site.
(Incidentally, this is my first posting on the forum; please be gentle!)

[bdodson]

Originally Posted by Nichtwahr

How often does nfsnet.org get updated? It seems a few months out of date; the only announcement I've seen for the most recent factorizations has been the latest page of the Cunningham book on Sam Wagstaff's site.
(Incidentally, this is my first posting on the forum; please be gentle!)

One of the most recent 3-4 email messages on the group list was that
we're looking for a volunteer (and your message count is already up to 2!).

Bruce Dodson

[Nichtwahr]

Originally Posted by bdodson

One of the most recent 3-4 email messages on the group list was that we're looking for a volunteer.

For the sake of those who aren't on the list, what sort of person are you looking for?
Talking about nfsnet-l, I tried to join it, but my message got bounced back:

Final-Recipient: rfc822; majordomo@nfsnet.org
Action: failed
Status: 5.0.0
Diagnostic-Code: X-Postfix; host POSTOFFICE.DATAPLEX.NET[216.177.163.56] said:
550 5.1.1 <majordomo@nfsnet.org>... User unknown (in reply to RCPT TO command)

[bdodson]

Originally Posted by Nichtwahr

For the sake of those who aren't on the list, what sort of person are you looking for? ...

The email in part read:

The project statistics are currently offline. We are actively seeking
assistance in this area. If you have experience with C++ and/or web site
scripting languages and you would like to assist with the NFSNET stats ...

The actual pre-req's are probably more formidable; I believe that the
previous person had access to most/all of the server info. The threads
in this subforum would seem to be the best current source of info.
-bd

[fivemack]

I have those prereqs, I have shell access on a well-connected system, I have a PhD in computational number theory, and I maintain http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/uc...mack/homcun.pl already. I volunteered several months ago and have heard very little since; please consider this a second volunteerment.

[bdodson]

Originally Posted by fivemack

I have those prereqs, I have shell access on a well-connected system, I have a PhD in computational number theory, and I maintain http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/uc...mack/homcun.pl already. I volunteered several months ago and have heard very little since; please consider this a second volunteerment.

Wow! The level of participants here is looking rather good. Richard/wacky
is the person running servers. We used to also have servers at Bristol,
probably still do --- any chance you'd know the people there having
access to those servers? If I understood correctly, Bristol was contributing
to NFSNET at some point, but it was too successful: they switched to
condor and a centralized grid. While user stats would be useful, and
likely would bring in new users, getting a sieving client that would run
on pc's under condor would have the potential to raise our sieving
rate by a factor of 10-or-so. Someone (probably not our server
contact person) at Bristol is listed in the UWisc condor material as being
an expert on pc-condor, with a custom version taylored for their site.
Richard has several ideas of how condor might be used, but isn't a
windows person. If we don't hear from Richard, I'll email him to suggest
that he contact you. -bd

PS - ah, re-reading, how well connected? Maybe moving (some) of
the Bristol server functions, enough to get the stats back up [they
used to really be quite nice, better than any other www-based nfs
system I've seen], would be another option to consider? --- both
stats and a condor-based pc-client would be better yet.

[fivemack]

The 'well-connected system' is a colocated dual-P3, I suspect it could run stats very happily but I don't know whether its sysadmin-cum-owner would be happy with the load that running an actual NFSNET server would put on it. I don't have a good idea of what that load is, even ... if it's one HTTP packet per two hours per client, that's probably not unendurable.

User stats are really what I'm most interested in.

[bdodson]

Originally Posted by fivemack

The 'well-connected system' is a colocated dual-P3, I suspect ...

User stats are really what I'm most interested in.

Congratulations on the reservations page. You'd probably be a
better candidate for maintaining stats after getting some more
experience with running nfs factorizations --- managing the data
for a smaller-scale project, in particular. If polynomial selection
and post-processing are more intricate than the attention you'd
like to spend, then even a larger quadratic sieve project - looking at
counts, and the estimation of when sufficiently many relns have
been collected to get a reasonable matrix size, in particular - might
provide some useful experience. The http/cgi implementations
are specifically designed so as to keep the users away from seeing
the data. That's good for users that have some cpu cycles to spare,
but that aren't interested in the data management. I'm fairly happy
to have Richard and Paul taking care of that for current nfsnet
projects myself. Completing a 110-digit gnfs yourself would give
you a better idea of the number of packets involved. -Bruce

[frmky]

Originally Posted by bdodson

You'd probably be a
better candidate for maintaining stats after getting some more
experience with running nfs factorizations --- managing the data
for a smaller-scale project, in particular. If polynomial selection
and post-processing are more intricate than the attention you'd
like to spend, then even a larger quadratic sieve project - looking at
counts, and the estimation of when sufficiently many relns have
been collected to get a reasonable matrix size, in particular - might
provide some useful experience.

A quick glance at his reservation page indicates that he now has reserved and is presumably working on or preparing for both C135 GNFS and C200 SNFS factorizations. Paul Leyland's Homogeneous Cunninghams updates page indicates that he has completed a number of SNFS and GNFS factorizations.

The NFSNET project now desperately needs someone willing to maintain the stats and website, or it will never grow beyond the current diehard factoring fanatics. Yet it seems that you are discouraging someone who is interested and clearly over-qualified. What's up??

[xilman]

Originally Posted by frmky

Yet it seems that you are discouraging someone who is interested and clearly over-qualified. What's up??

Remember the golden rule: never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence.

I believe that Bruce was simply unfamiliar with Tom's abilities and track record and that his post was an honest evaluation of what experience is likely to be needed to run the stats successfully.

I, on the other hand, have known Tom for years and believe that he's thoroughly capable of doing the job successfully. I'll mail him directly with more information and whatever assistance I can give him.


Paul

[bdodson]

Originally Posted by frmky

A quick glance at his reservation page indicates that he now has reserved and is presumably working on or preparing for both C135 GNFS and C200 SNFS factorizations. Paul Leyland's Homogeneous Cunninghams updates page indicates that he has completed a number of SNFS and GNFS factorizations.

The NFSNET project now desperately needs someone willing to maintain the stats and website, or it will never grow beyond the current diehard factoring fanatics. Yet it seems that you are discouraging someone who is interested and clearly over-qualified. What's up??

Uhm, you're suggesting that I ought to be scanning for the owner of
/~twomack/homcun.pl rather than for fivemack? To be honest, the
"colocated dual-P3" as server threw me off a bit. Bad judgement on my
part for a misdirected reply to the 10am post; then an apparently
unsuccessful attempt to back-off. I did my best to provide some
additional info; so far as I can see, the reply borders on non-responsive.
Perhaps I got off lucky, as I can see that I might not have fared well with
something more directly responsive. Thanks.

Richard does respond to posts in this thread/subforum. Did so yesterday,
in fact. NFSNET is his project. I know for a fact that he'd be a lot
happier to have more contributors from among the non-diehard-fanatical.
He seems a bit gloomy about the prospects. I don't know why he hasn't
pursued fivemack's offer. Of the reservations you refer to,

3^451-2^451, c135.6, difficulty 215.2 is the c135 gnfs? And
6^256+5^256, c199.3, diff 199.2 would surely be the snfs.

I'm not completely sure why you're so annoyed; these seem to me
likely to provide useful experience for someone interested in promoting
the nfsnet project. Some years ago I did a c137 gnfs myself (using
the CWI suite), and the sieving/post_processing of a c142 gnfs, before
sending the matrix off to Paul. And M727 by snfs, before sending the
matrix off to CWI (where it was the first hard test case for their parallel
Lanczos, using 25 cpus). Each with some sieving contributions from other
people. I also managed contributions from 6-7 people on the factorization
of 2^773+1, the first 768-bit snfs, with hand task-distribution and data
collection by ftp. Even earlier, our paper on RSA130 is titled "a world-
wide factoring record ...", a reference to the attempt to get contributions
from non-diehard-fanatics, using the web. You most likely don't want to
hear about factor-by-email, from '87-'91 or so, before the web; of which
I caught the last couple projects.

The skill-sets needed for these collaborative projects certainly include
a non-trivial amount of fanaticism. Paul's probably been the most
successful, with RSA129 (and the famous 5000 computers); but the
current nfsnet setup, together with the lamented stats pages was/is
a considerable improvement beyond anything seen before. I'd like to
suggest that a little more tolerance may be in order. Richard has been
doing some fundamental re-thinking. I haven't been deligated as
recruiter for the stats-page position, if there is one. I don't want to
discourage fivemack; on the contrary, he seems to be doing all of the
right things. Managing a stats-server without sys-admin privileges does
seem a bit unlikely, but that's just me --- actually, my initial post from
March does report that server access/experience, say at the univ
sys-admin level, was part of what the previous stats person did. But,
again, that list-serve/email_post was from the previous stats person,
not Richard, who has both the first and last word on what's wanted/needed
for the position (if there even is one ...). -Bruce