SB: THe SB Question and Answer Thread

[SlangNRox]

Seeing how people are having questions about running sb I thought I'd start a question and answer. Feel free to post questions and answers here

Heres a few faq links that may be helpful
Team Anadtech What is 17 or Bust? faq
TPR faq

 

[n0cmonkey]

I might have a question later when I get my new machine built, but not yet. It'll be the first Windows machine I've setup in a long long time.

I can possibly help with Linux questions though.

 

[SlangNRox]

I posted this in another thread but maybe someone can help me out

Is anyone else running sb on a p4 3.2ghz? My times seem to be slow. getting around 750 kcem/s right now. I recall getting around 850+ on a previous block. It is running with dual channel memory. I thought it might just be the wu that i was working on but i just got another one and its just as slow.

As far as I can tell my times were increasing as n increased but my last 2 blocks have been really slow, while on my p3 1ghz my rate is still increasing with each higher n that i test.

 

[Unforgiven]

i stopped my client on my pc last night (windows 2000 sp3, client 1.2.5) and this morning when i went to start it back up it downloaded a new test to start working on. it didnt resume where the other test had left off last night. the only way i could fix it is by going into the registry and hacking it and inputting the hexadecimal amounts of which test i should be running and such. this was a real pain in the ass but i want to know why it did this in the first place? was it because i didnt have the size of my log file set high enough? i had it set to 0 bytes and now ive bumped it up to 1000 but i didnt realize that that would have any effect on the client resuming when i installed this program. could someone please tell me what i did wrong to not have the ability to resume this morning because im stumped

 

[SlangNRox]

I don't why it did that. My client did a similar thing but i think it restarted from the beginning on the existing wu after installing it as a service. Luckily I only did around 3% on the block so i only lost about 3 hrs of computing time.

 

[Allio]

There is an unresolved bug with the SoB client where it does not properly create a 'cache' entry in the registry after being installed. To avoid the problem, reboot after installing and only then let it download a test.

It VERY occasionally drops tests on established installs, and I'm not quite sure why that happens. In either case, you can resume work on your previous test by following these instructions.

1) Identify the test that got dropped by looking in your logfile for a line like:
[Sun Jun 06 10:23:21 2004] got proth test from server (k=55459, n=6312874)

2) Double-check that the test exists as a Z-file in your SB directory. For the test I quote above, the file would be named 'z6312874' - that is, the current n of the test.

3) Open regedit and browse to "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\LhDn\sob\cache".

4) Set 'cache' to 2 if it isn't already, and 'k' and 'n' to the corresponding values for the dropped test, using binary values.

5) Save and start Seventeen or Bust - it should begin work on your old test.

 

[Unforgiven]

my client keeps killing itself periodically thoughout the day. im not running it as a service, just the gui and the icon in the system tray. i just went and checked it and its been down for 2 hours. no error messages, just put my mouse over the system tray icon and poof it was gone. any ideas?!?

btw, im running windows 2000 pro sp4

 

[Confused]

Unforgiven,

Check your sb.log file, see if anything untoward is in the log (if needbe, post it here).

Also, try using the service installer and use the switches -m and -s


Garry

 

[Unforgiven]

there is nothing odd in the sb.log file that i could see. i think i finally found the entry in the event log of 2k but its not showing me the application name so i cant be sure if its the correct entry or not (im 99% sure its the dr watson error from the sb.exe crash). ive posted my issue over at the sb forums and some other dude is having the same issue. link to thread on sb forum

 

[Unforgiven]

sorry but heres another question....

how long do i have to complete a test before it expires on me? im sure they have some length of time where you have to complete a test within X amount of days.... im asking because i want to install this on some slower boxes but wont bother if they wont complete the data in time.

 

[Confused]

The tests will expire if the client does not report it's progress in 30 days. If you enable "Transmit intermediate blocks" then that will do the job of contacting the server to say "hey, i'm still working on this block!"


Garry

 

[Unforgiven]

so it must be idle for 30 days in order to expire? nice! i can throw this on a whole bunch of boxes then! :beer: thanx for the quick response!