Welcome to the Showers to Flowers Challenge

PrimeGrid's Challenge series continues with the Showers to Flowers Challenge. Please come join us in observing Nature's wonderful cycle of spring. A 2 day (48 hour) Challenge is being offered on PrimeGrid's Prime Sierpinski Project (Sieve) application.

In some parts of the northern hemisphere, April is the month for the spring rains. It is commonly referred to as April Showers. The rains tend to taper off a bit as May approaches and the landscape turns to blooms; thus the saying, April showers bring May flowers. :)

The same can be applied to sieving and primality checking. We are hoping that April's sieving will bring May's primes. So, let the factor showers begin for the prime flowers to come. :D (FYI, with the recent Cullen find, June's Challenge will be on PSP LLR.)

To participate in the Challenge, please select only the Prime Sierpinski Project (Sieve) project in your PrimeGrid preferences section. The challenge will begin 29 April 2009 18:00 UTC and end 1 May 2009 18:00 UTC. Application builds are available for Linux 32 & 64 bit and Windows 32 & 64 bit. Note: 64 bit Windows and 64 bit Linux benefit from a 1.7X speed advantage over 32 bit...so 1.7X the credit. :)

Recommendation: The PSP (Sieve) application requires a one time download of a 10MB sieve file. Please consider running a few PSP WU's before the Challenge begins so your client will already have the sieve file. This way, bandwidth can be used to deliver WU's instead of the sieve file. :) Thank you!

Time zone converter:

The World Clock - Time Zone Converter

NOTE: The countdown clock on the front page uses the host computer time. Therefore, if your computer time is off, so will the countdown clock. For precise timing, use the UTC Time in the data section to the left of the countdown clock.

Scoring Information

Scores will be kept for individuals and teams. Only work units issued AFTER 29 April 2009 18:00 UTC and received BEFORE 1 May 2009 18:00 UTC will be considered for credit. Since this is a fixed credit project, we'll be using cobblestones for scoring.

About the Prime Sierpinski Problem

Waclaw Franciszek Sierpinski (14 March 1882 - 21 October 1969), a Polish mathematician, was known for outstanding contributions to set theory, number theory, theory of functions and topology. It is in number theory where we find the Sierpinski problem.

Basically, the Sierpinski problem is "What is the smallest Sierpinski number" and the prime Sierpinski problem is "What is the smallest 'prime' Sierpinski number?"

First we look at Proth numbers (named after the French mathematician François Proth). A Proth number is a number of the form k*2^n+1 where k is odd, n is a positive integer, and 2^n>k.

A Sierpinski number is an odd k such that the Proth number k*2^n+1 is not prime for all n. For example, 3 is not a Sierpinski number because n=2 produces a prime number (3*2^2+1=13). In 1962, John Selfridge proved that 78,557 is a Sierpinski number...meaning he showed that for all n, 78557*2^n+1 was not prime.

Most number theorists believe that 78,557 is the smallest Sierpinski number, but it hasn't yet been proven. In order to prove it, it has to be shown that every single k less than 78,557 is not a Sierpinski number, and to do that, some n must be found that makes k*2^n+1 prime.

The smallest proven 'prime' Sierpinski number is 271,129. In order to prove it, it has to be shown that every single 'prime' k less than 271,129 is not a Sierpinski number, and to do that, some n must be found that makes k*2^n+1 prime.

Seventeen or Bust is working on the Sierpinski problem and the Prime Sierpinski Project is working on the 'prime' Sierpinski problem. The following k's remain for each project:

• Prime Sierpinski Project
  
• Seventeen or Bust
  

For more information about Sierpinski, Sierpinski number, and the Sierpinsk problem, please see these resources:

• Waclaw Franciszek Sierpinski (WIKI)
  
• Sierpinski number / The Sierpinski problem (WIKI)
  
• The Sierpinski problem (Prothsearch)
  

32 bit OS with 64 bit CPU
This is for those who are "driving with the hand brake active" (running a 32 bit OS on a 64 bit machine) ;) Wubi is a very nice tool that installs Ubuntu as a dual boot to your 64 bit machine. It's as simple as adding a program to Windows. You can even uninstall it like you would any other program. :)

Wubi - Ubuntu Installer

After getting 64 bit OS running on your machine, here's a link to ALL BOINC clients (including Linux x64): http://boinc.berkeley.edu/download_all.php If you are new to Linux and need help getting set up, let us know.

It really is simple. :)

Ubuntu has a power save feature that throttles the CPU frequency down to save power. It does not treat BOINC as an active program so will throttle down thus causing under-performance. For those downloading the latest Ubuntu 8.10, please follow these directions to make sure the frequency is not throttled down while BOINC is running:

1. In Ubuntu, right click the top menu bar
2. Select add to panel
3. Select "CPU Frequency Scaling Monitor"
4. Click add

This will add a processor icon to the top menu. Click on the icon and set to "Performance". This also allows you to see the CPU frequency.
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(...)
Ubuntu has a power save feature that throttles the CPU frequency down to save power. It does not treat BOINC as an active program so will throttle down thus causing under-performance. For those downloading the latest Ubuntu 8.10, please follow these directions to make sure the frequency is not throttled down while BOINC is running:

1. In Ubuntu, right click the top menu bar
2. Select add to panel
3. Select "CPU Frequency Scaling Monitor"
4. Click add

This will add a processor icon to the top menu. Click on the icon and set to "Performance". This also allows you to see the CPU frequency.

Is this the same sieve file from the December challenge?

For "More Power" look here
And of course you have to give the command after every reboot (as said: in a console/on the commandline) - but who does boot his clients anyways? ;)
I am on RHEL 5 (or Fedora 10 on one host) - here cpuspeed is enabled as a service with the "ondemand" governor and i even undervolt my CPUs with acpi-cpufreq compiled with the patch from linux-phc.
I do not know how ubuntu handles services, but a
ln -snf /etc/init.d/cpuspeed /etc/rc3.d/S99cpuspeed
ln -snf /etc/init.d/cpuspeed /etc/rc[06].d/K00cpuspeed
on the console should also enable it for starting/stoping when booting/shuting down your system.
Of course you have to alter the cpuspeed to whatever the service is called in ubuntu.
Maybee you could - as in RHEL 5 - specifiy the governor to use in /etc/sysconfig/cpuspeed, but i am not familiar with ubuntu, e.g. in Gentoo this would be /etc/conf.d/cpuspeed i think.

I agree this is going to be an awesome Challenge!! Count me in on this one :)

Over at seventeen or bust sieve we're excited by the prospect of the challenge and look forward to the additional help. Just wondering if the PrimeGrid admins could post some before and after stats to show how much of an area has been sieved during this challenge?

Thanks again for your support!

I agree this is going to be an awesome Challenge!! Count me in on this one :)

I agree this is going to be an awesome Challenge!! Count me in on this one :)

Uups! I thougth you never meet our challenge lol
Nice to meet you then .... :)

When Tim sees this I hope he will challenge me on this event like we always do hehe but we shall see!!

When Tim sees this I hope he will challenge me on this event like we always do hehe but we shall see!!

When Tim sees this I hope he will challenge me on this event like we always do hehe but we shall see!!

I'm going to tan your ass again my friend.

No pressure. None at all.

Did I mention I've got the rats on steriods?

Let's dance:D

NOTE: The countdown clock on the front page uses the host computer time. Therefore, if your computer time is off, so will the countdown clock. For precise timing, use the UTC Time in the data section to the left of the countdown clock.
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WTF?

Mi 29 Apr 2009 20:31:47 CEST|PrimeGrid|Message from server: No work sent
Mi 29 Apr 2009 20:31:47 CEST|PrimeGrid|Message from server: No work is available for Prime Sierpinski Problem (Sieve)
Mi 29 Apr 2009 20:31:47 CEST|PrimeGrid|Message from server: No work available for the applications you have selected. Please check your settings on the web site.

WTF?

Mi 29 Apr 2009 20:31:47 CEST|PrimeGrid|Message from server: No work sent
Mi 29 Apr 2009 20:31:47 CEST|PrimeGrid|Message from server: No work is available for Prime Sierpinski Problem (Sieve)
Mi 29 Apr 2009 20:31:47 CEST|PrimeGrid|Message from server: No work available for the applications you have selected. Please check your settings on the web site.

There should be >200k WUs...

Besides: This particular client is only crunching with only one cpu from time to time, i haven't the least idea why.

Fixed, we had 1 hour offset becase of daylight savings time.
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All stats look fine to me.
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Fixed, we had 1 hour offset becase of daylight savings time.

Hello Rytis,
did you only fix the individual stats?
The team stats look as strange as before ...

wassup with that countdown-clock???

556T completed so far...that's on pace for 1P by the end of the Challenge!!!!!
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556T completed so far...that's on pace for 1P by the end of the Challenge!!!!!

The same thing that happened on previous challenges has happened again:
I have the option of using a couple of PCs in the office. All of them run Win32 so I am using a LiveCD with a 64-bit Ubuntu on it (Dotsch/UX).
Now I have booted about 10 of them using this live CD and attached them all to the project.
However, on each Boinc update, all my WUs get "aborted by project" - even the ones that were running a second ago.
Unfortunately I only noticed that today, so I have lost about 480 core-hours so far (20 cores x 24 hours).
I then noticed that only one of them appeared in the my-computers list. It then occurred to me that they all have the same hostname (boinc), but I didn't think that the computer-id is exclusively related to the hostname.
Anyway, since changing the hostname on the fly messes up X I went to the command-line and detached the project from all PCs. I then changed the hostname and re-attached the box from the command-line.
Now, the weird thing is that of the 10 workstations, only 4 show up at the moment. I've had every workstation show up right after I attached the project, but they have miraculously disappeared and i do not doubt that all their work will be in vain, too.
It also seems that the 4 machines seem to vary. At first, I saw boinc07, boinc08, boinc10, boinc19 in the list, now it's boinc07, boinc08, boinc11, boinc19... and it should be boinc07, boinc08, boinc10, boinc11, boinc13, boinc14, boinc17, boinc19, boinc21 (and one just called boinc)
Can you tell me what else I'm supposed to do, I'm running out of ideas! And I'm also quite .. well... annoyed!
Edit: BTW it really can't be the hostname as I have multiple hosts that show up with the same hostname.
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Yeah I love the fact that about a day or a half a day because after it was counting down, which it started noon/1pm time here in Minnesota But after 12 hours of this, were already a day and a half into this, umm What is going on here omg. Seriously guess greatly disappointed.

NOTE: The countdown clock on the front page uses the host computer time. Therefore, if your computer time is off, so will the countdown clock. For precise timing, use the UTC Time in the data section to the left of the countdown clock.

Yes like you said it started 1pm central my time, but many still got points for turning in sieves before that. I have all faith in Rytis the mod, but the issues of how some got caught by me, hopfully getting credit before hand and lastly how the countdowns said today as the start and yea so some small print say something else It would have been nice to have the count down timer this morning up to 1pm before I had to take my dad to his doc apt. Whom I take care of, this isn't the type of stress I need. So Whatever happens now I am at the point of not caring. This isn't the first Challenge, this is like what how many. Thats all I am going to leave with since other then community members and PM's and enjoying this website is great, but the Challenges always bring stress in me as in the way that I can't do anything to help. Fix the bugs or have any suggestion other then I wish this was more Community and less ....I'll hold off on that last word. I'm sure there are at least 1 doct degree in computer sci that could help, a few in majors, and myself along with many many others have bachelors degree's to help yet I'm left in the cold like they are. So maybe these challenges are a test to the community on how much you are willing to put up with before you speak. Who knows, we will see. What is done and not done will answer about 16 of the PM's I've got of people ready to just leave. I don't want them to leave and told them no no don't leave, just do what makes you happy hear. Like I plan to do. So I guess we wait and see. They will make there own choices, I'll stay here until it gets too " where 1 person doing a sieve gets this much because we like him, and another gets this much junk because we hate him so give him less," It's not that yet here, but can you show me how far away it is from there with proof? Because I can show you how close it is to the far side of the ones who get what faster, higher, etc. But I won't take too much of your time. I'm off for the night I think, unless I log in to read, one thing about the Internet you learn to know about hate mail, it will always be out there no matter who you are. you may not get any because you don't know as many as others. But I'm sure I will have some. Hope not but that is all. :) Hope you well on your Challenge Ben Rhodes
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John M. Johnson "Novex"

John M., have you ever heard of paragraphs and sentence structure? :) It's next to impossible to understand your writings to non-native English speaker (like me). In any case, I'll respond to the questions I could understand.

The scoring in the beginning of the challenge was off by one hour. However, it was quickly fixed. The score gets recalculated at every stats update, so that one hour has never been counted in anymore. If you don't believe me, or have doubts - what can I do - but check BOINCstats charts and see how some people had a drop in the stats right after the fix was implemented. This shows that extra points have been deducted from them.

What the heck are you blabbering about people starting a day or half a day earlier to get the score? Get your facts straight. I can't do anything to help you if your clocks are running way off.


Now, about the hostnames issue. I don't think it's the hostname problem, you've probably had copied whole BOINC installation from one host to another. If you do that, you copy over host id and connection counter. When one of your hosts contacts server, connection counter gets increased, however, on other computers having the same host id (because it was copied over), the counter has not been increased, so BOINC sees it as a communication failure and trashes all WUs. The safe way to copy things from one computer to another is to exclude client_state.xml.
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I think an old version of BOINC (which was available at that time) had a problem with the host names. What BOINC version are you running?
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2 hours to go... over 1.1P completed so far!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

WOW!
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Is that why I am getting this on my machines:
"5/1/2009 12:30:12 PM|PrimeGrid|Message from server: (reached per-CPU limit of 24 tasks)"

OR
"5/1/2009 12:04:48 PM|PrimeGrid|Message from server: No work is available for Prime Sierpinski Problem (Sieve)"

Seems a bit silly to me to have a limit during a Challenge. Isn't the whole point to crunch as many units as possible during the Challenge and THEN go back to the normal way. Also probably why I am dropping in the Challenge stats, hmmm.

What an amasing challenge
Thank you all for participating

Hope we will continue any place, any time, any how ...
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Sysadm@Nbg
my current lucky number: 3299*2^1441747+1
PSA-PRPNet-Stats-URL: http://u-g-f.de/PRPNet/

1.5 million points! Wow! Congratulations to SETI.Germany.
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Maybe it is the same problem as applied to the start of the challenge: DST?
Anyways: I am crunching away the last pspSieve, shut down some hosts and shuffle over to ppsLLR the rest.

Thanks for your reply Siegfried.
The issue is, I don't want to (or rather I can't) install anything, including Wubi. So I'm stuck with LiveCDs, and CDs make persistent changes difficult. No, I don't have 10 USB-Sticks.
The BOINC version on Dotsch/UX 1.1 is 6.4.5, so it's not a terribly old one and certainly a pretty stable one.
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Don't worry, your not the only one here that spoke up about it. Think of it not as a rebellion, but as a community helping and asking questions and helping one another which is what these Challenges do, they bring us together and thats the point isn't it. To get the primes done, bring the community together as a team or as I like to say, it brings us together as One.
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John M. Johnson "Novex"

WHY IS THERE COMPLETE SILENCE ON THIS ISSUE FROM THE ADMINS ???

It was a hit for me, but it seems that the data really was incorrect. The problem was incorrect timestamp for the challenge start/end, because of the daylight savings time (I was always against it... and now I have to pay). It was totally my fault, and I appologize to participants and teams who have been affected by the mistake.

The updated stats are now live, please look into them and let me know if you think they are correct now. And big thanks to people who pointed this out to me (especially computerguy09 and fan13027, because I manually counted score for them and used it to check the published score). I am very sorry for the issue.
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Rytis,
Thank you for all of your and your colleagues hard work.

Personnaly speaking, I can't get too enthused about these challenges as there is no way I will ever score even a single point (unless I buy a server farm or get a job as a sys admin).

That said, the team I joined did manage 11th place this time but I don't understand the points systen on this page.

Could you let me know how UK BOINC Team got 11 points, I'd assumed from the table that 11th place in a 2 day challenge would give 30 points?

Sorry for my ignorance and thanks again for the best project I've crunched for.
Pete.

That said, the team I joined did manage 11th place this time but I don't understand the points systen on this page.

Could you let me know how UK BOINC Team got 11 points, I'd assumed from the table that 11th place in a 2 day challenge would give 30 points?

It was a hit for me, but it seems that the data really was incorrect. The problem was incorrect timestamp for the challenge start/end, because of the daylight savings time (I was always against it... and now I have to pay). It was totally my fault, and I appologize to participants and teams who have been affected by the mistake.

The updated stats are now live, please look into them and let me know if you think they are correct now. And big thanks to people who pointed this out to me (especially computerguy09 and fan13027, because I manually counted score for them and used it to check the published score). I am very sorry for the issue.

So there is hope for my P3's & Celerons ??????
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Member of AtP

"If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?"
Albert Einstein

The results are Final!

What an incredible amount of work completed! Over 1169T was crunched in the 48 hours of the Challenge. Over 389K tasks were returned resulting in over 11.1M cobblestones awarded. PrimeGrid's overall (Challenge + regular work) daily record was set on the second day of the Challenge with over 7.7M cobblestones for a 24 hour period. Congratulations to everyone...this is a great accomplishment.

We are still mopping up all those factors - over 1500 found!!! Hopefully we'll see some prime blooms in the coming months. 260 teams and 2092 individuals participated in the Challenge.

The Challenge Points stats are official. Congratulations to SETI.Germany as the top team and AF>XTBA>XTC FRED as the top individual. Maybe some sleeping giants have been awoken. Remember, the top 30 places earn points for this Challenge.

There were stats blips at the beginning with DST (off by 1 hour) and at the end again DST (off by 1 hour). However, both have now been resolved. Our apologies for this.

Thank you again to everyone. We appreciate your participation and hope you had fun! We wish y'all a nice spring and look forward to seeing you at the next Challenge - PrimeGrid's Birthday/Summer Solstice Challenge - 12-21 June - 9 days on the Prime Sierpinski Problem LLR! This will be our first time to do PSP LLR as a Challenge and what a bruiser it's going to be. Start cooling your machines now. :)

Stats: Participants | Teams
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We are still mopping up all those factors - over 1500 found!!! Hopefully we'll see some prime blooms in the coming months.

...you don't have to be an admin or be hooked up with an institution

...you don't have to be an admin or be hooked up with an institution

Hi Outlnder & William, so where did you buy all of your hardware? And how much should I expect to pay to pick up a low spec but capable machine?
How much are your electricity bills?

And, more importantly, how on earth did you convince your significant others that its necessary? You must be 'silver tongued devils' to get away with turning your homes (or even a part of them) into farms!

As you can tell, I'm green with envy:)
Pete.

Start small and slowly get to the point of a ranch. I have 17 here running at home. 3 are true quad cores, all but 2 of the rest are dual cores. I have an all electric home here just south of Wash DC and pay about $400 or so a month in electric bills. Now I also have a 3 story house so my computers are spread out on all 3 floors, although most are in the basement. Most do not have a monitor, keyboard or mouse hooked up to them, I access them remotely.