SETI@Home Windows Client Release Notes Written by Charlie Fenton for U.C. Berkeley Space Sciences Laboratory 2000. Version 2.0 1/20/2000 NOTES: If you have an old result file which was created by a different version of SETI@home and which has not yet been returned to the server at Berkeley, this installation will delete your result file. This is not a major problem, since all work units are sent to someone else if results are not returned. If you have an old work unit in progress which has been partially analyzed by a different version of SETI@home, this installation will preserve the work unit, but will discard any analysis done so far. It will restart processing the work unit from the beginning (i.e., zero percent complete). SETI@home's data files have been renamed from *.txt to *.sah. ------------------------------------------- Internet Connection Retries ------------------------------------------- The new facility to automatically retry Internet connections may not work unless a recent version of Internet Explorer has also been installed. See the end of this document for a list of the changes since version 1.06. ---------------------------------------------------- Moving SETI@home's Data Files ---------------------------------------------------- Due to our new security measures to prevent falsified results, it is best to treat all the data files as a unit. If for any reason you must move or copy the data files, be sure to move them all together. The files affected include key.sah, state.sah, outfile.sah, result_header.sah, work_unit.sah and result.sah (not all of these will exist at any one time). You need not move user_info.sah, version.sah or ÒSETI@home ReadMeÓ together with the others. Some users download work units and return results from one computer, but process different work units on different machines, or save them for later processing on the same computer. If the computers are all of the same type and are all running the same version of SETI@home, then the procedure above will work. As an alternative, you may move only work_unit.sah or result.sah between different computers running SETI@home. If you move only work_unit.sah, SETI@home will delete and reinitialize the other files, so the work unit will be processed starting at the beginning. If you move only result.sah to a different computer, that SETI@home client will send the result to the server and then continue processing of its work unit (if it has one). IMPORTANT: Be sure to completely exit from SETI@home (by right-clicking on its icon in the System Tray and selecting Exit from the pop-up menu) before moving files. Selecting Exit from the maximized application's File Menu or Close Box does _not_ completely exit. The SETI@home screensaver will automatically restart the application when it kicks in, or you may restart it in the usual way by double-clicking SETI@home.exe. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Why are we requiring you to upgrade to SETI@home 2.0? ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Before answering this question, we want to say thank you to our users (over a million of you!). You have made history with this, the largest distributed computing project ever, with more processing power than any supercomputer ever built. Unfortunately, there are a few individuals who have caused us problems. Some of them have been altering the data files to make it appear that they have found the highest values, so they can see their names on our web site. Not only is this fraudulent, but it threatens the integrity of the project. SETI@home is, after all, a scientific research project. While we will eventually screen out bogus results by reprocessing the interesting work units ourselves, this form of hacking hurts our project in many ways. In addition, some persons have altered the SETI@home client software to use faster math routines. While their intentions may be honorable (faster computing means more data processed), the scientific integrity of this project requires that the same processing be applied to all data uniformly. Since we can not verify that the results of these altered versions match those of the originals, they are a cause for significant concern. Due to the actions of a tiny percentage of our users, we have been forced to add protection against this sort of hacking. This is the main reason we must refuse to send new work units to older versions of the SETI@home clients. We apologize for the inconvenience, but find this to be necessary to protect the investment of you, our legitimate users in this project. Version 2.0 also fixes many bugs. We understand that during the transition, there will be a heavy load on our servers for downloading the new software. Please be patient and keep trying; the quality of the science will greatly benefit from the upgrade. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bug fixes and new features in Windows v 2.0 since 1.06: ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - Improved network retries. If SETI@home fails to establish network connection, it retries twice at 45-second intervals. If the retries still fail, it restarts the sequence after a 15 or 60 minute delay. This should help clients whose system is slow connecting to the Internet. (Retries may not work unless a recent version of Internet Explorer has been installed.) - Better reporting of connection errors. - Better network protocol for updating user's totals at client when client sends results to server. - Enhanced support for Internet connections through HTTP and SOCKS proxies. - Improved validity checking, to reject corrupted or tampered files. - Server can send messages to be displayed by client. - Better numeric error detection. - Client returns power array summary for Gaussians. - File access retries for compatibility with ScanDisk, Defrag and FastFind. This may also give sleeping hard drives time to spin up. - Fixed minor bugs in measuring elapsed CPU time. - Miscellaneous improvements in drawing efficiency. - More reliable display of icon in System Tray. - Created Release notes.