SETI@Home Windows Client Release Notes
Written by Charlie Fenton for U.C. Berkeley Space
Sciences Laboratory 2000.
Version 2.04 3/29/2000
NOTES: 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.
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Internet Connection Retries
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The new facility to automatically retry Internet
connections may not work unless a recent version of
Internet Explorer has also been installed. IE versions
4 and later work; we have not tested older versions.
Note that the automatic retry feature only works
if you have set SETI@home preferences to connect
automatically. Otherwise, you must select "connect
now" to retry.
If you experience trouble connecting to the Internet
with SETI@home,see the Frequently Asked Questions
section in the help file for details.
See the end of this document for a list of the changes
since version 1.06.
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Moving SETI@home's Data Files
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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 "SETI@home ReadMe" 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.
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What happened to the Peak Power and Best Gaussian meters?
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The old Peak Power and Best Gaussian values on the display
have been replaced by a graph. We found that the highest
power peaks were due to radio interference from earth or
satellites, so we have replaced that info with a new
display which graphically shows how well the data fits
the shape of a gaussian curve.
While performing calculations other than curve fitting, the
display shows the best Gaussian fit so far. To save time,
SETI@home does curve fitting only when a pass through the
data merits further study. This means that the Gaussian
display will remain blank until "interesting" data is found.
For some work units, the data will not cause any Gaussian
curve fitting at all.
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Why are we requiring you to upgrade to SETI@home 2.0?
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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.
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Bug fixes and new features in Windows v 2.04:
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- Fixed a potential divide by zero error.
- Installer automatically closes old client if running.
- Fixed start menu short cut to help file.
- Properly show 100% progress when work unit complete.
- Synchronize output files when computer is shut down;
this fixes one cause of progress occasionally being
reset to zero.
- Don't accumulate CPU time when computer is in low-
power hibernate or standby mode.
- Use multithread-safe libraries for better stability.
- Changing "always run" option takes immediate effect.
- When relaunching client, show progress and elapsed
CPU time before doing baseline smoothing.
- Don't delete old result.sah file on version upgrade.
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Bug fixes and new features in Windows v 2.03:
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- Screensaver now draws at 480X640 screen resolution
("immediate blanking" bug).
- Fixed drawing problem when switching screen resolutions.
- Write the state file no more than once per minute.
- Improved logic to keep files in sync. This should
reduce the likelihood of spontaneously resetting progress
to zero.
- Made autodialing and connection retries more robust.
- Fixed bug where Connect Now menu was sometimes not
enabled properly.
- Don't show connection dialog if "connect automatically"
set.
- Setting "connect automatically" takes immediate effect
(some old versions needed exit & relaunch of client).
- Fixed a crash bug when memory or disk space was low.
- Modified installer to fix occasional conflicts with
existing setup.exe files.
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Bug fixes and new features in Windows v 2.02:
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- Fixed bug which allowed output file to grow above 32K.
- Properly clear Gaussian threshold for each new work unit.
- Fixed bug which caused long delays in drawing and made
the client unresponsive to mouse clicks.
- Eliminated possible problem with some proxies by tweaking
the format of HTTP headers.
- Changed the way we handle the state.sah file to solve a
"can't create file" bug when used with SETISpy, SETIWatch
and disk backup programs.
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Bug fixes and new features in Windows v 2.0 since 1.06:
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- 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
(only if Connect Automatically is set). This should
help clients whose system is slow connecting to the
Internet. (Retries may not work unless version 4 or
later 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.