Linux on DEC Alpha

HPUX

FreeBSD on i386 compatible

OS X on Intel CPU

OS X on PPC CPU

Solaris on Sun Sparc

Thanks to Dotsch and Crunch3r for those. Please let us know how you get on with the new applications.

September 28, 2007
It seems the new 64 bit applications are working very well indeed. Thanks a lot Crunch3r!

I have aborted all outstanding work units now, so you will find that there's no credit for anything currently crunching. This is to stop them being resent every time they come in over deadline. You should all abort anything you have from APS on the client side to avoid wasted effort. Work is continuing to fix the deadline bug. Thanks for your patience...

September 26, 2007
Thanks to Crunch3r (of SETI optimised client fame), we now have 64bit Windows and Windows Itanium applications. Welcome Crunch3r - we're proud to have him on board! Please let me know how you get on with these applications. No news on the OS X front yet, but I've been in contact with a couple of people, so we'll see what turns up in the coming weeks...

I've also made significant changes to the way we calculate duration and deadlines. The server calculates a few trajectories before creating work, and uses the resulting estimate of number of floating point operations to calculate an approximate WU duration. You should notice that estimates become more consistent with the next few work releases.

As for deadlines, I've now set this so that clients will fail to meet the deadline if they perform less than an average of 1000 floating point operations per second on each WU from the time they are issued the work. If we begin to see lots of clients failing, I'll reduce this figure. Think of it as "average required work."

September 14, 2007
The server software has been upgraded again, due to a potential BOINC wide security hole. As usual, please let me know if you notice anything which you think might have been broken during the upgrade.

August 16, 2007
We'll be relocating the server to our new laboratory and office complex early next week (beginning Monday 20th August). The server will be down for at least half a day, and possibly up to two days if there are DNS issues arising from the move.

I won't be creating any new work until the move is complete, because this might result in some people missing deadlines due to the server being offline. This should be the end of a rather difficult month, - we hope to be running smoothly again after the move. Thanks again for your patience.

August 5, 2007
The server software has been upgraded today. This usually results in a few minor breakages in a few different parts of the website. Please let me know if you see anything which doesn't look normal, and I'll take a look at it. And thanks in advance for your vigilance.

I've nearly finished with the housekeeping. Expect new work very soon!

July 30, 2007
We're now back up after a break of a couple of weeks. Apologies for the loss of connectivity. I needed physical access to the server to correct the problem we've been experiencing, and have just got back from Germany.

There will be no new work until the queue has run dry and all work is returned. I envisage this taking a few days at most. I'll then take stock of the results so far, and generate new work in the light of this

July 4, 2007
The server back end components are now finished. We'll be conducting a load test on Friday 6th July - see number crunching message board for details. If there aren't too many problems with the load test, we'll be going public some time over the weekend. Thanks everyone for all of your help over the last couple of months.

The server status page has been updated so that you can see the server performance on an hourly basis during the test. Hopefully we'll be breaking some project records.

By the way, happy Independence day to our American testers!

June 24, 2007
I've persuaded myself that version 0.9 of the application is robust enough for public release. Please continue to report any bugs you encounter, but what we seem to be seeing at the moment are client problems or server side daemon problems. So things are about to go quiet from me for a couple of weeks. I'll be working behind the scenes on changes which should be mostly transparent to testers.

Thanks everyone for your support and encouragement so far. We should be ready to go public within the next few weeks, and I couldn't have done it without you.

June 22, 2007
If the project goes down this evening, it's because I'm upgrading the main server operating system in an attempt to fix the mail problem.

Wish me luck. I'm nervous...

June 18, 2007
If you have problems contacting the server today, it's because I'm bounce testing - checking that everything will restart automatically after a reboot. I'll try a remote reboot between 6 and 7pm UTC, so if I haven't got everything right by then, the server will be down until Tuesday morning.

June 15, 2007
Version 0.9 has been released. It's a bug fix for a problem with resuming after checkpoints. Please report any problems on the message boards, as usual. Thanks to everyone for all the reports, comments and suggestions. I think we've finally cracked all the problems with the application. (Famous last words).

I've also added an FAQ section, which you may want to take a look at. Feel free to suggest corrections or additions, again on the message boards. And thanks again!

June 13, 2007
Version 0.8 has now been released. Apparently the solution to the credit claiming problem was not radical enough. This should now be fixed. Please can you let me know how you get on via the message boards, with the usual caveat about checking for known issues first?

Thanks for your patience, and for the very rapid reports from versions 0.6 and 0.7.

June 12, 2007
Version 0.6 didn't last long. There was a problem with credit claims, - I'd grossly underestimated an important parameter. This is hopefully now fixed, so you should notice your client claiming more than 0.0025 credits per WU. More news on the message boards.

June 12, 2007
Version 0.6 has been released. 0.5 is now deprecated, so you should get the new application automatically with your next work unit.

Please can I ask all testers to take a moment to check the message boards before reporting problems? I'm keen to hear how the new application goes, but it doesn't help any of us to have duplicate reports clogging the boards. Thanks in advance for your help with this!

May 31, 2007
The power cut that didn't happen last weekend now looks set to go ahead on Saturday 1 June. The server will go down, and may or may not power back up correctly. I'll get back to the office as soon as I can to restore power, but personal commitments mean it may be Monday morning.

May 29, 2007
Any new difficulties today are probably related to the change in project URL. To fix these, you MAY need to detach from the project, and then reattach using the new project URL:

http://www.apsathome.org/

Apologies for any inconvenience...

May 24, 2007
You may notice that the work units you have in progress are marked as 'not needed' or 'cancelled by server' today. This is semi-deliberate, and is to clear the way for version 0.5, which is ready, but works in a slightly different way to version 0.2. It would just confuse the validator to mix them up together.

Apologies for any lost credit. However, no pain no gain and all that. You should find it easier to complete jobs with the new version, as checkpointing now works, and I'm extending deadlines to 48 hours.

As always, thanks for your patience.

May 21, 2007
Apologies for the server going down this morning. The router in my office crashed, then gave the server a different internal IP. However, it continued forwarding HTTP requests to the old internal IP address. So, er, basically, blame Belkin. Normal service now resumed.

May 16, 2007
Welcome to the new wave of testers. It turns out that the project developed a problem with work generation some time today. The existing WUs ran out this evening, and there will be no more until I've worked the problem out. Should be some time tomorrow. Please bear with us...

May 10, 2007
Version 0.2 is now available. There are bound to be a couple of teething problems, but I think I've sorted most of the problems reported from version 0.1. Please let me know how you got on using the message boards.

Thanks for your patience...

May 2, 2007
The message boards are now active. Please could you use them instead of E-mailing me? I'm aware that the application is crashing on some hosts, and that there's an issue with upload size limit. If you can post logs and error messages to the message boards, it'll make it easier for us all to keep track of in the run up to this weekend's new app release.

Thanks all!

May 2, 2007
Memebership is closed for the time being, as suggested by a member of the boinc.be crowd. Hopefully the problems with the forum here will soon be solved, then we can start to discuss credit policy etc. I'm not yet sure how long the WUs you have will take to run. I'm new to this too. If they start to pass the 48 hour mark, I'll release a new (shorter running) application version.

I've recieved E-mail from several of you (Guy, Marc, Geert, Pieter). Apologies for the lack of replies. Most of them were about the download problems, which I've been busy solving today. I hope the problem Pieter found with some links should be solved when the current cache expires.

Thanks for your patience everyone!

May 1, 2007
The application download problem is now repaired. You may need to reset the project on your client to get work. In the meantime, I'm still trying to rebuild the message board, having just clobbered the mysql table...

May 1, 2007
Welcome to tutta55, - our first volunteer, and our first User of the Day!

I'm very grateful for this early help, but I need to warn you all that the first couple of weeks may well be spent generating interesting and exciting error messages :-(

We'll start racking up some credit soon though.

April 30, 2007
APS@home is now in alpha testing. I'm having some difficulty getting the message boards running so far. Bear with me, - it'll be sorted soon. In the meantime, you can send me BOINC client logs, comments etc. to: james@surface-exchange.net