Sorry, I sent a FAQ to debian-user
A few seconds ago, I send an rc5-race faq to debian-user. It was
more appropriate if I had posted to debian-devel firt. Well, it now done.
I send the following:
==========================================================================
1. DO I NEED PERMANENT CONNECTIVITY OR DIALD TO RUN THE CLIENT ?
----------------------------------------------------------------
No. When the client starts, it establishes a tcp connection to
zero.genx.net and gets a keyspace block, then it closes the connection.
Once the key search is done, it will use a another tcp connection to
return the result and get a new keyspace. There is no reason for internet
connectivity during keyspace search.
When the key search has finished and ppp is not on, the client will
initially sleep for one minute and retry. After several times of failed
attempts to reach the host zero, it will increase sleeping time to 10
minutes.
2. HOW MUCH BANDWIDTH ?
-----------------------
It takes about 1k bytes or traffic per keyspace. For a P-133 that is
about 1k every 30 minutes.
2. useful URLS
----------------
More info about the contest is at http://zero.genx.net/
Email statistics are at http://zero.genx.net/bill/email.html
RC5 clients are at ftp://portal.stwing.upenn.edu/pub/rc5 (US only)
There are non-us sites with clients at (?? please let me know)
3. WHY NOT HAVE A DEBIAN PACKAGE ?
------------------------------------
Yes, we want to test one!
4. WHAT HAPPENS TO THE $10,000 PRIZE ?
----------------------------------------
It is not clear who will declared the winner. Maybe it is top email
address, or maybe the address that finds the key. Do not know.
Debian has no official announcement on what will do with the prize. They
should. Most likely, part or the whole prize will get donated somewhere.
(where?)
4. WHAT ARE THE CLIENT COMMANDS ?
----------------------------------
To get a keyspace, use something command like this:
% nohup rc5-client-linux-i586 -i debian@debian.org
The -i option is needed to register the run to debian.org
OR, to avoid any noticeable delays
% nohup /usr/bin/nice -15 rc5-client-linux-i586 -i debian@debian.org
% rc5-client-xxxx -m gives a rough idea how long is takes to complete
one keyspace. For a P-133Mz it takes about 30 minutes, a 486-133 takes about
46 minutes.
5. ANY TIPS?
--------------
On the first try, start with one keyspace and you will see the results in
30 minutes.
The nice(1) is useful prevent noticeable delays. How many keyspaces you
want depends on how soon you plan to reconnect to isp: with 16 keyspaces
times 30 minutes per keyspace, you are done approximately 8 hours later.
When you reconnect, all the 16 keyspaces will register at once. And if you
forget to reconnect on time, the processes will sleep, and every minute will
check for route connectivity. A crontab job comes handy.
I found it it is inconvenient to manage more than 6 keyspaces at a time. If
you want more, let 10 minutes elapse then get another 6 keyspaces. This makes
it easier to figure out who is about to finish and who just started. And do
not kill the wrong ones.
Use renice(1) as root to undo what nice(1) does, if you have to.
If you run high loads, say 20 or more keyspace searches, fetchmail will
be unable to deliver to smtp. For sendmail, change the sendmail.cf to
a higher value:
# load average at which we refuse connections
#O RefuseLA=12
Needs to be: O RefuseLA=30
Ioannis Tambouras
ioannis@flinet.com, West Palm Beach, Florida
Signed pgp-key on key server.
Ioannis Tambouras
ioannis@flinet.com, West Palm Beach, Florida
Signed pgp-key on key server.
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