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To use this program you must agree to the terms and conditions,
prize rules, etc. at http://mersenne.org/legal/
FILE LIST
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INSTRUCTIONS
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There are two ways to use this program. The automatic way uses
a central server, which we call the PrimeNet server, to get work to do
and report your results. You do not need a permanent connection to the Internet.
The second method is the manual method. It requires a little more work
and monitoring. I recommend this for computers with no Internet access
or with some kind of firewall problem that prevents the automatic method
from working.
If you are running this program at your place of employment, you must
first GET PERMISSION from your network administrator, boss, or both.
This is especially true if you are installing the software on several machines.
Many companies have policies that prohibit running unauthorized software.
Violating that policy could result in termination and/or prosecution.
The "Start at Bootup" menu choice (on by default) will run prime95
every time you boot your computer. The "Start at Bootup" choice
became "Start at Logon" starting with Windows Vista.
NOTES
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Running prime95 may SIGNIFICANTLY INCREASE YOUR ELECTRIC BILL. The amount
depends on your computer and your local electric rates.
It can take many CPU weeks to test a large Mersenne number. This program
can be safely interrupted by using the ESC key to write intermediate results
to disk. This program also saves intermediate results to disk every 30 minutes
in case there is a power failure.
You can compare your computer's speed with other users by checking the
web page http://mersenne.org/report_benchmarks/. If you are much slower
than comparable machines, utilities such as Task Manager are available
that can find programs that are using CPU cycles.
You can get several reports of your PrimeNet activity at any time
by logging in at http://mersenne.org/.
Depending on the exponent being tested, the program may decide that it
would be wise to invest some time checking for small factors before
running a Lucas-Lehmer test.
3) Assuming you run your machine 24 hours a day, what hours of the
day do you not use your computer? Make these your nighttime hours and
let the program use a lot of memory during these hours. But reduce this
value if you also run batch jobs at night.
If at all in doubt, leave the settings at 8MB. The worst that will
happen is you end up running a Lucas-Lehmer primality test when stage 2
of P-1 factoring would have found a factor.
PROGRAM OUTPUT
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The results file and screen will include lines that look like:
TEST MENU
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The Worker Threads menu choice is used to choose the type of work
you'd like to execute as well as adjust priority and affinity.
You should not need to change the priority. You might raise the priority
if you just cannot live without a screen saver, or if you are running some
ill-behaved program that is using CPU cycles for no good reason.
The work type should usually be left set to "Whatever makes the most sense".
However, if you are running a slow computer and don't mind waiting several
months for a single Lucas-Lehmer test to complete OR you are running a faster
computer and get better thoughput if one core does an easier type of work,
then choose a different type of work to do.
The Status menu choice will tell you what exponents you are working on.
It will also estimate how long that will take and your chances of finding
a new Mersenne prime.
The Continue menu choice lets you resume prime95 after you have stopped it.
The Stop menu choice lets you stop the program. When you continue,
you will pick up right where you left off. This is the same as hitting
the ESC key.
ADVANCED MENU
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You should not need to use the Advanced menu. This menu choice is
provided only for those who are curious. Note that many of the menu choices
are grayed while testing is in progress. Choose Test/Stop to activate
these menu choices.
The Test choice can be used to run a Lucas-Lehmer test on one Mersenne
number. Enter the Mersenne number's exponent - this must be a prime
number between 5 and 560000000.
The Time choice can be used to see how long each iteration of a Lucas-Lehmer
test will take on your computer and how long it will take to test a
given exponent. For example, if you want to know how long a Lucas-Lehmer
test will take to test the exponent 876543, choose Advanced/Time and
enter 876543 for 100 iterations.
The ECM choice lets you factor numbers of the form k*b^n+c using the
Elliptic Curve Method of factoring. ECM requires a minimum of 192 times
the FFT size. Thus, ECM factoring of F20 which uses a 64K FFT will use
a minimum of 192 * 64K or 12MB of memory. You can also edit the
worktodo.txt file directly. For example:
ECM2=k,b,n,c,B1,B2,curves_to_run[,"comma-separated-list-of-known-factors"]
The P-1 choice lets you factor numbers of the form k*b^n+c using
the P-1 method of factoring. You can also edit the worktodo.txt file
directly. For example:
Pminus1=k,b,n,c,B1,B2[,"comma-separated-list-of-known-factors"]
The PRP choice, available from the menus only in the Mac OS X version, lets you do
a
probable prime test on numbers of the form k*b^n+c. On all OSes, you can edit
the worktodo.txt file directly. For example add:
PRP=k,b,n,c[,how_far_factored,tests_saved][,"comma-separated-list-of-known-
factors"]
where the how_far_factored and tests_saved values are used to pick
optimal bounds for P-1 factoring prior to running the PRP test.
SUM(INPUTS) error checking. Selecting this option will run an extra error
check on every iteration. This will slow down the primality test slightly.
Round off checking. This option will slow the program down by several percent.
This option displays the smallest and largest "convolution error". The
convolution error must be less than 0.49 or the results will be incorrect.
There really is no good reason to turn this option on.
The Unreserve Exponent choice lets you tell the server to unreserve
an exponent you have been assigned. You might do this if a second computer
you had been running GIMPS on died or if you had been assigned an exponent
of one work type (such as a first-time-test) and now you have switched to
another work type (such as double-checking). Any work you have
done on the unreserved exponent will be lost.
The Quit GIMPS menu choice is used when you no longer want this computer
to work on the GIMPS project. You may rejoin at a later date.
If you are a PrimeNet user your unfinished work will be returned to the
server. If you are a manual user, you need to send me email containing
your results.txt file.
OPTIONS MENU
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The CPU menu choice tells you what CPU the program has detected and
lets you set how much memory the program can use (see the earlier section
on "Setting available memory".
The Preferences menu choice lets you control how often a line is
written to the main window and how often a line is written to
the results file. It also lets you change how often
intermediate files (to guard against power failure and crashes)
are created. You can control how often the program checks to
see if you are connected to the Internet. The program polls
whenever it has new data to send to or work to get from the PrimeNet
server. If you are low on disk space, you can select one intermediate
file instead of two. However, if you crash in the middle of writing
the one intermediate file, you may have to restart an exponent from
scratch. You can also tell the program to be quiet, rather than
beeping like crazy, if a new Mersenne prime is found. You can also
make prime95 go idle whenever your laptop is running on battery power
(may not work under Windows NT/2000/XP).
The Torture Test choice will run a continuous self test. This is great
for testing machines for hardware problems. See the file stress.txt
for a more in-depth discussion of stress testing and hardware problems.
The Benchmark choice times the program on several FFT lengths. You can
then compare your computer's speed to others list at
http://mersenne.org/report_benchmarks/
The Tray Icon choice will cause prime95 to have a small icon on the taskbar
when it is minimized. You can activate or hide the program by double-clicking
on the small icon. If you place the cursor over the small icon, a tooltip will
display the current status.
Checking the "Start at Bootup" menu choice will run prime95 as a service
that starts when your computer boots up. Windows NT/2000/XP users need
administrator privileges to use this feature. Vista has eliminated support
for running prime95 as a service. Running prime95 as a service is better than
creating a shortcut to prime95 in the startup folder because services run even
when no one is logged on. These are the details you should be aware of:
In Windows 95/98/Me:
The HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunServices
registry entry is created. You will not be able to tell any difference between
prime95 running as a service and prime95 running as an ordinary process.
Windows Vista/7/8 and Windows NT/2000/XP without admin privileges:
In this case the menu text is changed to "Start at Logon". The
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run registry entry
is created. Prime95 will run only when you are logged in.
In Windows NT/2000/XP with administrator privileges:
There are a few minor quirks when running as a service. You shouldn't run
into these quirks in normal operation. You can only change this option once
and it will take effect when you exit the program. The prime95 window will
only appear on one user's desktop. Finally, if you are worried about giving
users access to a GUI service running in the Local System account, you can
turn off the "Allow service to interact with desktop" option in the services
control panel applet or run the GUI-less NT service version available at
http://mersenne.org/download/ These options are more secure than
using the No Icon menu choice.
-An Obsolete.
This is used to run two or more copies of prime95
from the same directory. Using this command line argument
causes prime95 to use a different set of filenames for the
INI files, the results file, the log file, and the spool file.
Just use a different value of n for each copy of
prime95.exe you start.
-t Run the torture test. Same as Options/Torture Test.
-Wdirectory This tells prime95 to find all its files in a different
directory than the executable.
Could it be a software problem? If the error is ILLEGAL SUMOUT and you are
running Windows 95/98/Me, then there is some chance that this is a software
problem. A device driver or VxD may not be saving and restoring FPU state
correctly. Windows NT/2000/XP/Vista protects prime95 from bad device drivers.
In that case ILLEGAL SUMOUT is very likely a true hardware error. The good news
is that prime95 recovers very well from ILLEGAL SUMOUT errors. Try seeing
if the problem occurs only when a specific device is active or a specific
program is running.
The other two errors messages, SUMINP != SUMOUT and ROUND OFF > 0.40 are
caused by one of two things:
1) For reasons too complicated to go into here, the program's error
checking is not perfect. Some errors can be missed and some correct
results flagged as an error. If you get the message "Disregard last
error..." upon continuing from the last save file, then you may have
found the rare case where a good result was flagged as an error.
2) A true hardware error.
If you do not get the "Disregard last error..." message or this happens
more than once, then your machine is a good candidate for a torture test.
See the stress.txt file for more information.
LUCAS-LEHMER DETAILS
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This program uses the Lucas-Lehmer primality test to see if 2**p-1 is prime.
The Lucas sequence is defined as:
L[1] = 4
L[n+1] = (L[n]**2 - 2) mod (2**p - 1)
2**p-1 is prime if and only if L[p-1] = 0.
DISCLAIMER
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THANKS
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