client differences?

[bubba56]

I had posted about issues with 6.23 on ini-processor client on that forum, but came here to see if there was any description of the differences/advantages/etc between old reliable ( for me) 5.03 and 6.23. I did have to download and use the core downloader as 6.23 would not retrieve a core here at work. I have no control over the firewall(group policies in effect) and found nothing in McAfee to prevent F@H from working properly. SO... when 6.23 refused to pick up a new core today and I couldn't make it accept core _11, I finally downloaded old 5.03 and it is up and running. Core downloaded and working fine.

SO I guess a couple questions come to mind for me.
a) is 6.23 a faster client, ie; able to go thru a WU faster than 5.03 or something ( I guess, what "improvements"??)
b) what is different in the way 5.03 requests and accepts WU's that is different from 6.23 ( why will 5.03 just plain work-- no issues downloading and running a core when 6.23 will not.)
Same anti-Virus -- McAfee Enterprise 8.7, same corporate firewall setup, same group policies in place.

I tried searching and while I am relatively certain this MAY have been addressed before, my sleuthing skills are not always the best.

[John Naylor]

a) There is no speed difference, as the cores have not changed and it is the cores that do the actual work. However the 6.23 client supports some extra options such as allowing the download of sidecar files with cores (FahCore_a0 uses this for a .dll file). It also supports the adding of flags when configuring so that these are added automatically when the client starts, and the passkey which at some point in the future may be used for bonuses (or so the Pande Group said when giving their reasons for adding passkeys). Finally, it adds CPU detection code which should allow units to be matched to the processors that are most efficient at processing them in future (e.g. sending units using the AMBER core to AMD processors).

b) I have no idea, sorry.

[toTOW]

Did you set your old v5 client tu use IE connection settings ? This feature has been removed in v6 since Microsoft added some security patches that broke this feature on almost all situations ... unfortunately, this feature was useful in particular network setups which might have been yours. Also proxies with advanced authentication usually have troubles with v6 clients.

[WangFeiHong]

I have a suggestion for the Pande development team regarding 6.23.

Since some people need "Use IE settings" to download cores, and some with 6.23 cannot download cores due to the lack of this feature, why not:

Continue with this feature, but regardless of the setting used, if it fails to download the core, then after 10 tries, use the opposite setting.

E.g. if bubba56 uses this client and sets "Use IE settings" to yes, he'll be able to download the core. But if he sets it to no, and the client can't download the core after 10 tries, it would automatically try to download USING IE SETTINGS. This way, while flipping back and forth, it would be able to find the best setting for users to download cores and WUs.

[7im]

The 10 failures increase the load on the Fah work servers. Also, as toTOW suggested, the USE IE SETTINGS option is broken for almost all users, and so the first 10 tries would fail, then the 2nd 10 tries to download would also fail, increasing server load even more. And if the didn't put a stopper after 20 tries, it would just keep going.

There were several very good reasons for removing this option. It didn't work for almost everyone, and caused MANY people to post on this forum for the exact same error over and over. And I already mentioned removing it lessened the server loads. For the very few this impacted, there are alternates. 1. continue to run v5.03 if you are one of the very few that USE IE continues to work (just don't run Windows Update, or IE update, as both have patches from MS that will break it.) 2. Upgrade to V6 and configure the proxy setting to get through that firewall that USE IE does for you now. 2A. If your Proxy needs advanced authentication, set up a software proxy on your local machine to route only the fah traffic to your Corp proxy, and back. Fah will talk to the local proxy, and the local proxy can then talk to Corp proxy.

[WangFeiHong]

All clients, if it can't download the core, would keep on attempting to do so, thus it would still cause some load on the FAH servers, regardless of my idea or not. Anyway 10 is an arbitrary number, I'm simply suggesting that using IE settings if otherwise fails would help the minority users. Besides, there have been many posts on the forums about proxy issues and being unable to download cores/WUs, so I believe the plight of these users should not simply be left to "stick to the old version or try a *complicated* method to get FAH to bypass your proxies (something that people either cannot do or find it difficult to)".

TBH I don't really know how the Microsoft Updates things cause the "Use IE Settings" to break down. For myself, with that enabled on 5.04, I could still download/upload cores/WUs perfectly, whether it is XP/Vista/Win7 fully updated, x86 and x64.

[7im]

No, there are more options... like try one of the existing options while we wait for Stanford to add support for authenticating proxies to a future version of the client...

[toTOW]

There is a workaround regarding proxy requesting authentication ... use a local proxy without authentication on your machine that will deal with authentication, and set your client to use the local proxy.

I don't know if that would work with people who used "Use IE settings" feature ...

The only other solution is to wait for v7 client.

[bruce]

I had posted about issues with 6.23 on ini-processor client on that forum, but came here to see if there was any description of the differences/advantages/etc between old reliable ( for me) 5.03 and 6.23.

Some projects are only issued to V6 ciients. The Pande Group tries to maintain servers that are compatible with earlier releases for as long as it makes sense, but if you upgrade to V6 you will have access to all of the projects.