I'm a long time seti cruncher (since May 19, 1999 WOO HOO!) and this question involves Boinc 6.10.18 on a WinXP Pro SP3 system, exclusively crunching seti tasks also with CUDA on my NVidia EVGA 9800 GTX+ card with driver version 195.62.

Every now and then, like maybe every other month, my firewall reports seti@home trying to talk out to 65.55.10.11. The IP belongs to Microsoft, and I deny it access. It does not seem to affect my work at all. Shortly after, it then requests to talk to a Berkeley server which I permit - "isaac.ssl.berkeley.edu".

The specific task requesting these transactions just now is,

setiathome_6.09_windows_intelx86_cuda23.exe

My question is why this task needs to talk to Microsoft?

I'm more curious than anything. My system is stable and I don't see a need to update anything since nothing seems broke. (unless the answer to my query indicates otherwise)

Thanks for any insight.

Brian - 476563

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I'm pretty sure that setiathome_6.09_windows_intelx86_cuda23.exe
will not try to connect to Internet at all.

Only boinc.exe does the communication.
It (boinc.exe) will connect only to berkeley.edu servers (if your only project is SETI@home)
and google.com (to check Internet works OK)

Maybe only if some .exe crashes report is sent to Microsoft (only if you enable this)?


Edit:
The following shows that debug info ("symbols") is get from Microsoft - not send:

I found the following strings in the (used by me) optimized (Lunatics) SETI@home app:

AK_v8b_win_SSE3_AMD.exe

http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu
http://boinc.berkeley.edu/symstore
http://msdl.microsoft.com/download/symbols

The first link is part of a sentence:
"If you'd like to contribute to the project,
please visit the SETI@home web site at
http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu."

The last links ("symbols") are obviously used in case of crash report.


Strings from boinc.exe (I searched for "http://"):

http://boinc.berkeley.edu/project_list.php
http://www.google.com/
http://boinc.berkeley.edu/download.php
http://boinc.berkeley.edu/download.php?xml=1
Visit http://boinc.berkeley.edu for instructions
http://boinc.berkeley.edu/symstore
http://boinc.berkeley.edu/symstore
http://msdl.microsoft.com/download/symbols
http://msdl.microsoft.com/download/symbols
http://crl.thawte.com/ThawtePremiumServerCA.crl
http://ocsp.verisign.com
http://crl.verisign.com/tss-ca.crl
http://ocsp.verisign.com
http://crl.verisign.com/ThawteTimestampingCA.crl
http://crl.thawte.com/ThawteCodeSigningCA.crl
http://ocsp.thawte.com
http://boinc.berkeley.edu

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- ALF - "Find out what you don't do well ..... then don't do it!" :)
 

My only thought was if you are unable to connect to boinc and using an program trying to use an outside reference to see if internet connection can be established, but I really do not know.

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In reply to "Weasel", I control when Boinc communicates by suspending network activity. And I also 'disconnect' from the 'net when not in use. But this happens whether I'm connected or not.

In reply to "BilBg", yes, I apparently have some crashed cuda23 tasks. So that's probably the culprit. I had never noticed the coincidence before.

So now I'm curious what this 'symbols' thing is. When the task crashes, what is it retrieving from that MS url? Why can't that information be in the program already?

I dabble in programming (an enhanced relative of basic called XBasic) but nothing terribly complex, mostly database stuff, nor networking related.

Brian

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Well, now u have my curiousty, lol. Let me know what u find out.

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You can look in "symbols" folder in your BOINC Data folder (my contains 58 .pdb files = 60 MB).

You will find numerous .pdb files which are some kind of database connecting numerical addresses in the executable to original names (as are in source) of functions
so the crash report can be more informative.

(Instead of "crash at address 123ABC" will say "crash in function Oh_No_Not_Again" ;)
http://www.lucidinterval.org/here_we_go_again.shtml
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Hitchhiker's_Guide_to_the_Galaxy#Chapter_18
)

Since BOINC is compiled using Microsoft C/C++ it uses Microsoft libraries
and need to get this debug info from Microsoft.
Read "About the Microsoft Symbol Server" down at page:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/hardware/gg462988


"Why can't that information be in the program already?":
Probably to save HDD space (accompanying .pdb is often bigger than the .exe).

"Each x86 symbol package may require 750 MB or more of hard disk space.":
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/hardware/gg463028

"Use the Microsoft Symbol Server to obtain debug symbol files":
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/311503/


If you see .pdb files in the installation directory of some program it already have this debug info "in the program" as you say.

---

 


- ALF - "Find out what you don't do well ..... then don't do it!" :)
 

If you look at somebody's crashed task:
http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/result.php?resultid=1910183433

You will see:
Symbol Search Path: C:\ProgramData\BOINC\slots\19;C:\ProgramData\BOINC\projects\setiathome.berkeley.edu;srv*C:\ProgramData\BOINC\projects\setiathome.berkeley.edusymbols*http://msdl.microsoft.com/download/symbols;srv*C:\ProgramData\BOINC\projects\setiathome.berkeley.edusymbols*http://boinc.berkeley.edu/symstore


The same line edited by me for easy reading:

Symbol Search Path:
C:\ProgramData\BOINC\slots\19;
C:\ProgramData\BOINC\projects\setiathome.berkeley.edu;
srv*C:\ProgramData\BOINC\projects\setiathome.berkeley.edu\symbols*http://msdl.microsoft.com/download/symbols;
srv*C:\ProgramData\BOINC\projects\setiathome.berkeley.edu\symbols*http://boinc.berkeley.edu/symstore


(I don't know why "\" was omitted in "berkeley.edu\symbols" and why the list do not include:
C:\ProgramData\BOINC\symbols;
)

---

 


- ALF - "Find out what you don't do well ..... then don't do it!" :)
 

Every now and then, like maybe every other month, my firewall reports seti@home trying to talk out to 65.55.10.11. The IP belongs to Microsoft, and I deny it access. It does not seem to affect my work at all. Shortly after, it then requests to talk to a Berkeley server which I permit - "isaac.ssl.berkeley.edu".

My question is why this task needs to talk to Microsoft?

Thanks for any insight.

Brian - 476563

When SETI's servers are unreachable for various reasons, BOINCManager tests Internet access. You may see a similar group of messages like this in stdoutdae.txt:

02-Jan-2011 23:42:15 [SETI@home] Started download of 31my10ab.19756.397412.13.10.130
02-Jan-2011 23:43:31 [---] Project communication failed: attempting access to reference site
02-Jan-2011 23:43:31 [SETI@home] Temporarily failed download of 31my10ab.20765.298213.4.10.103: HTTP error
02-Jan-2011 23:43:31 [SETI@home] Backing off 1 min 0 sec on download of 31my10ab.20765.298213.4.10.103
02-Jan-2011 23:43:32 [---] Internet access OK - project servers may be temporarily down.

I don't know what IP the "reference site" is referred to in the 2nd message.

Maybe that is the Microsoft IP your firewall is reporting??

Martin

Nope, AFAIK, it's google.

Gruß,
Gundolf

The reference site is http://www.google.com because it is assumed that Google is always up, therefore if BOINC cannot connect to www.Google.com, BOINC assumes that the internet isn't accessible or is down.