QDINFO.DAT(5) qd-tools documentation QDINFO.DAT(5) NAME qdinfo.dat - The data file for qd, a Folding@Home queue dumper SYNOPSIS qdinfo.dat DESCRIPTION qdinfo.dat is the data file which can update the credits per project table build into qd(1). Besides the table with the current credits per project, a table with the credits a project was worth up to certain points in time is also included. The date the file was generated and by whom is also recorded in qdinfo.dat. The file is split up into three sections, a header with some informa- tion on the content, the current credits per project table, and finally a table with the credit history per project. The qdinfo.dat file layout is detailed below. -- header -- # da 11 August 2005 (rph) # Latest functional revision number of "qd" fr 032 # Point table generation time, epoch 2000 pg 0A8DA04A -- header -- Each information item in the header section has a comment briefly describing its function. Below and above each comment is an empty line, with the exception of the first comment which is on the first line without an empty line above it. I will describe each item in a little more detail below. da 11 August 2005 (rph) A line beginning with "da" indicates that it contains the date this qdinfo.dat file was generated on and by whom. The date is in the form "day month year", the day is not prefixed with an 0 if the day is less than 9, the month is the full name of the month in English, and the year is in 4 digits. The tag "(rph)" indicates that this file was gen- erated by Dick Howell as those are his initials. Dick Howell original documentation has the following to say about the "da" entry: "The official distributed qdinfo.dat has the tag "(rph)" at the end. People maintaining their own versions of the file, for whatever reason, should use a different tag." Since the last official distributed qdinfo.dat was of 11 August 2005, all later versions of qdinfo.dat use a different tag. A qdinfo.dat generated by psummary2qdinfo.pl(1) will have the tag "(psummary2qdinfo)". A qdinfo.dat generated by update-qd-files.pl(1) will have the tag "(update-qd-files.pl)". The tools psummary2qdinfo.pl and update-qd-files.pl are part of qd- tools and can be used by anyone to keep their copy of qdinfo.dat and qd.c up to date. Therefor I didn't think it was appropriate to use my initials or another more personal tag. If someone were to modify those scripts, please use a different tag. This way we can always determine the exact person or script responsible for the updated qdinfo.dat. fr 032 A line beginning with "fr" indicates that it contains the latest func- tional revision of qd. Its function is basically to inform users of qd when a new version of qd is available when the only thing they update is qdinfo.dat. Dick Howells original documentation has the following to say about the functional revision: "The program [qd] is released as necessary to keep up with changes and new features. Often it is several times a week, as new project numbers are activated and their scores have to be added to qd's tables. If there is a significant change, or a bug fix, there is also a "func- tional revision" level built into the program, which will be increased. The message above shows the program functional revision level at "032". The latest functional revision level available is given in the qdinfo.dat file as an "fr" field. Users who update only qdinfo.dat to stay current will be notified with a warning message here if qd notices an "fr" level greater than its own functional level." pg 0A8DA04A A line beginning with "pg" indicates that it contains the date and time on which the point table was generated. The value is the time in sec- onds since January 1 2000 00:00:00 in hexadecimal. This value is only used by qd to determine if its own credits per project information is more recent than that supplied in qdinfo.dat. Dick Howells original documentation has the following to say about the "pg" entry: "The date the table information was compiled is recorded in qdinfo.dat as a hex value in a "pg" entry. If such a value is present and it is earlier than the date of the built-in tables in qd, then a warning mes- sage will be printed here, and the table entries in qdinfo.dat will not be allowed to overwrite the built-in values." Below the header are the two last sections, the point table and point history entries. Point table entries are on lines starting with "pt" and point history entries are on lines starting with "ph". Point Table Below are the two first and two last lines of the point table from qdinfo.dat of 11 August 2005. -- point table -- # Point table entries (points per WU (project, 100 * points)) pt 101 7400 111 500 112 500 113 500 114 500 pt 127 200 128 200 129 200 131 140 132 280 pt 2051 16700 2052 16600 2053 13700 2054 6900 2055 12900 pt 2056 12800 2057 10600 2059 3800 2060 5700 -- point table -- The point table entries are nothing more than the project number and the last known amount of credits that project was worth. If over time a projects credit is changed, this new value is used in the point table entry and the old value of the point table entry is added to the point history entries of that project. The point table lines contain double space separated pairs of project and credit data. The first thing on each line are the pt characters to indicate that this line contains point table data. The rest of the line is populated with the actual data, first the project number fol- lowed by a space and than the amount of credits for that project multi- plied by 100. Due to the max of 80 characters on a line, up to 5 projects are listed per line. Point History Below are a few point history lines. -- point history -- # Point history entries (project, 100 * old points, change date epoch 2000) ph 171 200 0A7A948C ph 257 9200 08398674 257 10483 0817020C ph 2020 1400 0A77D56C 2020 13600 0A72734C 2020 24600 0A71E6AC ph 2020 12200 0A58CC1C -- point history -- The point history entries are not much different from the point table entries. They also have the project number and the amount of credits for that project, but also have the date up to when that amount of credits was awarded to that project. The point history lines contain groups of credit revision history sepa- rated by double spaces. The first thing on each line are the ph charac- ters to indicate that this line contains point history data. The rest of the line is populated with the actual data, first the project number followed by a space, then the amount of credits multiplied by 100, a space, and the epoch 2000 time which indicated when the amount of cred- its was changed to that value. Every line contains one or more credit revisions of only one project. Because of the maximum of 80 character per line, there are at most 3 revision on one line. If a project has more than 3 credit revision, additional ph lines are created to list all the revisions. So it is very well possible to see a specific project which has several ph lines. The revisions are ordered from latest up to the oldest. So the most recent revision is at the beginning of the line. Preferred Deadlines Below are a few lines with preferred deadlines. -- preferred deadlines -- # Preferred deadline entries (project, deadline in seconds) pd 772 25920000 773 25920000 962 86400 963 86400 pd 964 259200 1136 950400 1151 432000 1155 432000 pd 1156 3974400 1157 3974400 1158 3974400 1162 172800 pd 1163 172800 1164 604800 1165 604800 1166 864000 pd 1167 864000 1487 4060800 1491 259200 1492 2851200 -- preferred deadlines -- The preferred deadline entries are nothing more than the project number and the last known preferred deadline in seconds that was reported for that project. If over time a projects preferred deadline is changed, the new value is used in the preferred deadline entry, the old value of the preferred deadline is discarded. The lines with preferred deadline entries contain double space sepa- rated pairs of project and preferred deadline data. The first thing on each line are the pd characters to indicate that this line contains preferred deadline data. The rest of the line is populated with the actual data, first the project number followed by a space and than the preferred deadline for that project in seconds. Due to the max of 80 characters on a line, up to 4 projects are listed per line. FILES qdinfo.dat The data file for qd with updated credits per project and pre- ferred deadlines. BUGS The date saved in the point history is the time on which the system which updated the qdinfo.dat noticed the change in the project summary of Stanford. If you check for updates every hour, you should not have much difference, if at all. If you check less frequent it is possible that your work unit is rewarded with less credits than stated in qdinfo.dat. Dick Howell had the following to say about the date saved in the point history in his original documentation: "The times are not necessarily very accurate, being determined not so much by when the points were actually changed as by the time I noticed the changes on the Stanford project summary web page. I check the Stan- ford page automatically at 0635 and 1835 UTC (0535 and 1735 UTC during the summer), and occasionally when I use the network for other reasons, so my times could be late by as much as twelve hours." The qdinfo.dat distributed with qd-tools has a gap in the point his- tory, between Dick Howells last release on 11 August 2005 and 25 Novem- ber 2005 when I had fixed my update scripts which had a bug in the point history handling. The qdinfo.dat distributed with qd-tools no longer contains data on projects in beta stage. Usage of that project data was not allowed. The position of Vijay Pande was posted on the Folding-Community, Team MacOS X and Dutch Power Cows Forums: http://folding-community.org/fpost171195.html#171195 http://www.teammacosx.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=42409#p42409 http://gathering.tweakers.net/forum/list_message/27655766#27655766 NOTES The qdinfo.dat which is being maintained as part of qd-tools is updated every hour, because Stanford updates its project summary page every hour as well. The version distributed with qd-tools always reflects the most recent version at the time when it was packaged. For updates you can download the most recent version from the qd-tools website: http://linuxminded.xs4all.nl/?target=software-qd-tools.plc AUTHORS qd(1), qdiprint(1) and qdinfo.dat(5) were originally written by Richard P. Howell IV This manual page is written as part of qd-tools(1) by Bas Couwenberg SEE ALSO qd(1), qdiprint(1), qd-tools(1) qd-tools 2007-02-26 QDINFO.DAT(5)