SharkD wrote:
> Will IMP ever return? Google hasn't deleted the site from its cache yet.

The main URL, www.imp.org, was hosted on a Windows-based server by Tom
Galvin (the one who started with the whole IMP idea). That URL disappeared
a few months ago, and we haven't contacted Tom back; although he was on
povray.off-topic last month.

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Nicolas Alvarez wrote:
> The main URL, www.imp.org, was hosted on a Windows-based server by Tom
> Galvin (the one who started with the whole IMP idea). That URL disappeared
> a few months ago, and we haven't contacted Tom back; although he was on
> povray.off-topic last month.

Oops, premature posting. I wanted to press Enter twice (new paragraph), not
Ctrl-Enter (send) :P

There is also http://impfarm.imp.org/ which is hosted on a Linux-based
server by Andy Read. There were plans to allow multiple administrators, to
avoid the problem we had in the past: the one and only admin going MIA for
a whole year (health issues on Tom's family IIRC). There was an update to
the client code, the server code was released, and a few admin pages were
made to send render jobs and stuff.

Then the project just kinda died. There's a few people I haven't talked to
since then (like houz, who worked quite a bit on the client dev. IIRC). And
even a few that apparently were already gone by the time I discovered
IMP... (I'm looking at the IMP forums on archive.org).

Having multiple admins doesn't really help if there were a total of five
people still remotely interested in IMP, and none actually working on a
collaborative POV-Ray movie; which is what IMP is about.

The IMPfarm server CGI is still running (on the new-ish Linux server). It
has been repeating "no jobs to render" for a few years. Poor script. I have
access to logs, and it looks like there are people still running the
client. I bet even that Perl script is sad about how IMP disappeared.

To be honest, I think the POV-Ray newsgroup activity has lowered as well,
compared to previous years...

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Nicolas Alvarez wrote:
> I used to have one (volunteer, similar to IMP). But I don't have time to
> maintain it anymore :(

And as for my own farm... Started it about two years ago. At first it didn't
work too well, considering it was a Linux virtual machine, running on top
of Windows, on my home computer without really enough RAM.

And my Internet connection had 256kbps download and 128kbps upload speed. I
remember one time my connection completely saturated during the whole
night, because of the rendered images being uploaded back :/

Later, somebody offered me hosting on something that was still a home
computer, but had Linux installed for real (not a VM), and a much faster
network connection. Everything got faster.

The farm was ("is") based on BOINC (see http://boinc.org). From
administrating that server, I got a lot of Linux experience. And enough
knowledge about BOINC that now I give tech support to other project admins
(I should start charging for the service as soon as I become 18!).

The BOINC-POVray bridge is code I'm not exactly proud of. It has many things
that feel like a hack. For example, I renamed main() to povmain(), and call
it from my real main() after extracting the input files and other stuff. I
disable file output and hook on a macro (intended for the preview window!)
to get the rendered pixels, and save the image using my own code when the
render is finished. The image is also saved every few minutes in an
uncompressed format with a simple header, to be able to resume the render.
To resume the render, I change the POV-Ray Start_Row setting (!). Uglyyy

I myself question the legality of my code changes. They may not comply with
the POV-Ray source code and redistribution license. Although I might be
covered by clause 2.3, which permits modifications that allow controlling
POV-Ray from other software "for parallel or network rendering purposes".

Some months later, I lost the "hosting". Due to financial problems, this
friend who was hosting me had to shut down many computers and downgrade his
Internet connection speed.

I copied everything back into my computer and loaded it on the VM again.
Back to slowness. But by then I was also losing interest. I was getting
some really strange rendering problems on some scenes, that I never figured
out (they only happened on the farm, not on a standard POV-Ray). I had lots
of users, yet not too much to render (!); I posted about the farm a few
times on POV newsgroups but nobody seemed interested in giving me something
to render.

Plus, keeping the virtual machine running was an annoyance, because of its
RAM usage.

Plus, after having used the BOINC server for so many months, I was already
getting into the stage of "this code sucks so much that most of it would
need a rewrite" :P

So I just let it disappear.

Quite a bit later, I was given access to IMP server, and I decided to
install the BOINC server from scratch. I copied my POV application and the
work generator in there, and even ran a few renders there.

At first I felt like there was still nobody interested in giving me
something to render on it. But when somebody did, I remembered how much of
a mess it was to get a render running (manual processes I never automated
enough). Or I found even worse rendering glitches.

And well... it ran for a while. Actually it's still running
(http://impfarm.imp.org/boinc/), but completely ignored; there hasn't been
a render task in 250 days.

Now I have a job, and my nose in three or four different open source
projects (most BOINC related, go figure). And school, which seem to never
end (similar to hell, huh). I don't think I have the time to keep a
renderfarm up and running...

(I still have the database backups though. I could get it and its hundreds
of users back up if I wanted to, and had the time and motivation)

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Nicolas Alvarez <nic### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> To be honest, I think the POV-Ray newsgroup activity has lowered as well,
> compared to previous years...

The off-topic seems to be pretty active...

-Mike

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What is the feasability of having such a thing as a distributed computing
option, sort of like Folding at Home? Are there enough POV-Ray users for this
to be a valid option? How long would it take for a person to code such a thing?

-Mike

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SharkD wrote:
> What is the feasability of having such a thing as a distributed computing
> option, sort of like Folding at Home? Are there enough POV-Ray users for
> this to be a valid option? How long would it take for a person to code
> such a thing?

I did it, as I explained before on my giant post. I think I reached 1000
users. Most of which just contributed CPU time without caring what POV-Ray
even *was*. I even know someone who has multiple 8-core computers.

I welcome everyone on this newsgroup to show it's worth my time and effort
to get the farm back working, because I currently have no motivation to do
so. The fact that a total of three people have been active on this thread
doesn't really help.

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Nicolas Alvarez wrote:
> I welcome everyone on this newsgroup to show it's worth my time and effort
> to get the farm back working, because I currently have no motivation to do
> so. The fact that a total of three people have been active on this thread
> doesn't really help.

...see what I mean? :)

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"Nicolas Alvarez" <nic### [at] gmailcom> schreef in bericht 
news:493c3b22@news.povray.org...
>
> ...see what I mean? :)
>

You are absolutely right. Question is why this is so? I suppose (I may be 
wrong) that people feel this is an outlandish (read difficult) way of using 
POV-Ray, needing all kind of skills on the programming side of PC's. I 
confess I feel a bit like that.

Thomas

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Thomas de Groot wrote:
> You are absolutely right. Question is why this is so? I suppose (I may be
> wrong) that people feel this is an outlandish (read difficult) way of
> using POV-Ray, needing all kind of skills on the programming side of PC's.
> I confess I feel a bit like that.

I don't see what are all the skills needed. Show some interest in a
renderfarm, wait for me to get the thing back up and running, then email
me .pov files.

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Nicolas Alvarez <nic### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> Nicolas Alvarez wrote:
> > I welcome everyone on this newsgroup to show it's worth my time and effort
> > to get the farm back working, because I currently have no motivation to do
> > so. The fact that a total of three people have been active on this thread
> > doesn't really help.
>
> ...see what I mean? :)

Heh. I could have used a render farm this week. 36 frames taking roughly 45
minutes each. I may need it again later if I decide to use area lights and
focal blur.

-Mike

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