md5GUI v0.1 for Windows now available

[Digital Parasite]

Hi everyone. Those of you who have participated in the ECC2 or DistributedFolding projects are probably famililar with my GUIs. I have now created one for the MD5CRK project.

You can download it here:
http://gilchrist.ca/jeff/md5GUI/md5GUIv01.zip

This release should be used with v1.0.6 of the client or newer. There are some things with v1.0.6 that do not work perfectly but JL has apparently solved these problems for the next release.

The GUI will allow you to easily install/remove the client as a service. The Start and Stop buttons work fine, but the perf.xml file only gets updated every time a new DP is found (not every few seconds when the client is not running as a service).

If you use the GUI with the client not running as a service, you will be able to Start it without any problems but the "Stop" button will not function as expected. The Stop button creates a .kill file for the MD5CRK client, but right now the client only checks for it when a new DP is found, so clicking on STOP might take a while to actually stop the client. This is supposed to be fixed in the next release of the client. For now you will have to stop the client yourself by close the client manually.

The little graph on the "Advanced Tab" is a heart-beat monitor so you can see how your client is producing DPs. By default it graphs the # of DPs generated every 30 minutes, but that is configurable.

If you find any bugs or have any suggestions, please feel free to post here or email. Remember this is just the first release.

Screen Shots:

http://gilchrist.ca/jeff/md5GUI/screenshot1.jpg

http://gilchrist.ca/jeff/md5GUI/screenshot2.jpg

Jeff.

[Guilherme]

Cool! :)

[Digital Parasite]

BTW, the full md5GUI web site isn't ready yet so if you go to the provided link you will get a "Forbidden" error but the client at the link above is there for download. Just haven't had time to make pretty HTML yet. ;)

[Mystwalker]

Nice work! :thumbs:

I have a feature request:
Could you make it possible to keep track of more than one md5crk instance?
Me for example, I'm using 2 instances due to hyper-threading. Others would benefit when using network shares or something like that...

[Digital Parasite]

Hi, it gets too complicated for me to track 2+ at once in one GUI. I just don't have the time to add support for that. The solution I use for my own dual boxes at home is just to run two instances of md5GUI so I can track both (it does support monitoring network shares).

Jeff.

[jlcooke]

Originally posted by Guilherme
Cool! :)

I second that. I'll wait for people here to try it a bit more to know it's stable and I will add it to a perment "3rd Party Apps" section which will also include FreeDC's stats engine.

Now if someone could onyl write a web-based frontend for hard-core linux/bsd users like http://www.mariovaldez.net/software/phpsetimon/

[Darkness Productions]

Gimme a while ;)

[echoray]

Originally posted by jlcooke
Now if someone could onyl write a web-based frontend for hard-core linux/bsd users like http://www.mariovaldez.net/software/phpsetimon/

Not web-based, but I've already done some early experiments with a GTK+-based Linux frontend using libxml2 to gather information. Funny enough, I've named the prototype MD5gui, too :) But I don't think it will ever get into a usable state as I have neither the time nor the skills to write a good graphical application. Maybe someone wants to grab the idea and code something useful?

[alpha]

1. There is an option on the config tab called:

AutoStart md5net Client
Presumably, this should be "md5crk" not "md5net".

2. When switching back to the "Progress" tab after visiting other tabs, the "Using Build" data is selected.

3. Would it be possible to have md5GUI "remember" your min/avg/max DP distances, similarly to how ecc2GUI could? (I guess this could already be in there, but the client hasn't found a DP while I was typing this so I can't test it ;))

4. When the systray icon turns green it is barely visible against my blue colour scheme. Would it make a difference if the "M" and "D" were outlined (thicker) in black?

Excellent work though DP, as always. :thumbs:

[Digital Parasite]

Alpha,

1) found that last night myself and is now fixed

2) I will check the tab ordering on that, it probably is set to the first

3) Hmmmm, perhaps. Right now the client itself feeds me that info and its so easy just to use the data from the client. I guess it depends on how much free time I have. :cool:

4) This icon has been a major PITA to do, I have had to make many different versions just to get it readable in Win2k and XP default schemes. THe problem is that I only have 12x12 pixel to work with. I will see if I can get some kind of black border around but the problem is that the default 32x32 icon gets downsized by XP when it displays it on the task bar and it doesn't always keep the pieces you want. :mad: Are there any icon experts out there?

BTW, I found some big bugs in v0.1, like some of buttons not working. The install and remove service buttons probably don't work, and neither to the Send or Prepare Batch ones. I made what I thought was a small change somewhere and it seemed to have affected other code. Once Jean-Luc released 1.0.7, I will release a new version of the GUI that fixes those.

Jeff.

[alok]

very cool, this is something i have been looking for, :D

[Digital Parasite]

Ok, I have modified the md5GUI icons to have a black border in two different sets. Can you guys please download the ZIP file and take a look at which set you like better? In windows explorer you can see the 12x12 size by looking at the files in "Details" view. You wil see the 32x32 version in "Icons" view but it is the 12x12 size that shows up on the Windows task bar.

Grab it here:
http://gilchrist.ca/jeff/md5GUI/md5GUI_icons.zip

Thanks,
Jeff.

[alpha]

Actually Jeff, I think this new version is probably a little worse. You did exactly like I asked, but it squishes it just a bit too much. Maybe others prefer it though?

Just noticed something else BTW, if I minimize md5GUI to the tray as soon as I start it up, and then hover the mouse over the systray icon, "Number field sieve GUI" pops up.

[Digital Parasite]

alpha, doh!!!! Yeah I also found that other set of text and fixed it too.