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| Author |
Message |
dpc
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Dispose of the Sun 670?
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Sep 11 20:55 UTC 1997 |
It has been many, many months since the Sun 670 arrived, and it still
isn't running. This is no fault of the staff--the darn thing is,
as one person pointed out, "a beast."
Would it be better to admit defeat and sell the parts for what
we can get for them?
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| 137 responses total. |
dang
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response 1 of 137:
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Sep 11 21:05 UTC 1997 |
No. It looks like all the major technical problems are solved, and now the
only things remaining are finding time to install software, and operating
systems and whatnot. There'd be little point in giving up now.
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scott
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response 2 of 137:
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Sep 12 01:51 UTC 1997 |
Heck, why don't we just give up and liquidate the entire Grex
operation?
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bmoran
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response 3 of 137:
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Sep 12 13:37 UTC 1997 |
I'll bid $5.00(US).
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valerie
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response 4 of 137:
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Sep 12 21:40 UTC 1997 |
Dave, there actually is some progress on the 670, it's just slow.
Until recently it wouldn't recognize its disks. Mike McNally fixed that.
Now it hangs when it does the file system check as it boots. That's the
next hurdle in getting it configured and running.
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richard
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response 5 of 137:
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Sep 13 20:25 UTC 1997 |
Grex has over $4,000 in the bank. It could afford to swap out the
Sun670 on an even faster model, one that would work better with Grex.
Must be a place somewhere that would take a 670 as a partial trade-in?
If it is such a problem to ever use this 670 right, maybe it should be
replaced?
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aruba
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response 6 of 137:
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Sep 13 21:32 UTC 1997 |
Actually, we have $3,499.84 in the bank, after paying for the routers.
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senna
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response 7 of 137:
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Sep 15 06:15 UTC 1997 |
That's a fairly hefty investment that runs a bit of an unpleasant risk.
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jared
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response 8 of 137:
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Sep 15 23:09 UTC 1997 |
$3k gets you a computer a lot faster than the 670.
but that's not the point here.
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mdw
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response 9 of 137:
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Sep 16 01:06 UTC 1997 |
Actually, that's just it. We also want something that's reliable,
compatible with what we have now, does the things we need, and cheap to
run and expand. The 670 is an MP machine, which means it has 2
processors. That means even though it's slower than a uniprocessor
machine, it can do more. We care a *lot* more about throughput than we
do about speed. Most of the binaries we have on the sun-4 will run
unchanged on the 670, and we should be able to just unplug the current
/a partition, possibly change one dip settting, and plug it on on the
670.
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dang
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response 10 of 137:
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Sep 17 22:28 UTC 1997 |
And we can even add two more processors, although that probably would improve
things much unless we also went to solaris.
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senna
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response 11 of 137:
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Sep 18 02:08 UTC 1997 |
You mean, would not?
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srw
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response 12 of 137:
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Sep 19 01:40 UTC 1997 |
i am sure he meant "would not". Actually there probably would be some
benefit to running a second processor even under SunOS, just not as
much.
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mdw
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response 13 of 137:
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Sep 19 15:29 UTC 1997 |
SunOS doesn't have a threaded kernel; so doesn't support symmetric
multi-processing. SunOS does have some support for multi-processing,
with only one processor in the kernel at a time. On "average", Unix
sytems like grex spend about 50% in the kernel. Therefore, 2 processors
works well, but more than 2 processors is a waste.
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dpc
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response 14 of 137:
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Sep 20 20:29 UTC 1997 |
I'm glad to see some progress is being made. Obviously getting the
ISDN line working is a higher priority, but it looks like that should
be done in a week or so. (hope, pray!)
Can anyone tell when the 670 should be ready for use?
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valerie
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response 15 of 137:
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Sep 21 13:29 UTC 1997 |
Alas, nope.
Relax?
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steve
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response 16 of 137:
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Sep 21 17:34 UTC 1997 |
Dave, we've gone over this before.
We aren't going to commit to a time table because we all have other
things to do in our lives, like work, sleep, and maybe a few other things
that aren't Grex related.
Yes--progress has been slow. Would that it were not. Progress was
slow on getting to the Sun-4, too, but when we got there, we were on a
stable platform that was secure. So it will be with the 670. I would
*FAR* rather take a year to properly come up on a new platform than
rush into something only to have it be a disaster.
One of M-Net's operating system upgrades immediately comes to mind.
Within days (hours?) of the new system in place, a dear little vandal
found some hole in the system (one of the rdist problems, I believe)
and proceeded to do a "rm -rf /" on the system, wiping out every file
on the system. I remember that, as I was on the system at the time,
and saw various pieces of the system evaporate.
Grex staff has always, always, always been over cautious when working
with things, precisely becuase if we screw up something, we've not only
wasted the original time in making the screwup, but we get to spend the
additional (probably larger) amount of time doing it *again*, to fix the
the first problem!
Lastly, I will point out that just selling the 670 without having
a clear idea of where to go to next would be insane. And, given that
any campaign to dump the 670 and move to an Intel box of some sort
would mean 1) Switching operating systems, 2) recompliling all of
Grex's special software, 2) Testing an entirely new operating system
for security problems. It took about 14 months for us to switch from
the Sun-3 to Sun-4 platforms. Moving completely from this architecture
to an Intel based monstrosity would take even longer.
Has the progression of getting to the 670 moved at the speed of a
wounded snail? Hell yes.
Has Grex managed to upgrade from platform to platfom? Again, hell
yes--there was 1) the move from the Sun-2 to Sun-3, 2) the move from
the Sun-3 to the Sun-4, and 3) currently the move from the Sun-4 to
the Sun-4/670. In several ways this is just as hard, since its the
top-of-the-line older Sun stuff, which most of the staff hasn't had
as much flight time with, since this was the *really* expensive stuff
of its day, moreso than the random Sun-{2,3,4} stuff we've used in
the past.
We will get there.
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senna
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response 17 of 137:
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Sep 22 05:10 UTC 1997 |
If STeve and I are talking about the same thing, then I remember the software
upgrade he's talking about. At any rate, I remember 15 months ago when m-net
did a major upgrade. A catastrophic crash occured, rendering m-net unviable
for close to a month, with few exceptions. It was rarely up, and a large
number of mnetters left or came to grex. M-net's usership took months to
recover, and I don't think it ever really got back under its feet financially
(though it was certainly reeling before then, too). I woulnd't want that to
happen to grex.
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n8nxf
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response 18 of 137:
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Sep 22 13:07 UTC 1997 |
The world is *FULL* of complainers and most of those complainers do not
have the wherewithall to do anything about what they compain about, or
much else. At least that's been my experiance when I ask a compliner to
help out. Sometimes you get lucky thoug :-)
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dpc
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response 19 of 137:
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Sep 22 18:19 UTC 1997 |
As long as the snail is still moving along, can anyone predict when
it will reach its goal? Six months from now? A year from now?
Obviously security is a major goal. However, getting stuff
operational which was paid for by a fundraising drive quite some
time ago should also be a major goal.
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mta
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response 20 of 137:
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Sep 22 18:45 UTC 1997 |
It is a major goal, Dave. Folks are working on it as fast as they can
whenever they can. Time is one of the path elements that can't be changed
much in an all volunteer, high -skills project. I think most everyone else
here understands that.
Do you want your money back? Is that the point you're working up to?
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steve
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response 21 of 137:
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Sep 22 21:43 UTC 1997 |
I'll stick my neck out Dave, and say six months or less. Plan
on Six months, like when the ice of winter '97 is thawing.
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bmoran
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response 22 of 137:
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Sep 23 12:56 UTC 1997 |
"fundraising drive quite some time ago". That time ago was the July board
meeting, two months ago. A mere blink of the eye, in grex time.
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aruba
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response 23 of 137:
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Sep 23 20:10 UTC 1997 |
(Dave is referring to the fundraising drive for the new computer, which ran
from Januray through March of this year. You're thinking of the ISDN drive,
Bill.)
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tao
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response 24 of 137:
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Sep 23 22:02 UTC 1997 |
re 19: When I donated funds to the ISDN drive, it was with no
condition on how soon staff had to implement installation.
When it comes to shared computing environments such as Grex,
only a fool would rush an upgrade job. The folks we have
on staff here bhave been around computers long enough to
know what they're doing. I've been around computers long
enough to know that the staff aren't blowing smoke when
they tell us it'll be a few months.
Security and stability win out over fast implementation
any day.
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