response 26 of 181:

Oct 13 18:18 UTC 2001

Re 22: I think Sun's official explination of their numbering system is 
that Solaris 1.x, 2.x, 7, and 8 are suites including many software 
tools.  At the core of each Solaris suite is a SunOS 4.x or 5.x 
operating system.

response 28 of 181:

Oct 13 18:37 UTC 2001

Ok, all this scattershot stuff is nice background for this project, but 
let's focus a little bit.

I propose that we address the upgrade in the following way:

        1. Since the most limiting factor in any Grex upgrade procedure 
seems to be staff time, let us focus primarily on what sort of upgrade 
would be easiest to accomplish with minimal strain on that resource, 
rather than what we would ideally want for an upgrade.

        2. Since we have a supply of hardware which we are already using, 
let's take step one and branch it into two parallel avenues of 
consideration:  One, what is the easiest upgrade worth the trouble which 
would allow us to continue to use our existing hardware, and; Two, what 
is the easiest upgrade which could be done on replacement hardware which 
is within our budget for the purpose (allowing both purchase and 
scrounging).  

        3. Identify a handful of specific OS/hardware combinations which 
fit 
the above parameters and rank them according to ease of implementation.

Obviously, there are a number of considerations which are implied in the 
above process, such as what packages will run on the proposed platforms, 
etc.  These considerations must form the basis for determining whether a 
particular OS/hw combo constitutes an acceptable upgrade, but I would 
suggest that our only hard and fast requirements be: 1. The upgrade must 
support both those packages which constitute the primary basis of Grex's 
present operations (i.e. pine/mail, picospan, backtalk), and those which 
we have identified as necessary components of Grex's future growth/
existence (i.e. kerberos, current versions of gcc, *sql, etc), and; 2. 
(Obviously, I hope) the upgrade must be able to handle our current 
traffic loads at current or better speeds.


Obviously, it would be advantageous to us to be able to upgrade the OS on 
our existing hardware and meet the needs in so doing, but I don't think 
we should reject any hardware unless it is firmly established that use of 
it will require an ongoing and inordinate drain on staff time beyond 
installation and setup.

response 30 of 181:

Oct 13 20:12 UTC 2001

Since I had asked, "After November 4", I'll note that the evening of November
3 is acceptable.

Perhaps we could look at adding staff?

response 32 of 181:

Oct 13 23:41 UTC 2001

  Several people have already suggested this, but let me just state 
  again as plainly as possible that it makes no sense to talk about
  what kind of upgrade is desirable until there's a general consensus
  about what's deficient with the current setup.  Make a clear list
  of what it is you want to be able to do and *then* start talking
  about what kind of upgrade is needed to do it.

response 34 of 181:

Oct 14 04:24 UTC 2001

``weblogs'' and ``wikis'' doesn't strike me as being all that compelling
for grex.  One can find that functionality elsewhere.

Grex currently does some unique things that only grex does.  grex has a
unique user community running picospan (as well as the web interface).
grex also provides some unique services to ann arbor residents, and provides
some amount of unix shell accounts to anyone who wants one.  Perhaps grex
does some other unique things that I'm forgetting at the moment.

Keeping as many of the unique services that grex offers that people use
as possible is vastly more important than adding services that are available
at numerous other sites, I think.

(Which is not to say that grex shouldn't experiment with things that are
available elsewhere, but if grex causes itself to lose its uniqueness, I
think that would be a significant loss.)

response 36 of 181:

Oct 14 05:19 UTC 2001

I don't think anyone is talking about abandoning any service we now 
provide.  Exploring some new directions would be interesting.

I don't see any reason to upgrade to a new operating system on the 
current hardware.  The main options would be Solaris or netBSD.
I don't think the newer versions of Solaris support this machine, so 
we'd have to upgrade to an old version of Solaris (could be wrong about 
that).  However, I believe we could quite easily get significantly 
better machines for free that would run Solaris or netBSD (such machines
have been offered to us in the past) and it would actually be easier to
get it working on a newer machine because the newer operating systems do 
a better job of supporting newer machines than old obsolete machines. So 
what would be the point of doing the work to install a new operating 
system on an old machine, when we could do less work to install it on a 
newer machine?

I really think we need to be talking about a new OS on a new machine.

I also think we can afford a new machine.  Just to get a sense of a 
possible price, I randomly went to the Dell small business website, 
picked a rack-mounted PE 1550 server, with a 1GHz Pentium III processor, 
and space for a second one, 512MB memory, 36 GB Ultra3 SCSI disk and 
controller, no OS, keyboard or monitor.  That costs $2060.  We have 
$1024 in the hardware fund already, donate a bit from the general fund, 
do a fund raiser, and we'd pretty easily get to say $2500.  I think we 
can get a respectable new machine for that.  It'd take a lot of research 
to figure out exactly what we really want (the machine above definately 
isn't it, for many reasons).  We might end up wanting to build our own 
from parts.  But I think it's doable.

The other advantage of moving to an newer x86 system is that there are 
just *so* many more people who know the hardware than there is for Sun 
hardware.  I could probably entirely stop pretending that I do 
hardware.

response 38 of 181:

Oct 14 05:37 UTC 2001

Good explanations Valerie and Jan; I support your recommendations (as long
as we move from a poxy old OS to one which supports Java, too).

response 40 of 181:

Oct 14 17:26 UTC 2001

Why new and not 2-3 years old?  What can you get for $1024 instead of $2500?
Do we need 1G processor speed? (What do we have now, by the way?).

response 42 of 181:

Oct 14 19:01 UTC 2001

From a pure price/performance viewpoint, I don't think buying used
computers is advantageous.  A five-year-old car will perform pretty much
just like a brand new car, and will cost less (though with a shorter
expected lifetime).  An two year old computer, on the other hand, is
going to be substantially less capable than a new one.  You pay a lot
less, but you also get a lot less.

If Grex couldn't afford a current generation machine, then looking at an
older machine might make sense.  If we can afford a current machine, then
what's the advantage?  Well, there are some, but I'll get to those later.

The Dell quote above was just a quick way to get an idea of what a current
generation machine might cost.  If we actually decided to build a x86
server, then we would almost certainly put it together ourselves from
parts acquired separately.  For some of the parts, second-hand makes
sense.  Power supplies, chassis (so long as they support the form factor
for a modern motherboard), ethernet card, video card, etc.  I'd want to
go with a fairly modern processor, SCSI controller and drives, memory.
I think a lot of the choice would be driven by what kind of memory we can
get most cheaply, because I'd guess that a machine loaded with lots and
lots of memory would be advantageous for us.  I think if we are going
to invest the work to build and set up a new machine, it's stupid not
to invest the money to make it a high quality machine.

There is, however, something you can gain by going with old machines.
Our current Sun 4/670 probably cost something like $120,000 when it
was new.  It was meant as an enterprise server for large companies with
critical needs for reliability.  When you are building a machine that you
expect to sell for $120,000 you don't cut corners.  The chassis alone is
to die for - seems like a hundred pounds of stainless steel in multiple
layers.  When we first got it, I had to remove 25 screws just to be able
to get deep in enough to remove a disk drive.  It's cooled by an array
of nine box fans blowing a steady stream of air up through the chassis.
The power supply is similarly overbuilt, as is every other part of the
machine.  By modern standards the Sun 4/670 is a pathetic performer,
but it is totally reliable and solid.  If you want to drive a computer
into a demolition derby, I'd bet on the Sun 4/670 over typical x86 boxes
any day of the week.  This level of quality not a inconsiderable advantage.

So though I see very little reason to get any mass-market x86 boxes
second hand, there is are certainly good arguments for getting old
enterprise server machines second hand - things like Suns and Alphas.
Though you do get higher levels of reliability that way, you do pay
some price.  Typically we'd be talking substantially lower performance
and higher power consumption.  They are big and bulky (it'd take two
strong men to lift the Sun 4/670, but anyone could lift the Dell machine
I quoted above one hand).  There are fewer well-established operating
system alternatives for them.

My personal inclination is to go with a mostly new x86 system instead
of some fine old salvaged lady, but tastes vary and I'm OK with either
approach.

response 44 of 181:

Oct 14 23:08 UTC 2001

What would four faster modems cost? (33K or even 28K).

response 46 of 181:

Oct 15 10:26 UTC 2001

Assuming a constant rate of improvement in computers, why is it that 
much less advantageous to buy a 2-year-old machine than a new one, if 
the price is significantly better?  Even if you buy a new machine, in 
two years it'll be as out-of-date as the 2-year-old machine is now (if 
the initial assumption holds).

Why is grex's user base dwindling, I wonder?  Is it because the primary 
mode of access is telnet, and that's too retro for today's users?  I 
use the web interface myself: it's significantly less clumsy by my 
standards than most interactive web interfaces.  (But I'm someone who 
has never found a Usenet news reader that I like at all, so my 
standards may be strange.)

response 48 of 181:

Oct 15 13:27 UTC 2001

<knee jerk mathematical reaction>
(d/dx)(e^x) = e^x, which is not constant.
</knee jerk mathematical reaction>