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Grex > Coop10 > #118: Grex vs. Malthus, round Sixty-Five Thousand, Five Hundred and Thirty-Six |  |
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| 25 new of 74 responses total. |
mdw
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response 38 of 74:
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Jul 19 22:07 UTC 1998 |
The thing is, the 68030, sparc, powerpc, etc., platforms *are* different
than intel. *All* of these cpu's have much more modern design
methodology in them. The intel design methodology basically dates from
about 1960 -- the chip architecture is pretty obviously pre-GPR, and
even the IBM 7094 has a more regular instruction set. It's worse than
that even -- until the pentium II, intel processors weren't microcoded,
but used "random logic" to implement the instruction set. I've heard
that the famous intel FP bug wasn't an actual logic bug, but was in fact
an analog layout glitch.
There are also PCI bus powerpc machines, and PCI bus sparc machines.
(In fact, I have one of each in my office now...) That's why I said it
was a pretty safe bet that grex would end up on PCI bus at some point.
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scg
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response 39 of 74:
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Jul 20 06:44 UTC 1998 |
It's worth noting that with the 0xf00f bug, most the the PC Unix systems had
patches out to trap the instruction within a few days, before people had time
to do major damage with it.
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mdw
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response 40 of 74:
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Jul 20 14:39 UTC 1998 |
With the FP bug, intel *sat* on the bug for a year. After the bug was
popularized, intel was pretty recalcitrant about replacing the affected
CPU's. There is no patch for the FP bug.
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jared
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response 41 of 74:
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Jul 25 10:21 UTC 1998 |
I like the way marcus brings up when you're doing scientific divison in
this item.
Yes, intel replaced those chips only because of a class-action suit
against them. I'm sure of that. But what percentage of the public
was really affected by this bug? Less than .01%, those were the folks
that should have really been getting the swapped cpus, not kids playing
doom.
And what CPU number was the pentium for intel? the FP+0xf00f bugs are
the only ones i know of. Want me to start listing the bugs that
have to be coded around in the sparc cpus? I can go dig up a list,
we can really start comparing, marcus. Maybe we could use one of
those as your "holy grail" bugs in the right way. It's more
likeley to have a bug not be found in the sparc CPUs because of
lack of exposure. We can't really say that about the intel ones,
I think they get a *little* more exposure than the others. How
many people are using your powerpc, 680x0 cpus in direct ratio to
intel x86 based cpus? Not many in comparision.
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devnull
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response 42 of 74:
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Sep 28 00:46 UTC 1998 |
It appears that netbsd will support the 4/600; I guess openbsd doesn't.
I have not seen any convincing argument of why anyone would prefer openbsd
over netbsd (openbsd claims to care more about security, but I haven't seen
any solid evidence that in practice openbsd is more secure than netbsd).
(It has certainly been my experience that netbsd is more immune to cracker
attacks than debian.) As far as I can tell, the people working on netbsd
are probably more competent in general than the openbsd people.
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saw
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response 43 of 74:
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Sep 28 21:02 UTC 1998 |
Let me just say that I have found out FreeBSD handles a LOT better than
Linux. Linux is fine for a home box where you won't have a lot of
traffic, it's what I use on my home PC. But, Jared can tell you, when
he switched nether from Linux to FreeBSD (without changing the computer
itself, he only changed OS) it made a BIG difference. It could handle tons
of users online at once just fine. Also, I've heard that anything newer
than Red Hat v4.2 isn't good at all-- and I could get practically NOTHING
to compile under RedHat 5.1 ..
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dang
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response 44 of 74:
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Sep 30 17:22 UTC 1998 |
(5.1 has a hacked pre-release version of the 2.0.34 kernel. Get a real
version and everything compiles fine.)
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saw
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response 45 of 74:
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Oct 1 01:59 UTC 1998 |
Well, that explains how RH got the 2.0.34 kernel onto their CD's so quickly
after it was released. By the time I got my CD though 2.0.35 was out, and
I tried using that but didn't really fool with compiling stuff under it. I
like Slackware better.
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gorwell
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response 46 of 74:
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Apr 12 03:24 UTC 1999 |
Has a non-paying user I would like to express that I would like to
still use this system to email and bbsing
Because right now I have very little money.
I like to go on party because talking to people on m-net and grex
is mighty fun I don't think that tell people that you need to
pay to email is a good idea
60 days is good idea, after then reap them
It's to bad if they don't relogin again after 60 days
90 days is to long.
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jiffer
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response 47 of 74:
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Apr 12 18:27 UTC 1999 |
I like the concept of 90 days. I could be gone for a summer (e.i. I am
talking about the students) and they could come back still with their
account.
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lilmo
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response 48 of 74:
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Apr 13 01:51 UTC 1999 |
90 days is good for establishd members. I sometimes am unable to get to a
'Net-capable computer for nearly that long.
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don
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response 49 of 74:
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Aug 25 23:59 UTC 1999 |
IT IS NOW THE END OF SUMMER '99. STeve was wrong; we are nowhere near 65k
users... in fact, our latest new user (Johnny (hype404) Tron), is the 27636th
user according to /etc/passwd (now the staff knows why I've been dicking
around in there, reading it multiple times). Grex doesn't seem to be growing
too much, definately not 175 new users a day. I'd guess we have another 5
years or so until we get to the limit, which gives people lotsa time to work
on it. Grex will probably have a completely new system by then anyway. C'est
la vie.
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i
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response 50 of 74:
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Aug 26 00:28 UTC 1999 |
Unfortunately, don, i don't think it's quite that simple....
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don
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response 51 of 74:
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Aug 26 01:37 UTC 1999 |
So how is it not simple? STeve said we'd have 65k users, and we only have
27.8k users. Ergo, we don't have to worry about the problem for many years
to come (note that there were only 2 responses in the past year).
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scott
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response 52 of 74:
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Aug 26 11:10 UTC 1999 |
We already reached User ID (UID) numbers near enough to 65k. That doesn't
mean 65k users, though.
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don
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response 53 of 74:
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Aug 26 14:30 UTC 1999 |
Exactly. When we get to 65k uid, we simply make another gid and rewind the
uids again. Problem quickly solved with very little headache (most times
none).
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i
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response 54 of 74:
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Aug 26 23:17 UTC 1999 |
Uh...do you realize, don, that two users with identical uid's but
different gid's present some problems? Our computer system is
just slightly designed around the assumption that a uid # is all
that's needed to securely and uniquely identify who's entering the
command to change a file, who really owns (and is allowed to change)
the file, etc.....
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pfv
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response 55 of 74:
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Aug 26 23:20 UTC 1999 |
If you have duplicate uid's, yer in a world of hurt, since
getuid() and getpwname() are based on them.
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don
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response 56 of 74:
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Aug 26 23:30 UTC 1999 |
Maybe you two are idiots, maybe I didn't speak clearly enough. What I meant
was that the old uids that are chucked along the way get recycled when we hit
the 65k uid limit. Of course they don't use active uids!
The whole point of my original response was that it's summer of 99, and we're
nowhere near 65k users. Anyone have an idea why it hasn't happened yet?
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mdw
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response 57 of 74:
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Aug 27 02:10 UTC 1999 |
It's all the fault of the Chinese.
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janc
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response 58 of 74:
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Aug 27 02:33 UTC 1999 |
The number of users didn't continue growing linearly. It hit
equilibrium. Changes in the system or the world may cause that
equilbrium to shift to another equilbrium, but there is no danger in the
forseeable future.
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pfv
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response 59 of 74:
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Aug 27 07:51 UTC 1999 |
And the verdict isn't in yet on my being an idiot.
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toking
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response 60 of 74:
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Aug 27 13:42 UTC 1999 |
so what about inactive users? Could someone with the same uid go through
and say....scribble all the posts of an old user?
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pfv
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response 61 of 74:
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Aug 27 13:54 UTC 1999 |
Hrmm... Good point.. Username match? damn..
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don
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response 62 of 74:
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Aug 27 16:37 UTC 1999 |
Sheesh, people! I mean "active" uid's by there being an account assigned to
them! Of course uid's aren't gonna be doubled!
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