response 54 of 91:

Dec 7 22:42 UTC 1999

        Oh, I'd not argue it as a BAD Thing, provided it didn't mulch
        CPU like say.. downloading and compiling eggdrop & bnc2 and icq
        are already.

        I was simply trying to envision why those "web-based tools &
        programs" had some advantage to the dialin user over a comline.


        Basically, it sounds like an idea to further reduce the "curb" -
        and I'm never sure that's a good idea: not even if my own parents
        would take advantage of it.

response 56 of 91:

Dec 7 22:52 UTC 1999

        sure, it might.. I don't fault that..

        OTOH, ISP's - particularly with "limited access" are not all that
        costly.

        If this is a desired state of affairs, why not also consider
        acting as an X-server for remote users? Typically, this is
        considered too costly in bandwidth - and offering "ppp" is
        certainly going to be more "costly" than what is now experienced.

response 60 of 91:

Dec 8 00:18 UTC 1999

        I won't "start" - eggdrop has been reduced and I admitted that
        motnhs ago. OTOH, I've seen and tel'd at least 2 people per day
        for a WEEK, regarding icq, eggdrop and bnc compiles.


        Yer right though: it's not exclusive to those, however quota's
        would prolly help.. As would a low-lvel background-task to reap
        those files - perhaps accounts - that keep trying. No joke: the
        clowns I spoke to insisted 'newuser' had nothing to say about such
        things.. I downloaded the newuser.info stuff: I almost agree -
        it's buried amidst a few tons of total crap: it's seriously time
        for a rewrite.


        OTOH, the very idea of "throwing money (or space) at a problem" is
        far and away too republican for me to credit the grexies
        suggesting it: it doesn't do a thing to resolve the "issues" (and
        they must exist, or the "problem" wouldn't) causing the bottomline
        shortages.

        As an aside-sorta' thing.. I find it interesting that "update" is
        typically run during stateside business-hours, rather than
        "stateside downtime" - and I don't belive I've seen a "slow-time"
        reaper running at all - reaping the "trouble files". Instead, we
        hear of STeve and such cleaning these out "on demand".

        If such are not a problem, not even human-intervention is
        required. If it IS a problem, why pretend it isn't? Further, why
        try to solve these non-problems during CONUS "hours-of-operation"
        and manually to boot??

        Myself? no problem - I can certainly use space as fast as the
        wabbits or whatever is chewing space - I can't determine this, as
        I ain't root - although, it certainly won't be with useless porn
        images or irc-crappola, teardriops and what have you.. Please do
        install that disk: at the least, my partfiles wouldn't get creamed
        as often..

response 62 of 91:

Dec 8 03:00 UTC 1999

Heh.  If Grex is "slowing down to the point of unusability" you obviously
weren't around for the good old days before the 670 hardware.

response 64 of 91:

Dec 8 03:33 UTC 1999

Grex is faster than the University of Michigan's servers, most of the time.
Of course, this isn't really a compliment to Grex so much as an indication
that UM has troubles.  :)

response 66 of 91:

Dec 8 10:25 UTC 1999

Yup, that's a problem - unless you start getting heavily involved into
intrusion detection type analysis, you're not going to have much success with
a total automated 'solution'.  And, actually IDS have huge problems of their
own.

response 68 of 91:

Dec 8 20:56 UTC 1999

There's a big comment at the start of the newuser text that explains
what all the "funny" encoding information does.  Most of the remaining
text is formatted to appear about 20 lines at a time.  The text for web
newuser is stored separately.

response 70 of 91:

Dec 9 04:29 UTC 1999

I think the reason we don't run disk quotas is that Grex does a lot of disk
I/O.  Every reference I've read has indicated that turning on quotas
*dramatically* slows down disk I/O and increases CPU load.  Most system
administration books treat it as a last resort, of sorts.

"Throwing space at the problem" makes sense because disk space is currently
very cheap, and faster Sun machines aren't.

My FreeBSD machine runs a locate database update nightly.  This is probably
similar to what a program hunting for eggdrops would do, since it too has to
look at every filename on the disk.  Despite the fact that I only have about
580 megabytes of storage online, the database update often takes three or
four minutes of disk thrashing to complete -- and it's scheduled for a time
when the machine is usually not being otherwise loaded down.  I can
certainly understand the argument that a junk file search program could
consume more resources than it's worth, considering it probably wouldn't
take long for people who really wanted to to find a way around it.  In
addition, you'd almost have to tell people what names were being looked for,
because it's not very fair for someone's legitimate file to suddenly
disappear simply because they gave it the wrong name.

response 72 of 91:

Dec 9 20:38 UTC 1999

I think it would be great to provide PPP to local dialers-in.

response 74 of 91:

Dec 10 18:02 UTC 1999

Oh, I don't remember which servers, or know anything about what might 
have caused the problem (which could even by my own network), but during 
the last few weeks, I've been getting a lot of lag when using Pine, 
logged into the login.itd.umich.edu pool.  

response 76 of 91:

Dec 11 17:49 UTC 1999

If compiles are a problem, then perhaps it would be better to restrict
compiler access to members and allow guests to request access to the
compiler.

response 78 of 91:

Dec 11 19:41 UTC 1999

Somebody's in a bad mood...