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Grex > Coop11 > #36: Increasing User Disk Space Maximum | |
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| Author |
Message |
| 25 new of 111 responses total. |
janc
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response 75 of 111:
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Feb 6 20:18 UTC 1999 |
We will probably be putting some more disk on Grex real soon. We now
have a very large supply of moderately large disks, thanks to a generous
(but anonymous) donor.
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pfv
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response 76 of 111:
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Feb 6 20:21 UTC 1999 |
I thought he implied it meant work - and that labor was in short
supply?
Why bother? What's the space needed for?
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devnull
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response 77 of 111:
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Feb 6 20:47 UTC 1999 |
Re #75: If this implies grex has more disks than it needs, it might be
worth selling them in the auction, after it has been determined how
many disks grex needs for grex. I certainly would be interested
in bidding...
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steve
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response 78 of 111:
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Feb 6 22:25 UTC 1999 |
The disks we have are used 2G SCSI disks, and are not single-ended
but have the differencial interface, which not many people use. Given
that we have about 10 of them, we have the ability to put some number
of them in service and have some spares. I view these as temporary
disks more than anything else. Before long we need to spend some
money (about $500) and get a 9G disk. This will let us retire several
disks saving heat and such. Anyway, for now these will be fine.
As for why we need more disk on the system, the answer is simple.
Grex is growing, and the space we've allocated for things are too
small now. We need more room for
- mailboxes: we have nearly 13,000 active mailboxes now;
- user storage: we have about 26,000 accounts on the system;
- log file storage: with all the activity Grex has, we generate
a lot more data then we used to;
- internal areas like our directory for source code.
We have grown in every way possible and are cramped in several
areas these days.
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devnull
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response 79 of 111:
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Feb 7 00:06 UTC 1999 |
Ah, OK, differential SCSI makes them a lot less interesting for the auction.
(They might be useful, but I'd have to look into what hardware I need
to make them work.)
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steve
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response 80 of 111:
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Feb 7 00:27 UTC 1999 |
What would you pay Grex for one or two of them? I really have no
idea that they'd be worth.
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devnull
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response 81 of 111:
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Feb 7 03:48 UTC 1999 |
A random guess is maybe $50 each, but it could be off by a factor of two
either way.
I've seen an IDE disk bigger than 3 GB advertised for less than $150, I think.
The real question is how much money I'd have to spend on suitable SCSI
controllers in order for the drives to be useful. I'd buy the differential
SCSI drives if I figured it would be a reasonably cost-effective way
to build myself a RAID array, when figuring in the cost of the controller
or controllers.
The fact that the drives require differential SCSI means that I couldn't
just drop one in my sparc and have it just work (and since I recently
noticed that its fan died, I'm wondering whether the drive currently
in the machine will last forever).
Are these normal 3.5" half-hieght drives, or are they full height 5.25"?
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steve
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response 82 of 111:
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Feb 7 03:55 UTC 1999 |
$50 is likely reasonable considering that 2G IDE disks are $120,
unless you *did* see a 3G unit for $150--that would be neat to see.
These are the big fat honking heavy full-height monster disk
drives. Weapons if dropped from the roof of a building; able to
break foot bones dropped off a shelf. ;-)
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scg
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response 83 of 111:
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Feb 7 05:23 UTC 1999 |
The 3G IDE drive I have in one of my computers cost $150, new, in
mid-September. I'd guess 3G drives would be a lot cheaper than that now, if
they still exist. When I bought it it was the smallest IDE drive the store
had.
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dang
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response 84 of 111:
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Feb 7 05:43 UTC 1999 |
The smallest I've seen recently (last few weeks) is 6 gigs.
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rtg
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response 85 of 111:
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Feb 7 06:44 UTC 1999 |
I bought a Caviar 3.2G IDE from Sky-tech on Jan 9th for $126. It was the
smallest they had at the time.
BTW, the first HDD I ever bought is still running. a 10M 5.25"
half-height MFM for $200. A bargain at the time. Made my X820 the
hottest machine on the block! (oops, I'm showing my age...)
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mdw
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response 86 of 111:
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Feb 7 07:22 UTC 1999 |
I have several full-height 5.25" 5M drives. Nyah!
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devnull
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response 87 of 111:
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Feb 7 08:54 UTC 1999 |
I bought an 11GB IDE hard disk in June 98 for about $300.
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janc
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response 88 of 111:
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Feb 8 03:55 UTC 1999 |
Data point: http://www.bobjohnson.com/new_equipment/hard_drive.htm
offers a ST42400ND (the differential drive we have ten of) for $50.
I presume those are new though.
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rtg
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response 89 of 111:
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Feb 8 07:57 UTC 1999 |
I don't recall hearing a critical point. Does Grex' Sun/4 have
differential drivers on it's SCSi interface?
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steve
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response 90 of 111:
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Feb 8 15:45 UTC 1999 |
We have some adaptors which will let us use differencial SCSI
disks on a standard single ended controller, and the 'new' 4/670
CPU board can talk differencial directly.
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janc
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response 91 of 111:
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Feb 9 02:53 UTC 1999 |
Actually, the new motherboards are just like the old ones, and the SCSI driver
on them is not differential, but we have gained two new SBus cards containing
differential SCSI controllers which can be plugged into any of our
motherboards.
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steve
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response 92 of 111:
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Feb 9 03:30 UTC 1999 |
Huh? We have *two* differencial SBUS scsi controllers? Wonderful!
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janc
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response 93 of 111:
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Feb 9 06:48 UTC 1999 |
I believe so. One on the anonymous motherboard, one on the SBus
expansion card.
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mdw
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response 94 of 111:
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Feb 9 12:09 UTC 1999 |
That means we could also have multiple scsi busses, a possible win.
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senna
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response 95 of 111:
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Feb 11 11:47 UTC 1999 |
Pardon my ignorance, but have we just tabled the mail machine idea? It
seems like spare disks would be a wonderful starting point. We have
some extra processors running around, too.
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steve
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response 96 of 111:
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Feb 11 12:04 UTC 1999 |
It isn't the lack of disks thats preventing us so much as the
lack of staff time. Also, the disks we have are all SCSI and the
mail machine hardware is IDE at this point. The mail machine
doesn't need that much disk, really. If it has 100M of disk
buffer space, we'll be fine for at least a solid day of it catching
mail in the circumstance of Grex being down. I forget the size
of the disk on that machine right now but I think we have a couple
hundred meg free on it at the moment.
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tpryan
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response 97 of 111:
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Feb 12 03:31 UTC 1999 |
I have a couple of 160M IDE drives available from those PS/2
machines I've been rescueing and repairing. May or may not be what is
what you are looking for. Let me know.
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mdw
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response 98 of 111:
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Feb 12 03:54 UTC 1999 |
Actually, one of the main reasons I haven't put more time into the mail
server, is I don't think we have a really pressing need for it yet. So,
rather than put time into sendmail on another machine, I've put time
into putting better anti-spam fangs into sendmail on grex, and into
kerberos for grex. This does have implications for the mail machine.
When we do deploy the mail machine, it really should have similar
anti-spam fangs as grex does -- otherwise, what will happen is that all
the spam will be accepted by the mail machine, then bounced by grex.
Kerberos has even more interesting impliations -- it could be used to
facilitate having the mail machine actually store, as well as collect
mail - which would allow us to offload much of the mail processing
completely off grex. It is also possible that we might take the machine
that had been planned as the mail machine and use it for kerberos, at
least temporarily.
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steve
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response 99 of 111:
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Feb 12 04:10 UTC 1999 |
PS/2's that used IDE disks? Thats interesting.
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