This item is for system announcements (new computer equipment on Grex, 
system upgrades, Grex meetings, etc.).  Personal announcements should go 
back in item 2; Grex system *problems* belong in the next item (#4). 

219 responses total.

Grex's Sun server will be taken off line on December 26, probably never to
be seen again.  Wave it good bye.  The old warhorse has been good to us (if
you don't know what I mean, you probably don't remember its predecessors).

Staff will then set semi-diligently (hey, it's a holiday week and we have
families too) to work moving all user accounts, mail, and the bbs contents
to the new server, a vastly faster, much more modern machine with lots more
disk space.

I expect the process of getting everything onto the new machine will take
something like 2 to 4 days.  I don't really know though.

Mostly you shouldn't notice a lot of differences, aside from speed.  The
new system will be running OpenBSD Unix instead of SunOS Unix, but they
are pretty similar from a user point of view.

Disk quotas will be enabled on the new machine.  If you try to create use
more than 2 megabytes of disk space, it will not work.  This is an increase
over the old limit, which was 1 megabyte, but which was manually enforced
by staffers wandering around deleting files.  It will be possible to get
your disk quota increased, in fact, it will be pretty simple.  Ask staff
and if you have any kind of vaguely sensible reason for using more disk
space, you can have an increase.  Don't ask yet though.  Wait till we are
on the new system.  If you are over quota now, and it isn't just because you
have a lot of eggdrop source laying around, you'll get a high enough quota
to cover your current usage on the new system.

Currently Grex has some spam filtering installed, though not much and not
very effective.  The new system has none.  We just haven't had time to work
out a strategy for spam filtering yet.  We'll work on this some more once
we have the new system up.

We will try to be very, very careful in moving data over to the new system,
to ensure that nothing gets lost or munged.  However, ordinarily we would
start by backing up everything on the old system before we touched anything,
however, we do not appear to have a working backup drive at this time.
This shouldn't be a problem.  Copying data over to the new system could
actually be counted as making a backup.  We won't be deleting anything from
the old system for a while.  However, I would not think it stupid for you
to look through files and email you have stored here on Grex and copy
anything you deeply value back to your own computer.  While you are at it,
if you see any old junk that you don't want any more, please delete it, so
we don't have to move it over to the new system.

There is another, mostly unrelated, move in the works.  We will soon be
moving Grex's server to a new location.  We will be giving up our lease
on the pumpkin and moving the system into an ISP provider's co-location
space.  This will substantially decrease our operating costs, and should
substantially improve our network connectivity.

At around the same time as the move, we will also be reducing the number of
dial-in lines from four to two.  This is not because of the move.  Over the
years we have been periodically re-evaluating how many dial-in lines we need,
based on how much they are being used.  Current usage just doesn't justify
four lines any more.  The third line is rarely being used, and the fourth
almost never.  Since phone lines are fairly expensive, we don't want to keep
around unused lines.  It is possible that the new phone lines will be of a
different sort that is local to a larger calling area.  If true, that could
increase demand for them.  However, it also appears that many of the people
currently using the phone lines are doing so to get around Grex's crappy
network connection.  If our network connectivity improves, this may not be
an issue.

When the server moves, Grex's IP address will change.  This shouldn't matter.

We don't know yet when the server will be moved.  Probably soon after the new
server is up.

Thanks, Jan!

Hooray and many thanks:

<Twenex waves a tearful goodbye to the old Sun, *sob*>

By the way, what are you doing with the system? And the other one that was
going to be put up as a backup, but never was?

Jan, thanks for all your hard work with this project. And thanks for
posting this update here. I often forget how frustrating it is for
people when they don't know what is going on. 

Re #1:
    I expect to be getting mail from two mailing lists throughout. Is there
a way to have it forwarded to m-net in spite of grex being off the net?

Short answer: No.  Unless/until there is an SMTP implementation listing on
port 25 of 216.93.104.34, mail will not be delivered.  Right now, we don't
know when we will turn on mail on the new machine.

I will renew all my library books and music through Jan 10 since I won't be
getting reminders.  This seems like an excellent time to go through the 200
or so emails I have saved (or at least download the inbox and delete it from
grex).  Is there anyone reading this who does not know how to move their mail
to their own computer?  I will also notify anyone likely to send me mail that
they should use a different address.
Jan and Joe - a big hug!!!!  Jim asks 'can we bring them food while they are
working?'

I'll plan to run a reap Christmas Eve or Christmas, probably Christmas.

Good idea.

Re resp:2: Excellent news!  Thanks to staff for all their hard work.

Thanks, staff!

I've got my inbox trimmed down to less than 60 messages.

        Okay, how do I download my mbox (held mail)?  To my 
Windows ME machine.  Available tools are Hypertext telenet,
ICE.TP telenet, Windows IE for ftp?

Wow!  Best of luck on the move to the new hardware... it's been a long time
in coming.  Thanks to staff, and also to that rock-solid old beast of a Sun.

 re #14:

  Mail that you haven't yet read or that you have preserved in your
  incoming mail is stored in the spool directory.  Grex has so many
  users its mail spools are organized hierarchically, so the exact
  location will depend on your login id, but an easy way for most people
  to find out is to start up a shell and do "echo $MAIL"

  Mine, for example, is:

          grex% echo $MAIL
          /var/spool/mail/m/c/mcnally

  Yours should be /var/spool/mail/t/p/tpryan.  
  And if your name was xyZZZZ it would be in /var/spool/mail/x/y/xyZZZZ

  Mail that you have already read can be stored in a variety of places.
  The traditional Unix mail program stores it in ~/mbox   Pine and several
  other mail programs store mail in mbox-like files in ~/mail
  If you use some other mail program it could be stored some place else..

  Find where your mail program stores mail and back up both your incoming
  unread mail and your saved messages by using ftp from another machine
  to connect to Grex and retrieve the files.

Does pine validate S/MIME attachments on Grex?

I don't know anything about pine.

The best way to copy files off Grex for internet users is either 'ftp' or
'telnet'.  Either way, you'll need a client program on your computer.  I'm
afraid that I know nothing about Windows FTP clients.  Generally, you will
be running the program on your computer.  You will connect to "grex.org" or
"cyberspace.org" with you usual login and password.  You should then be able
to select files to copy back to your computer.

If you are using a Mac running OS X, you have the unix ftp and scp commands
on your system.  Find the "Terminal" application, and run it.  It'll give you
a terminal window where you can type standard Unix commands in a standard unix
shell.

Unix-style ftp is run like

   ftp grex.org

It'll ask you for your login and password, then give you a prompt.  You
can do "ls" to list files in your Grex home directory, or "cd" to change
to a different directory on Grex.  Doing "get filename" will copy a file
from Grex to your local system.

Unix-style scp is less interactive, but more secure.  You do

  scp janc@grex.org:filename localfilename

To copy a file named "filename" on Grex to a file named "localfilename" on
your sytem.  It'll prompt you for a paasword.  You should give your login
instead of "janc" of course.

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 re #17:  I haven't checked, but probably not.  The version of pine we
 are running here is quite ancient.

        (wow, no one uses MS-DOS telnet and ftp??)

I use DOS telnet and ftp but usually I just dial in with DOS kermit and do
kermit file transfer on the same connection.  kermit -is mail would send a
binary file mail to my computer.  

           I'd just like to take this opportunity to thank the staff & 
           express my sincere gratitude to Grex for its excellent 
           performance & for its excellent service. I wish you success!

           Thank you very much. You do a wonderful job for us & I 
           thoroughly enjoyed remaining with you :-)

           

I used to use SSHDOS back in the day.

Re. 23: OK, who are you and what have you done with Vitor?

This response has been erased.

This response has been erased.

It's only the truth.

It's only the truth.

Hmm... ft told me "response not entered."  I wonder why that is?

Yeah, well, now it's time to brace ourselves for all the bugs...

Oops, Joe slipped in with one already.

There seems to be something about 'mesg' not being able find ttys.

The quota on /tmp is too low for some users to be able to read their
huge mailboxes.

I can't telnet in, it says 'user not authenticated' and rejects my 
password

Yea! Grex is back up. (charcat does the snoopy happydance) Way to go
Janc Joe and all others!   

Dang, Backtalk is fast on this computer!  I like it.  Many thanks to 
Jan and Joe and all else who made it happen!

Aside from a little personal config glitch it seems fine to me. 
Congratulations, staff!

Yea!  Yea!  Thank you so much Jan and Joe, for making this happen.

Wow, Backtalk is much, much faster now.  Very nice.

Thank, Jan, for giving so much time to Grex.

Thank you for your hard work! Some of us were beginning to become cynical
mnetters. :)

We worked hard to get backtalk to perform acceptably on old slow
machines. The effect of all that optimization now that we are on a fast
machine is kind of impressive.  One of the reasons I wanted a faster
machine, actually.

- Backtalk version 1.3.30 - Copyright 1996-2006, Jan Wolter and Steve Weiss