Grex Oldcoop Conference

Item 126: Aidez.

Entered by rational on Mon Feb 23 02:32:17 2004:

Grex's staff and board ignores important member concerns in E-mail.  I could
sympathise with ignoring baseless or silly complaints, but that's not what
I'm talking about:  I'm talking about them ignoring important issues I've
brought up in E-mail because I'd prefer not to discuss them in coop.  Most
of the times, I've been completely ignored.

Have you ever read Grex's /etc/aliases?  It's quite a doozy, quite complicated
for a file like that.  But what's the point, if mail sent to those aliases
is ignored?
35 responses total.

#1 of 35 by salad on Mon Feb 23 03:21:03 2004:

What's the point of GreX at all, unless you're considered "special"


#2 of 35 by albaugh on Mon Feb 23 23:11:04 2004:

BS.  e-mail sent to staff of a legitimate nature sent by people not proven
by themselves to be twits is treated seriously and is reponded to.  Can you
grok the implication?


#3 of 35 by rational on Mon Feb 23 23:51:06 2004:

I already explained I'm talking about reasonable complaints, and not just
staff.  Did you read what I wrote?


#4 of 35 by jaklumen on Tue Feb 24 00:03:59 2004:

*yawn*


#5 of 35 by salad on Tue Feb 24 00:24:55 2004:

Staff is ignoring like crazy


#6 of 35 by davel on Tue Feb 24 01:21:09 2004:

Well, you drove away the one staff person most likely, by a large margin, to
respond to any particular complaint.

Otherwise, what albaugh said.


#7 of 35 by salad on Tue Feb 24 02:25:48 2004:

It was all my fault, I admit.
That's why I asked for item 68 to be deleted.
But look, it hasn't been deleted.
Look who's the culprit now.
The staff, as usual.



#8 of 35 by janc on Tue Feb 24 03:41:08 2004:

Actually, I think the staff member most likely to answer any message is Steve
Weiss, who has not been driven away.  However he usually processes mail only
once a week and occasionally misses a week.

I never read any staff email.  I should check my grex-box.  Oops 2013 new
messages.  Is that all?


#9 of 35 by salad on Tue Feb 24 04:47:11 2004:

The recent stuff is important


#10 of 35 by rational on Tue Feb 24 04:56:32 2004:

Not just staff, folks:  board.


#11 of 35 by janc on Tue Feb 24 14:12:23 2004:

I don't usually mess with this stuff, but I took a very quick look at
it.  It looks to me like the locking of naftee's account was perfectly
ordinary.  Naftee had lots of pointless processes running that drove
Grex's system load very high, making the system nearly unusable.  The
system was so slow, Joe had difficulty logging in.  I believe he went to
the pumpkin and got on the console to kill the processes.  Killing
naftee's processes fixed the problem.

If I had some time to kill, I'd go look at what he was running in detail
and try to figure out why robocop didn't kill it, but it doesn't
particularly surprise me that it didn't.  Robocop is really not that
smart, and trys to err on the side of not killing stuff.

I have no way of knowing if naftee was doing this to cause problems or
had some sensible end in mind and just screwed up.  Running "fortune"
zillions of times with the output directed to /dev/null doesn't have any
obvious sensible application, but it isn't exactly a normal vandal
attack either.

Only think I can say in his favor is that naftee does not have a record
of doing this kind of crap.  It might be reasonable to restore his
account if he'll be more careful in the future.


#12 of 35 by gelinas on Tue Feb 24 16:40:39 2004:

(Yes, I had to go to the Pumpkin and use the console to log on to figure out
what was happening.)


#13 of 35 by rational on Tue Feb 24 16:54:59 2004:

You really didn't.  Grex was usuable, if incredibly slow.


#14 of 35 by gelinas on Tue Feb 24 17:13:33 2004:

From off-site, I only use ssh, which could not open a connection.
After logging in from the console, I used telnet from another machine on
the network and discovered that there was a queue, even with fewer than
forty people logged in (I don't remember the exact number now).

Yes, a visit to the pumpkin was required.


#15 of 35 by rational on Tue Feb 24 20:55:29 2004:

nope.  i was able to use grex remotely just fine.


#16 of 35 by albaugh on Tue Feb 24 21:20:08 2004:

Bully for you.


#17 of 35 by salad on Tue Feb 24 23:06:12 2004:

I did manage to log onto GreX, but when I did a ps at the bash promt, I
only recieved the output of two jobs.  Therefore I assumed that whatever
jobs I had before had ceased running and the high load averages were not
of my doing.  I was unable to run top and kill the processes myself
though.


#18 of 35 by rational on Tue Feb 24 23:08:00 2004:

gelinas is just impatient, and you paid for the trouble his impatience caused.


#19 of 35 by salad on Tue Feb 24 23:28:09 2004:

I paid for the cost of a bug!  At least janc mentioned he could look into the
problem, as apposed to gelinas, who just likes to QUASH USERS


#20 of 35 by salad on Tue Feb 24 23:29:45 2004:

I hope janc finds some time to kill and puts some sensibility into this
senslelessnes.


#21 of 35 by rational on Tue Feb 24 23:35:47 2004:

I'd like to know one thing gelinas has done as staff besides killing accounts.


#22 of 35 by other on Tue Feb 24 23:37:25 2004:

21: Tough monkeys, bunghole.


#23 of 35 by mary on Wed Feb 25 00:17:38 2004:

Our staff is doing a wonderful job of remaining cool and calm
and reasonable despite the baiting.  Kudos, guys.


#24 of 35 by janc on Wed Feb 25 00:35:48 2004:

Actually Joe does lots of useful stuff, including killing users.  Staff
kills lots and lots of users.  I used to do dozens a week when I was
still active.  I thank Joe for his efforts.  If I'd seen an account
running crap like that, I'd have locked it too.

If it was a mistake on your part, then it is possible to rectify the
mistake.


#25 of 35 by rational on Wed Feb 25 00:48:34 2004:

Killing users is a NEGATIVE action, even if it's necessary; it doesn't
contribute to the system at all.  What has gelinas done POSITIVELY? 
ABSOLUTELY nothing.


#26 of 35 by cmcgee on Wed Feb 25 02:00:02 2004:

A hearty 'thank you' to all the staff who keep Grex functioning in spite of
name calling, personally directed verbal abuse, and general negative feedback.

I -really- appreciate the job you're doing.


#27 of 35 by jp2 on Wed Feb 25 02:12:49 2004:

This response has been erased.



#28 of 35 by gelinas on Wed Feb 25 02:18:38 2004:

Such as, jp2?


#29 of 35 by rational on Wed Feb 25 02:23:24 2004:

No!  Don't respond!  You're letting the trolls win!


#30 of 35 by aruba on Wed Feb 25 03:38:36 2004:

Thanks Joe, for dealing with this.


#31 of 35 by keesan on Wed Feb 25 04:35:25 2004:

Is it possible to set a limit on the number of processes any account can run
at one time and if that is exceeded, to automatically kill them all?  And
generate a report so the account can be killed too?


#32 of 35 by salad on Wed Feb 25 14:13:14 2004:

re 24 How so, sir?


#33 of 35 by styles on Thu Feb 26 04:06:05 2004:

#31: that would be a resource limitation that grex probably does not support
with such fine-grained detail, but experiences nonetheless through some
robocop-ish thingy.

say something? ^@
Stripping bad input: 
Too many bad characters
say something? 


#34 of 35 by mdw on Fri Feb 27 00:53:15 2004:

Grex does impose a limit on the # of processes a user can use at one
time, and has further logic to kill forkbombs.  Grex does not have good
logic to limit people's ability to run a small fixed number of things in
rapid succession or otherwise more creatively increase system load.
There's an expectation here that people will behave in a responsible
fashion when it comes to shared resources, and that includes consuming
the time of staff just as much as any other scarce resource.


#35 of 35 by jesuit on Wed May 17 02:14:53 2006:

TROGG IS DAVID BLAINE


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