I've discovered that I have mixed feelings about moving on to the new hardware. One of the things about makes Grex and M-Net unique is our history. When you telnet into Grex today and run "bbs" you are in some ways taking a trip two decades back into computer history, back to the time when Picospan was originally designed, when a public conferencing system was a new idea, before the Well, before the internet went public. I think for Grex to continue to be relevant, we need to move forward. We need newer hardware, a newer operating system, and, as I'll discuss in another item, we need to be rethinking how conferencing works on Grex. However, I think as we move forward there is a danger that Grex's unique identity will disappear among thousands of web-based forums on the Net. I think our history is worth preserving, as we move forward. My notion is that after we have moved to the new system, the current be kept on line, at a reduced level of service. Party and Picospan would remain. SunOS 4.1.4 would remain. All web services would be shut down including backtalk and webnewuser. It would no longer be possible to send or recieve offsite email. If you want to access it, you need to telnet or ssh in. All these services would, of course, still be available on new Grex, but not on Retrogrex. The reduction of services is partly to keep adminstration simple, and partly to restore things to a state more nearly resembling the experience that early users of Grex, M-Net or even the Well would have seen. The disadvantage to this plan is that it requires keeping the current 4/670 computer turned on. It's a lovely machine, sold for around $100,000 when it was new, and built like a $100,000 product. It'll keep working forever. It does use an unattractive amount of power, and take rather more space than most co-lo facilities could tolerate. Still, I think this would be a cool thing to do.67 responses total.
Cool, but impractical for the reasons you mention (power, space, etc). One doesn't need an old Sun to preserve computer history. The users are the thing that counts.
Is there a VM-Sun program?
That's what I was thinking (emulation).
Actually, I think you do need an old machine to give the whole thing deep legitimacy. Knowing you are using a genuine old computer, not a modern machine pretending to be an old computer makes a world of difference, and the difference will grow bigger with time. A modern machine emulating an old machine would just be a shallow fraud. In the 4/670 we have a somewhat unique item. When I mentioned this at the staff meeting, Steve Andre' raised the idea of really pushing backward, and bringing up a Sun 2 or Sun 3 or one of the older Sun 4 machines that we still have pieces for. I want nothing to do with that. I remember those machines. They were flakey as all get out, failing regularly for mysterious reasons. The 4/670 it their direct technological decendent, running the same software, using the same VME bus, but it's a rock solid machine, in many ways better than anything that can be bought today. I see no reason it couldn't run forever with minimal effort. This makes it nice - an undoubted dinosaur, but a hardy one. The perfect base for a project like this. Retro-cool enough to give the idea heft, but stable enough not to make it a pain in the ass. I recognize that I'm one of the few Grexers ever to have taken this machine apart, and it's hard to convey what a lovely creature it is without doing that. I guess to a lot of people, it would be mysterious even if you have done that. For the time being, I don't think power or space are such big factors. I think it is much more important to the future of Grex to figure out what we mean to the future of the internet, and I think an homage to the past is a slightly paradoxical, but effective way to achieve a part of that. It nails down something about Grex's historical identity in a substantive way. And as Dan said: "Cool but impractical..." Why, oh why would we turn down a chance to do something cool just so we can be practical? If we start making practicality our goal, Grex is lost.
Remember, when people donate money to Grex, they want to feel like they are supporting something unique, not just another cookie-cutter web forum. The coolness of having an old machine like this stay on the net will increase with time. You'll be able to say to people "send us a few dollars to help keep this old power hog turned on". I'd not care to make any guarantees, but I think there is a chance that that could turn into a positive asset that actually brings in more than it costs. There may be a day when the geeks at a co-lo facility would leap at the chance of hosting an real live working Sun 4/670 on their site, just for the variety from all those identical rack-mounted boxes. It's like the people who keep antique cars on the road, restore old buildings, or re-enact civil war battles. Obsolete does not equal trash. There is value in this, and maybe even financial value.
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When you consider that timesharing under a "real" version of Unix is becoming more and more unique, I see little difference between SunOS 4.1.4 on VME based SPARC and OpenBSD whatever on x86. To me, the thing that makes grex grex is the shell prompt, not the fact that it's a rack of old hardware in a little room somewhere. Is the SPARC machine cool? Sure. I dare say it isn't as reliable as Jan makes it out to be: there have been problems with memory boards, multi-processor configurations, etc through the years. Strolling back through Garage has given me the impression that while yes, it is stable, it's not *that* stable. I certainly think a modern commodity machine is going to be *more* reliable, particularly as time goes by.
It's a great idea. Old computers are getting harder and harder to find. I refuse to get rid of my old Amigas and Spectrum, and remain in despair of ever getting hold of a VAX (I shudder to think of the cost and potential risks involved in shipping one over the Atlantic; they seem pretty thin on the ground here in the UK or continental Europe.) To a certain extent, I agree that you need people to keep history alive; but what happens when the people have moved on?
If the people have moved on, the community is dead. ``This is my favorite hammer; I've replaced the handle 17 times, and the head 23 times to keep it usable!'' Here's a suggestion: Donate the old machine to a computer museum with the priviso that it must be kept running as long as feasible and accessible as a BBS system in the style of grex. Make sure it has a copy of Picospan and newuser installed, but most everything else turned off. Then it becomes someone else's problem, but the historical value of the machine/software combination can be preserved. Personally, I'm not terribly stokked on the idea of subsidizing grex as a computer museum when other such things exist and I'm really into subsidizing grex as an interesting socio-technical experiment.
I like that suggestion, too. Perhaps the members ought to vote on some proposals?
Do you actually believe that there is any computer museum who wants Grex's not-terribly-rare computer enough that they'd except a donation that included a condition requiring them to do something forever? I think that's more in the realm of the impossible than the impractical. Do other such things exist? Oh, I know there are computer museums, but had the impression they turned their computers off and certainly did not put them on the net and open them to the public. As far as space goes, I don't think that retroGrex would necessary always have to be in the same place as grex. If Grex were to move to a co-lo that didn't want to house a sun 4/670, it could probably move to someone's basement - it doesn't need dialin lines or a fast network connection. My hope would be that a continuing conferencing community would grow up on retroGrex, probably different in character to the one on Grex. It would be small and geeky. It might appeal especially to old M-Net/Well users. It might work out pretty well - a certain level of barriers to enter can sometimes encourage growth of a good community. But the barriers may be too high, and the levels of interest might be too low, and usage might fade to zero. If that happened I'd advocate turning it off. We'd have web pages on Grex that told about retroGrex, gave instructions for how to connect to it (telnet or ssh1), and how to use bbs and party. (I might be tempted to roll back to an older version of party.)
Note that I said as long as practical. I don't think they'd be interested in only the hardware, but I *do* think they'd be interested in the hardware/software combination and the preserving the community aspect. Personally, if I were at a computer museum and someone told me about something like this, I'd think it'd be a pretty cool piece of the net to keep going. I'm sorry, but I just don't see a `retrogrex' as being in keeping with grex's mission or charter. If someone wants to put the old Sun 4/670 in their basement at the end of a small DSL line or whatever, then more power to them and I certainly have no problem with a web page on grex pointing them to it, but I really don't see it being feasible to keep it going with scarse volunteer time that could be going to grex proper. To summarize my position, I don't have a problem with the old grex machine continuing to run, just as long as it's done outside the context of grex itself. But this is really all academic at this point. The new machine isn't even running the latest version of the operating system, nor is it on anywhere near ready to accept the user load from grex itself. Let's worry about getting that online before we worry about what to do with the old hardware.
Keeping a server open for telnet connections at all is pretty retro in this day and age.
I don't think, personally, that the average user cares WHAT Grex is running on. I certainly don't. I find it, at times, to be obnoxiously slow. The people here are what makes Grex unique, not the hardware it runs on.
Yeah, Rick, but you just say that 'cause you use it for interacting with people. ANYWAY< GUYS< I THINK WE"RE FORGETTING ONE THING> WE HAVE TO GET NEW GREX RUNNING FIRST! AND ALSO JAN"S IDEA ABOUT CASTRATING OLD GREX (BY USING AND OLD VERSION OF PARTY AND ALL< WTF?!) IS JUST AS MUCH OF A "CHEAP FRAUD" AS RYUNNINNG SOME EMULATOR PROGRAM.
re 15 - the ones that come here to interact with other people are the ones that are most important to the Grex community.
I think the 'community-building' aspect of retroGrex is well within the purpose of Cyberspace Communications, Inc. I also think the maintenance of retroGrex will become easier, once FTP is turned off. I would like to see us do both. It should be noted that the discussion of retroGrex *is* relevant to the migration to the new machine: The existence of retroGrex affects the software set that will run on the new machine. The new machine does not depend upon retroGrex, though.
re #11 Can't Cyberspace add Museum to its non-profit list of deeds?
I would object to any "rat packing" scheme that cost more money than necessary (unless those who wanted it were willing to foot the bill). Jan's #5 is *not* why I am a member of grex.
Regarding #17; Why does the existence of a retrogrex affect what set of software the new machine will run in any way, shape, or form? And how will a retrogrex help build a community any more than the current current configuration (which is essentially retrogrex) does? If it will, why are we bothering with nextgrex at all? We should sell the machine for 50c on the dollar and use the money to pay for something else.
I don't think the existance of retrogrex effects the set of software on Grex in any direct way. Personally I think that Grex right now is on a slow downward slide. I think we are seeing that in our income and in the overall quality of the conferences. I suspect (though I haven't checked) that we are seeing a decline in pure volume of activity in the conferences. When I look at Grex's future, I see us sliding along in the trail of M-Net. That doesn't mean Grex is doomed, but it isn't exactly an exciting future. There is already an M-Net. Who needs two? I think it's time to try making some changes on Grex. Moving to a new machine is an important step in facilitating that, because it widens our options, but in itself it solves nothing. We need to be prepared to make deeper and more experimental changes to the system. My confidence that anyone can be found to do that work isn't high, but I hope we can. This is not something I am entirely enthusiastic about. A slow slide into senility is one possible "death" of Grex, but getting revamped and revised into something different is also a sort of "death". We need to do everything we can to preserve the ideals and style of Grex as it evolves, but it's an uncertain processes, and there is always a strong constituency for doing nothing. I think having retroGrex around will help people (including myself) who are nervous about changes feel a bit more confident that the baby isn't going to be lost with the bath water, and to preserve a snapshot of Grex's history, so people who come along can have a bit more context to think about Grex's future. So I think if we do this, and if it works (that is, the system maintains a decent critical mass of users) then it might have an indirect psychological effect on the evolution of Grex. But I would still want to keep as many old Grex elements as possible on new Grex too - including shell access and a picospan compatible command line interface.
WHY NOT MERGE WITH M_NET?!
By keeping Picospan on the current machine, we eliminate (or at least reduce) the demand for Picospan on the new machine. Which leaves us free to design new conferencing software that better meets our needs (and desires). I don't think News, with any interface, meets our needs. I'm not sure that RetroGrex will "build a community," but I think it will help us preserve at least some of our current community. NB: RetroGrex _is_, essentially, currentGrex. No new development is required to keep it going.
True, but the amount of effort required to keep it going is effort that could be used on the new machne, but won't be. Why don't you think News with a custom interface will foot the bill, Joe? I think of it as a message store and convenient way to share conference data, not as an extension of the pre-existing USENET infrastructure. I contend that a clone of the picospan user interface backed up by an NNTP server will look exactly the same as `real' picospan to the end user.
The effort required to keep retroGrex going is likely to be effort that would not be available for the new machine, anyway. For instance, it may require an additional cfadm. However, if the administration of the new conferences is sufficiently differnt, as I expect to it be, we'll need a new cfadm any way. I've never looked closely at NNTP, but it is quite a bit more than just storing each bit of a text in a separate file. After all, the "TP" stands for "transfer protocol;" if you aren't transferring files, you don't need NNTP. If you start reworking clients to present the "look and feel" of picospan, or any other conferencing system, you will rapidly lose any advantage of starting with an existing client.
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How so? The machine will still be open to telnet, so the clients will still be running on grex, as will the server.
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Except the limitation of the hardware owned.
re 26 What the hell is "two- or three-tier" architecture ?
Jan has convinced me. The more I think about it, the more I like the idea of RetroGrex. It's easy, simple, creative, and unique, all at the same time.
Yep.
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re #31 I'll make the t-shirts
"RetroGrex" is a misnomer. You only use "retro" when you're creating something new to deliberately look like something old. In this case it's just current-grex-on-life-support, and that ain't "retro" to me.
I called it "retroGrex" because it slips nicely off the tongue. How retro it would be depends on your point of view. Lots of people today would find a forum where you turn off http and make it accessible only via telnet pretty darn retro. I'd be happy to entertain suggests for better names.
Well, in the spirit of current trends in nomenclature such as prefacing every name with i- or e-, I'd like to propose the name oGrex Short for old-Grex, but swifter off the tongue, and emcompassing the word ogre, which is vaguely applicable to the monstrous old hardware when compared to the sleek, small, new system. Ok, so that's a bit of a stretch.
Also O for obsolete, ontiquated, on-life-support, etc. :-)
"Grex Classic" "Legacy Grex" "This is your father's Oldsmobile."
YE OLDE GREXE
Veggie Grex
<<janc is not a veggie>> i'm pretty much *with* janc on this one - the name might need tweaking but the concept is quite sound. btw, would there be a commonality between b0xen for agora & co-op? .... conference-copy?
re #42 grex on life support = veggie grex
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NB: It looks like it will cost us $30/month to keep current-Grex up and online.
If certain people want to fund that dubious "luxury", they're welcome to raise the additional funds. I don't think that the grex general fund should be used to keep current grex on life support.
Will the membership be given a chance to beta test NextGrex before oldGrex goes offline?
Why $30/month?
I see litle advantage in letting everyone on before openning the system. I'd have to delete all their test accounts before moving their real accounts over. I'll let anyone have access whom I trust will report security problems to me rather than exploiting them. Very few of the people who I asked to do testing did anything. I think what's actually going to happen is that we'll change over with rather inadequate testing. Some problems will occur, and we'll fix them.
I was thinking of just the membership. Aren't they "trusted"?
The $30/month figure is for adding a second system to the colocation, based on the numbers that Joe reported in the colocation item.
Oh. I don't think the Sun should be moved to co-lo. If we keep it on line, it should be stuck in someone's basement. It doesn't need dialins. It doesn't need much bandwidth. It doesn't need to be in the co-lo.
Yeah, I agree... hell, ship it to Australia - it can live in my basement ;)
I like the idea of an Australian Grexbox.
"The sun never sets on the Grex Empire."
because it's ass is so big?
The Sun might not set but it sure gets rebooted alot!
Uptime is currently 24 days. It's really been a faithful and stable creature. I'll miss it. But Sunset is indeed approaching.
In theory, I think it would be fab if I could house retro Grex however (1) I don't have a basement (just my townhouse villa of which I am the sole inhabitant), (2) Aussie temps are warm, and I don't have sufficient air-conditioning; my desktop PC (much newer, and much smaller than soon-to-be retro Grex) keeps my place too steamy as it is, (3) I don't think the fiscal position of Cyberspace Communications Inc could justify the freight charges of shipping the beast and its associated peripherals - I can imagine they would not be cheap! However, if 1-3 inclusive could be overcome, I would be happy to pamper retro-Grex :)
I think it'd be cheaper to ship you someplace. We've lined up a house in Northern Quebec for you. It never gets warm, rents are very low, has a basement (well, a root celler) and electricity and internet connectivity is good due to the nearby NORAD radar station. We'll be trucking the Sun up there as soon as it's summer. Summer generally occurs late in July. We can get you there any time though. There is a scenic lake nearby (with sand beach!) that a ski plane can land on any time the wind speed drops below 40 mph.
Live like an Indian
Sounds like an affordable plan!
Re: #61. Is that the sequel to "Walk Like an Egyptian"?
re #60 Can I bring my bassoon?
I think it would be a good place for a bassoon.
Along with the other bedposts...
TROGG IS DAVID BLAINE
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