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Grex System Announcements - Winter 2004/2005
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Dec 22 09:06 UTC 2004 |
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).
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janc
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response 1 of 219:
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Dec 22 21:27 UTC 2004 |
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.
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janc
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response 2 of 219:
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Dec 22 21:37 UTC 2004 |
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.
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