|
Grex > Coop8 > #66: Membership privileges and telnet lethargy | |
|
| Author |
Message |
| 25 new of 113 responses total. |
kerouac
|
|
response 25 of 113:
| 
May 19 19:40 UTC 1996 |
I'd like to see items 66 and 67 linked to Agora because there are users
from India who would read these there, and I think its important to get
their perspective.
|
remmers
|
|
response 26 of 113:
|
May 19 19:45 UTC 1996 |
(I'd suggest telling the fw of Agora that, then.)
|
kerouac
|
|
response 27 of 113:
|
May 19 19:47 UTC 1996 |
well katie reads this conf doesnt she?
|
scott
|
|
response 28 of 113:
|
May 19 20:58 UTC 1996 |
Does she?
|
aruba
|
|
response 29 of 113:
|
May 20 02:29 UTC 1996 |
Yes, she does.
|
selena
|
|
response 30 of 113:
|
May 21 03:46 UTC 1996 |
Popcorn- yeah, no mesg allowance to you, AND your login is androgenous.
|
ajax
|
|
response 31 of 113:
|
May 21 07:01 UTC 1996 |
Back to the topic of #0. As someone already said, I liked Mark's
response. I do understand the writers complaint...his/her analogy of
donating to a church, but finding it's too crowded to attend, seems
right on.
I don't foresee a solution to the problem of over-demand in
providing valued free services to the 'Net community. If we bumped up
the ptys, then people would get on to a very slow system, and be
irked. If we reduced the ptys, people would only get on once in a
hundred tries, and be irked. Either way, I understand (and have
experienced) such frustration. But what possible solution is there?
I think if people still use Grex frequently in spite of their
frustration, they ought to support it. If everyone did, the cause of
the frustration *would* be eliminated. But so few people agree with
this idea, the problem of over-demand on the 'Net seems permanently
unavoidable.
|
aruba
|
|
response 32 of 113:
|
May 21 13:51 UTC 1996 |
I think we need to get away from the attitude that we're providing a service
that people pay for. Clearly that was not the intention when Grex was
founded, but responses like brighn's in #2 make it clear that the attitude is
out there.
You know, the problem really is that the ratio of users to members is so damn
*huge*. There *have* to be other users out there who would be willing to
become members if they were somehow tapped. And if they were, it would make
it easier on everybody.
|
rcurl
|
|
response 33 of 113:
|
May 21 16:41 UTC 1996 |
The church analogy is one perspective - and then there is the Red Cross, where
you hope you *won't* need their services. So, convince people to donate
so that Grex will be here in the future when they *might* need its service,
even if they don't now.
Keep track of people's usage and after every n hours (n=4?) of use, post
non-members a message saying how glad we are that they like Grex, and how
much it would be appreciated if they supported the system, etc. Could that
be done automatically?
|
brighn
|
|
response 34 of 113:
|
May 21 16:52 UTC 1996 |
How does my response reflect thhis?
#2 is the sort of complaint letter I might send to Smithsonian or
the DIA, both of which I'm member of. Granted I get the magazines,
but that's not why I'm a member to either (I don't even read the goofy
DIA magazine most of the time).
There's a difference between providing services for fee and having
a friendly enough staff (albeit volunteer) that users feel at home
enough to want to donate money. Certain people have been making me
feel like my presence is unwelcome (certain staffers... there have
*always* been people here who I don't get along with.
Why should I donate money to a group I don't feel like I'm welcome
in? It's as simple as that. If I don' have a say, if I'm not welcome,
then I simply won't donate. *shrug* I don't see how that's me looking
for a service. (And note: it's not all staffers... there's only four
or five that come to mind as having made me feel unwelcome. Many of the
staffers are wonderfully friendly people.)
|
rcurl
|
|
response 35 of 113:
|
May 21 17:17 UTC 1996 |
So, on the whole, you are made to feel more welcome than unwelcome? That
seems to me to be a good basis for donating.
|
brighn
|
|
response 36 of 113:
|
May 21 19:56 UTC 1996 |
Good point, Rane. How about if I donate something to the Grex auction
that nets, oh, about $30 or so? Then I can half-donate for my
half-welcome. *giggles*
|
adbarr
|
|
response 37 of 113:
|
May 22 02:52 UTC 1996 |
You could bid on the Grexbat, if you are worthy.
|
rcurl
|
|
response 38 of 113:
|
May 22 21:04 UTC 1996 |
How do we ascertain our worthiness?
|
adbarr
|
|
response 39 of 113:
|
May 23 04:36 UTC 1996 |
Was your application filed timely? Did you include your check? Did you sign
your application in blue indelible ink? Did you include your personal, hand-
written, confession to crimes-you-committed-but-no-one-knows-about? That
is a start.
|
rcurl
|
|
response 40 of 113:
|
May 23 07:38 UTC 1996 |
No^4
|
steve
|
|
response 41 of 113:
|
May 24 00:56 UTC 1996 |
It isn't germane to this item, but someone mentioned slowing down
FTP. Marcus and I have talked about it, and I've looked at the code.
I think I see a way to to slow things down--essentially, add a delay
system during reads: the first nn reads get basically no delay, but
successive data gets more and more delayed. This could be made such
that the effect of FTPing in a 20K file wouldn't be any slower, more
than that would be slower, 'till you get to nnn-hundred K files which
would get really slow. All those numbers would have to be fine-tuned.
It can be done, at the cost of another "project" on Grex's staff time.
Now, onto the item's topic: something we have to realize, is that
"public access" computing is never going to be rich. *However*, this
doesn't mean that we can't do better at exploting other resources
like grants, etc. We haven't tried that at all--and we should.
Right now, the thing we really need more than anything else is a
better net connection. Getting that--even a 56K link would improve
our situation somewhat. I'm inclined to leave the number of pty's
at 64 after we get the faster link, so we'll actually *see* the
improvement.
|
nephi
|
|
response 42 of 113:
|
May 24 04:01 UTC 1996 |
I agree, STeve. Besides, if we go any higher with the pty's, we'll start
running out of RAM and other goodies right away, and instead of having a
moderately slow computer, we'll see a computer with load averages in the 40's.
I'd really like to see the new login program installed before we get the
faster net connection, though. With a fast Grex and only 64 pty's, nobody
will ever be able to find a free port here.
|
srw
|
|
response 43 of 113:
|
May 24 04:40 UTC 1996 |
ptys are probably not what is eating the net connection, though.
|
steve
|
|
response 44 of 113:
|
May 24 13:15 UTC 1996 |
That is absolutely right. Interactive stuff isn't the problem.
Mail is.
The other day we were at 64 users, with a load average that
hovered between 1.5 and 4. Pretty reasonable, until some set of
evil mailing-list machines all dumped their lists at once. The
system promptly went to hell for about 15 minutes.
I was at the console, and watched. First, the "rd" light on
the link modem went to being solidly on. Usually, there are these
little pauses in the light, such that the LED isn't always on.
But right then, the light was just constantly on. Then, I noticed
that the system bogged down. Waay down. Doing a ps revealed that
no less than 27 sendmail connections were busily eating up mail
data--and the link.
Once these spawn from Hell---I mean, these sendmail processes
all started up the load average went up and no further ones were
started. That was good. By the time the number of sendmail procs
dropped down to about 10, the load average had dropped, and the
link was back to something closer to normal.
It was one of the few times I've been on, doing something that
used the net, and noticed the whole process. Mail is just an
incredible resource hog on this system. I once before did some
calculations based on a days process accounting records, that
indicated that mail was about 25% of the system. I'm not sure
that it isn't worse, now.
|
albaugh
|
|
response 45 of 113:
|
May 24 17:35 UTC 1996 |
Would it ever be considered to block mailing lists?
|
steve
|
|
response 46 of 113:
|
May 25 03:45 UTC 1996 |
We couldn't possibly reasonably block incoming mailing lists,
and if we did manage, we'd really hurt some of the people who use
Grex. Outgoing (ie, coming from Grex) mailing lists we do stomp
on--I just found a 12 person and 31 person mailing list accounts
here and stopped them.
Mail is a huge percantage of other systems, too. Grex isn't
unique in this area. Not at all. Email is a tool that humans
have really picked up on, and email winds up taking vast amounts
of bandwidth on nearly every machine that I've ever talked to
its maintainers about.
|
nephi
|
|
response 47 of 113:
|
May 25 18:30 UTC 1996 |
(Well, if we decrease the number of pty's (or the number of users who can be
online simultaneously), we will be decreasing the number of people who can
be on per day, which will be decreasing the amount of mail that gets sent and
the number of ftp's done, in addition to the decrease in interactive traffic.
I'm sure that whatever load gets put in the system is roughly proportional
to the number of people we allow online simultaneously, although I don't
really advocate reducing the number of people who can be online simultaneously
until we find a better way to get people online when we're full. What happens
now is a little beyond inconvenient for people (especially for the people who
don't know how to escape from a telnet session!).
|
steve
|
|
response 48 of 113:
|
May 25 23:23 UTC 1996 |
Thats true to a point I'm sure, but I don't know how much of a
"throttle" reducing the number of pty's would be on the effect that
mail would have, later on.
I say this, because the biggest usage of mail here are incoming
mailing lists, and all it takes is one little 140 byte piece of
mail that will start a subscription, and continue on 'till we
blast the account or whatever. So if we reduce the number of
pty's I don't think we'll see a large reduction in mail usage
here.
|
adbarr
|
|
response 49 of 113:
|
May 26 00:48 UTC 1996 |
would a separate mail-server help? Why? Why not? Perhaps a secondary
internet link?
|