From gbowland at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au Sun Oct 3 15:42:12 1999 From: gbowland at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au (Grahame Bowland) Date: Wed Oct 27 01:17:32 2004 Subject: [tech] Mussel Message-ID: <19991003154212.A417@mussel.ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au> Just rebooted for no apparent reason. I was in the machine room at the time, attempting to tidy up a bit and put another machine in the rack above mussel. Then it did a spontaneous reset with no apparent cause. The power cable seemed loose when I checked it after the reset, so I may have knocked it. Sorry, -- Grahame Bowland /---------------------------------------------------------------------\ | Email: gbowland@ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au gbowland@iee.org.uk | | gbowland@tartarus.uwa.edu.au gbowland@hotmail.com | | Web: http://users.wantree.com.au/~bowest/gmb.html | \---------------------------------------------------------------------/ From mustang at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au Sun Oct 3 18:53:20 1999 From: mustang at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au (David Manchester) Date: Wed Oct 27 01:17:33 2004 Subject: [tech] Mussel In-Reply-To: <19991003154212.A417@mussel.ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au> from Grahame Bowland at "Oct 3, 99 03:42:12 pm" Message-ID: <199910031053.SAA31224@mermaid.ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au> > Just rebooted for no apparent reason. I was in the machine room at the time, attempting to tidy up a bit and put another machine in the rack above mussel. Then it did a spontaneous reset with no apparent cause. > > The power cable seemed loose when I checked it after the reset, so I may have knocked it. THat's OK - its happened before - you're just scrupulously honest, Grahame :) What else were you installing there..? Cheers /dave -- / David Manchester [TDH] Netware/UNIX droid. \ Tell someone who's interested, tell someone who can keep their lunch digested Tell someone who wants your conversation, tell someone who doesn't regard you \as an argument for compulsory sterilisation." [TISM], `How Do I Love Thee?'/ From gbowland at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au Sun Oct 3 22:43:19 1999 From: gbowland at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au (Grahame Bowland) Date: Wed Oct 27 01:17:33 2004 Subject: [tech] Mussel In-Reply-To: <199910031053.SAA31224@mermaid.ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au> References: <19991003154212.A417@mussel.ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au> <199910031053.SAA31224@mermaid.ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au> Message-ID: <19991003224319.A1820@mussel.ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au> > On Oct 03, David Manchester scrawled : > > Just rebooted for no apparent reason. I was in the machine room at the time, attempting to tidy up a bit and put another machine in the rack above mussel. Then it did a spontaneous reset with no apparent cause. > > > > The power cable seemed loose when I checked it after the reset, so I may have knocked it. > > THat's OK - its happened before - you're just scrupulously honest, Grahame :) > What else were you installing there..? Richard and I have been setting up a FreeBSD box - it initially started as my project to make a working box from components lying around the room. Can anyone think of a useful service we can run on a 486/100 with 8Mb of RAM? Its running FreeBSD 3.3 so it shouldn't have many of the hideous security holes that 3.2 had :) -- Grahame Bowland /---------------------------------------------------------------------\ | Email: gbowland@ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au gbowland@iee.org.uk | | gbowland@tartarus.uwa.edu.au gbowland@hotmail.com | | Web: http://users.wantree.com.au/~bowest/gmb.html | \---------------------------------------------------------------------/ From gbowland at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au Sun Oct 3 22:48:28 1999 From: gbowland at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au (Grahame Bowland) Date: Wed Oct 27 01:17:33 2004 Subject: [tech] Mussel In-Reply-To: <19991003224319.A1820@mussel.ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au> References: <19991003154212.A417@mussel.ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au> <199910031053.SAA31224@mermaid.ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au> <19991003224319.A1820@mussel.ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au> Message-ID: <19991003224828.A1869@mussel.ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au> > On Oct 03, Grahame Bowland scrawled : > Richard and I have been setting up a FreeBSD box - it initially started as my project to make a working box from components lying around the room. Can anyone think of a useful service we can run on a 486/100 with 8Mb of RAM? Accidental error - its a 486/66 :) -- Grahame Bowland /---------------------------------------------------------------------\ | Email: gbowland@ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au gbowland@iee.org.uk | | gbowland@tartarus.uwa.edu.au gbowland@hotmail.com | | Web: http://users.wantree.com.au/~bowest/gmb.html | \---------------------------------------------------------------------/ From luyer at ucs.uwa.edu.au Tue Oct 5 18:50:41 1999 From: luyer at ucs.uwa.edu.au (David Luyer) Date: Wed Oct 27 01:17:34 2004 Subject: [tech] Honeywell k/b Message-ID: <199910051050.SAA09409@typhaon.ucs.uwa.edu.au> I'm putting a Honeywell k/b in the machine room. Its PCB is a single layer board and has been cracked in two locations. With effort it could probably be repaired. Or it could be put in the rubbish. It is a donation from UCS on the basis that we're never going to fix it. David. From yakk at yakk.net.au Sun Oct 10 20:32:34 1999 From: yakk at yakk.net.au (Ian McKellar) Date: Wed Oct 27 01:17:34 2004 Subject: [tech] Proxies Message-ID: <19991010203234.E18892@yakk.net.au> Frantic study time hits again. I've rehacked my evilproxy code. Soon we'll be able to offer proxy access to our member (via username+password). In the process I noticed that we're still charing 38.8c per meg for traffic. We're being charged 20c for international, and 2.2c for Australian. I propose that we lower the price to a flat 25c per meg. In the proxy server I'll charge for only 1/3 of the bytes going to .au hosts. This will encourage users to use the proxy server rather than the socks server. Also with the proxy server, going through UCS's proxy server we'll only be charged for cache misses. Ian -- Ian McKellar | Email: yakk(a)yakk.net | Web: http://www.yakk.net/ Prefix: +61 8 | Fax/VoiceMail: 9265 0821 | Home: 9389 9162 | Work: 9380 3688 From gbowland at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au Mon Oct 11 12:41:15 1999 From: gbowland at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au (Grahame Bowland) Date: Wed Oct 27 01:17:34 2004 Subject: [tech] BeOS R4 Message-ID: <19991011124115.A19100@mussel.ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au> Anyone know where the BeOS R4 install media is? The Be seems to have stopped booting for some reason. -- Grahame Bowland Email: gbowland@ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au Web: http://users.wantree.com.au/~bowest/gmb.html From japester at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au Wed Oct 13 15:15:14 1999 From: japester at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au (Jean-Paul Blaquiere) Date: Wed Oct 27 01:17:34 2004 Subject: [tech] Re: [hardware] the CD-R In-Reply-To: <19991013231814.F21545@yakk.net.au> References: <19991013150426.A19998@beowulf.ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au> <19991013231814.F21545@yakk.net.au> Message-ID: <19991013151514.A20267@beowulf.ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au> > On Oct 13, Ian McKellar scrawled : > > Hmm - we need a case for it now I guess. Luyer volunteered my case, though I > would rather hang on to it if we can find an alternative... is it sitting in the case that used to hold Mikolaj's CD-R. It is not however bolted in. THis should be rectified, but it works atm. This may be an alternative to using Yakk's case. cya -- Jean-Paul Blaquiere japester@ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au gotta www.wibble.org again From japester at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au Wed Oct 13 15:16:12 1999 From: japester at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au (Jean-Paul Blaquiere) Date: Wed Oct 27 01:17:34 2004 Subject: [tech] beowulf Message-ID: <19991013151612.A20278@beowulf.ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au> oh and before i forget, beowulf now has a 1024x768 screen that was kindly donated by Anatomy. *wave* -- Jean-Paul Blaquiere japester@ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au gotta www.wibble.org again From yakk at yakk.net.au Wed Oct 13 23:28:14 1999 From: yakk at yakk.net.au (Ian McKellar) Date: Wed Oct 27 01:17:35 2004 Subject: [tech] Re: [hardware] the CD-R In-Reply-To: <19991013151514.A20267@beowulf.ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au> References: <19991013150426.A19998@beowulf.ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au> <19991013231814.F21545@yakk.net.au> <19991013151514.A20267@beowulf.ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au> Message-ID: <19991013232814.H21545@yakk.net.au> On Wed, Oct 13, 1999 at 03:15:14PM +0800, Jean-Paul Blaquiere wrote: > > On Oct 13, Ian McKellar scrawled : > > > > Hmm - we need a case for it now I guess. Luyer volunteered my case, though I > > would rather hang on to it if we can find an alternative... > > is it sitting in the case that used to hold Mikolaj's CD-R. It is not however > bolted in. THis should be rectified, but it works atm. This may be an > alternative to using Yakk's case. Its an alternative that I like :) When I get the chance I'll set up the relevant CD buring utilities on erwin. Ian -- Ian McKellar | Email: yakk(a)yakk.net | Web: http://www.yakk.net/ Prefix: +61 8 | Fax/VoiceMail: 9265 0821 | Home: 9389 9162 | Work: 9380 3688 From mustang at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au Thu Oct 14 11:46:01 1999 From: mustang at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au (David Manchester) Date: Wed Oct 27 01:17:35 2004 Subject: [tech] Reliability of various UCC bits Message-ID: <199910140346.LAA19796@mermaid.ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au> Just as a point of interest... Although its probably been up for longer, the overclocked mermaid has been up for 68 days. *yay* Mussel's load has beeen over seven for several days, thanks in part to Yakk and Grahame both seemingly failing to install StarOffice. The hardware's cool.. doesn't seem to have even blinked, even with a decent load. Happy /dave -- / David Manchester [TDH] Netware/UNIX droid. \ Tell someone who's interested, tell someone who can keep their lunch digested Tell someone who wants your conversation, tell someone who doesn't regard you \as an argument for compulsory sterilisation." [TISM], `How Do I Love Thee?'/ From yakk at yakk.net.au Thu Oct 14 22:20:12 1999 From: yakk at yakk.net.au (Ian McKellar) Date: Wed Oct 27 01:17:35 2004 Subject: [tech] Reliability of various UCC bits In-Reply-To: <199910140346.LAA19796@mermaid.ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au> References: <199910140346.LAA19796@mermaid.ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au> Message-ID: <19991014222012.B30201@yakk.net.au> On Thu, Oct 14, 1999 at 11:46:01AM +0800, David Manchester wrote: > Just as a point of interest... > Although its probably been up for longer, the overclocked mermaid > has been up for 68 days. *yay* *yay* > > Mussel's load has beeen over seven for several days, thanks in part > to Yakk and Grahame both seemingly failing to install StarOffice. *oops* I've killed mine. > The hardware's cool.. doesn't seem to have even blinked, even with a decent > load. Yes. I'm very impressed by how fast it is. I suspect its the amount of RAM combined with the fact that we're not running an X server on the console, but its noticably faster than my machine at home (a celeron 300 with 64m ram). Ian -- Ian McKellar | Email: yakk(a)yakk.net | Web: http://www.yakk.net/ Prefix: +61 8 | Fax/VoiceMail: 9265 0821 | Home: 9389 9162 | Work: 9380 3688 From mustang at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au Fri Oct 15 19:52:04 1999 From: mustang at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au (David Manchester) Date: Wed Oct 27 01:17:35 2004 Subject: [tech] Machine room Message-ID: <199910151152.TAA25950@mermaid.ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au> Any ladies reading, avert your eyes NOW. Where are the 8mm tape drives..? The machine room is the most unholy, cunty mess I've seen it in EVER... can we please try not to mix power and ethernet cables... maybe keep SCSI cables off the floor, etc..? I'm extremely surprised that things have been running so smoothly. We HAVE to clean it up before summer comes with a vengeance, or things WILL melt. Cheers /dave -- / David Manchester [TDH] Netware/UNIX droid. \ Tell someone who's interested, tell someone who can keep their lunch digested Tell someone who wants your conversation, tell someone who doesn't regard you \as an argument for compulsory sterilisation." [TISM], `How Do I Love Thee?'/ From nick at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au Fri Oct 15 20:01:07 1999 From: nick at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au (Nick Bannon) Date: Wed Oct 27 01:17:36 2004 Subject: [tech] Machine room In-Reply-To: <199910151152.TAA25950@mermaid.ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au>; from David Manchester on Fri, Oct 15, 1999 at 07:52:04PM +0800 References: <199910151152.TAA25950@mermaid.ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au> Message-ID: <19991015200106.T29002@mermaid.ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au> On Fri, Oct 15, 1999 at 07:52:04PM +0800, David Manchester wrote: [...] > Where are the 8mm tape drives..? The machine room is the most unholy, cunty > mess I've seen it in EVER... can we please try not to mix power and ethernet > cables... maybe keep SCSI cables off the floor, etc..? Yes, it's gotten very bad - this is the reason for the greater-than-usual number of grumblings about it recently. The TISC 8mm drive is sitting on something or other just _under_ the bench - I was worried that it had gone walkies until I eventually saw it there. Dunno about the other one. > I'm extremely surprised that things have been running so smoothly. Not completely smoothly... > We HAVE to clean it up before summer comes with a vengeance, or things WILL > melt. Nick. -- Nick Bannon | "I made this letter longer than usual because nick@it.net.au | I lack the time to make it shorter." - Pascal From mustang at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au Fri Oct 15 20:36:24 1999 From: mustang at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au (David Manchester) Date: Wed Oct 27 01:17:36 2004 Subject: [tech] Machine room In-Reply-To: <19991015200106.T29002@mermaid.ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au> from Nick Bannon at "Oct 15, 99 08:01:07 pm" Message-ID: <199910151236.UAA26080@mermaid.ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au> > On Fri, Oct 15, 1999 at 07:52:04PM +0800, David Manchester wrote: > [...] > on something or other just _under_ the bench - I was worried that it had > gone walkies until I eventually saw it there. Dunno about the other one. OK. I'm thefting the TISC one for the weekend. I just want to compare the speed with DAT for backing up my SS10. I expect they'll be fairly close, but my DAT drives seem inordinately slow, like 380KB/s-ish, which is a little crap. I'll be safe & back soon. Cheers /dave p.s. Didn't I bring in some tapes..? All I could find were your 160M ones, Nick... I think there outta be some 112M crap ones about. -- / David Manchester [TDH] Netware/UNIX droid. \ Tell someone who's interested, tell someone who can keep their lunch digested Tell someone who wants your conversation, tell someone who doesn't regard you \as an argument for compulsory sterilisation." [TISM], `How Do I Love Thee?'/ From melissa at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au Fri Oct 15 23:35:07 1999 From: melissa at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au (Melissa Challenor) Date: Wed Oct 27 01:17:36 2004 Subject: [tech] Machine room In-Reply-To: <199910151152.TAA25950@mermaid.ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au> from David Manchester at "Oct 15, 1999 07:52:04 pm" Message-ID: <199910151535.XAA13979@mussel.ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au> > Any ladies reading, avert your eyes NOW. > > Where are the 8mm tape drives..? The machine room is the most unholy, cunty > mess I've seen it in EVER... can we please try not to mix power and ethernet > cables... maybe keep SCSI cables off the floor, etc..? With regards to the cunty mess in the machine room, I believe that it should be the reponsibility of the two new committee members to do something about it :-) Melissa From mtearle at tartarus.uwa.edu.au Sun Oct 17 13:35:18 1999 From: mtearle at tartarus.uwa.edu.au (Mark Tearle) Date: Wed Oct 27 01:17:37 2004 Subject: [tech] VAXstation video cable woes... (fwd) Message-ID: FYI, these are the same monitors that are on the CS machines. Yours Mark -- Mark Tearle - mtearle@tartarus.uwa.edu.au Captain Bipto: We did win, didn't we? Blaznee: No, but if we think fast enough we might just live to lie about it. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Sat, 16 Oct 1999 17:23:31 -0700 (PDT) From: Seth To: port-vax@netbsd.org Subject: VAXstation video cable woes... Hi all, I have a VAXstation 3100m38, with a VS40X 8-plane color graphics board. It's a nice old system to play around with, but unfortunately I don't have a DEC fixed frequency monitor for it. I do however have several Sony Multiscan 15sf monitors -- it's not advertised much, but these monitors do sync-on-green just fine. They simply lack BNC connectors to take real advantage of it. So I've tried to make a VAXstation-to-VGA cable, using this pinout: VAXstation (pin #) Sony Multiscan 15sf (pin #) ------------------ --------------------------- 9 ........ Red Hi ............ 1 10........ Green Hi .......... 2 11........ Blue Hi ........... 3 1 .........Red Return ........ 6 2 .........Green Return ...... 7 3 .........Blue Return ....... 8 Hood ...... Ground ........ Hood I connect up the Sony monitor to the vaxstation, and... lo and behold, it WORKS! Almost.... Blue and Green/Sync work fine. The text on the screen is stable and clear with no ghosting. But there's not _quite_ any red! Every three seconds or so, the screen pulses with a red tint all over, then the red goes away. It's not very bright, just a dim red background color, like a flash. Every three seconds. If I disconnect the Red and Red Return lines, it goes away. I have tested for continuity and resistence, and the values are not different than the other lines, so I have eliminated bad cabling as a problem, as far as I can tell. Is there something else going on with the red signal on the VAX end? Is there some other sync signal going on I should take into account? I don't have an osilliscope, so I can't really tell what's going on at the signal level. Does anyone have any ideas? If so, please drop me a line, I'd greatly appreciate it! I'm soooooooo close, it would be great to use any old Sony monitor on a VAX... -Seth From mtearle at tartarus.uwa.edu.au Mon Oct 18 15:21:21 1999 From: mtearle at tartarus.uwa.edu.au (Mark Tearle) Date: Wed Oct 27 01:17:38 2004 Subject: [tech] State of the Clubroom address Message-ID: Hi all As anybody who has been anywhere near the clubroom today or for the past week will know, UCC is in dire need of tidying up it's clubroom. This is partially in part due to recent donations. There are basically three tasks that need to be performed: tidy the machine room, tidy the centre of the room, tidy up the hallway and tidy up around the workstations. To these ends, I suggest we have three teams of people working with slightly different objectives on the day that we decide to do this: Team Stuff - along with the two other teams, removes all the chairs and junk from the centre of the room - assists the other teams as required - builds PCs from the recent donations - helps [MTL] with the Laserwriter II's - repairs the damaged couch - tests monitors Team Workstation - arranges the workstations around the room in a sensible fashion. - arranges the printers around the room in a sensible fashion. - clean up the benches so they are no longer sentient - tidy up the terminals outside the room and sanitise cabling to them - (if time permits) runs cables along ducting around the room for more network points - (if time permits) cable runs to other useful locations around the hall Team Machine Room - powers down machine room - remove unnecessary stuff from the machine room. - obtains power boards and extension cords as required to sanely power the machines inside the room - sanitises the network topology - wire the racks up such to minimise cabling running between them - minimise the number of consoles in the machine room - powers up the machine room My initial suggestions for the makeup of these teams ... TS - Mel, Grahame TW - Ian, Nick TMR - myself, Mustang, Fryers and others depending on who turns up. The only problem being selecting time to do this with the impending doom of exams, can I suggest that we discuss this at the committee meeting tommorow? Yours Mark -- Mark Tearle - mtearle@tartarus.uwa.edu.au Captain Bipto: We did win, didn't we? Blaznee: No, but if we think fast enough we might just live to lie about it. From fryers at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au Mon Oct 18 15:34:11 1999 From: fryers at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au (Simon Fryer) Date: Wed Oct 27 01:17:38 2004 Subject: [tech] Re: [committee] State of the Clubroom address In-Reply-To: ; from Mark Tearle on Mon, Oct 18, 1999 at 03:21:21PM +0800 References: Message-ID: <19991018153411.D7922@ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au> Bingle I like this Mark. I will spare what time I don't have! :-) I wil try and be at the meeting tomorrow to discuss this. See Ya Simon -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "Well, an engineer is not concerned with the truth; that is left to philosophers and theologians: the prime concern of an engineer is the utility of the final product." Lectures on the Electrical Properties of Materials, L.Solymar, D.Walsh From bers at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au Mon Oct 18 16:14:06 1999 From: bers at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au (Nick Rohrlach) Date: Wed Oct 27 01:17:39 2004 Subject: [tech] Re: [committee] State of the Clubroom address In-Reply-To: Message-ID: I would like to repeat my comments that a tidy up is a stupid thing to do. What we have here is a brilliant example of faulty pattern recognition. Every tidy up in the world has not lasted very long. Out fundamental approach to hardware management should be considered. Ben had a great idea at last week's committee meeting which I cn only hope he's writing now. Any suggestions about general tidiness management solutions would be good. Nick -- -_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ Nick "bers" Rohrlach [NRR] bers@ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au 1999 UCC Treasurer 1999 Unigames Treasurer _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_- From mustang at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au Mon Oct 18 17:22:07 1999 From: mustang at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au (David Manchester) Date: Wed Oct 27 01:17:39 2004 Subject: [tech] State of the Clubroom address Message-ID: Sounds good. Given that I'm not on committee this year, can I be Cc:ed on any committee discussion on this... i.e. as to when and how..? Cheers /dave / David Manchester, Workstation Necromancer \ Tell someone who's interested, tell someone who can keep their lunch digested Tell someone who wants your conversation, tell someone who doesn't regard you \as an argument for compulsory sterilisation." [TISM], `How Do I Love Thee?'/ From mustang at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au Thu Oct 21 11:11:04 1999 From: mustang at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au (David Manchester) Date: Wed Oct 27 01:17:39 2004 Subject: [tech] Re: [wheel] things fixed this week In-Reply-To: <19991022070459.F14169@yakk.net.au> from Ian McKellar at "Oct 22, 99 07:04:59 am" Message-ID: <199910210311.LAA29976@mermaid.ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au> > On Thu, Oct 21, 1999 at 11:01:08AM +0800, David Manchester wrote: > > > hi all > > > > > > 1) just restarted named on moray > > > 2) (earlier) added a line in rc.conf to bring up the alias for fms's ip # > > > > Any joy with Appletalk, or am I installing Netware on the router tomorrow > > night..? > > Netware - so long as you can put a little rant somewhere on how to unbreak > netware when it breaks. Random stupid idea.... can someone web-savvy (nudge, nudge) maybe set up one of those MySQL forum-y type things somewhere, so we can effect the Great UCC Oracle we've always spoken of...? So that when someone writes something like dispense/FMS/gets appletalk over DECnet running under FreeBSD or whatever, there's a searchable webby-thing there for someone to look at, make comment at and generally not whinge about no FMS documentation..? I'd be happy to put all the Netware procedures into it... Cheers /dave -- / David Manchester [TDH] Netware/UNIX droid. \ Tell someone who's interested, tell someone who can keep their lunch digested Tell someone who wants your conversation, tell someone who doesn't regard you \as an argument for compulsory sterilisation." [TISM], `How Do I Love Thee?'/ From nick at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au Thu Oct 21 11:23:04 1999 From: nick at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au (Nick Bannon) Date: Wed Oct 27 01:17:40 2004 Subject: [tech] Re: [wheel] things fixed this week In-Reply-To: <199910210311.LAA29976@mermaid.ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au>; from David Manchester on Thu, Oct 21, 1999 at 11:11:04AM +0800 References: <19991022070459.F14169@yakk.net.au> <199910210311.LAA29976@mermaid.ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au> Message-ID: <19991021112302.F19786@mermaid.ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au> On Thu, Oct 21, 1999 at 11:11:04AM +0800, David Manchester wrote: > Random stupid idea.... can someone web-savvy (nudge, nudge) maybe set up > one of those MySQL forum-y type things somewhere, so we can effect the > Great UCC Oracle we've always spoken of...? [...] Sounds great, but remember, first and foremost, email. It's not a replacement for "real" documentation, but it's vitally necessary. If nothing else, it can be an announcement that some other document has appeared or changed, what it's about and where (exactly) to find it. Email is good, email is reliable, email instantly ensures that lots of copies have been sent out and _someone_ is likely to keep any given item. Nick. -- Nick Bannon | "I made this letter longer than usual because nick@it.net.au | I lack the time to make it shorter." - Pascal From barnes at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au Thu Oct 21 11:28:05 1999 From: barnes at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au (Barnaby Brown) Date: Wed Oct 27 01:17:40 2004 Subject: [tech] Re: [wheel] things fixed this week In-Reply-To: <199910210311.LAA29976@mermaid.ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au> from David Manchester at "Oct 21, 99 11:11:04 am" Message-ID: <199910210328.LAA30142@mermaid.ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au> Live from the Palace Hotel Ballroom, David Manchester wrote: > Random stupid idea.... can someone web-savvy (nudge, nudge) maybe set up > one of those MySQL forum-y type things somewhere, so we can effect the > Great UCC Oracle we've always spoken of...? > So that when someone writes something like dispense/FMS/gets appletalk > over DECnet running under FreeBSD or whatever, there's a searchable > webby-thing there for someone to look at, make comment at and generally > not whinge about no FMS documentation..? I seem to recall someone saying recently they wanted to do this with the slashdot code (freely available). Uccdot? Slashucc? Barnes From yakk at yakk.net.au Fri Oct 22 07:32:15 1999 From: yakk at yakk.net.au (Ian McKellar) Date: Wed Oct 27 01:17:40 2004 Subject: [tech] Re: [wheel] things fixed this week In-Reply-To: <19991021112302.F19786@mermaid.ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au> References: <19991022070459.F14169@yakk.net.au> <199910210311.LAA29976@mermaid.ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au> <19991021112302.F19786@mermaid.ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au> Message-ID: <19991022073215.J14169@yakk.net.au> On Thu, Oct 21, 1999 at 11:23:04AM +0800, Nick Bannon wrote: > > Sounds great, but remember, first and foremost, email. It's not a > replacement for "real" documentation, but it's vitally necessary. If > nothing else, it can be an announcement that some other document has > appeared or changed, what it's about and where (exactly) to find it. And we have a standard place for these sort of docs: /home/wheel/docs/ Unfortunately people making changes to the systems don't seem to have been keeping them up to date. Ian -- Ian McKellar | Email: yakk(a)yakk.net | Web: http://www.yakk.net/ Prefix: +61 8 | Fax/VoiceMail: 9265 0821 | Home: 9389 9162 | Work: 9380 3688 From mustang at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au Thu Oct 21 11:30:18 1999 From: mustang at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au (David Manchester) Date: Wed Oct 27 01:17:41 2004 Subject: [tech] Re: [wheel] things fixed this week In-Reply-To: <19991021112302.F19786@mermaid.ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au> from Nick Bannon at "Oct 21, 99 11:23:04 am" Message-ID: <199910210330.LAA30164@mermaid.ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au> > On Thu, Oct 21, 1999 at 11:11:04AM +0800, David Manchester wrote: > > Random stupid idea.... can someone web-savvy (nudge, nudge) maybe set up > > one of those MySQL forum-y type things somewhere, so we can effect the > > Great UCC Oracle we've always spoken of...? > [...] > > Sounds great, but remember, first and foremost, email. It's not a > replacement for "real" documentation, but it's vitally necessary. If > nothing else, it can be an announcement that some other document has > appeared or changed, what it's about and where (exactly) to find it. > > Email is good, email is reliable, email instantly ensures that lots of > copies have been sent out and _someone_ is likely to keep any given item. Yes, 'cept for those who go `High Volume mailing list? Hmm. GIGO. *thwump*' ....and then whing that no-one told them :) However, I'll be re-learning (haven't installed NW for ages) and documenting as I go. I could really really use a copy of Adaptec's EZ-SCSI with the DOS drivers for the 1522 so I can get the CDROM to talk to the router PoeCee. Any volunteers..? Mmm, other than maybe sniffing out other netware networks on campus or playing games, has anyone got any compelling reasons why I should not have it only talking IP and AppleTalk..? I don't think we need IPX... Cheers /dave -- / David Manchester [TDH] Netware/UNIX droid. \ Tell someone who's interested, tell someone who can keep their lunch digested Tell someone who wants your conversation, tell someone who doesn't regard you \as an argument for compulsory sterilisation." [TISM], `How Do I Love Thee?'/ From yakk at yakk.net.au Fri Oct 22 07:33:07 1999 From: yakk at yakk.net.au (Ian McKellar) Date: Wed Oct 27 01:17:42 2004 Subject: [tech] Re: [wheel] things fixed this week In-Reply-To: <199910210328.LAA30142@mermaid.ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au> References: <199910210311.LAA29976@mermaid.ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au> <199910210328.LAA30142@mermaid.ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au> Message-ID: <19991022073307.K14169@yakk.net.au> On Thu, Oct 21, 1999 at 11:28:05AM +0800, Barnaby Brown wrote: > > I seem to recall someone saying recently they wanted to do this with the > slashdot code (freely available). > Uccdot? Slashucc? At GNOME we're using Zope (http://www.zope.org) and Squishdot (http://www.squishdot.org) for our news site - we could use that at UCC... Ian -- Ian McKellar | Email: yakk(a)yakk.net | Web: http://www.yakk.net/ Prefix: +61 8 | Fax/VoiceMail: 9265 0821 | Home: 9389 9162 | Work: 9380 3688 From mustang at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au Thu Oct 21 11:39:40 1999 From: mustang at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au (David Manchester) Date: Wed Oct 27 01:17:42 2004 Subject: [tech] Re: [wheel] things fixed this week In-Reply-To: <19991022073215.J14169@yakk.net.au> from Ian McKellar at "Oct 22, 99 07:32:15 am" Message-ID: <199910210339.LAA30234@mermaid.ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au> > On Thu, Oct 21, 1999 at 11:23:04AM +0800, Nick Bannon wrote: > > > > Sounds great, but remember, first and foremost, email. It's not a > > replacement for "real" documentation, but it's vitally necessary. If > > nothing else, it can be an announcement that some other document has > > appeared or changed, what it's about and where (exactly) to find it. > > And we have a standard place for these sort of docs: /home/wheel/docs/ > > Unfortunately people making changes to the systems don't seem to have been > keeping them up to date. I'll squirt something in there then. By the way.... when was the last time anyone used the log books..? Cheers /dave -- / David Manchester [TDH] Netware/UNIX droid. \ Tell someone who's interested, tell someone who can keep their lunch digested Tell someone who wants your conversation, tell someone who doesn't regard you \as an argument for compulsory sterilisation." [TISM], `How Do I Love Thee?'/ From japester at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au Wed Oct 20 14:22:11 1999 From: japester at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au (Jean-Paul Blaquiere) Date: Wed Oct 27 01:17:43 2004 Subject: [tech] Re: [wheel] things fixed this week In-Reply-To: <199910210330.LAA30164@mermaid.ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au>; from mustang@ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au on Thu, Oct 21, 1999 at 11:30:18AM +0800 References: <19991021112302.F19786@mermaid.ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au> <199910210330.LAA30164@mermaid.ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au> Message-ID: <19991020142211.A7003@beowulf.ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au> > On Oct 21, David Manchester scrawled : > I could really really use a copy of Adaptec's EZ-SCSI with the DOS drivers > for the 1522 so I can get the CDROM to talk to the router PoeCee. > Any volunteers..? > *nod* I shall remember to bring my 4 floppy disks in tomorrow then. /aside, what version of NW are you going to install? > Mmm, other than maybe sniffing out other netware networks on campus or > playing games, has anyone got any compelling reasons why I should not have > it only talking IP and AppleTalk..? I don't think we need IPX... > Duke Nukem 3d????? *grin* cya, -- Jean-Paul Blaquiere japester@ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au gotta www.wibble.org again From nick at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au Thu Oct 21 15:15:13 1999 From: nick at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au (Nick Bannon) Date: Wed Oct 27 01:17:43 2004 Subject: [tech] Re: [wheel] things fixed this week In-Reply-To: <19991022073215.J14169@yakk.net.au>; from Ian McKellar on Fri, Oct 22, 1999 at 07:32:15AM +0800 References: <19991022070459.F14169@yakk.net.au> <199910210311.LAA29976@mermaid.ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au> <19991021112302.F19786@mermaid.ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au> <19991022073215.J14169@yakk.net.au> Message-ID: <19991021151512.H19786@mermaid.ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au> On Fri, Oct 22, 1999 at 07:32:15AM +0800, Ian McKellar wrote: > And we have a standard place for these sort of docs: /home/wheel/docs/ So we do. OK - I've just added a document for vimotd - /home/wheel/docs/ChangingTheMOTD. (Hopefully vimotd itself will be folded into a more generic file distribution system sooner or later, but for now it's handy as it is) Nick. -- Nick Bannon | "I made this letter longer than usual because nick@it.net.au | I lack the time to make it shorter." - Pascal From andrew at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au Thu Oct 21 19:10:12 1999 From: andrew at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au (Andrew Williams) Date: Wed Oct 27 01:17:44 2004 Subject: [tech] Re: [wheel] things fixed this week Message-ID: <199910211110.TAA06299@ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au> On Fri, 22 Oct 1999 07:32:15 +0800, Ian McKellar wrote: >And we have a standard place for these sort of docs: /home/wheel/docs/ > >Unfortunately people making changes to the systems don't seem to have been >keeping them up to date. The history of /home/wheel/docs is: -Created by me, back in the mists of prehistory (ie before I started saving all my email, sometime in 1995). -Mentioned by Dunc in the email below, but AFAIK he never actually set up the auto-saving email thing. -Mentioned by Nick in <19970310011916.02903@ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au> a few weeks later. In the same message, he introduces David Basden as a new wheel member. This is replied to once by Chinnery. -Mentioned by Nick in <19970421121933.17271@ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au> when he writes the "BringingUpMermaid" document. -Not mentioned or used at all until today. So from 1995 to 1997, nobody used it much. There was a brief mention early in 1997, then everything went quiet until late 1999. I expect it will be some time around christmas 2001 before the next time anyone even mentions the concept of wheel documentation, and some time in 2003 before the next document actually written... Andrew ------------------------------------------------------------------------ From luyer at ucs.uwa.edu.au Fri Oct 22 03:16:14 1999 From: luyer at ucs.uwa.edu.au (David Luyer) Date: Wed Oct 27 01:17:45 2004 Subject: [tech] The Star 910/VP Message-ID: <199910211916.DAA11607@typhaon.ucs.uwa.edu.au> Here's some details I e-mailed myself ages ago, probably mostly from the manual but not completely. I recall discussing these with someone familiar with porting *BSD to various SPARCs and they were not surprised (in fact I didn't tell them the error just asked if they knew what instruction 0xD801E01C was and they said straight off 'are you getting a memory alignment error?'). Anyway I'm killing this out of my old saved mailbox so if anyone else finds it useful please keep it :) David. Star 910/VP 40MHz Cyprus SPARC. 160MFLOPS single prec/80MFLOPS double prec vector processor, but that bit's ripped out. CY7C601 Integer unit. CY7C602 Floating point unit. (block diagram shows all significant chips and data flows) VME-bus, B-bus and M-bus, vector processor machine, most scalar stuff seems to be VME-bus (the other holds only memory and CPU and the now removed vector processor). OpenBSD: Memory alignment error with PC 0x00008578. Instruction "0xD801E01C". NetBSD: Memory alignment error with PC 0x00009450. Instruction "0xD801E01C". >From the architecture manual (goes down to the bitlevel and describes every clock cycle of the bus transactions and every bit of the registers and timing ok instructions, so possibly quite useful), M-bus (brief summary of interface specs): 64-bit, fully synchronous, multiplexed bi-directional address and data bus. all signals are sampled on the rising edge of the system clock. bus transfer sizes 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128 bytes. read or write transfers clocked every cycle (25ns). B-bus (brief summary of the general overview bit again): fully syncronous, non-multiplexed 32-bit address and 64-bit bi-directional data bus. all signals are sampled on the clock rising edge. can operate in a block or burst mode. all control signals are asserted one clock cycle before the assertion of the address bus or data bus or both. bus transactions can be initiated on every clock cycle (25ns). B-bus seems to be used between vector DMA and system memory, which doesn't matter since the vector processor isn't there. B-bus transfers around 320Mbytes/sec - for a single bus in 1991, that ain't bad. In 1998 it'd still be ok :) (most internal busses counters etc go at this 320Mbyte/sec or the slower 160Mbyte/sec in special cases). From mustang at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au Mon Oct 25 10:32:25 1999 From: mustang at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au (mustang@ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au) Date: Wed Oct 27 01:17:47 2004 Subject: [tech] Re: [wheel] machineroom / munt In-Reply-To: <19991025101337.U19786@mermaid.ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au> from Nick Bannon at "Oct 25, 99 10:13:37 am" Message-ID: <199910250232.KAA19222@mermaid.ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au> > Followups to tech@ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au > > On Mon, Oct 25, 1999 at 08:19:29AM +0800, David Manchester wrote: > [...] > > > Can we put it on an insecure segment or something? Is our router currently > > > allowing waix access to the insecure segments? Or rather Yakk wrote the above. > We decided that we _did_ want this, of course it's up to someone with a > reason, to actually do it at some stage. (I haven't had to do a machine > install recently, so I haven't done it) We were also hoping for a better > Mac login system. Radius..? > ...however mail is an exception. > > > No. Because of the firewall rules set on our router. > > i.e. if it ain't on the 1st network, port 25 is filtered. > > If you're going to set up a mail server, make bloody sure that it doesn't > relay. If you're going to set it up properly and maintain it then by all > means allow port 25 through to _that machine_. Yes, and I'll not run an open squid on it either... no, it won't relay. > (Of course with mail that doesn't usually make much sense. Usually > you'd want a mailserver to be world-accessible, which it can't with just > WAIX access) mmhm. > It's a really simple thing, so just get it right. Too many default > installs come with an open mail relay, so firewalling them out is > sensible. Like I said... it'll have 8.9.x on it with sane rulesets sometime soon. Cheers /dave -- / David Manchester [TDH] Netware/UNIX droid. \ Tell someone who's interested, tell someone who can keep their lunch digested Tell someone who wants your conversation, tell someone who doesn't regard you \as an argument for compulsory sterilisation." [TISM], `How Do I Love Thee?'/ From gbowland at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au Mon Oct 25 12:24:09 1999 From: gbowland at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au (Grahame Bowland) Date: Wed Oct 27 01:17:47 2004 Subject: [tech] Re: [ucc] [[hardware] the pentium] In-Reply-To: References: <199910250247.KAA19389@mermaid.ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au> Message-ID: <19991025122408.B977@mussel.ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au> > On Oct 25, Mark Tearle scrawled : > There have been a few options put forward for it: > 1) upgrade mako/moray with it - dull, boring :) > 2) make it a machine ala "sentinel" duel boot lose 95 and some free[1] unix > lose 95 will have scanner attached and omnipage software that we got > recently I'm all for the upgrading Moray option - it is currently struggling with the load being placed on it by mailman, flame, and the other services. At least Mako doesn't freeze up intermittently when I use it. Lots of people seem to use flame and apparently that is also freezing when Mailman sends mail. -- Grahame Bowland Email: gbowland@ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au Web: http://users.wantree.com.au/~bowest/gmb.html From nick at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au Tue Oct 26 15:05:20 1999 From: nick at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au (Nick Bannon) Date: Wed Oct 27 01:17:47 2004 Subject: [tech] Random coke brain/generic controller idea Message-ID: <19991026150519.B22430@mermaid.ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au> On Sunday, one of the useful things that happened was a going through of several of the Laserwriters we had seeing if we could swap logic boards to make extra working ones. No luck unfortunately, but at least we managed to classify some bulky items as FITH and chuck them. So... we have a lot of spare Laserwriter logic boards. 68020's, couple of megs of RAM, readymade interfaces and an OS and scripting language built in... (PostScript) Unknown condition, but some of them might be OK. Does anyone feel at all enthused about seeing if we can power one up without the rest of the printer and make it tweak a TTL line or something? Does anything approaching documentation exist for them? if so, who could we ask or where could we look? (dispense slot 6) setcommand showpage Nick. -- Nick Bannon | "I made this letter longer than usual because nick@it.net.au | I lack the time to make it shorter." - Pascal From mustang at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au Wed Oct 27 00:28:39 1999 From: mustang at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au (David Manchester) Date: Wed Oct 27 01:17:47 2004 Subject: [tech] Mermaid's uptime Message-ID: <199910261628.AAA28607@mermaid.ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au> 12:26am up 81 days, 1:11, 18 users, load average: 0.18, 0.04, 0.01 I think we can safely assume that the cyrix CPU sucked ass. 'course people are annoying it less as the use mussel. What shall we do with Mermaid. .. . mako or moray replacement, or shall we hark back to the mermaid/starfish/marlin days and have two semi-decent user machines..? cheers /dave -- / David Manchester [TDH] Netware/UNIX droid. \ Tell someone who's interested, tell someone who can keep their lunch digested Tell someone who wants your conversation, tell someone who doesn't regard you \as an argument for compulsory sterilisation." [TISM], `How Do I Love Thee?'/ From gbowland at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au Wed Oct 27 00:40:36 1999 From: gbowland at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au (Grahame Bowland) Date: Wed Oct 27 01:17:48 2004 Subject: [tech] Mermaid's uptime In-Reply-To: <199910261628.AAA28607@mermaid.ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au>; from mustang@ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au on Wed, Oct 27, 1999 at 12:28:39AM +0800 References: <199910261628.AAA28607@mermaid.ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au> Message-ID: <19991027004036.A10366@mussel.ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au> > On Oct 27, David Manchester scrawled : > 12:26am up 81 days, 1:11, 18 users, load average: 0.18, 0.04, 0.01 > > I think we can safely assume that the cyrix CPU sucked ass. > 'course people are annoying it less as the use mussel. > > What shall we do with Mermaid. .. . mako or moray replacement, or shall > we hark back to the mermaid/starfish/marlin days and have two semi-decent > user machines..? Lots of people still use mermaid for checking email and other low-load tasks, although most people doing coding now use mussel. If mussel can handle the additional load of everyone checking their email then I don't see why we shouldn't use mermaid as a moray replacement, and then use the Pentium we just had donated to replace Mako. -- Grahame Bowland Email: gbowland@ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au Web: http://users.wantree.com.au/~bowest/gmb.html From mustang at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au Wed Oct 27 00:54:22 1999 From: mustang at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au (David Manchester) Date: Wed Oct 27 01:17:48 2004 Subject: [tech] Mermaid's uptime In-Reply-To: <19991027004036.A10366@mussel.ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au> from Grahame Bowland at "Oct 27, 99 00:40:36 am" Message-ID: <199910261654.AAA28643@mermaid.ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au> > > On Oct 27, David Manchester scrawled : > > > > What shall we do with Mermaid. .. . mako or moray replacement, or shall > > we hark back to the mermaid/starfish/marlin days and have two semi-decent > > user machines..? > > Lots of people still use mermaid for checking email and other low-load Like me :) > tasks, although most people doing coding now use mussel. If mussel can > handle the additional load of everyone checking their email then I don't > see why we shouldn't use mermaid as a moray replacement, and then use > the Pentium we just had donated to replace Mako. mmm, modulo people wanting to make effectively a PC games machine. I vote moray replacement. Ben seems to be set on taking the new pentium as a mako, but people want to make that the play machine. ... but I want mermaid to live on, also. I think whatever needs the most RAM needs mermaid's motherboard and CPU, given that its got 64MB now & can easily have more (there are 4 spare slots). If we do body-snatch it, I'd like to put mermaid's disk into something else & keep the mermaid install alive. Cheers /dave -- / David Manchester [TDH] Netware/UNIX droid. \ Tell someone who's interested, tell someone who can keep their lunch digested Tell someone who wants your conversation, tell someone who doesn't regard you \as an argument for compulsory sterilisation." [TISM], `How Do I Love Thee?'/ From mtearle+ucc at tartarus.uwa.edu.au Wed Oct 27 12:41:11 1999 From: mtearle+ucc at tartarus.uwa.edu.au (Mark Tearle) Date: Wed Oct 27 01:17:48 2004 Subject: [tech] Mermaid's uptime In-Reply-To: <199910261654.AAA28643@mermaid.ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au> Message-ID: > > > tasks, although most people doing coding now use mussel. If mussel can > > handle the additional load of everyone checking their email then I don't > > see why we shouldn't use mermaid as a moray replacement, and then use > > the Pentium we just had donated to replace Mako. > > mmm, modulo people wanting to make effectively a PC games machine. > I vote moray replacement. Ben seems to be set on taking the new > pentium as a mako, but people want to make that the play machine. > ... but I want mermaid to live on, also. I think whatever needs the most > RAM needs mermaid's motherboard and CPU, given that its got 64MB now & can > easily have more (there are 4 spare slots). > If we do body-snatch it, I'd like to put mermaid's disk into something else > & keep the mermaid install alive. > > Cheers > /dave > >From discussion at the end of the committee meeting yesterday (where are those minutes Ben?), there was some form of consensus that mako was already well specced and coping well except for running the web server, the proposition was put forward that we upgrade moray and move the web server back there. Also finding a list server less likely to grind the machine was discussed. My personal opinion is that we just source a Pentium from elsewhere to be a faceless machine like moray, we do have enough money at the moment. Yours Mark -- Mark Tearle - mtearle@tartarus.uwa.edu.au Captain Bipto: We did win, didn't we? Blaznee: No, but if we think fast enough we might just live to lie about it. From nick at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au Wed Oct 27 12:46:31 1999 From: nick at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au (Nick Bannon) Date: Wed Oct 27 01:17:49 2004 Subject: [tech] Mermaid's uptime In-Reply-To: <199910261654.AAA28643@mermaid.ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au>; from David Manchester on Wed, Oct 27, 1999 at 12:54:22AM +0800 References: <19991027004036.A10366@mussel.ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au> <199910261654.AAA28643@mermaid.ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au> Message-ID: <19991027124630.F22430@mermaid.ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au> On Wed, Oct 27, 1999 at 12:54:22AM +0800, David Manchester wrote: > Grahame Bowland wrote: > > Lots of people still use mermaid for checking email and other low-load > > Like me :) Very much so. > > tasks, although most people doing coding now use mussel. If mussel can > > handle the additional load of everyone checking their email then I don't It's the best single machine we have for now, but it's not actually very good at that job (it's got Celerons). In the medium term (next year) we need to get ourselves a decent user machine, which could probably just have a HDD transplant with mussel. [...] > ... but I want mermaid to live on, also. I think whatever needs the most > RAM needs mermaid's motherboard and CPU, given that its got 64MB now & can > easily have more (there are 4 spare slots). True. So... We have a fully working 64MB (or more) P150/P166 mermaid which needs a HDD, and a P100. (32MB? what else?) mussel's being an unstable user box - I note that people _are_ still apt-get upgrading it from unstable packages, occasionally breaking them, and it still reboots for no reason once in a while. We want ; * An outside firewall server (like mako/moray). Needs a stable machine, 32MB or 64MB memory, not too much CPU, a bigger disc would be nice. The database ought to be on this box, but otherwise I don't think it matters which mix of moray and mako's jobs it takes on. As soon as there _is_ an extra working box, we should free up mako or moray. * A PC wintel/scanning/games box. Has to be Pentium class, the faster the better. 32MB should be enough. The more disc the merrier. We could even try mermaid's old unstable CPU in it. * A stable user box. Lots of memory (above 64MB), a fair bit of disc, decent CPU. A handmedown 486 from moray or mako is underspec'ced for any of these. So... three machines, three jobs. Sounds perfect. How about ; * mermaid becomes the server, with that new IDE HDD we were buying * The P100 becomes the PC wintel/etc box, maybe with the Bigfoot * Wheel exercises more self-discipline on mussel - keep it potato, even when a new unstable is released. It's tempting to downgrade it to slink for now, but depending on when potato's released we can probably live with it for now. - purge unstable or badly packaged programs and keep special things up to date with our own packages and source - _tell_tech@ucc_every_time_there_is_a_change_ We can try the Cyrix CPU in the P100 box if it supports the right voltages. Alternatively, perhaps mermaid and the P100 can have a CPU swap. Alternatively, we can leave it be. > If we do body-snatch it, I'd like to put mermaid's disk into something else > & keep the mermaid install alive. The mermaid install is damaged by previous crashes - the partition needs a format. If we have some space to backup/restore with and use Luyer's packages to replace any missing files, that hsould be easy enough. Nick. -- Nick Bannon | "I made this letter longer than usual because nick@it.net.au | I lack the time to make it shorter." - Pascal From mtearle+ucc at tartarus.uwa.edu.au Wed Oct 27 13:18:08 1999 From: mtearle+ucc at tartarus.uwa.edu.au (Mark Tearle) Date: Wed Oct 27 01:17:49 2004 Subject: [committee] Re: [tech] Mermaid's uptime In-Reply-To: <199910270455.MAA31438@mermaid.ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au> Message-ID: On Wed, 27 Oct 1999, Ben Rampling wrote: > > >From discussion at the end of the committee meeting yesterday > > > (where are those minutes Ben?), there was some form of consensus that > > mako was already well specced and coping well except for running > > the web server, the proposition was put forward that we upgrade > > moray and move the web server back there. > > You wern't listening very well. :) > > Response times for the web pages are fairly dismal when it comes to some > things. Moving the web server won't help, because apache itself isn't the > problem. > So what is the problem, oh wise one? > The minutes are scheduled to come out about Wednesday next week, or maybe > Tuesday. Any one who thinks they should be done sooner is welcome to take > the job off my to do list for the next week, or start doing all the things > above it for me. ;) > > Regards, > Ben Rampling > They are already typed up, what's the problem emailing them to the list? (our previous secretary did it quite quickly, and typing things up is usually the delay ) Yours Mark -- Mark Tearle - mtearle@tartarus.uwa.edu.au Captain Bipto: We did win, didn't we? Blaznee: No, but if we think fast enough we might just live to lie about it. From mustang at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au Wed Oct 27 13:56:23 1999 From: mustang at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au (David Manchester) Date: Wed Oct 27 01:17:49 2004 Subject: [tech] Mermaid's uptime In-Reply-To: <19991027124630.F22430@mermaid.ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au> from Nick Bannon at "Oct 27, 99 12:46:31 pm" Message-ID: <199910270556.NAA31722@mermaid.ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au> [mussel/coding] > It's the best single machine we have for now, but it's not actually very > good at that job (it's got Celerons). In the medium term (next year) > we need to get ourselves a decent user machine, which could probably > just have a HDD transplant with mussel. *ahem* PAckrat's started to get a little more enthused with the UCC and has about a dozen alphas and sparcs in his room at George's. When he leaves, he'll probably want to drop a couple at the UCC. An Alpha 3000/600, like the Alpha tartarus outta make a decent machine. He's got buttloads of 3000 series alphas. That said, we could build a cheap dual PII or PIII system. We could probably find a cheaper Dual PPro machine. ... or we could linux the BeBox. > * An outside firewall server (like mako/moray). Needs a stable machine, > 32MB or 64MB memory, not too much CPU, a bigger disc would be nice. The > database ought to be on this box, but otherwise I don't think it > matters which mix of moray and mako's jobs it takes on. As soon as > there _is_ an extra working box, we should free up mako or moray. Alastair mentioned that we might score a couple of Sparcstation LXes from ATRI. These are not to be sneered at - one would make a great moray, so long as we coupld recompile dispense and other voodoo. > * A PC wintel/scanning/games box. Has to be Pentium class, the faster > the better. 32MB should be enough. The more disc the merrier. We > could even try mermaid's old unstable CPU in it. Ugh. No - pentium, 64mb P150 minimum. If people are going to run games, its going to need at least that. Maybe a 3dfx card or somesuch. > * A stable user box. Lots of memory (above 64MB), a fair bit of disc, > decent CPU. Yes, indeed. > So... three machines, three jobs. Sounds perfect. How about ; > > * mermaid becomes the server, with that new IDE HDD we were buying > * The P100 becomes the PC wintel/etc box, maybe with the Bigfoot > * Wheel exercises more self-discipline on mussel I'd advocate that the P100 will do an admirable job of webserving, etc. and that Mermaid's CPU is more useful in the games box. We can also snatch mermaid's RAM & put that where its needed & stick 8s and 16s into the Rhino9 (mermaid's mobo), as it has 6 slots. > > If we do body-snatch it, I'd like to put mermaid's disk into something else > > & keep the mermaid install alive. > > The mermaid install is damaged by previous crashes - the partition needs > a format. If we have some space to backup/restore with and use Luyer's > packages to replace any missing files, that hsould be easy enough. OK. That sounds sane. It will not be the games box, it will be in the machine room, but if the need arises, my C333A/96MB poecee can become available to the UCC if required. Cheers /dave -- / David Manchester [TDH] Netware/UNIX droid. \ Tell someone who's interested, tell someone who can keep their lunch digested Tell someone who wants your conversation, tell someone who doesn't regard you \as an argument for compulsory sterilisation." [TISM], `How Do I Love Thee?'/ From mustang at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au Wed Oct 27 14:42:54 1999 From: mustang at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au (David Manchester) Date: Wed Oct 27 01:17:49 2004 Subject: [tech] Re: [ucc] Sun FastEthernet question In-Reply-To: <19991027143512.G22430@mermaid.ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au> from Nick Bannon at "Oct 27, 99 02:35:13 pm" Message-ID: <199910270642.OAA31984@mermaid.ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au> > On Wed, Oct 27, 1999 at 02:14:09PM +0800, Angus Stewart wrote: > > Hi Everyone, > > I have a Sun here with a Sun FastEthernet card installed. For some stupid > [...] > > OBTW - if anyone sees one of these for sale at a reasonable price, > tell us. mola could really do with one, otherwise I think its days as > our main NFS server are numbered. > > A couple such cards have been spied in the past, but they definitely > weren't cheap and the opportunity passed. We're still on the lookout. Of course there's always automount and interface round-robining. You tell the client a filesystem could come from any of a list of addresses. It gets it from whichever answers first. Failing that, Solaris x86 would be a good go... Of course the current state of the machine room can't be helping network performance. *shrug* Cheers /dave -- / David Manchester [TDH] Netware/UNIX droid. \ Tell someone who's interested, tell someone who can keep their lunch digested Tell someone who wants your conversation, tell someone who doesn't regard you \as an argument for compulsory sterilisation." [TISM], `How Do I Love Thee?'/ From gbowland at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au Wed Oct 27 22:01:56 1999 From: gbowland at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au (Grahame Bowland) Date: Wed Oct 27 01:17:49 2004 Subject: [tech] Mermaid's uptime In-Reply-To: <199910270556.NAA31722@mermaid.ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au>; from mustang@ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au on Wed, Oct 27, 1999 at 01:56:23PM +0800 References: <19991027124630.F22430@mermaid.ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au> <199910270556.NAA31722@mermaid.ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au> Message-ID: <19991027220156.A13639@mussel.ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au> > On Oct 27, David Manchester scrawled : > That said, we could build a cheap dual PII or PIII system. > We could probably find a cheaper Dual PPro machine. > > ... or we could linux the BeBox. I did attempt this the other week. The one guy that has been working on the project hasn't made much progress. Apparently he has his own Bebox 'almost booting' but ours just gives a blank screen with the supplied boot image. > > So... three machines, three jobs. Sounds perfect. How about ; > > > > * mermaid becomes the server, with that new IDE HDD we were buying > > * The P100 becomes the PC wintel/etc box, maybe with the Bigfoot > > * Wheel exercises more self-discipline on mussel > > I'd advocate that the P100 will do an admirable job of webserving, etc. > and that Mermaid's CPU is more useful in the games box. > We can also snatch mermaid's RAM & put that where its needed & stick > 8s and 16s into the Rhino9 (mermaid's mobo), as it has 6 slots. I fixed a lot of the problems that apt had on mussel with broken packages. Nick showed me the basic approach and I fixed quite a few errors which were present. One thing that is good about mussel is that I can do coding work (assignments, ucc stuff, messing about) and have incredibly fast compiles. If we downgrade it to slink or stop updating it with new packages then it might become less useful as a coding box. -- Grahame Bowland Email: gbowland@ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au Web: http://users.wantree.com.au/~bowest/gmb.html From gbowland at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au Wed Oct 27 23:54:22 1999 From: gbowland at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au (Grahame Bowland) Date: Wed Oct 27 01:17:50 2004 Subject: [tech] Linux on the Be Message-ID: <19991027235422.A13882@mussel.ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au> Hi all. I just had another look at putting Linux on the Be. The work so far is very unfinished. They don't have proper support for PCI cards or SCSI and they don't do any SMP - so we'd need to put a dodgy ISA video card/network card in and turn off one of the processors. That's assuming the Be has ISA slots, I can't remember. Is there anyone around bored enough to do this kind of porting (its too low level for my knowledge) or do we just leave the Be as a useless BeOS box? :) The page I was looking at is: http://sowerbutts.com/belinux/ -- Grahame Bowland Email: gbowland@ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au Web: http://users.wantree.com.au/~bowest/gmb.html From fryers at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au Thu Oct 28 13:59:26 1999 From: fryers at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au (Simon Fryer) Date: Wed Oct 27 01:17:50 2004 Subject: [tech] Warning/Disturbing Message-ID: <19991028135926.E11317@ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au> Bingle Had a quick looksee in the machine room. Yes, it is a mess but I am not going to complain about that! :-) The drives on mola have been moved from a disk box I obtained ages ago to the case that came with the next. The original box had a quirk that could have melted some of the cabling. There is a set of headers on the PSU and a matching socket with n+-1 pins for the power cables. If the header is not matched up correctly the +5V rail is sent down one of the ground lines and if a drive is plugges in, then down the other ground line. Effectivly creating a short on the 5V line. This does not shut the PSU down (presumibly the short isn't quite good enough). As a resuly the power cabling melts. The SCSI box is quite nice apart from that and I would not like to see it get junkied because someone with no hardware clue could not make it work(that is how I got the box in the first place). If UCC does not want it I will gladly find a home for it. I just don't know where the box has gone to. See Ya Simon -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "Well, an engineer is not concerned with the truth; that is left to philosophers and theologians: the prime concern of an engineer is the utility of the final product." Lectures on the Electrical Properties of Materials, L.Solymar, D.Walsh From mustang at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au Thu Oct 28 14:40:57 1999 From: mustang at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au (David Manchester) Date: Wed Oct 27 01:17:50 2004 Subject: [tech] Warning/Disturbing In-Reply-To: <19991028135926.E11317@ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au> from Simon Fryer at "Oct 28, 99 01:59:26 pm" Message-ID: <199910280640.OAA04416@mermaid.ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au> > Bingle > > Had a quick looksee in the machine room. Yes, it is a mess but I > am not going to complain about that! :-) *mumble* > The drives on mola have been moved from a disk box I obtained ages ago > to the case that came with the next. The original box had a quirk that Which had my two 700MB drives in it for the squid cache. Where are these..? > could have melted some of the cabling. There is a set of headers on the > PSU and a matching socket with n+-1 pins for the power cables. If the > header is not matched up correctly the +5V rail is sent down one of the > ground lines and if a drive is plugges in, then down the other ground > line. Effectivly creating a short on the 5V line. This does not shut the > PSU down (presumibly the short isn't quite good enough). As a resuly > the power cabling melts. The SCSI box is quite nice apart from that and OK.... but since no-one goes poking around inside mola's guts, was this really necessary..? > I would not like to see it get junkied because someone with no hardware > clue could not make it work(that is how I got the box in the first place). > > If UCC does not want it I will gladly find a home for it. I just don't > know where the box has gone to. So, recapping, you removed them from the box, blinked and it was gone..? If you need some SCSI external shizz, ask me :) Cheers /dave -- / David Manchester [TDH] Netware/UNIX droid. \ Tell someone who's interested, tell someone who can keep their lunch digested Tell someone who wants your conversation, tell someone who doesn't regard you \as an argument for compulsory sterilisation." [TISM], `How Do I Love Thee?'/ From fryers at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au Fri Oct 29 00:37:27 1999 From: fryers at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au (Simon Fryer) Date: Wed Oct 27 01:17:50 2004 Subject: [tech] Warning/Disturbing In-Reply-To: <199910280640.OAA04416@mermaid.ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au>; from David Manchester on Thu, Oct 28, 1999 at 02:40:57PM +0800 References: <19991028135926.E11317@ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au> <199910280640.OAA04416@mermaid.ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au> Message-ID: <19991029003727.F11317@ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au> Bingle > A while ago David Manchester tapped: > > The drives on mola have been moved from a disk box I obtained ages ago > > to the case that came with the next. The original box had a quirk that > > Which had my two 700MB drives in it for the squid cache. > Where are these..? I don't know. I didn't have the urge to investigate the machine room dispite the upcomming exams. > > PSU down (presumibly the short isn't quite good enough). As a resuly > > the power cabling melts. The SCSI box is quite nice apart from that and > > OK.... but since no-one goes poking around inside mola's guts, was this > really necessary..? > > > I would not like to see it get junkied because someone with no hardware > > clue could not make it work(that is how I got the box in the first place). > > > > If UCC does not want it I will gladly find a home for it. I just don't > > know where the box has gone to. > > So, recapping, you removed them from the box, blinked and it was gone..? No, At some point, I blinked and I thought some drives got swapped between boxes which I was kinda confused about. If my memory serves me correct the box orriginally housed the 6GB Scsi and the 4.5GB Scsi for /home and /services respectivly. I assumed that these drived had been shouffled between cases for some reason but I may and hopefuly am wrong. See Ya Simon -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "Well, an engineer is not concerned with the truth; that is left to philosophers and theologians: the prime concern of an engineer is the utility of the final product." Lectures on the Electrical Properties of Materials, L.Solymar, D.Walsh From mtearle at tartarus.uwa.edu.au Sat Oct 30 11:43:24 1999 From: mtearle at tartarus.uwa.edu.au (Mark Tearle) Date: Wed Oct 27 01:17:50 2004 Subject: [tech] [Mailman-checkins] CVS: mailman/src common.c (fwd) Message-ID: -- Mark Tearle - mtearle@tartarus.uwa.edu.au Captain Bipto: We did win, didn't we? Blaznee: No, but if we think fast enough we might just live to lie about it. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 11:06:44 -0400 (EDT) From: Barry A. Warsaw To: mailman-checkins@python.org Subject: [Mailman-checkins] CVS: mailman/src common.c Update of /projects/cvsroot/mailman/src In directory anthem:/home/bwarsaw/projects/mailman/src Modified Files: common.c Log Message: Invoke Python with -S option, which avoids the "import site". This speeds up invocation of the executable considerably by eliminating tons of stats and other computation. _______________________________________________ Mailman-checkins mailing list Mailman-checkins@python.org http://www.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-checkins From yakk at yakk.net.au Sun Oct 31 10:05:34 1999 From: yakk at yakk.net.au (Ian McKellar) Date: Wed Oct 27 01:17:51 2004 Subject: [tech] Cables, X-Terms, Sparcs and Alphas Message-ID: <19991031100534.N24198@yakk.net.au> Hi, I've had a few discussions with Chris, Laurie, Philip and Joe at CS about a few things: o X-Terms - They've got some they want to get rid of - ranging from Colour Labtams to B+W NCDs, I think they want at least a token price for the working ones - how much do we think they're worth to us? o Sparcs - They've got a Sparc 2 (which they might keep), and a couple of Sparc 5s they're looking at getting rid of. What are they worth? o Alphas - There will be some alphas becoming available. How much are they worth to us? o Security cables - They're available, I'll take a look around UCC to work out how many we need. Ian -- Ian McKellar | Email: yakk(a)yakk.net | Web: http://www.yakk.net/ Prefix: +61 8 | Fax/VoiceMail: 9265 0821 | Home: 9389 9162 | Work: 9380 3688 From mustang at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au Sun Oct 31 01:57:20 1999 From: mustang at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au (David Manchester) Date: Wed Oct 27 01:17:51 2004 Subject: [tech] I wanna lend the UCC some stuff... Message-ID: <199910301757.BAA15822@mermaid.ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au> OK, in a fit of irrational altruism (and a realisation of the need for storage space), I've decided to lend the UCC a machine for an extended period. Please let me know what would be more useful to UCC: An R4400 Indigo2 with 256MB of RAM, or a Celeron 333A with 96MB. They occupy approximately the same space, and I can give the Celery SCSI as/if required. I figure actually using an IRIX box as a user or sercices machine might be a cool idea, to give wheel a bit more of a taste of IRIX, before (a) they go out into the wide world and are forced to use it, or (b) it gets killed and SGI goes all-Linux. I'll probably keep the monitor/kbd/mouse here and put them on the PC if you guys decide the I2's more useful. Either of them could have 100Mb ethernet. Lemme know what people think. Cheers /dave -- / David Manchester [TDH] Netware/UNIX droid. \ Tell someone who's interested, tell someone who can keep their lunch digested Tell someone who wants your conversation, tell someone who doesn't regard you \as an argument for compulsory sterilisation." [TISM], `How Do I Love Thee?'/ From nick at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au Sun Oct 31 23:16:44 1999 From: nick at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au (Nick Bannon) Date: Wed Oct 27 01:17:52 2004 Subject: [tech] I wanna lend the UCC some stuff... In-Reply-To: <19991101103358.B17479@yakk.net.au>; from Ian McKellar on Mon, Nov 01, 1999 at 10:33:58AM +0800 References: <199910301757.BAA15822@mermaid.ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au> <19991101103358.B17479@yakk.net.au> Message-ID: <19991031231642.E5012@mermaid.ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au> On Mon, Nov 01, 1999 at 10:33:58AM +0800, Ian McKellar wrote: > On Sun, Oct 31, 1999 at 01:57:20AM +0800, David Manchester wrote: > [willing to lend either a SGI Indigo2 or a Celery PC] [...] > The I2 with 100Mb would probably make a fscking brilliant NFS box - and > probably user box at the same time. I personally really like IRIX, and if > we were going to use an IRIX box as a core user box I would probably actually > secure the thing. Wonderful! I'd like to put in a preference for the I2 as well. With 256MB and a perfectly good CPU, it'd make a great user box. However... before we make a user box into a NFS server, we need to do the home/away FMS change. Shouldn't be too hard - I might end up giving it a go if noone else does. Nick. -- Nick Bannon | "I made this letter longer than usual because nick@it.net.au | I lack the time to make it shorter." - Pascal