[tech] Mermaid's uptime

Nick Bannon nick at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au
Wed Oct 27 12:46:31 WST 1999


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 at 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 at it.net.au | I lack the time to make it shorter." - Pascal




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