Way OT: How long does your box run for?
The other day I was explaining something to my boss (a suit), and I mentioned that a FreeBSD box would easily run for a year or more. Oh, he said, and then you've got to reboot it?. I explained that generally some upgrade comes along that reqwuires a reboot, but I realized that I don't know how long a box would stay up in the maximum. So, come on, this should be fun, what's the biggest uptime you've ever had for a BSD box? --- Andy Holyer, Technical stuff Hedgehog Broadband, 11 Marlborough Place Brighton BN1 1UB 08451 260895 x 241 ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Way OT: How long does your box run for?
On Friday 03 September 2004 01:45 am, Andy Holyer wrote: The other day I was explaining something to my boss (a suit), and I mentioned that a FreeBSD box would easily run for a year or more. Oh, he said, and then you've got to reboot it?. I explained that generally some upgrade comes along that reqwuires a reboot, but I realized that I don't know how long a box would stay up in the maximum. So, come on, this should be fun, what's the biggest uptime you've ever had for a BSD box? Netcraft has a list of long uptimes for websites, which has a lot of FreeBSDs (including number 1, with an uptime of nearly five years). Bad security, but still... http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/today/top.avg.html -David -- +++ Divide By Cucumber Error. Please Reinstall Universe And Reboot. +++ ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Way OT: How long does your box run for?
Andy Holyer wrote: The other day I was explaining something to my boss (a suit), You're a patient one, then ... and I mentioned that a FreeBSD box would easily run for a year or more. Oh, he said, and then you've got to reboot it?. I explained that generally some upgrade comes along that reqwuires a reboot, but I realized that I don't know how long a box would stay up in the maximum. So, come on, this should be fun, what's the biggest uptime you've ever had for a BSD box? For a publicly accessible host, around 150 days, which is probably too much; generally things start to feel stale by then, to me, and security paranoia grows in direct correlation to system uptime (which should reflect more on my perceived knowledge of security and paranoia than on the Project's software) I've heard accounts of boxen acting as, say, LAN routers or LAN file servers with uptimes of years. IIRC, Netcraft now claims that most new FreeBSD builds reset to zero after 400-something days, so some of their statistics may be no longer as valid... ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Way OT: How long does your box run for?
Andy Holyer [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The other day I was explaining something to my boss (a suit), and I mentioned that a FreeBSD box would easily run for a year or more. Oh, he said, and then you've got to reboot it?. I explained that generally some upgrade comes along that reqwuires a reboot, but I realized that I don't know how long a box would stay up in the maximum. So, come on, this should be fun, what's the biggest uptime you've ever had for a BSD box? Aside from various uptime projects like the ones David commented on, it's generally not practical to go for long uptimes, for exactly the reasons you describe. In practice: My desktop generally maxes out at about 30 days uptime. Something comes up about once a month that causes me to reboot it. Sometimes it's as simple as a few days off from work, and I turn the computer off. Most of the servers I manage (which are all intended for 24/7 access) see about 3 months between reboots. That's an average. Some servers are more aggresively updated than others, and are rebooted more often. The fun part (for me) is that this is all _scheduled_ downtime. For the potentialtech.com server (for example) has about 3 hours of unscheduled downtime since Jan 1. And that downtime is the result of a failed UPS at the colo facility. It has 0 unscheduled downtime due to software issues. -- Bill Moran Potential Technologies http://www.potentialtech.com ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Way OT: How long does your box run for?
Kevin D. Kinsey, DaleCo, S.P. writes: I've heard accounts of boxen acting as, say, LAN routers or LAN file servers with uptimes of years. Within the last year or two, I had a conversation with someone who claimed to have a machine runn9ing 2.2.x (or maybe it was 2.1.x) continuously since applying the final security patch. IIRC, Netcraft now claims that most new FreeBSD builds reset to zero after 400-something days, so some of their statistics may be no longer as valid... From the NetCraft FAQ: Why do some Operating Systems never show uptimes above 497 days ? The method that Netcraft uses to determine the uptime of a server is bounded by an upper limit of 497 days for some Operating Systems (see above). It is therefore not possible to see uptimes for these systems that go beyond this upper limit. Although we could in theory attempt to compute the true uptime for OS's with this upper limit by monitoring for restarts at the expected time, we prefer not to do this as it can be inaccurate and error prone. ... which is not exactly the same thing. Robert Huff ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Way OT: How long does your box run for?
Robert Huff wrote: Kevin D. Kinsey, DaleCo, S.P. writes: IIRC, Netcraft now claims that most new FreeBSD builds reset to zero after 400-something days, so some of their statistics may be no longer as valid... From the NetCraft FAQ: Why do some Operating Systems never show uptimes above 497 days ? The method that Netcraft uses to determine the uptime of a server is bounded by an upper limit of 497 days for some Operating Systems (see above). It is therefore not possible to see uptimes for these systems that go beyond this upper limit. Although we could in theory attempt to compute the true uptime for OS's with this upper limit by monitoring for restarts at the expected time, we prefer not to do this as it can be inaccurate and error prone. ... which is not exactly the same thing. Point taken. Typing faster than thinking is dangerous; particularly when not looking at the datum to which one is referring. Thank you. KDK ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Way OT: How long does your box run for?
--On Friday, September 03, 2004 09:15:00 AM -0500 Kevin D. Kinsey, DaleCo, S.P. [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Andy Holyer wrote: The other day I was explaining something to my boss (a suit), You're a patient one, then ... and I mentioned that a FreeBSD box would easily run for a year or more. Oh, he said, and then you've got to reboot it?. I explained that generally some upgrade comes along that reqwuires a reboot, but I realized that I don't know how long a box would stay up in the maximum. So, come on, this should be fun, what's the biggest uptime you've ever had for a BSD box? For a publicly accessible host, around 150 days, which is probably too much; generally things start to feel stale by then, to me, and security paranoia grows in direct correlation to system uptime (which should reflect more on my perceived knowledge of security and paranoia than on the Project's software) In the old days, we used to have boxes with uptimes in the 900 day range. Nowadays that would be insanity. As a security professional, I get irked that some of our boxes only get patched annually (because they only get rebooted annually). It's far too risky a proposition these days. Paul Schmehl ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) Adjunct Information Security Officer The University of Texas at Dallas AVIEN Founding Member http://www.utdallas.edu/ir/security/ ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Way OT: How long does your box run for?
--On Friday, September 03, 2004 10:55:09 AM -0400 Bill Moran [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Most of the servers I manage (which are all intended for 24/7 access) see about 3 months between reboots. That's an average. Some servers are more aggresively updated than others, and are rebooted more often. The fun part (for me) is that this is all _scheduled_ downtime. For the potentialtech.com server (for example) has about 3 hours of unscheduled downtime since Jan 1. And that downtime is the result of a failed UPS at the colo facility. It has 0 unscheduled downtime due to software issues. Well, if you're ruling out scheduled downtime, I have a box that's never been down since it was purchased four years ago. :-) 'Course it started out as a RH 7.2 box, and now it's a FreeBSD 4.9 box, but it's never had a single minute of unscheduled downtime. :-) Paul Schmehl ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) Adjunct Information Security Officer The University of Texas at Dallas AVIEN Founding Member http://www.utdallas.edu/ir/security/ ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Way OT: How long does your box run for?
I've had a 4.8 server with 280 days uptime, then the motherboard burned :/ I try never to reboot my servers, only when critical security updates are issued. The reason for this is I work with shell providers mostly, and the uptime is a big factor for the clients. But of course, if choosing to reboot apply a patch or let the server unpatched with a possible root vulnerability, I'll go for the reboot anytime. --On Friday, September 03, 2004 10:55:09 AM -0400 Bill Moran [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Most of the servers I manage (which are all intended for 24/7 access) see about 3 months between reboots. That's an average. Some servers are more aggresively updated than others, and are rebooted more often. The fun part (for me) is that this is all _scheduled_ downtime. For the potentialtech.com server (for example) has about 3 hours of unscheduled downtime since Jan 1. And that downtime is the result of a failed UPS at the colo facility. It has 0 unscheduled downtime due to software issues. Well, if you're ruling out scheduled downtime, I have a box that's never been down since it was purchased four years ago. :-) 'Course it started out as a RH 7.2 box, and now it's a FreeBSD 4.9 box, but it's never had a single minute of unscheduled downtime. :-) Paul Schmehl ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) Adjunct Information Security Officer The University of Texas at Dallas AVIEN Founding Member http://www.utdallas.edu/ir/security/ ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- www.6s-gaming.com ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Way OT: How long does your box run for?
At 9:45 AM +0100 9/3/04, Andy Holyer wrote: I explained that generally some upgrade comes along that requires a reboot, but I realized that I don't know how long a box would stay up in the maximum. So, come on, this should be fun, what's the biggest uptime you've ever had for a BSD box? I don't think it would ever require a reboot. The question is whether you need to reboot to apply some prudent updates and security fixes. I have one server that I try to keep up as much as possible. The three longest runs on that machine are: 373 days 10 hours, ending in July 2000 (long power outage) 599 days 14 hours, ending in Sept 2002 (UPS failure) 497 days 18 hours, ending in Apr 2004 (disk failure) The first one ended because a power-station going into campus was flooded (due to some construction in the area), and the building did not have any power for about four hours. My UPS lasted about three and a half hours before giving out. The second one was that the UPS itself melted down! Well, it did not quite melt, but it was seriously overheating and I had to shutdown all the machines connected to it and unplug everything. The UPS was literally too hot for me to touch, and once it cooled down enough (which took about four hours), I could see that the battery had started to melt. The third was a disk problem, but I also believe it was a OS error because the disk *getting* the error was one I should have been able to ignore. However the OS was confused over which disk got the error, and it kept resetting the disk-controller for the main system disk, instead of the one for the disk which had the errors. So, I suspect the fault for that reboot is half hardware and half the OS itself. If you are going for long up times, then the stupidest thing you can do is install it and forget it. While I have long uptimes on this machine, I also have only a few network services running, and there are only two or three people who can log onto the machine (and I trust them). I use the ports collection to keep many things up-to-date, and for some things in the base system (like sendmail), I recompile them on a different machine and then copy the pieces over to this server. So, I manage to apply the vast majority of security fixes, even though I do not reboot and I do not have to stop/restart the main service that this machine provides. -- Garance Alistair Drosehn= [EMAIL PROTECTED] Senior Systems Programmer or [EMAIL PROTECTED] Rensselaer Polytechnic Instituteor [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Way OT: How long does your box run for?
Hugo Silva [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I've had a 4.8 server with 280 days uptime, then the motherboard burned :/ I try never to reboot my servers, only when critical security updates are issued. The reason for this is I work with shell providers mostly, and the uptime is a big factor for the clients. It's interesting that the software is more reliable than the hardware. This comes up on the PostgreSQL lists a lot. A vast majority of the data corruption problems that people report turn out to be hardware failures. PostgreSQL is actually several orders of magnitude more reliable than the average box it runs on. FreeBSD is the same way, in my experience. -- Bill Moran Potential Technologies http://www.potentialtech.com ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Way OT: How long does your box run for?
Hugo Silva writes: I try never to reboot my servers, only when critical security updates are issued. The reason for this is I work with shell providers mostly, and the uptime is a big factor for the clients. Surely these folks can afford a spare machine on which to do systems development and testing? Robert Huff ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
