On 10 Sep 2001, at 7:34, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
I beg your pardon: you didn´t really expect to get informed about a
planned outage BEFORE it happens or a crash AFTER it happened, did
you?
Well, as a service operator myself (though without any
responsibility to PrimeNet), I do try to warn users when a service is
at unusual risk.
As for crashes, or unplanned outages for other reasons (like the
power failing), I would try to post a notice explaining what
happened as soon as I know myself. In the case of a system which
fails on a Friday evening I do not think it is unreasonable that there
is no information until Monday. Presumably the system support
staff are not paid on a 24x7 basis.
BTW some people claim that the PrimeNet server is working, just
very, very slowly. In that case it's more than likely that the server is
sufferring a DoS attack :(
Such an outage didn´t occur for the first time in my (nearly) three
years supporting GIMPS and others will follow.
Is that a statement, or a threat?
BTW I do remember a few service breaks, though this one is the
worst; in fact the service has been pretty reliable recently, at least
until last Friday night.
May be that´s one
reason why GIMPS lost about 8.000 to 9.000 machines during the last
six months.
Other reasons may apply:
(a) new projects which may be attractive to many people;
(b) the increasing size of our work units; processor speeds really
haven't been keeping up!
(c) problems with utility (mains) power supply in some areas e.g.
California discouraging people from running systems 24x7;
(d) adverse publicity involving distributed computing projects e.g.
the sysadmin who installed RC5 clients on his systems without
consent of his employer.
Regards
Brian Beesley
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