Re: Hardware Upgrade Fund

2001-01-22 Thread Jonathan Stowe

On Mon, 22 Jan 2001, Philip Newton wrote:

> alex wrote:
> > I'd prefer to do it the other way round if you don't mind, and say you
> > have just one month to send a cheque for 50 pounds made out 
> > to C A McLean [1] to state51, 8 rhoda street, bethnal green, e2 7ef ,
> > or brought along to the next social or technical meeting.
> 
> Hm, random question -- is penderal just for London.pm members or might it
> conceivably be opened to a wider public? For example, what about honourary
> London.pm members such as dha?
> 

dha *is* a London.pm member - not honourary, (not honourable either :)
just a plain old member like everyone else - hfb, gnat, you, marcel and
everyone else who has washed up and stayed here - I don't think any
distinction is possible :) After all some of us only *work* in London.

> To come to the point, I might be interested in buying a share since I don't
> really have a decent machine anywhere else besides a shell account somewhere
> in California. And colocating a machine of my own seems a bit costly to me
> at the moment. However, I can imagine you might be wanting to keep penderel
> a London thingy, which is why I thought I'd ask.
> 

Go for it geezer - I can't think there would be any objection :)

/J\
-- 
Jonathan Stowe   |   
http://www.gellyfish.com |   I'm with Grep on this one 
http://www.tackleway.co.uk   |




Re: Hardware Upgrade Fund

2001-01-22 Thread Philip Newton

alex wrote:
> I'd prefer to do it the other way round if you don't mind, and say you
> have just one month to send a cheque for 50 pounds made out 
> to C A McLean [1] to state51, 8 rhoda street, bethnal green, e2 7ef ,
> or brought along to the next social or technical meeting.

Hm, random question -- is penderal just for London.pm members or might it
conceivably be opened to a wider public? For example, what about honourary
London.pm members such as dha?

To come to the point, I might be interested in buying a share since I don't
really have a decent machine anywhere else besides a shell account somewhere
in California. And colocating a machine of my own seems a bit costly to me
at the moment. However, I can imagine you might be wanting to keep penderel
a London thingy, which is why I thought I'd ask.

Cheers,
Philip



Re: Hardware Upgrade Fund

2001-01-20 Thread Mark Fowler

> > [1] My first name is actually Christopher, but handily my parents changed
> 
> [Oddly enough, same here. I'm Chris Paul ... It's an absolute pain in the
> arse. Note to parents: don't do this.]

I know a Andrew Christopher Jackson that's known as Chris.  So it's not
just Christopher that's shunned...
 
> 128MB RAM and a K6 is quite enough to run a decently hammered mod_perl site.
> You only need more memory if you end up using a large database or doing
> something rash like install Oracle. Assuming you're not on an OC-12 backbone
> and you're not doing finite element analysis of an F15 jet per form
> submission, your IO bottleneck will be the net.

I would think that more RAM is a good idea.  This is because:

 1. It's cheap right now
 2. We're a varied range of people so will probably want to load a whole
host of modules in mod-perl.  This will probably make our httpd
rather fat and take up a lot of memory - much more if it was a simple
production machine.

> Building reliability is probably your best aim: does it have a UPS? does it
> have a RAID 1/0 config? Dual PSUs? Tape drive & backup policy? Those things
> are way more important than a faster chip or RAM.

Along these lines I'd buy another hard drive.  Having lots of hard drive
space is good for backups - most time data is lost not due to hardware
failure but the directory stucture it's in being trashed through
human/coding error.  Simply back up to another area.

Also if we keep the original drive we can simply backup to that
nightly.  Quicker and easier than tapes - and as we've said any long term
data should really be backed up by individual users anyway, so we need not
worry about things like state51 burning down (well, as far as the server
data is concerned)

For the record, my box, heavly used used by myself, Leon, Simon, Shevek,
and Magnus for 2shortplanks.com / astray.com / huckvale.net / anarres.org
is:

model name  : AMD-K6(tm) 3D processor
stepping: 12
cpu MHz : 501.143806

total:used:free:  shared: buffers:  cached:
Mem:  264376320 208822272 4048 47583232 25063424 128712704
Swap: 542826496 32563200 510263296

(Leon, thanks for the memory)

Filesystem   1k-blocks  Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda6821340164 816634860   3890812 100% /
/dev/hda115522  3540 11181  24% /boot

(actually, that's a lie - df very broke - it's only 18GB - but you get the
idea)

Later

Mark

(off to see the offspring)

-- 
print "\n",map{my$a="\n"if(length$_>6);' 'x(36-length($_)/2)."$_\n$a"} (
   Name  => 'Mark Fowler',Title => 'Technology Developer'  ,
   Firm  => 'Profero Ltd',Web   => 'http://www.profero.com/'   ,
   Email => '[EMAIL PROTECTED]',   Phone => '+44 (0) 20 7700 9960'  )









Re: Hardware Upgrade Fund

2001-01-20 Thread Michael Stevens

On Fri, Jan 19, 2001 at 11:42:52PM +, Greg McCarroll wrote:
> * Paul Makepeace ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote:
> > Building reliability is probably your best aim: does it have a UPS? does it
> > have a RAID 1/0 config? Dual PSUs? Tape drive & backup policy? Those things
> > are way more important than a faster chip or RAM.
> your right of course, however all of those things are more expensive
> and in some cases involve disgarding existing equipment
> and at the end of the day its a hobby machine that currently is lucky
> to have an average CPU usage of 0.1% per hour

But when we start using it for the web site and the mailing list and
that jobs thing I think jo is working on we're all gonna get really annoyed
if it breaks...

Michael



Re: Hardware Upgrade Fund

2001-01-20 Thread Greg McCarroll

* Paul Makepeace ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote:
> 
> Building reliability is probably your best aim: does it have a UPS? does it
> have a RAID 1/0 config? Dual PSUs? Tape drive & backup policy? Those things
> are way more important than a faster chip or RAM.
> 

your right of course, however all of those things are more expensive
and in some cases involve disgarding existing equipment

and at the end of the day its a hobby machine that currently is lucky
to have an average CPU usage of 0.1% per hour

-- 
Greg McCarroll  http://www.mccarroll.uklinux.net



Re: Hardware Upgrade Fund

2001-01-19 Thread alex

On Fri, 19 Jan 2001, Paul Makepeace wrote:
> Without wanting to sound too real-world and pragmatic, why not upgrade
> the server when you actually *need* to, i.e. learn how to monitor
> performance and when it starts to suck, *then* buy new stuff.

because as i'm gathering together this money, i'll want to spend it (on
the server) straight away rather than have it sitting around.

you have some good suggestions for what we should spend it on, though.

alex

-- 
Snack pastries are dramatic when shapes are combined




Re: Hardware Upgrade Fund

2001-01-19 Thread Paul Makepeace

From: "alex" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> [1] My first name is actually Christopher, but handily my parents changed
> their minds after registering my birth and decided to call me by my middle
> name.

[Oddly enough, same here. I'm Chris Paul ... It's an absolute pain in the
arse. Note to parents: don't do this.]

Without wanting to sound too real-world and pragmatic, why not upgrade the
server when you actually *need* to, i.e. learn how to monitor performance and
when it starts to suck, *then* buy new stuff. Otherwise you'll end up in the
situation it is now: a load of kit that's not being used & is depreciating
rapidly.

128MB RAM and a K6 is quite enough to run a decently hammered mod_perl site.
You only need more memory if you end up using a large database or doing
something rash like install Oracle. Assuming you're not on an OC-12 backbone
and you're not doing finite element analysis of an F15 jet per form
submission, your IO bottleneck will be the net.

Building reliability is probably your best aim: does it have a UPS? does it
have a RAID 1/0 config? Dual PSUs? Tape drive & backup policy? Those things
are way more important than a faster chip or RAM.

Paul




Re: Hardware Upgrade Fund

2001-01-19 Thread Redvers Davies

> I like the idea of a backup disk and a procedure that automatically backs up

Do like I did on one of the machines I set up which was to have a backup
disk but not mounted except during backups.


Make it bootable and use rsync to keep peeps data current.

If you lose a disk, simply select the backup disk in LILO.

Its ammazing how many script kiddies don't check the rest of the SCSI
or IDE bus to see if there are any other devices available.



Re: Hardware Upgrade Fund

2001-01-19 Thread David Cantrell

On Fri, Jan 19, 2001 at 02:42:19PM +, Neil Ford wrote:
> >On Fri, Jan 19, 2001 at 02:37:24PM -, Jonathan Peterson wrote:
> >>  > Personally I'd be happier if we had mirrored disks in there.
> >>  I'd go for a backup system before a mirror, myself.
> >
> >That could be good, too...
> >
> >We definately need one of the two. (IMHO)
> >
> >Michael
> 
> Well a tape drive would be easier and (for the most part) cheaper to 
> install. For mirroring you're either going to need a raid controller 
> or use software raid... how good is that under linux?

It's very usable.  At Oven, we used it for the main mail-and-stuff server,
managing something like a hundred gig of disk in RAID-5 loveliness.

Personally, I don't like tapes.  They go wrong easily and someone has to
remember to swap the media.  I favour doing backups to another machine
with rsync.  This has the advantage that you can do far more frequent
backups.  Perhaps that's what we should spend the upgrade money on -
a cheap-ass machine with a bg cheap IDE disk to handle backups *only*.

-- 
David Cantrell | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david/

   Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced



RE: Hardware Upgrade Fund

2001-01-19 Thread Gareth Harper
Title: RE: Hardware Upgrade Fund





I don't know about anyone else, but I'm quite happy to provide some money, but I'd much prefer to do a direct bank cash transfer (through online banking) I don't know if you'd want to publicise your bank acvcount details on the list, but if this is all going ahead and you don't mind transfers then can you send me your bank details and I'll set up the transfer.  if anyone else is interested in that then I'd suggest to keep the traffic off the list then email alex in person.

-Original Message-
From: alex [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: 19 January 2001 12:42
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: Hardware Upgrade Fund



On Fri, 19 Jan 2001, Dave Cross wrote:
> Thanks for the offer. I'm more that happy to take you up on it.


no problems.


> How soon do you think you can have a list of the kinds of hardware
> that you want to buy? That would give us an estimate of how many new
> donors we're looking for.


I'd prefer to do it the other way round if you don't mind, and say you
have just one month to send a cheque for 50 pounds made out to C A McLean
[1] to state51, 8 rhoda street, bethnal green, e2 7ef , or brought along
to the next social or technical meeting.


At the end of the month I'll let you all know what money we have and we
can then decide what to do with it.



Alex


[1] My first name is actually Christopher, but handily my parents changed
their minds after registering my birth and decided to call me by my middle
name.


PS The guy with the tennants extra broke in to another part of the
building and caused some damage to a couple of studios :( it seems that he
couldn't find anything to steal, but still, not nice.


-- 
Snack pastries are dramatic when shapes are combined





Re: Hardware Upgrade Fund

2001-01-19 Thread Robert Shiels

> > Who is planning to store data on penderel that they won't
> > have somewhere
> > else anyway. I don't think we should ever rely on our data
> > being there. I
> > have a local copy of everything that I have on other servers.
>
> So, we need only buy two more of whatever size disk we want in there, and
> backup to disk is a world more fun than backup to tape (unless we feel
like
> spashing out for a tape jukebox).
>
I like the idea of a backup disk and a procedure that automatically backs up
to it; I guess what I'm unhappy about is giving someone else the
responsibility for all our data and the job of managing tapes, that doesn't
seem fair.
>From a security point of view (are we worried about hiding our data from
each other), the backup disk should only be readable by root. Yes? Or should
all the files retain the owners permissions so that we can restore our data
anytime we fancy without needing the sysadmin to do it. I like this plan.


/Robert




RE: Hardware Upgrade Fund

2001-01-19 Thread Jonathan Peterson

> Who is planning to store data on penderel that they won't
> have somewhere
> else anyway. I don't think we should ever rely on our data
> being there. I
> have a local copy of everything that I have on other servers.

What about applications running on penderel that generate data? Even if what
they generate is small, it's a royal PITA to be emailing it around the net
in the name of backup.

If you go for something like an 8 day retention period with weekly full and
daily differential backup, your backup data set would at most be double your
working data set (unless anyone has really funky plans for applications).
So, we need only buy two more of whatever size disk we want in there, and
backup to disk is a world more fun than backup to tape (unless we feel like
spashing out for a tape jukebox).

Or, just get the extra storage space and give everyone an allocation on it
that's double their allocation on the primary storage, and let them write
their own backup scripts. But unless we've already got quota's running (have
we?) that's not so practical maybe.

Jon 'yay! sysadmin!' Peterson




Re: Hardware Upgrade Fund

2001-01-19 Thread Robert Shiels

- Original Message -
From: "Michael Stevens" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: 19 January 2001 14:41
Subject: Re: Hardware Upgrade Fund


> On Fri, Jan 19, 2001 at 02:37:24PM -, Jonathan Peterson wrote:
> > > Personally I'd be happier if we had mirrored disks in there.
> > I'd go for a backup system before a mirror, myself.
>
> That could be good, too...
>
> We definately need one of the two. (IMHO)


definitely

 that's better :-)

I think the backup system should be individual users writing cron jobs to
tar/gzip/ftp their stuff to other machines, or emailing it to their hotmail
accounts if they don't have other machines!

Who is planning to store data on penderel that they won't have somewhere
else anyway. I don't think we should ever rely on our data being there. I
have a local copy of everything that I have on other servers.

Perhaps I'm missing the point here...

/Robert




Re: Hardware Upgrade Fund

2001-01-19 Thread Neil Ford

>On Fri, Jan 19, 2001 at 02:37:24PM -, Jonathan Peterson wrote:
>>  > Personally I'd be happier if we had mirrored disks in there.
>>  I'd go for a backup system before a mirror, myself.
>
>That could be good, too...
>
>We definately need one of the two. (IMHO)
>
>Michael

Well a tape drive would be easier and (for the most part) cheaper to 
install. For mirroring you're either going to need a raid controller 
or use software raid... how good is that under linux?

Seeing as access to the box is not currently an issue, tape changing 
can be done .

Neil.
-- 
Neil C. Ford
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.binky.ourshack.org



Re: Hardware Upgrade Fund

2001-01-19 Thread Michael Stevens

On Fri, Jan 19, 2001 at 02:37:24PM -, Jonathan Peterson wrote:
> > Personally I'd be happier if we had mirrored disks in there.
> I'd go for a backup system before a mirror, myself.

That could be good, too...

We definately need one of the two. (IMHO)

Michael



RE: Hardware Upgrade Fund

2001-01-19 Thread Jonathan Peterson

> Personally I'd be happier if we had mirrored disks in there.

I'd go for a backup system before a mirror, myself.




Re: Hardware Upgrade Fund

2001-01-19 Thread Michael Stevens

On Fri, Jan 19, 2001 at 02:41:57PM +, Jonathan Stowe wrote:
> > [gem@penderel gem]$ df -h
> > FilesystemSize  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
> > /dev/sda6 3.9G  879M  2.8G  24% /
> > /dev/sda1 7.6M  2.9M  4.2M  41% /boot
> > 
> OK that'll be another disk or two then - if there are going to be a number
> of accounts on the machine then I would suggest /home should be a separate
> disk.  I would vote for separate /usr /usr/local and /var partitions too.





Re: Hardware Upgrade Fund

2001-01-19 Thread Jonathan Stowe

On Fri, 19 Jan 2001, Greg McCarroll wrote:

> * Dave Cross ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote:
> > At Fri, 19 Jan 2001 12:34:11 +, John <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > 
> > [upgrading penderel]
> > 
> > > What's the current specs of the machine? (Just out of interest)
> > 
> > I'm not sure. I don't think I've ever known this. I'm hoping that 
> > someone woh a) bought it or b) is sitting next to it will be able to
> > leap in with this information.
> 
> [gem@penderel gem]$ df -h
> FilesystemSize  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
> /dev/sda6 3.9G  879M  2.8G  24% /
> /dev/sda1 7.6M  2.9M  4.2M  41% /boot
> 

OK that'll be another disk or two then - if there are going to be a number
of accounts on the machine then I would suggest /home should be a separate
disk.  I would vote for separate /usr /usr/local and /var partitions too.

/J\
-- 
Jonathan Stowe   |   
http://www.gellyfish.com |   I'm with Grep on this one 
http://www.tackleway.co.uk   |




Re: Hardware Upgrade Fund

2001-01-19 Thread Robin Szemeti

On Fri, 19 Jan 2001, you wrote:

> [gem@penderel gem]$ cat /proc/meminfo 
> total:used:free:  shared: buffers:  cached:
> Mem:  130895872 125063168  5832704 46772224 63795200 15314944
> Swap: 271392768  6909952 264482816
> MemTotal:127828 kB

if its of any intereset I was offered 133mhz DIMMS of the 256Mb flavour
for ~65 + vat the other day .. memory has plummetted now is a very good
time to buy.

-- 
Robin Szemeti

The box said "requires windows 95 or better"
So I installed Linux!



Re: Hardware Upgrade Fund

2001-01-19 Thread alex

On Fri, 19 Jan 2001, Greg McCarroll wrote:

ok i was a bit late ;)

-- 
Snack pastries are dramatic when shapes are combined





Re: Hardware Upgrade Fund

2001-01-19 Thread alex

On Fri, 19 Jan 2001, Dave Cross wrote:
> I'm not sure. I don't think I've ever known this. I'm hoping that
> someone woh a) bought it or b) is sitting next to it will be able to
> leap in with this information.

[alex@penderel alex]$ cat /proc/cpuinfo
processor   : 0
vendor_id   : AuthenticAMD
cpu family  : 5
model   : 8
model name  : AMD-K6(tm) 3D processor
stepping: 12
cpu MHz : 350.803
cache size  : 64 KB
fdiv_bug: no
hlt_bug : no
sep_bug : no
f00f_bug: no
coma_bug: no
fpu : yes
fpu_exception   : yes
cpuid level : 1
wp  : yes
flags   : fpu vme de pse tsc msr mce cx8 sep mtrr
pge mmx 3dnow
bogomips: 699.60

[alex@penderel alex]$ cat
/proc/meminfo
total:used:free:  shared: buffers:  cached:
Mem:  130895872 126423040  4472832 53395456 62877696 15953920
Swap: 271392768  6909952 264482816
MemTotal:127828 kB
MemFree:   4368 kB
MemShared:52144 kB
Buffers:  61404 kB
Cached:   15580 kB
BigTotal: 0 kB
BigFree:  0 kB
SwapTotal:   265032 kB
SwapFree:258284 kB

[alex@penderel alex]$ cat /proc/scsi/scsi
Attached devices:
Host: scsi0 Channel: 00 Id: 06 Lun: 00
  Vendor: IBM  Model: DDRS-34560   Rev: S97B
  Type:   Direct-AccessANSI SCSI revision: 02

[alex@penderel alex]$ df
Filesystem   1k-blocks  Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda6  4119172899532   3010396  24% /
/dev/sda1 7746  2951  4395  41% /boot

I can open up the box on any requested fact-finding missions. :)


alex

-- 
Snack pastries are dramatic when shapes are combined





Re: Hardware Upgrade Fund

2001-01-19 Thread Michael Stevens

On Fri, Jan 19, 2001 at 02:03:43PM -, Robert Shiels wrote:
> > At Fri, 19 Jan 2001 12:34:11 +, John <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > [upgrading penderel]
> > > What's the current specs of the machine? (Just out of interest)
> > I'm not sure. I don't think I've ever known this. I'm hoping that 
> > someone woh a) bought it or b) is sitting next to it will be able to
> > leap in with this information.
> 
> http://se71.org/myimages/pm/picklist.jpg

More disk and RAM sounds like the obvious upgrade...

Personally I'd be happier if we had mirrored disks in there.

Michael

(then again, isn't it always?)



Re: Hardware Upgrade Fund

2001-01-19 Thread Robert Shiels



> At Fri, 19 Jan 2001 12:34:11 +, John <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> 
> [upgrading penderel]
> 
> > What's the current specs of the machine? (Just out of interest)
> 
> I'm not sure. I don't think I've ever known this. I'm hoping that 
> someone woh a) bought it or b) is sitting next to it will be able to
> leap in with this information.

http://se71.org/myimages/pm/picklist.jpg

/Robert

Though I think someone replaced a graphics/network card?




Re: Hardware Upgrade Fund

2001-01-19 Thread Greg McCarroll

* Dave Cross ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote:
> At Fri, 19 Jan 2001 12:34:11 +, John <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> 
> [upgrading penderel]
> 
> > What's the current specs of the machine? (Just out of interest)
> 
> I'm not sure. I don't think I've ever known this. I'm hoping that 
> someone woh a) bought it or b) is sitting next to it will be able to
> leap in with this information.

[gem@penderel gem]$ df -h
FilesystemSize  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda6 3.9G  879M  2.8G  24% /
/dev/sda1 7.6M  2.9M  4.2M  41% /boot

[gem@penderel gem]$ cat /proc/meminfo 
total:used:free:  shared: buffers:  cached:
Mem:  130895872 125063168  5832704 46772224 63795200 15314944
Swap: 271392768  6909952 264482816
MemTotal:127828 kB

[gem@penderel gem]$ cat /proc/cpuinfo 
processor   : 0
vendor_id   : AuthenticAMD
cpu family  : 5
model   : 8
model name  : AMD-K6(tm) 3D processor
stepping: 12
cpu MHz : 350.803
cache size  : 64 KB



-- 
Greg McCarroll  http://www.mccarroll.uklinux.net



Re: Hardware Upgrade Fund

2001-01-19 Thread Dave Cross

At Fri, 19 Jan 2001 12:34:11 +, John <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

[upgrading penderel]

> What's the current specs of the machine? (Just out of interest)

I'm not sure. I don't think I've ever known this. I'm hoping that 
someone woh a) bought it or b) is sitting next to it will be able to
leap in with this information.

Dave...



Re: Hardware Upgrade Fund

2001-01-19 Thread Robert Shiels



> At Fri, 19 Jan 2001 12:41:38 + (GMT), alex <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > On Fri, 19 Jan 2001, Dave Cross wrote:
> >
> OK. Sounds like a fine plan to me.
>
> Just as long as you don't bugger off to Amsterdam, Krefeld or Sweden :)
>
although Alex doesn't know it yet - his job is just about to send him abroad
for an extended period of time, but not until the money is in his bank
account, this is the LondonPM way :)

/Robert




Re: Hardware Upgrade Fund

2001-01-19 Thread Dave Cross

At Fri, 19 Jan 2001 12:41:38 + (GMT), alex <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Fri, 19 Jan 2001, Dave Cross wrote:
>
> > How soon do you think you can have a list of the kinds of hardware
> > that you want to buy? That would give us an estimate of how many new
> > donors we're looking for.
> 
> I'd prefer to do it the other way round if you don't mind, and say you
> have just one month to send a cheque for 50 pounds made out to C A 
> McLean [1] to state51, 8 rhoda street, bethnal green, e2 7ef , or 
> brought along to the next social or technical meeting.
> 
> At the end of the month I'll let you all know what money we have and 
> we can then decide what to do with it.

OK. Sounds like a fine plan to me.

Just as long as you don't bugger off to Amsterdam, Krefeld or Sweden :)

Dave...



Re: Hardware Upgrade Fund

2001-01-19 Thread alex

On Fri, 19 Jan 2001, Dave Cross wrote:
> Thanks for the offer. I'm more that happy to take you up on it.

no problems.

> How soon do you think you can have a list of the kinds of hardware
> that you want to buy? That would give us an estimate of how many new
> donors we're looking for.

I'd prefer to do it the other way round if you don't mind, and say you
have just one month to send a cheque for 50 pounds made out to C A McLean
[1] to state51, 8 rhoda street, bethnal green, e2 7ef , or brought along
to the next social or technical meeting.

At the end of the month I'll let you all know what money we have and we
can then decide what to do with it.


Alex

[1] My first name is actually Christopher, but handily my parents changed
their minds after registering my birth and decided to call me by my middle
name.

PS The guy with the tennants extra broke in to another part of the
building and caused some damage to a couple of studios :( it seems that he
couldn't find anything to steal, but still, not nice.

-- 
Snack pastries are dramatic when shapes are combined





Re: Hardware Upgrade Fund

2001-01-19 Thread Neil Ford

>A quick reminder of something I mentioned last night.
>
>The hardware spec for penderel (our server) is starting to show its age
>(I don't know exactly what the specs are, but the box is at least 18
>months old).
>
>There are also a number of people who have expressed an interest in
>joining the exclusive club of people who have accounts on the server.
>
>The suggestion is, therefore, that we set up a hardware upgrade fund to
>buy new bits for the server. Contributions would be set at £50 and
>anyone contributing would gain the same rights on the box as the
>origianl contributors.
>
>I'm therefore looking for a volunteer to organise this. The organiser
>would, of course, be given a free login on the server.
>
>Anyone fancy it?
>
>Dave...

As a comparison, here's the spec of Ourshack.com (which houses 
Template Toolkit amongst other projects). I don't think anyone's 
complained about performance just yet.

Pentium II 233MMX
320MB RAM (this we have upgraded)
14GB HD

Box is running Apache, Roxen, MySQL and all the regular stuff (named, 
mail, mailman), never seems to be heavily loaded.

So you might be quite surprised how little you need to add. The 
biggest expense may be some kind of backup device.

Neil.



-- 
Neil C. Ford
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.binky.ourshack.org



Re: Hardware Upgrade Fund

2001-01-19 Thread John

Dave Cross ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote:

> At Fri, 19 Jan 2001 12:12:58 +, Simon Wistow <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > Dave Cross wrote:
> > 
> > > I'm therefore looking for a volunteer to organise this. The 
> > > organiser would, of course, be given a free login on the server.

What's the current specs of the machine? (Just out of interest)

John

-- 
:wq



Re: Hardware Upgrade Fund

2001-01-19 Thread Jonathan Stowe

On Fri, 19 Jan 2001, Dave Cross wrote:

> At Fri, 19 Jan 2001 12:10:26 + (GMT), alex <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > On Fri, 19 Jan 2001, Dave Cross wrote:
> > > Anyone fancy it?
> > 
> > I forgot to mention, I offered to do this before, and that offer still
> > stands.
> 
> Alex,
> 
> Thanks for the offer. I'm more that happy to take you up on it.
> 
> How soon do you think you can have a list of the kinds of hardware that
> you want to buy? That would give us an estimate of how many new donors
> we're looking for.
> 

ISTR that I *was* originally signed up to pay for the server in the first
place but for some reason failed to do so I would be quite happy to chip
in the odd £50.00 this time.

If anyone needs some help organizing as well let me know.

/J\
-- 
Jonathan Stowe   |   
http://www.gellyfish.com |   I'm with Grep on this one 
http://www.tackleway.co.uk   |




Re: Hardware Upgrade Fund

2001-01-19 Thread Dave Cross

At Fri, 19 Jan 2001 12:12:58 +, Simon Wistow <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Dave Cross wrote:
> 
> > I'm therefore looking for a volunteer to organise this. The 
> > organiser would, of course, be given a free login on the server.
> > 
> > Anyone fancy it?
> 
> I'll give it a go.

Simon,

The advantage of having Alex doing it, is that with penderel sitting 
under his desk, hardware installation is much easier. I'm sure he'd
be happy for help speccing the requirement tho'.

Did you get your login account? You earned one for lugging the bloody
thing halfway across london.

Dave...



Re: Hardware Upgrade Fund

2001-01-19 Thread Dave Cross

At Fri, 19 Jan 2001 12:10:26 + (GMT), alex <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Fri, 19 Jan 2001, Dave Cross wrote:
> > Anyone fancy it?
> 
> I forgot to mention, I offered to do this before, and that offer still
> stands.

Alex,

Thanks for the offer. I'm more that happy to take you up on it.

How soon do you think you can have a list of the kinds of hardware that
you want to buy? That would give us an estimate of how many new donors
we're looking for.

Dave...



Re: Hardware Upgrade Fund

2001-01-19 Thread Simon Wistow

Dave Cross wrote:

> I'm therefore looking for a volunteer to organise this. The organiser
> would, of course, be given a free login on the server.
> 
> Anyone fancy it?

I'll give it a go.



Re: Hardware Upgrade Fund

2001-01-19 Thread alex

On Fri, 19 Jan 2001, Dave Cross wrote:
> Anyone fancy it?

I forgot to mention, I offered to do this before, and that offer still
stands.

alex

-- 
Snack pastries are dramatic when shapes are combined