Oolite Bulletins

Unfortunately, hardware problems continue with the server that runs the wiki, and it's getting worse.

I will try and arrange for some alternate hardware on which to run it, but for the time being this probably means it will be on my ADSL line which has only 256Kbits of upstream. Until I get it running on new hardware expect the site to be down.

Thanks for your patience!

OK - I have dug up some spare hardware and set up the wiki on it while the proper server is having trouble. I loaded the backup from the weekend onto it. There are some caveats:

- The only suitable hardware I could dig up is an old 333MHz UtraSPARC II system (openbsd/sparc64). Therefore it's not very fast.
- It's running on my home ADSL connection, not the big fat pipe the data centre will have.
- The database has been made read-only.
- There are no nightly builds for Linux at present, that ran on the same server. I'm not sure an OpenBSD/sparc64 nightly build will be of much use

So - you can access the wiki again but you'll have to be patient. It may take an hour from me posting this message until you can reach it, that's how long the TTL is on the DNS record.

Is there a way I can just cache the entire wiki; save it to my computer?

No, not without clobbering both my poor old SPARC system and my ADSL upstream at the same time!

It could have been worse - it could have ended up on my VAX!

When it gets up on a better connection, though, is there?

You have a VAX! Wow! Do you use it to heat the house?

Haven't used VAX VMS since my Uni days (Sunderland - had 3 of them - Kirk, Spock and McCoy!)

What kind of system do you need - I've got a box full of partly stripped down PCs at work (they're mine - they're just at work so my wife continues to think I've got rid of them!) - getting them to the Isle of Man might be a bit tricky though!

VAX = ?

(Youngling unknowing of stone age technologies... )

wackyman465 wrote:

VAX = ?

(Youngling unknowing of stone age technologies... )

Once upon a time, there was a company called Digital. They invented a machine called the PDP-8, on which in the year 1969, the very first baby steps of UNIX were taken. Later, it produced the PDP-11, which was a legend in its own lunchtime. Languages such as C were developed on the PDP-11, under the then growing UNIX.

Then, in 1979, the VAX series was born with the VAX 11/780, a full 32 bit architecture, complete with an MMU etc The VAX 11 was the direct successor of the PDP 11, hence the '11' in the name of the first VAX. Where PDP stood for "Programmed Data Processor", VAX stood for "Virtual Address eXtension", to point out the advanced virtual memory features that we take for granted today. They developed an operating system to go with it called VMS (Virtual Memory System), with features that Microsoft didn't get until the mid 1990s. BSD UNIX was also significantly developed, including the TCP/IP stack that you use this very day (Microsoft used the BSD TCP/IP implementation to make the NT TCP/IP stack). Throughout the whole 1980s, us kids with our Spectrums and BBC Micros talked of the VAX in hushed, awed tones. After the VAX, Digital invented something new called the Alpha architecture. The original Alpha architecture was so fast when it came out, it simply blew everything else out of the water.

Unfortunately, Digital got taken over by Compaq who got taken over by HP, who dumped the Alpha in favour of Intel's awful Itanium. Little is left of Digital now, save the DLT backup tape format, and VMS, and the control codes still used today on a modern terminal window. And of course, BSD UNIX lives on, in the guise of Mac OS X, OpenBSD, NetBSD and FreeBSD.

The VAX that I have isn't a room-filling 11/780, it's just a wee late model MicroVAX with 70-odd MB of RAM, and 1GB of disc. It runs BSD rather than VMS. Even though it's a MicroVAX, it still can do a reasonable job of heating a small room

The word 'Micro' when prepended to VAX usually means it has a CPU you'd recognise as a CPU, a single chip with a heat sink stuck on top of it. The non-micro CPUs were usually made up of numerous chips. Incidentally, you may think of a 1GHz front side bus as being something new and exciting..but the VAX 9000 in the late 1980s had a 1GHz front side bus. But it did fill a room, and it did consume as much electricity as a small village.

DaddyHoggy wrote:

What kind of system do you need

One in the data centre, really, rather than in my house! The arrangements at the moment should only be temporary, I'm hoping it won't be long before proper replacement hardware is available at the data centre (spares are on order).

..but the VAX 9000 in the late 1980s had a 1GHz front side bus. But it did fill a room, and it did consume as much electricity as a small village.

wackyman465 wrote:

..but the VAX 9000 in the late 1980s had a 1GHz front side bus. But it did fill a room, and it did consume as much electricity as a small village.

Young sir, it is considered slighty gauche to titter about decades you didn't exist in.

I did too exist! I just wasn't all in one place, and definitely not in my current form.

Good answer oh wackyone!

Danke!

Just an update.

STILL working on getting new hardware, so the wiki is still on a home ADSL connection with an ancient UltraSPARC system. Sorry.

PLEASE PLEASE don't try and download the whole wiki with some kind of "recursively get the whole website thing" (such as wget, or anything else). It hammers the CPU on the system and really hammers my ADSL connection - it's effectively a denial of service attack. I had to block an IP address today because it looked like that was what they were doing, they sent the load average up to about 150 in the process and saturated my ADSL, and of course made the wiki inaccessable to everyone else.