[Volunteers] State of the old host

[Alvin Oga]

hi ya rick

On Wed, 3 May 2006, Rick Moen wrote:

> This is mainly for Alvin's benefit

gee thanx.. 

> Marc Merlin confirmed that the SVLUG server is a gift 2U server box
> running Debian with enormously excessive CPU power and a single,
> medium-sized IDE hard drive, donated by (IIRC) Google.  I tracked down
> its IP address, and deduced that it's at Hurricane Electric, at colo
> rackspace in Fremont being comped to us (in his colo cabinet) by member
> Drew Bertola.  Paul Reed is at present the only person with the root
> password.

i think there was a svlug machine preceding that one but that doesn't
matter
 
> the IP address was also slightly wrong:  The PTR record points to
> "svlug.svlug.org".

that's bad, but still better than w.x.y.z.he.net or some other reverse

> address I had for him (in Sunnyvale), and found from the apartment
> manager that he'd moved and the company no longer had a forwarding
> address.

yeah.. he seems to have disappered ( aka married if i recall )
 
> At the same time, Paul (the only root user) assessed the condition of
> the system software:  bad.  When he tried to apt-get update the machine,
> it warned him that some crucial package would have to be removed to
> perform the upgrade

seems odd to me, but i didnt see those warnings on the upgdates/upgrades

, and he didn't want to proceed.  Marc Merlin (who
> built and used to admin the box) claimed in e-mail that this is nothing
> to worry about, though the grsecurity-patched kernel would need to be
> replaced.  Paul still did not wish to proceed.  He did, however, do the
> first full system backup in years(!).

that is ooddd too ... backups is what i jump up and down about
except for my own backups sometimes .. too much work to test it

> Meanwhile, new VP Micah Dowty lobbied for abandonment of physical boxes

good idea

> and use of a virtual-server hosting service.  [RM 2006-05-03: Snip
> once-relevant discussion of options now obsoleted by Linode's generous
> gift of hosting, secured for us by Micah.  Thank you, Micah!  Thank you,
> Linode!]

i'd be curious to see how virtual servers would work for svlug.org

> Paul sees this as perfect because it eliminates the access problem
> illustrated by Drew Bertola's non-responsiveness.

and can be indicative of jsut about anybody that has "control"
of community property ... i prefer to see shared responsibilities
that if one is too bz, another can step in during their shift to 
take care of any issues

>  Jim Dennis and I
> (qualified sysadmins) consider this a non-sequitur:  If our physical
> host goes down and we can't get quick physical access, just repoint
> the DNS to a spare machine, copy our backup files onto it, and done.

that assumes you have access to the dns records at the registrars
or at least the zone file 

> Paul prefers virtual hosting because we can walk away from it and move
> elsewhere,

nah... bad idea ... you should say thank you for your support
but we need this new widget features .. can we get it here .. etc

> whereas physical hosting means you need physical access.  

you will always need physical access .. even with virtual servers

> (In truth, you can _also_ walk away from physical hosting in exactly the
> same way, and later recover the physical box if it still matters, at
> your leisure.)

exactly, you can jsut as easily walk from physical machines just
as easily as virtual machines

> We also heard back from Drew, saying (paraphrased), "While I'm at it,
> guys, I'll soon be needing to _reclaim_ that 2U of rack space you're
> using.  Go elsewhere, please."  No specific deadline, but that was
> (IIRC) mid-February.

bad thing

--- find machines is trivially simple to get  .. i see few folks 
    throwing away purrfectly working and tested and burnt-in systems
    and svlug.or probably doesn't need quad-opterons with 16GB of 
    dual-channel ddr2 memory ( or similar ) that replaces the throw away
    boxes

c ya
alvin