Slartibartfast is showing his age

Just zis Guy said:

Slartibartfast offline, chapmancentral unavailable. A bad block on
one of his venerable IBM 9GB ultra SCSI disks, currently running
repairy type things. Maybe time for a new disk :-(

Maybe time to run a RAID setup to keep things going if a disk fails? My
P100 server could show yours the meaning of venerable, having a huge 6GB
installed disk, spread over three drives.

RAID-1 on most of it, protecting system, website and swap space in the
event of a single disk failure. Assuming it doesn't take out the IDE
interface, it'll keep running...

Hope you're back up and running soon!

--
Mark.
http://tranchant.plus.com/

Just Zis Guy said:

Slartibartfast offline, chapmancentral unavailable. A bad block on one
of his venerable IBM 9GB ultra SCSI disks, currently running repairy
type things. Maybe time for a new disk :-(
Guy
--
May contain traces of irony. Contents liable to settle after posting.
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk/http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
88% of helmet statistics are made up, 65% of them at Washington
University

tell me about it. Lemonds hard disk was playing up two weeks ago, I
fitted a temporary replacement and if I get time this evening (if the
traffic doesn't delay me too much) I am going to stop by ccl and get a
new HDD for it. [I may go directly home and get the bike out and ride
up, thus beating the worst of traffic - why not]

--

On Fri, 02 Jul 2004 14:36:28 +0100, Mark Tranchant
<[email hidden]> wrote in message
<[email hidden]>:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Slartibartfast offline, chapmancentral unavailable. A bad block on
one of his venerable IBM 9GB ultra SCSI disks, currently running
repairy type things. Maybe time for a new disk :-(

Quoted message said:

Maybe time to run a RAID setup to keep things going if a disk fails?

Which would require another disk or two...

I have got a spare server but am short of Round Tuits.

Quoted message said:

Hope you're back up and running soon!

Online temporarily while I wait for some patches to download.

Guy
--
May contain traces of irony. Contents liable to settle after posting.
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk

88% of helmet statistics are made up, 65% of them at Washington University

On Fri, 02 Jul 2004 15:05:59 GMT, Mike Causer
<[email hidden]> wrote in message
<rReFc.54$AM.37@newsfe1-win>:

Quoted message said:

I've got a couple of those surplus to requirements. Do you want 'em?

Ooh, yes please! Emu me to negotiate price etc.

Thanks

guy dot chapman at spamcop dot net

Guy
--
May contain traces of irony. Contents liable to settle after posting.
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk

88% of helmet statistics are made up, 65% of them at Washington University

you know? said:

Slartibartfast offline, chapmancentral unavailable. A bad block on
one of his venerable IBM 9GB ultra SCSI disks, currently running
repairy type things. Maybe time for a new disk :-(

I've got a couple of those surplus to requirements. Do you want 'em?

Mike

in message <[email hidden]>, Just zis Guy,

you know? (') said:

Slartibartfast offline, chapmancentral unavailable. A bad block on
one of his venerable IBM 9GB ultra SCSI disks, currently running
repairy type things. Maybe time for a new disk :-(

Time to raid the piggy bank, maybe?

--
[email hidden] (Simon Brooke) http://www.jasmine.org.uk/~simon/
;; If God does not write LISP, God writes some code so similar to
;; LISP as to make no difference.

On Fri, 02 Jul 2004 15:35:03 GMT, Simon Brooke <[email hidden]>

wrote in message : said:

Time to raid the piggy bank, maybe?

Why start now? I'll just wait for the next redundant old server to
fall in my direction :-)

Guy
--
May contain traces of irony. Contents liable to settle after posting.
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk

88% of helmet statistics are made up, 65% of them at Washington University

"Mark Tranchant" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

Just zis Guy said:

Slartibartfast offline, chapmancentral unavailable. A bad block on
one of his venerable IBM 9GB ultra SCSI disks, currently running
repairy type things. Maybe time for a new disk :-(

Maybe time to run a RAID setup to keep things going if a disk fails? My
P100 server could show yours the meaning of venerable, having a huge 6GB
installed disk, spread over three drives.

RAID-1 on most of it, protecting system, website and swap space in the
event of a single disk failure. Assuming it doesn't take out the IDE
interface, it'll keep running...

Hope you're back up and running soon!

RAID 1 wont protect you against a software failure though, such as user
error, virus, worm etc. These days, *much* more likely than a disk crash.

--
Tumbleweed

email replies not necessary but to contact use;
tumbleweednews at hotmail dot com

On Fri, 2 Jul 2004 17:25:15 +0100, "Tumbleweed"
<[email hidden]> wrote in message
<[email hidden]>:

Quoted message said:

RAID 1 wont protect you against a software failure though, such as user
error, virus, worm etc. These days, *much* more likely than a disk crash.

Using non-Microsoft web server software helps there, though.

Guy
--
May contain traces of irony. Contents liable to settle after posting.
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk

88% of helmet statistics are made up, 65% of them at Washington University

On Fri, 02 Jul 2004 14:13:42 +0100, "Just zis Guy, you know?"
<[email hidden]> wrote in message
<[email hidden]>:

Quoted message said:

Slartibartfast offline, chapmancentral unavailable.

Disks doctored, patches patched, Domino updated to 6.5.2, so all
should now be well again.

Must get back to Linux some time...

Guy
--
May contain traces of irony. Contents liable to settle after posting.
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk

88% of helmet statistics are made up, 65% of them at Washington University

in message <[email hidden]>, Tumbleweed

(') said:

"Mark Tranchant" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

RAID-1 on most of it, protecting system, website and swap space in
the event of a single disk failure. Assuming it doesn't take out the
IDE interface, it'll keep running...

RAID 1 wont protect you against a software failure though, such as
user error, virus, worm etc. These days, *much* more likely than a
disk crash.

Not if you run a proper operating system. And don't mess around when
logged in as root. We haven't had a software failure (or a security
breach, or a virus, or a worm) on any of our servers in the last ten
years (and I can't remember one before that). We've had a number of
hardware failures - power supplies, chip fans, disks - but we've never
lost any data. Crosses fingers, touches wood, throws salt over
shoulder.

I suspect that the intersection between the set of people who think
software problems are things which just happen and you can't do
anything about, and the set of people run Microsoft operating systems,
is quite large.

--
[email hidden] (Simon Brooke) http://www.jasmine.org.uk/~simon/

IMHO, there aren't enough committed Christians, but that's care
in the community for you. -- Ben Evans

in message <[email hidden]>, Just zis Guy,

you know? (') said:

On Fri, 02 Jul 2004 15:35:03 GMT, Simon Brooke <[email hidden]>

wrote in message : said:

Time to raid the piggy bank, maybe?

Why start now? I'll just wait for the next redundant old server to
fall in my direction :-)

Well, it doesn't really matter _what_ you raid so long as you raid,
as the viking said to the bishop.

--
[email hidden] (Simon Brooke) http://www.jasmine.org.uk/~simon/

;; ... exposing the violence incoherent in the system...

On 2/7/04 9:05 pm, in article
[email hidden], "Simon Brooke"

Quoted message said:

Not if you run a proper operating system. And don't mess around when
logged in as root. We haven't had a software failure (or a security
breach, or a virus, or a worm) on any of our servers in the last ten
years (and I can't remember one before that). We've had a number of
hardware failures - power supplies, chip fans, disks - but we've never
lost any data. Crosses fingers, touches wood, throws salt over
shoulder.

RAID doen't help when you get 2 disks die in the array. Deskstar GXP75 are
the spawn of Stan.. 20% failure in 18 months was a little high and two
failures inside 24 hours on the one array was something that caused more
than a little hassle.

Backups are your friends but they take a little while to restore on a half
terabyte array.

...d

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

RAID 1 wont protect you against a software failure though, such as
user error, virus, worm etc. These days, *much* more likely than a
disk crash.

Not if you run a proper operating system.

Hmmm, I read that as 'paper' operating system. I suppose its even more
resilient then.

"Simon Brooke" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

in message <[email hidden]>, Tumbleweed

(') said:

"Mark Tranchant" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

RAID-1 on most of it, protecting system, website and swap space in
the event of a single disk failure. Assuming it doesn't take out the
IDE interface, it'll keep running...

RAID 1 wont protect you against a software failure though, such as
user error, virus, worm etc. These days, *much* more likely than a
disk crash.

Not if you run a proper operating system. And don't mess around when
logged in as root. We haven't had a software failure (or a security
breach, or a virus, or a worm) on any of our servers in the last ten
years (and I can't remember one before that). We've had a number of

What...... you've never had a kernel panic in ten years...over several
servers? Excuse me if that seems difficult to believe!

--
Tumbleweed

email replies not necessary but to contact use;
tumbleweednews at hotmail dot com

On Sat, 3 Jul 2004 09:24:31 +0100, "Tumbleweed"
<[email hidden]> wrote in message
<[email hidden]>:

Quoted message said:

What...... you've never had a kernel panic in ten years...over several
servers? Excuse me if that seems difficult to believe!

Believeable for Solaris, though.

Guy
--
May contain traces of irony. Contents liable to settle after posting.
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk

88% of helmet statistics are made up, 65% of them at Washington University

in message <[email hidden]>, Tumbleweed

(') said:

"Simon Brooke" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

in message <[email hidden]>, Tumbleweed

(') said:

"Mark Tranchant" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...
>
> RAID-1 on most of it, protecting system, website and swap space in
> the event of a single disk failure. Assuming it doesn't take out
> the IDE interface, it'll keep running...

RAID 1 wont protect you against a software failure though, such as
user error, virus, worm etc. These days, *much* more likely than a
disk crash.

Not if you run a proper operating system. And don't mess around when
logged in as root. We haven't had a software failure (or a security
breach, or a virus, or a worm) on any of our servers in the last ten
years (and I can't remember one before that). We've had a number of

What...... you've never had a kernel panic in ten years...over several
servers? Excuse me if that seems difficult to believe!

'true though. Used to get kernel panics with BSD 4.2 back in the
eighties; have occasionally in the past had kernel panics on test boxes
running experimental kernels (we were running RAID on a Linux 1.0.x
long before RAID got merged into the main kernel source tree). Never
had a kernel panic on a production machine. I've just checked the root
log (which we keep on paper for obvious reasons); no kernel panic,
ever.

--
[email hidden] (Simon Brooke) http://www.jasmine.org.uk/~simon/

I shall continue to be an impossible person so long as those
who are now possible remain possible -- Michael Bakunin

David Martin said:

RAID doen't help when you get 2 disks die in the array. Deskstar GXP75
are
the spawn of Stan.. 20% failure in 18 months was a little high and two
failures inside 24 hours on the one array was something that caused more
than a little hassle.

When I worked at another major UK university I was responsible for
commissioning a terabyte RAID system. It was [censored] and just to prove it
the company went bust so we couldn't return it. Before they went bust the
company's engineer came out and swapped various disks, various caddies,
various controller cards... It still had repeated but not repeatable
failures. After they went bust and we realised we were stuck with it, I
stripped the thing completely, put in new ribbon cables and it has worked
fine since. I even found a way of adding two more disks to fill the
controller cards and get a bit more space out of it. As usual the company
had a skimped on the most trivial part of the system, they'd bought the
cheapest shortest ribbon cable they could and their engineer hadn't
followed the first rule of any wired together system: check the cabling
FIRST!

Colin

On 5/7/04 9:10 am, in article [email hidden], "Colin

Blackburn said:

David Martin said:

RAID doen't help when you get 2 disks die in the array. Deskstar GXP75
are
the spawn of Stan.. 20% failure in 18 months was a little high and two
failures inside 24 hours on the one array was something that caused more
than a little hassle.

When I worked at another major UK university I was responsible for
commissioning a terabyte RAID system. It was [censored] and just to prove it
the company went bust so we couldn't return it.

We have a multi terabyte HSM system. I'll refrain from saying anything that
could be incriminating about it as the company who sell it are most unlikely
to go bust..

The interesting thing we hadn't considered is that when someone uses a
graphical file browser to view a directory, all the files are retrieved from
tape.. Big performance hit.

...d