[HCoop-Discuss] Filesystem poll results

[Derrick Brashear]

On Thu, Jul 30, 2009 at 9:01 AM, Adam Chlipala<adamc at hcoop.net> wrote:
> Derrick Brashear wrote:
>> I will point out what I did elsewhere: if set up right, AFS is "set
>> and forget". My 1994-vintage AFS cell just keeps ticking.
>>
>
> Since you keep bringing this up, I've become curious about the details.
> What is the peak number of users of that set-up?

It was in the small hundreds range. Most are gone now and it's in the
dozens. Peak was certainly above where hcoop is now but not much.

> What is the policy for
> advertising chances for membership and accepting new members?

Explicitly not allowed, because I was using CMU's network for 100% of
my connectivity. It's not "membership", either. It's "here, I set up
this distributed computing infrastructure out of my own pocket and
time. You can use it, or join it."

> A lot of
> the issues we run into simply wouldn't be coming up if we were more of
> an "old boys' club," inviting friends in at a slow rate.

Disagree, at least on the topic of invite rate. More-expert users, you
might have a point, but I didn't get that.
I got whatever people left CMU, or never got in, and wanted an account.

> Also, have you had easy physical access to the machine(s) all along?  We
> never have, so hardware upgrades are more work than you might think.

My Sparc Classic (SunOS 4.1.4) and 1998-vintage PC(*) are still
running services. I don't remember the last time the Classic was open,
but I'm pretty sure it was before 2004. Try again. (Not that that has
*anything* to do with AFS whatsoever. If your problem is your hardware
is unreliable, any filesystem, or database or whatever, is going to
suck.)

* I'm not sure on 1998. I can dmidecode if you want an exact model
number. It's running Fedora Core 1.