Re: [9fans] sources down?

[Rudolf Sykora <rudolf.sykora@gmail.com>]

> While not having direct knowledge of what caused the current outage, I
> can say that such outages are rarely caused by Plan 9 or the hardware
> on which its running.

Ok. So what caused the other outrages in the recent past?
(I may give at least one other date, on which I even asked the same
question to the list; according to you this situation is very rare,
according to what I have lived through it happens annoyingly often.)

> You see, right now, the Plan 9 machine room
> (and the doom room, and much of the offices/lab space around it) are
> being repurposed. There are exactly (I think exactly) two people who
> turn the lights back on every time something like this happens, and
> they get no accolades from the company for providing this free service
> to the community -- in fact, their life would be significantly better
> if they just left the lights off.  So please, keep antagonizing them
> so that they shut this nice free service down -- you'll make their
> lives considerably more simple and they can get back to doing real
> work.

First, I am grateful, somebody once designed plan 9. It is a well
crafted system.
Second, if the system is to be hosted as it is now, it is a shame.
Make statistics.
I don't care who helps, as long as it doesn't work.


> As ron said, verifying that sources is down on the list (or IRC or
> whatever) and then sending a polite note to geoff and/or jmk to let
> them know is fine (since they use this infrastructure as their primary
> work environment, these problems often cause them more pain than us).

I do not know who takes care of the sources. I do not know even there
is somebody called geoff. Thus writing that we should appeal to him is
a nonsense. Moreover, there is not that many posts here, nobody gets
hurt if one writes 'sources are down' here. If it were true and it all
worked as it should, you wouldn't have here anything, by the way.
Writing to the list also documents that something is wrong. And that's
a good thing.

> Anything beyond that is ridiculous.  Also  as Ron said, a far more
> constructive approach is mirroring (which many already do), and an
> even better idea would be for someone to code up a nice little layer
> that directs your sources request to the closest available server.

So is there a need, suddenly? Isn't it good to discuss it here? What
about saying, hey we need it. Who can do it? I guessed this mailing
list IS the right place.

I am a physicist. I can recognize I like the system in a way. I can't
do much about it yet. It's enough for me, that I must struggle with
topics like: I need python, there seem too many of them somehow, how
should I install it, which one? what is necessary?, why hasn't
somebody write a few lines about it?, oh I can't use ssh2, oh probably
usb won't work, oh, let's forget about wireless... Encountering
problems even when downloading sources is just getting to the breaking
point to say: that's enough, let's just stick to something that has
some problems, but works somehow (bsd, linux, whatever...; or
plan9port, glendix). And that's a pity, because although one knows he
would like to follow some way, he is forced to follow a different one.

R