Date: Wed, 18 Apr 2001 06:46:57 +1000 (Australia/ACT) From: Darren Reed <avalon@coombs.anu.edu.au> To: bright@wintelcom.net (Alfred Perlstein) Cc: freebsd-security@FreeBSD.ORG, net@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: non-random IP IDs Message-ID: <200104172046.GAA04095@caligula.anu.edu.au> In-Reply-To: <20010417131300.L976@fw.wintelcom.net> from "Alfred Perlstein" at Apr 17, 2001 01:13:00 PM
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In some mail from Alfred Perlstein, sie said: > > * Rodney W. Grimes <freebsd@gndrsh.dnsmgr.net> [010417 10:37] wrote: > > > * Darren Reed <avalon@coombs.anu.edu.au> [010417 04:29] wrote: > > > > In some mail from Julian Elischer, sie said: > > > > > > > > > > there is a site that calculates server uptime from these numbers. > > > > > All the leading machines are freeBSD. When you do this it will > > > > > no-longer be able to track us :-( > > > > > > > > IMHO, extraordinarily large uptimes are nothing to be proud of and > > > > say nothing about the quality of software. > > > > > > > > I'd almost go so far as to say uptimes greater than 1 year indicate > > > > that the system administration practises need review. [WARNING: major digression from security ahead] I'm not talking (just) about security here. I'm talking about systems maintenance. How long has your box been up ? How many changes to the system config have been made since then ? If you're not there, and it reboots, will it come up 100% functional ? Do your computers need some amount of preventative maintenance like internal cleaning to deal with dust build up, etc ? How many times do unscheduled reboots result in hardware not spinning back up and at an inconevient time ? Any non-trivial change to startup (or bootup) sequence should be tested and how do you do that without a reboot ? Else where is the egg when that "she'll be right mate" change fails at 9:00am on Monday morning and you've slept in ? There is so much more to serious system admin (from your personal desktops to mainframes) than just applying (security) patches and keeping it running with no downtime. Well, that is when you don't have hot-swap everything :) None of my personal boxes have uptimes that ever exceed 6 months, even my servers, but I have complete confidence in them rebooting and services being restarted (modulo file system damage from an unclean shutdown). Darren To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-net" in the body of the message
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