Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Thu, 03 May 2001 19:51:21 +0200
From:      Poul-Henning Kamp <phk@critter.freebsd.dk>
To:        jessemonroy@email.com
Cc:        jkh@osd.bsdi.com, hackers@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: [jkh@osd.bsdi.com: ANNOUNCE: Status update on ftp.freebsd.org A KA ftp.freesoftware.com] 
Message-ID:  <31182.988912281@critter>
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Thu, 03 May 2001 10:32:32 PDT." <200105031733.KAA11858@dnull.com> 

next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help

Jordan,

As far as I can see the ECHELON is still doing a good job of
filtering his messages out, I have seen no traces of this thread
anywhere else than on the encrypted monitor VPN.

But I guess he is on to our plan, so we really have no choice but
to kill him.  Is it your turn or my turn to call the squad ?

Ohh, btw: great cover story you got going there, I wonder if anybody
else will catch the subtle irony of the first space tourist having
the same name as a former eastern block dictator, TSGM were all
howling from laughter when they heard it, you certainly scored 
some brownie points with that.

And how's your new helicopter ?  Black is always beautiful as they say :-)

Poul-Henning


In message <200105031733.KAA11858@dnull.com>, jessem@livecam.com writes:
>On  3 May, Jordan Hubbard wrote:
>> Well, given that it's you I'm speaking with, I think we can just
>> settle for the Aliens explanation and leave it at that.  In the real
>> world, shit happens and people do their best to deal with it, often
>> with inadequate information and a lack of alternative resources.
>> 
>> I suppose I could also ascribe your own failure to ever come up with a
>> QIC tape driver or a floppy driver (despite months of "newsletters"
>> and apparent effort) as a coverup or major incompetence in action, but
>> that would be another case of reading too much into a sitution where
>> simple human frailty was a more than adequate explanation.
>> 
>> If you wish to turn SVBUG into your own personal pulpit for conspiracy
>> theories and other wild-ass politicking then you're also free to do
>> so, but SVBUG should not then be surprised if the rest of us avoid it
>> like the plague.  I've already made our position plain and this is the
>> last communication we need to have on the matter since I can easily
>> see that we're going squarely down the path of serious
>> non-productivity with this whole exchange.  I also don't see where the
>> -hackers mailing list needs to be involved since this has NOTHING to
>> do with FreeBSD hacking.  Have a nice day.
>> 
>Mr. Hubbard,
>    It's more than apparent I've found the right point at which to
>discuss this issue. If flame bait had to be labeled, in this case
>it would be 'aliens'. We both have bitten into that apple now.
>
>    I hoped you would answer the question. However, given the past
>nature of your responses, my guess that you would take the 'aliens' 
>route proved correct (at least to me). Conspiracy, that's your label.
>It has implications, I don't see any that apply; perhaps you do.
>
>    As for the nature of SVBUG, perhaps you might consider
>that my 'wild-ass politicking' might be the response of the
>club as a whole. To which, a bunch of OS-X newbies might
>be the least of your issues for years to come.
>
>    Lastly, as an SVBUG club member remarked last might, "perhaps
>FreeBSD will now become familiar with how the Jolitz felt, when
>they were accused of coverups."
>
>				Best Regards,
>				Jessem.
>
>
>
>
>> - Jordan
>> 
>> From: jessem@livecam.com
>> Subject: Re: [jkh@osd.bsdi.com: ANNOUNCE: Status update on ftp.freebsd.org A KA ftp.freesoftware.com]
>> Date: Thu, 3 May 2001 03:14:44 -0700 (PDT)
>> 
>>> Jordan,
>>>     I don't buy this story for a moment. You should expect
>>> SVBUG not to either. This can only be classified as:
>>> 
>>> A) A poor excuse for a coverup (for some unknown reason)
>>> B) Major incompetence (in which someone should resign)
>>> C) Aliens have landed
>>> 
>>>     If as you say, it has been known since the 20th of 
>>> April, 2001, then the world (and FreeBSD) has plenty
>>> of channels for communications. Windriver has a website,
>>> it is un-affected by FreeBSD traffic. BSDi has a website,
>>> it is un-affected by FreeBSD traffic. Daemonnews has
>>> a website.... Do I need continue?
>>> 
>>> 					Best Regards,
>>> 					Jessem.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>>     
>>> > To: announce@FreeBSD.ORG
>>> > Subject: ANNOUNCE: Status update on ftp.freebsd.org AKA ftp.freesoftware.com
>>> > X-Mailer: Mew version 1.94.1 on Emacs 20.7 / Mule 4.0 (HANANOEN)
>>> > Date: Wed, 02 May 2001 20:58:09 -0700
>>> > From: Jordan Hubbard <jkh@osd.bsdi.com>
>>> > 
>>> > Hi folks,
>>> > 
>>> > This is just a short note to discuss the current state of affairs with
>>> > our master FTP site, explain what we're doing about it and combat some
>>> > of the FUD floating around which has everyone from space aliens to
>>> > Wind River Systems (who supply the space aliens with navigational
>>> > software, of course) intentionally killing the site off.
>>> > 
>>> > On April 20th, 2001, the day that FreeBSD 4.3 was due to be released,
>>> > we lost access to our main FTP site, ftp.freesoftware.com, without any
>>> > advance warning.  Further investigation revealed that the problem was
>>> > due to an unforeseen network outage which caused the hosting ISP to
>>> > have to block access to the site.  With one of their major links down,
>>> > it was overloading the ISPs backup links and denying bandwidth to
>>> > their other customers.
>>> > 
>>> > It was also not clear to us, then or now, just how long the outage
>>> > would last and whether this was to be a short-term or a long-term
>>> > problem.  With the release date for 4.3 already well publicized in
>>> > advance and many people asking me for it, I decided to use one of our
>>> > backup sites, the usw[1-6].freebsd.org cluster, and at least get the
>>> > current releases bits up somewhere on an interim basis.
>>> > 
>>> > Unfortunately, I really underestimated both the extent of the demand
>>> > and the degree to which our big, fat Gigabit pipe at ftp.freesoftware.com
>>> > has made distributing the bits to our mirrors look comparatively easy.
>>> > Even with the login limits set *significantly* greater in favor of the
>>> > registered mirror sites, and with multiple machines pulling the load,
>>> > it quickly overwhelmed the new hosting infrastructure and resulted in
>>> > significant bandwidth limiting on FTP traffic being instituted by the
>>> > ISP.  Even delaying the official announcement by 24 hours had no
>>> > measurable effect on the overload since word of mouth and anticipation
>>> > had already built demand beyond the saturation point.
>>> > 
>>> > In short, what many of us have suspected for years turned out to be
>>> > proven rather abruptly true: The FreeBSD.org services infrastructure
>>> > has become overly reliant on resources which constitute single points
>>> > of failure and lacks both sufficient tiering and redundancy in the
>>> > face of such failure.  We lost a key FTP resource and our entire
>>> > distribution service essentially collapsed.  The same may be true for
>>> > CVSup, mail and WWW services and that's something we definitely need
>>> > to look at.
>>> > 
>>> > For now, the most critical item is to finish implementing the
>>> > discussed-but-not-implemented ftp-master site scheme.  A machine to
>>> > serve as the project's "master FTP host" has been procured will
>>> > shortly be available for FTP access.  ONLY mirror sites will be
>>> > allowed to connect to it, and it will always be pre-loaded with
>>> > release bits, CERT advisories and anything else which requires the
>>> > mirrors to have a head-start in advance of any public announcement.
>>> > Announcements will only be made after a hand-inspection of the mirror
>>> > sites reveals that a significant degree of propagation has taken place
>>> > from the master site and not beforehand.
>>> > 
>>> > What people currently regard as "ftp.freebsd.org" will become another
>>> > tier of sites, probably served in round-robin DNS fashion, which have
>>> > all agreed to meet the minimum requirements for being "full and
>>> > complete mirrors" of the bits offered from ftp-master.freebsd.org.
>>> > Existing mirror sites which wish to maintain only a subset of the
>>> > master bits will become clients of these second-tier sites and subject
>>> > to whatever distribution policies they institute.  It would be my
>>> > expectation that certain 2nd-tier sites will also have mirror access
>>> > lists which favor the 3rd-tier sites over end-users, but that's a
>>> > detail to be worked out over time.
>>> > 
>>> > It's also not clear what, if anything, needs to be done to make sites
>>> > like www.freebsd.org and hub.freebsd.org more reliable in the face of
>>> > failure, but people can certainly expect that a good deal of thought
>>> > will be going into answering those questions over the next few weeks.
>>> > 
>>> > It certainly would have been nice to have had all of this been fixed
>>> > before the release of 4.3, of course, and it's somewhat ironic that
>>> > discussions about these very problems were occurring right around the
>>> > same time, but it sometimes requires a truly painful experience to
>>> > actually force an organization (or an individual for that matter) to
>>> > both recognize and act on its shortcomings.
>>> > 
>>> > The failure of the FTP site, the timing of FreeBSD 4.3 RELEASE and
>>> > Wind River's acquisition of BSDi's BSD assets were simply unfortunate
>>> > coincidences which had no causal link and I'd also be happy if people
>>> > would stop inferring as much.  Wind River has, in fact, indicated some
>>> > interest in keeping the ftp.freesoftware.com site alive and we simply
>>> > need to figure out the best way of doing so.  As one might expect, a
>>> > Gigabit connection and collocation facilities for a full 19" rack's
>>> > worth of equipment doesn't come cheap!
>>> > 
>>> > I will be releasing more information as the situation develops,
>>> > both here and to the hubs@freebsd.org mailing list.  Thanks,
>>> > 
>>> > - Jordan
>>> > 
>>> > This is the moderated mailing list freebsd-announce.
>>> > The list contains announcements of new FreeBSD capabilities,
>>> > important events and project milestones.
>>> > See also the FreeBSD Web pages at http://www.freebsd.org
>>> > 
>>> > 
>>> > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
>>> > with "unsubscribe freebsd-announce" in the body of the message
>>> > 
>>> > 
>>> > ----- End forwarded message -----
>>> > 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
>>> with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
>> 
>> 
>
>
>
>To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
>with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
>

--
Poul-Henning Kamp       | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20
phk@FreeBSD.ORG         | TCP/IP since RFC 956
FreeBSD committer       | BSD since 4.3-tahoe    
Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence.

To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message




Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?31182.988912281>