Date: Mon, 10 May 1999 09:40:29 -0400 (EDT) From: Pat Lynch <lynch@rush.net> To: Conrad Sabatier <conrads@neosoft.com> Cc: chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Stupidity subjects box to *severe* stress test -- FreeBSD passes with flying colors Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.05.9905100938120.995-100000@bytor.rush.net> In-Reply-To: <XFMail.990510080142.conrads@neosoft.com>
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I made the same mistake once... running tripwire at 1 am, I ran 60 copies
of tripwire, when I woke up in the morning, and logged in remotely, it was
a little sluggish, and the load was up to 134 or something like that...
(ok, a *little* sluggish is an understatement)
but I was able to kill all the tripwire processes (took me 25 minutes) and
the machine was back on its way....
this was a 486DX2/66 running 2.2.6 at the time.
-Pat
___________________________________________________________________________
Pat Lynch lynch@rush.net
Systems Administrator Rush Networking
"Wow, everyone looks different in Real Life (tm)"-
Nathan Dorfman meeting people at FUNY
"Suicide is painless, switching to NT isn't."-
Unknown
___________________________________________________________________________
On Mon, 10 May 1999, Conrad Sabatier wrote:
> [ The following was mailed to a friend of mine whose -STABLE box I've been
> maintaining. Even under the conditions described below, I was still able
> to rlogin and bring the machine back to a useable state, a real credit to
> FreeBSD's performance and reliablity. ]
>
> -----FW: <groan> Stupid, stupid, stupid! <sigh>-----
>
> Date: Mon, 10 May 1999 07:03:04 -0500 (CDT)
> From: Conrad Sabatier <conrads@neosoft.com>
> To: "Wayne F. Cox" <waynefc@neosoft.com>
> Subject: <groan> Stupid, stupid, stupid! <sigh>
>
> Got your mail this morning (it's a miracle you were able to send it; must
> have been a real exercise in frustration, I'm sure).
>
> I'm terribly, terribly sorry. It was such a stupid, idiotic mistake. In
> your root crontab, I had scheduled a job to update your ports collection at
> 3:00 am (I thought) [ Note: this included a "make -k readmes index" after
> the actual update ]. What I actually had done, though, was schedule the
> job to run *every* *friggin'* *minute* starting at 3:00 am. So you had
> literally *hundreds* of these things going.
>
> The scheduling info should have read:
>
> 0 3 * * *
>
> Whereas, instead, it actually read:
>
> * 3 * * *
>
> You can see, I'm sure, that the first asterisk was the culprit.
>
> It's a real credit to the stability and solidity of FreeBSD that all these
> processes running simultaneously [in only 64 MB/128 MB swap!] didn't just
> crash the system altogether. A lesser operating system surely would have
> choked to death in no time. Talk about a stress test! :-)
>
> I've gone in and fixed my error, and killed all the errant processes.
> Tonight at 3:00 am you should notice a marked difference, I guarantee.
>
> Again, I am truly sorry. But even the best of us UNIX Guru types are
> entitled to an occasional stupid fuck-up. :-)
>
> Take care,
>
> Conrad
>
> --
> Conrad Sabatier <conrads@neosoft.com>
>
> Acid absorbs 47 times it's weight in excess Reality.
>
>
> --------------End of forwarded message-------------------------
>
> --
> Conrad Sabatier <conrads@neosoft.com>
>
> "I'd love to go out with you, but I've been scheduled for a karma
> transplant."
>
>
>
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