OpenBSD Journal

New Alpha Urgently Needed!

Contributed by grey on from the don't let a good architecture die dept.

Thanks to Johan M:son Lindman, Nate and others for writing in with the following:

Hours ago Theo de Raadt put out a call for an Alpha CS20, because as of last night OpenBSD no longer has one.

The CS20 that died was a build machine and without it further support would be nearly impossible.

If you have a C20 or other 1U Alpha machine that you would be willing to donate to the project, please respond to the discussion on the misc mailing list.

For further information and to track the misc discussion, click here.

(Comments are closed)


Comments
  1. By Damien (82.226.59.105) on

    I am still waiting a poster that I bought three month ago at the openbsd project. I have been charged but never received the poster. No money from me for the openbsd project anymore ... (thanks to Vim Vandeputte)

    Comments
    1. By Anonymous Coward (66.131.206.50) on

      Why not look into it instead of waiting and waiting? Maybe it got lost in the mail?

    2. By Anonymous Coward (213.84.84.111) on

      Why blame Wim without asking him if he shipped it? Things do get lost in mail.

      I'm sure he will deal with this if you contact him

      Comments
      1. By wicked (62.103.254.154) on

        The only problem I had with the sales was that they accidentally sent me a cd set of OBSD 3.6 instead of a book I had ordered, nevertheless they sent me the book after I contacted them and when I asked them if they wanted to send the cd set back they told me to keep it :-) My other transactions where smooth.

    3. By Wim (194.78.167.231) wim@kd85.com on http://eurobsd.org/2005-WhatTheHack

      Oh, really mature to bring up the issue this way. Thanx.

      Why don't you email me to resolve this issue?

      I really have been working my ass off to solve some open issues and I'm trying my best to get the urgent things done first.

      Somehow there is always some smartass....

      Comments
      1. By Damien (82.226.59.105) on

        "Why don't you email me to resolve this issue?" -> I have already send you 4 emails. 11 may 2005 26 may 2005 8 Jun 2005 27 Jun 2005 "Oh, really mature to bring up the issue this way. Thanx." Really mature to call "smartass" people that paid for nothing. I bring up the issue this way because after 4 emails (and 3 answers of you), I never received anything.

        Comments
        1. By wob (63.237.113.222) wob@bonch.org on

          Sorry to ask the obvious, but what does Damien's beef have to do with getting alpha hardware to the OpenBSD team to keep the port alive?

        2. By wim (194.78.167.231) wim@kd85.com on http://eurobsd.org/2005-WhatTheHack

          Wel sorry but due to various time constraints I've had to make choices and right now posters are not on my priority list anymore.

          They will be back on my list in August but right now I have some serious other things (hello Intrastat) to deal with.

          Comments
          1. By Damien (82.226.59.105) on

            Hi Wim,
            I can understand now you gave me an explanation. :-)
            In fact, the only thing I wanted (and the purpose of my post) was another answer that "i'm busy" ;-)
            So it's a happy end story :-D

          2. By Anonymous Coward (212.211.153.7) on

            "time constraints"? "I had to make choices"? "priority list"?
            What are you thinking, man?

        3. By Wim (194.78.167.231) wim@kd85.com on http://eurobsd.org/2005-WhatTheHack

          First of all, don't send me emails during the buildup of a release. Be realistic, do you really think I'm sane of mind, not on drugs and sleepless during that period?

          Anyways, until this issue with the posters is resolved, I've removed the posters from the ordering site.

    4. By Anonymous Coward (82.43.92.127) on

      Wim's never been anything but very prompt and helpful whenever I've queried anything about an order.

      Comments
      1. By Fizban (80.3.128.7) apt@earthling.net on

        I ordered from OpenBSD, a few T shirts and a CD set, it arrived in the UK promptly and was exatcly what I needed( Green Wireframe ;)

        Carry on the great work Theo and Team, I'll send you a few dollars thru the post.

    5. By Paulo (84.195.171.207) on

      Five OpenBSD releases, one wireless card (plus a new one because of DOA or so I thought), 2 books, and a lot of kindly answered questions. Wim does a good job and in a timely manner. Please don't talk bollocks because of a missing poster. At least have the decency of talking to him about it directly, instead of making outlandish assumptions in public. Good job Wim. Keep up the good work.

      Comments
      1. By Damien (82.226.59.105) on

        I have also received 2 T-shirts, 1 books, and 2 releases of openbsd from Vim with no problem. I am just tired to ask each month for a poster that I paid in April.

        Comments
        1. By Anonymous Coward (195.56.94.170) on

          It is Wim not Vim...

          Comments
          1. By Bert (68.100.43.184) on

            I was about to say...if it handles t-shirt orders, it's an amazing improvement over plain ol' vi.

            Comments
            1. By Nate (65.95.243.163) on

              Nah, that's emacs that handles tee shirt orders.

          2. By Damien (82.226.59.105) on

            Arf sorry Wim.
            :1,$ s/Vim/Wim/

            :-)

  2. By Anonymous Coward (64.92.206.84) on

    I think Theo should ask for air conditioning. I'm willing to help, but 1U boxes tend to get hot, and I see no point in all chipping in for a new Alpha box to see it go pop again in 2 weeks time. Theo, tell us what went wrong and what you've done to fix it or what we can do to help you fix it. Then we can worry about replacing the hardware - otherwise I think it's probably just as well to ask for Alpha hardware and rackspace in a reliable colo as send the hardware back to the same place.

    Comments
    1. By Anonymous Coward (65.5.196.200) on

      At one point during the recent media coverage of the Hackathon, a local TV station interviewed Theo, and they remarked about how hot it is. He replied with something like "I spend $600 just to keep this place this cool," followed by a joke about how he feels lucky the police haven't busted down his door looking for heat lamps growing pot.

      He obviously knows its an issue, and has tried to remedy it. Still, bad things will happen. You deal with it, move on, and try to keep it from happening again. Bitching about it doesn't really help.

    2. By djm@ (203.217.30.86) on

      Theo already has kickass AC.

    3. By henning (80.86.183.129) on

      theo has a quite big airconditioning unit for the machine room.
      it temporarily failed, and that caused this machine's (and some other hardware's) death.

      Comments
      1. By Anonymous Coward (213.118.35.56) on

        Redundant A/C would be good ;)

      2. By Matthias Kilian (84.134.29.243) on

        I'm not a datacenter guy, but wouldn't it be possible to monitor the AC and shut down all machines if the AC fails? Or just some simple kind of room temperatur sensors?

        NB: some months ago, in a datacenter of a company I won't name here, they actually had a power failure. All the equipment in the room was connected to UPS's, the AC wasn't -- ouch! Lots of disks died within minutes.

        Comments
        1. By grey (207.215.223.2) on

          Certainly. At my work, we actually use a Netbotz environmental monitoring system at various branches. This was initially sparked because we had a two unit AC system that was not failing over properly, bringing very high temperatures and drive losses. You can find out more about such things here:
          http://www.netbotz.com/

          Not the best or only things I'm sure - keep in mind I work at a w32 oriented company as well :(, and can't attest to whether all their java web interface crap works on OpenBSD. But it still might be useful info for some.

          That said, the solution to the root of the problem was reducting our server room to spread the AC to the appropriate spots instead of trying to cool the whole room. The servers stay cooler, the AC units' workload dropped, they stopped freezingup/failing over as often (this happened particularly in winter where they couldn't cope with the workload and the cold air) and no more problems. In the interim, the monitor was good as an alarm for us to rush in and open a door with a fan to get things to cool down, but it didn't solve the problem. Moreover, a room can get up to nasty temperatures in 10-15 minutes with as many machines as I deal with & just an active/passive AC system, and that's not always enough time to react (esp. if it's after normal hours).

        2. By Anonymous Coward (66.80.196.248) on

          heh, I remember that, very amusing *cough* serverbeach *cough*

  3. By Nathan (69.34.233.55) natex84@gmail.com on http://www.brainwerk.org/

    I know most people don't like buying hardware on ebay... but i just thought i would throw this out there, incase nothing else is available: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=5219321518&category=51116&rd=1 not nearly as beefy as the one you are replacing, and i would drill the seller with questions... good luck finding a replacement, i dont have an alpha (well, i have a multia 166mhz machine.. but its pretty much trash) but i plan on buying one some day.. it would be nice to be able to load openbsd on it! :)

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