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Welcome to the new Cluster 151

Posted by CmdrTaco from the here-we-are dept.
We're up and running on the new cluster at Exodus West. The hardware configuration is almost identical to what we had on the east coast, just a few time zones over. No doubt we'll be working out a few kinks over the next few days, so hang in there. Now that that's over with, please continue swimming naked.
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Welcome to the new Cluster More

Welcome to the new Cluster

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  • mod me down if you want - this is great honor (modded)

  • Ah, that new server smell... (Score:4, Informative)

    by Bobulusman ( 467474 ) on Wednesday October 30, 2002 @11:40PM (#4570863)
    Well, everything seems to be working alright. I can log in and post just fine. :)

    The only thing I noticed is that since almost all the links point to slashdot.org, simply using brak.slashdot.org until DNS updates will not work. I've already updated my host file to fix this.

    Anyway, congrats. :D

  • Swimming naked? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Drunken Coward ( 574991 ) on Wednesday October 30, 2002 @11:41PM (#4570865)
    Good lord, that's the last thing I want to imagine the /. crowd doing.

  • Why the move? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by cherrypi ( 71943 ) on Wednesday October 30, 2002 @11:41PM (#4570866)
    Hey guys, why the move from the east? Ya guys gonna stay located in Michigan or move to the demonpit of cali-forn-i-a?

  • now - seriously (Score:5, Interesting)

    by lingqi ( 577227 ) on Wednesday October 30, 2002 @11:41PM (#4570867) Journal
    I think I speak for everyone (or, a lot of people) when I say that brak.slashdot.org was really neat (in a "we are all tripping on acid from the 30 mod points and silly stories / posts") kind of way...

    How about putting up an "alternative universe slashdot" for us to play on?

    (everyone who was "stress testing" brak please say "aye")

    • Re:now - seriously (Score:3, Insightful)

      by cscx ( 541332 )
      How about putting up an "alternative universe slashdot" for us to play on?

      You mean like IRC bot-war channels? That's ridiculous.
    • AYE

      That would rule.

      --j
    • Heh.. acid.slashdot.org - I can see it now. We can keep the Amiga and CowboyNeal posts here too! :)
    • some of the more interesting ones revived:

      CowboyNeal & Beowulf Clusters (Score:5, Funny)
      by lpret on 17:11 Tuesday 29 October 2002 (#4551192) Alter Relationship
      (User #570480 Info | Last Journal: 11:58 Saturday 26 October 2002) Searches

      specifically for Beowulf clusters. Also every time CowboyNeal beats up Bill Gates!! C'mon, you got 30 mod points -- the least you can do is give me one of 'em! And yes I'm drunk.

      [ Reply to This | Parent ] Moderation Totals: Offtopic=9, Flamebait=7, Troll=7, Redundant=2, Insightful=10, Interesting=3, Informative=1, Funny=21, Overrated=10, Underrated=2, Total=72.

      This is...the NEW slashdot (Score:5, Troll)
      by YourMissionForToday (yourmissionfortoday&YAHOO,com) on 15:41 Tuesday 29 October 2002 (#4550747) Alter Relationship
      (User #556292 Info | http://www.nolanryanbeef.com/ | Last Journal: 15:15 Tuesday 08 October 2002)

      long message... excluded

      Moderation Totals: Offtopic=8, Flamebait=2, Troll=16, Redundant=1, Insightful=9, Interesting=4, Informative=5, Funny=12, Overrated=4, Underrated=3, Total=64.

      that was fun
    • 1) There was a story, in entirety, is as follows:

      Is this working? fee, fo, fum...

      2) somebody posted something about 200 monkeys. I did not cache it - but it was funny and got 118 moderations! (probabbly more, actually) That is some serious messed-up-ness there. (somebody re-post the monkey story please)

      3) Did I mention the 30 mod points? I did already? you sure you understood the consequences of *everyone* having *30* mod points? at the *same time*?

      4) there are a lot more...

      but yeah. really. somebody. need. to. re-post. the. monkey. story.
    • testing brak was more fun than a barrel of monkeys
      but dont you think it might get old

      maybe a 2 day long bi-yearly slashdot acid marathon?
      by your drugs in advance

      • testing brak was more fun than a barrel of monkeys
        or 200 dead monkeys. 197 of which are charred, 2 are frozed and 1 is wet. (i guess that only people taht were testing brak will get this)

    • Re:now - seriously (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Powercntrl ( 458442 )
      I think I speak for everyone (or, a lot of people) when I say that brak.slashdot.org was really neat (in a "we are all tripping on acid from the 30 mod points and silly stories / posts") kind of way...

      Interestingly enough, even with all the chaos, the best posts STILL rose to the top the signal to noise ratio didn't render it unreadable and the 8 or so posts I made ended up with a net moderation amount no different than I usually get on the regular Slashdot.

      Do I think 30 moderation points to EVERYONE is excessive - yes... But amazingly, it didn't break the system as badly as I would have thought.
      • Yeah... I have been thinking actually if it really was possible to do something like that for fun (i mean, slashcode IS opensource).

        I mean, of course you will need to kill anon. access to mod points, and then make sure people with rediculously low karma do not get mod access - but in the end, since you can mod both UP and DOWN, i think it will eventually work out okay even though more people got more (as in, a LOT more) mod points.

        It might even bring out more good stuff, and discourage more crap.

        Then again, though - maybe that people who clicked through to the test site are actually adament /.ers who does not represent the real /. population faithfully.

        I guess we will never know.
    • AYE. Having a "red pill" and "blue pill" version of Slashdot would be cool. Fooling around on brak during its test phase was fun.
    • Aye.

      Count me in.

    • AYE.

      I think I sorta suggested this somewhere in one of the first
      posts - unfortunately don't have the URL handy....

      Testing was just too much fun....my ribs still hurt from
      the hilarity of some of the posts.

    • I think it would be fun for 5 minutes (since thats about how long I spent on brak). But at the same time, look at all the hardware and bandwidth it took to do that. You can't put up that kinda hardware & band just for something fun.
    • Tis true, Brak was fun while it lasted... 30 mod points I never did get around to using all of... [sigh] Days gone by. I call for a permanent Slashdot stress-test server :)
    • I agree with this post.

      Seriously, brak was way fun. Perhaps it would be the best way to do April Fool's - give some carefully [slashdot.org] selected [slashdot.org] trolls [slashdot.org] and [slashdot.org] jokers [slashdot.org] editor access for a day, and give everyone tons of mod points - it could be really fucking hilarious, certainly better than 4/1/02 (though the "anon has been disabled" trick was funny).

  • First Post (Score:5, Informative)

    by cscx ( 541332 ) on Wednesday October 30, 2002 @11:42PM (#4570870) Homepage
    On the new server?

    Remember to point your HOSTS file to 66.35.250.150!
    • It's so ridiculous to have to add this to my hosts file. I'm pretty dissapointed that the kids running this enterprise didn't define the server as brak.slashdot.org in their slashrc file for a day or two so the links would work without local intervention. It would have saved a lot of users a lot of confusion.

      Pity the coutless users who don't know about /etc/hosts or just don't have permission to change it.

      Kalin

      • it would have been smarter for them to not use abslute links to their own website
        • If you've ever had the displeasure of working with /code you realize that it would take an army of CowboyNeals a week to fix that problem. They could have changed the domain variable in slashrc in just under 10 seconds.

          • That's no excuse for braindead design. It's only an excuse for not changing it.

            One of the ten commandments of web design (if it's not, it should be): Thou shalt not use absolute links when relative links will do

            I hate to throw in Perl flamebait, but this is what tends to happen when Perl hackers design anything large-scale: ad hoc hacks will become so entrenched that the design will break and be impossible to fix without starting over.

            It's possible to write horrible code in any language, and some of my favorites (PHP, bash, C/C++) are guilty of this. But Perl is the exceptional case: only in Perl, it seems, are ugly hacks considered objets d'excellence for the community to strive to. C coders may look at the sheer ugliness of Duff's Device and applaud the intimate knowledge of syntax and even recognize that it's more efficient, but they know not to use it, except when absolutely necessary.

            The mindset that Perl encourages is that there's no right way to do something, which results in a nightmare when anything disturbs the design.

            • I'm pretty sure this is possible in Perl, but in ASP you would do a Request.ServerVariables ("SERVER_NAME") and append it to your URL in the links. That way, you CAN get an absolute URL dynamically generated according to the server it's on. Why they didn't do it is beyond me.
    • Remember to point your HOSTS file to 66.35.250.150!

      Remember that real OSes are case-sensitive, and it's hosts, not HOSTS. ;-)
    • remember to point your HOSTS file to 66.35.250.150!

      the funny thing is that I wasnt able see you suggestion until I had already done that

    • Seen at on an ISP page:

      "If your Internet Connection is down, please contact us by email." :)
    • Someone should submit a story about this ;) This story says to use brak.slashdot.org but since all the links point to slashdot.org, this won't be seen by those who need it ;)

  • OT, but great book on Linux clustering (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Yeah, I know this is off topic, but I just found an awesome book [amazon.com] on Linux clustering, written by the same guy that did a bunch of other O'Reilly books. Of course you can't really be on topic with this discussion now can you ;)

    I'm curious, how did Slashdot set up the cluster system? Full time maintenence on staff or did they contract it out?
  • How come I get a 404 for slashdot.org?

    Just kidding. :)
  • >simpsons<A toast to the host who boasts the most roast (err servers)>/simpsons<

    Anyways, I think that the Exodus West cluster, which has served us so faithfully, should get a good send-off - say, one last surge of traffic to permanently melt the last remining servers to the rack posts.

  • why the move (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ibennetch ( 521581 ) <bennetch AT gmail DOT com> on Wednesday October 30, 2002 @11:55PM (#4570893) Journal
    have we any idea what prompted the move? I can't imagine it was for a bigger pipe; and previously (according to the FAQ) the techs were within a short drive of the facility...so now are there new network/db techs or has everyone moved, or as a third option; when there's trouble does CowboyNeal flap his wings and everyone hold on for the ride across the country?

    • Re:why the move (Score:5, Informative)

      by Aaton ( 216314 ) <slashdot@23 0 v o l t s .net> on Thursday October 31, 2002 @01:33AM (#4571000) Homepage Journal
      OSDN is part of VA Software you knew that already, and the main offices for VA Software are in Fremont CA. The machines in Boston MA are moving to Santa Clara CA. The office in Acton MA is closing and moved to a smaller place in downtown Boston.

      In the end its a budget thing. I don't know the full answer, I just try to keep machines working....

      PS: Which means I'm moving to San Francisco CA since CowboyNeal I think would hate having to be on-call.

    • Re:why the move (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Basically, in order to save money, VA got rid of the Acton office and layed off yet more people in the process.
      Then, in order to run more machines with less admins, all the servers are being moved to the west coast so that the current already overworked admins still working there can also admin the OSDN machines.
      Part of the OSDN stay got layed off, part quit, and part is moving/moved to the west coast where the machines are now located (well, you also have the ones who can work from home regardless of where the servers are located. Lucky you :).

      I sincerely wish good luck to the part of the crew that's still there running the show in the background, I wish them the best of luck, and thank them for putting the extra hours so that we can still benefit from ./ sf.net, and the other
      sites that we all know and love
    • OSDN are consolidating their facilities as part of a cost-cutting exercise. Preumably a majority of their servers were on the west coast already, Slashdot's just joining them.

  • Temporary solution (Score:5, Informative)

    by Devil's BSD ( 562630 ) on Thursday October 31, 2002 @12:06AM (#4570907) Homepage
    If you use anything with a HOSTS file (yes, i believe even XP has it under C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\drivers\etc), you can add a line that says
    66.35.250.150 slashdot.org www.slashdot.org slashdot any_other_aliases_you_feel_like_having
    Of course, if you didnt have access to the new server, you wouldnt be reading this... right? At any rate, this solves any DNS misdirections due to the server move, and it will even let you access slashdot using the DNS should the root servers of the internet actually fail.
  • For a minute I was beginning to think /. got Slashdotted...
  • I have too much (note I said much, not many) karma at the moment, and would like to burn some. Let it burn, baby burn!

  • Relative links, guys? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Otto ( 17870 ) on Thursday October 31, 2002 @12:15AM (#4570916) Homepage Journal
    Using a different server sure would be a hell of a lot simpler if you slashdot guys would get with that whole "web thing" and make all the links on the page RELATIVE instead of ABSOLUTE..

    I mean, it's kinda annoying to use brak.slashdot.org only to have every link on every resulting page point to http://slashdot.org anyway.
  • Looks like some miss communications. Its kinda working.

    • Yes the $TTL 1D was set to high. I'll be taking the heat for that one for awhile I think.
    • Spent all day today trying to build enough machines, 8 server died in shipping. Not enought time talking to everyone involved.
    • The admins were thinking everything was going to just go to http://brak.slashdot.org/ for a bit. The Developers were thing something else.
    • Admins thought the Arrowpoint could do the RedirectMatch we were looking for. It can and it can not.
    Well this was the first site to move from Boston Exodus 2 and well we will try to do better on the next group of website.

    --Yazz

    • Yes, we fell behind moving schedule, we asked movers if we could postpone sending machines out until slashdot was stable on west coast, they said "No, sorry, our movers will be there Thursday morning to take your servers west." So here we are group of happy sys admins pulling an all-nighter to shove this entire site out west before the moving van arrives. <yell type=secial-ed>YAY!</yell> Sorry about the DNS sloppiness everyone, we should've primed that earlier.
      • Is this any different than how things were originally? In building "the Matrix" (some person's idea of a cool name for a datacenter installation for Andover at Exodus Boston 2), we were rushed and had similar issues. I had hoped things had changed, I wish you and Yazz lots of luck out on the left coast.

        Me, I'm just happy to be doing what I'm doing.

        no more stress of OSDN, just stress of a newborn child :)

        -Trish
    • Read slashdot last night. Reading slashdot now. On new servers. Didn't notice. Go grab yourself some cocoa and don't beat yourself up about how well you are providing a free service to slashdot geeks :p
    • Yes the $TTL 1D was set too high. I'll be taking the heat for that one for awhile I think
      Geez, I advised to lower the TTLs [slashdot.org] (and I meant as one first step) and got a reply from an AC that I was myopic and naive." [slashdot.org]

      Hey, AC, how're ya doing with your MCSE? Still workin'?

      Anyway, I couldn't post last night due to the brak.slashdot.org .vs. slashdot.org confusion and I wasn't in the mood to edit my hosts file. The problem's gone this morning so it was fixed or the TTL must have expired.
  • What did East Exodus server say to the West exodus server ? ... ... You are gonna smoke pot ! What did the West Exodus server say to the East exodus server ? ... ... You are such a DNS whore! (DNS~=Dense)
  • Let me tell you, those Exodus rooms are BIG, and oddly shaped. It's actually easy to get lost in there.

    Just over a year ago, I was part of the IT team to move 50 computers from Exodus to another facility

    We had all these computers in a cage in Big Room A. We needed to get all of the equipment to the loading dock, which was on the other side of this huge building.

    So there we were, by the back entrance. Got the truck up to the loading dock, loaded some equipment. Then it was time to go back to the cage and get the second batch.

    The guard opened the door for us, pointed us down one hallway, and shut the door. *click* Door's locked. We walked down the hallway, opened the door, and entered the cage room.

    "Wait," said my friend "Let me make sure this is the right..." *click*

    Like in a bad horror movie, the last person into the room let the door slam shut. So we were stuck.

    So we walked around for a few minutes, trying to find our way.

    "Wait, wait. We're going the wrong way!" said my friend, who had only been here once, and in a different part of the building.

    So we turned around and traced our way back to the first door. The door, of course, is locked. We knocked. No answer. We pounded the door. Still no
    answer. No intercom. No guard to open the door. The door could be opened in a fire, but that would set off the alarms, halon, whatever. This wasn't
    a fire. We were just ... lost... and embarrassed...

    So we tried a second hallway, hoping it would be a more direct route to the other door.

    "It's this way" my friend said, "I think..."

    After walking 100 ft down the hallway, turning left and walking down another hallway and turning past a few more corners, we came to a 4-way intersection, and NOTHING looked familiar. Just a long 100-ft hallway of identical cages in each direction. No landmarks, no maps... blank walls at the end of every hallway.

    Being that it was almost Halloween, I half expected our numbers to start droping one-by-one.

    So we proceded down a random hallway and came to a blank wall. No door. Turned around , tried another hallway. Blank wall.

    "Where'd the fucking door go?"

    "I don't know. Maybe we should split up."

    "Shuttup. That's what they do in the fucking horror movies."

    Eventually we found our way, and everyone survived... except I smashed my foot by dropping a 100-lb loading ramp 2 feet onto it.

    But those were good times.
    • If you are ever lost, just pull that white handle next to the door that says "fire" or "emergency power off" or "FM200 Discharge". It won't actually start a fire, so don't worry. There might be some other side effects, though...

    • After walking 100 ft down the hallway, turning left and walking down another hallway and turning past a few more corners, we came to a 4-way intersection, and NOTHING looked familiar. Just a long 100-ft hallway of identical cages in each direction

      Sounds like a D&D adventure:

      DM: "Okay, you're walking down a hallway that's 100 feet long and then turns left. As you round the corner you notice a small pool of greenish slime puddled against the wall. All along the hallways are identical cages, on both sides."

      Player 1: "What's in the cages?"

      Player 2: "I take a closer look at the slime."

      DM: "Lights. Hundreds of tiny red, green and white blinking lights. And something making whirring noises.

      "The slime looks like slime. And it's greenish."

      Player 1: "I wonder if the cages are full of some kind of flying insects with multi-colored eyes."

      Player 2: "I stick my sword in the slime."

      DM: "Your sword melts. If you want to find out what's in those cages, you'll have to open one..."

      Player 1: "Let's keep walking."

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • The lovely XML feed says there is an article called Mathematica and BattleBots [slashdot.org], but it doesn't seem to exist.

    A glitch in the move?

  • New cluster hardware is... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Kurt Gray ( 935 ) on Thursday October 31, 2002 @12:55AM (#4570958) Homepage Journal
    ... as Rob said, same as was on east coast: 4 quad-pentium VA 4450 DB servers running MySQL and Red Hat 7.x, plus 9 VA 2251 web servers running Debian and Apache + mod_perl + slash. Load balancing across web servers via Arrowpoint CS800 switch (which is now a Cisco product). The move was in order to consolidate our network operations on west coast. Choice of Exodus over other colos was that we've been overall satisfied with Exodus service and costs, and the datacenters we occupy are owned by Exodus parent, Cable&Wireless, by all appearances they have a stable parent company, but you can never guess what financial status a telco will be in 12 months from now the way the telco market has been in the past 2 years: look at WorldCom 18 months ago as compared to today... who knew? but they're not about to close their doors but still, every telco has bad-looking finances these days but doesn't mean their datacenters will go dark next week. (These are only my own opinions by the way, not official opinions of OSDN, and IANATFABJASATYVM: I am Not A Telco Financial Analyst but Just a Sys Admin, Thank You Very Much)
    • You'd be surprised about the stability of C&W - be careful what you wish for. According to this article [independent.co.uk], Exodus may not be a C&W product for much longer. And if they can't sell it, you know what they might do... liquidation, baby. We're getting out of Exodus while the getting's good.
  • When I tried brak.slashdot when it was posted for load testing the server had been slashdoted
  • "please continue swimming naked."

    I guess the skinny dipping is better on the east coast. No wonder they wanted to move

  • check it out on my site earth2willi.com [earth2willi.com] if you like, the feeds are returning this error from my scripts:

    Warning: fopen("http://slashdot.org/slashdot.rss","r") - Success in /home2/www/sejus/earth2willi/RSSslashdot.php on line 60
    Error reading news headlines from this site.
  • If I click on "Wednesday 30 October", I get a page with columns on both sides, but the content is missing. There's a big white rectangle in the middle. Have you been slashdotted perhaps?
  • The real reason for the move is that they wanted their disk drives to be in a building that looked like a disk drive.

  • IP banned (Score:4, Funny)

    by den_erpel ( 140080 ) on Thursday October 31, 2002 @04:29AM (#4571098) Homepage Journal
    Hm,

    the /. ppl did not take over the "unban" list from the east cost. Just found out that our entire university got banned from the /. site :( since the proxy got banned, ...

    Luckily there is squid and I have my box at home >:)

    It was touch and go there when I was not able to access the geek news in the morning :x
  • So now that the site has move a few timezones, we won't see anyone pull a Lone Gunmen anymore? :)
    Oh wait, it doesn't work that way, and they moved in the wrong direction.
  • just wondering... I was having problems meta-moderating until I switched to yro.slashdot.org (and am now using yro to post this)
    since the links are absolute and all, I kept getting redirected back to the form, sans data.

  • Google Slashdot (Score:5, Interesting)

    by De Lemming ( 227104 ) on Thursday October 31, 2002 @06:12AM (#4571167) Homepage
    Did you notice the search button now says "Google Slashdot?"

    One of the articles (besides the total nonsense "test test blablabla" kind) on brak.slashdot.org was "What search features would you like on Slashdot?" The tread gone now, as they mirrored slashdot.org to brak.slashdot.org. But the use of Google as search engine was one of the suggestions in this thread. And it seems they are testing that suggestion now.
    • I hope that decision gets undone quickly. If I'd want to google slashdot, I'd google slashdot. strl-l, site:slashdot.org [whatever I want to search for], arrow down, enter.

      The old slashdot search, though not perfect, at least allowed you to easily narrow down searches on several criteria. That is what I'd like to see more of.

      Of course, chances are that this indeed is a temporary solution, used only because the old search [slashdot.org] still gives that infernal internal error message.
  • Where is bsd.slashdot.org?
  • The "Slashdot is Moving" story is posted on 10:25PM, and the "Welcome to the New Cluster" story is posted on 11:35PM.

    What kind of time are they? Are they east coast time or west coast time?
  • Not that I can tell the difference, but why this sudden move from East to West? Was this done for corporate reasons? Where are you located now? May be I can come visit sometime
  • Congratulations on leaving The Cluster. Perhaps in the dark Universe, you will be light.
  • please continue swimming naked

    That visual is definitely one I did not need this early...
  • Is it just me, or is the RSS headline list currently way behind? Did the updating of this break in the move?
  • I think after you guys moved servers the other day you broke the subscription stuff. I am seeing ads on the homepage and I still have literally thousands of ad-free views left on my subscription.
  • How about fixing the frickin' bugs in the slashcode?

    For example, whenever clicking on Wednesday under older stuff, nothing appears! Argh...

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