...At the moment, due to hackers, and/or archivers.

This temporary back-up Forum, will help regular posters "find a place" to continue communications, until the Sysops can work with Phil Greenspun on "what to do next."

Shift Happens.

*Sigh*

;-D

Diane

-- Diane J. Squire (sacredspaces@yahoo.com), December 29, 1999

Answers

Phils TBY2K Message at the top URL level...

http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and- a.tcl?topic=TimeBomb%202000%20%28Y2000%29

Someone was using a robot to grab every page on this server and it was hammering my poor ancient Solaris box (167 MHz processors). The file system was also full. So I had to shut off the most popular forums to let other users have a chance.

I'm a bit humiliated that my service didn't hold up. On the other hand, it was built to support human beings talking to each other. The average human can't read 10 postings per second! So it isn't surprising that a robot could overwhelm this machine.

If you want the forum turned back on, send me a Quad Pentium from www.penguincomputing.com! Or a 10-year-old's Athlon 700 game machine! It is sad that small children have faster computers than MIT but that's life...

Sorry,

Philip
Wednesday night around midnight


-- Diane J. Squire (sacredspaces@yahoo.com), December 29, 1999.

The URL for this back-up forum is...

TimeBomb 2000 (Y2000) Rollover/Back-Up Forum

http:// greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a.tcl?topic= TimeBomb%202000%20%28Y2000%29%20Rollover%2fBack%2dUp%20Forum

Also...

Some posters have found their way over to Ed Yourdons place at...

HumptyDumptyY2K

http://18.24.3.72/bboard/q-and-a.tcl?topic=HumptyDumptyY2K

-- Diane J. Squire (sacredspaces@yahoo.com), December 29, 1999.

....and just for the record, the original message mentioning someone changing the root password:

"Someone is using a robot to grab every page on this server and it is hammering my poor ancient Solaris box (167 MHz processors). The file system is full, someone has changed the root password. So I'm shutting off the most popular forums in an effort to let other users have a chance."

-- Man-Dog (mandog@man.dog), December 29, 1999.

Initially, Phil thought someone changed the password, but as it turned out it was an archiving program that doesn't need a password to copy threads from his server, being used by some forum regulars. It uses batch processing to load each thread and copy it, and it does it so quickly that it draws a lot of resources from the server, giving the impression that someone has taken control of it. Shortly thereafter, he acknowledged that it was the archiving, probably by several people simultaneously.

-- Hawk (flyin@high.again), December 29, 1999.

Glad we have some resources......

having a bad case of the DT's this morning, forum wise.

-- mushroom (mushroom_bs_too_long@yahoo.com), December 29, 1999.

Can we have our old forum back if everyone promises to curb their robot dogs

-- Pinkrock (aphotonboy@aol.com), December 29, 1999.

Blame it on Gary North. He told everyone to download that "sucker" program and they did. Now they are trying to suck tb2000 and it killed the performance.

Hope we can all find our way back. I didnt know about this until I went to lusenet listings.

-- hamster (hamster@mycage.com), December 29, 1999.

thanks Diane for getting this up. Poor Phil

-- Nancy (wellsnl@hotmail.com), December 29, 1999.

Any bets this was intentional? Seems a little too 'pat'. Thank the God(s) that its back...I was gettin' the 'shakes' there for a while...

-- Billy Boy (Rakkasan101st@Aol.com), December 29, 1999.

Glad to have found this backup...would have serious withdrawls going through the rollover without everyone here.

long time lurker

-- Tiara (sorceress5@hotmail.com), December 29, 1999.

Lots of folks at Humpty Dumpty Y2K...

R.

-- Roland (nottelling@nowhere.com), December 29, 1999.

I must say that I was fully prepared to go it alone thru the roll over.

It wasnt like it was a surprise this morning when I could'nt get into tb2x. wheww=-.

Blank stare!!!!! incredulity. I guess I'm not as mentally prepared as I thought. LOL!!!

-- d----- (dciinc@aol.com), December 29, 1999.

Hamster---

You wrote:

"Blame it on Gary North. He told everyone to download that "sucker" program and they did. Now they are trying to suck tb2000 and it killed the performance."

Could you give me a url to the "sucker" program posting on North's site.

Thanks

-- nothere (nothere@nowhere.net), December 29, 1999.

Folks at MH site are very concerned about your problems here. More power to you all...This forum is needed and valuable. You have our support!

-- River (Riverwn@aol.com), December 29, 1999.

The folks below who think there is something insidious about the root password being changed amuse me! My friend Scott was actually applying some patches to the ancient server that supports greenspun.com. He didn't know the root password (this is a Unix thing about 100 levels below the TB2000 forum) and I guess couldn't reach me on my cell phone. So he brought up the machine in single- user mode and changed the root password. Anyway, there was no attack on the computer. It is just that it can't support 100 requests/second for db-backed pages with a total of 600 MHz of processing power.

-- Philip Greenspun (philg@mit.edu), December 29, 1999.

I'm glad Phil checked in with the facts of the situation. The most ironic thing is that the Queen of the Censors herself is largely to blame for this situation by posting the links to the software and encouraging people to try to download the entire forum archives. When the sytem blows up, she an the others attempt to blame it on the pollys with no evidence whatsoever. It would be funny if it wasn't so pathetic!

-- My Full Name (My@email.address), December 29, 1999.