Mailing List Archive

> Just out of curiocity... what did NCSA stop shipping the docs with
> the source code?
>
> <Aram>

There are suppose to be postscript copies of the documents available.
We stopped packaging the html documents, because people were setting
up mirror sites.

Because we test alpha software on hoohoo, it has intermittent reliablity
problems. If people have other locations where the documents are
available, they will tend to migrate to those site. The only way to
keep a middle to high load on our test server is to have a monopoly on
something. So, I've chosen to limit distribution of our html documentation.

We will allow overseas mirrors. I believe there's one running in
Australia (or maybe it was New Zealand) and one in Europe.

--
Elizabeth(Beth) Frank
NCSA Server Development Team
efrank@ncsa.uiuc.edu

Beth wrote,

> Because we test alpha software on hoohoo, it has intermittent reliablity
> problems. If people have other locations where the documents are
> available, they will tend to migrate to those site. The only way to
> keep a middle to high load on our test server is to have a monopoly on
> something. So, I've chosen to limit distribution of our html documentation.

This sounds a bit assbackwards as Rob McCool might say. The main source
of information about a server resides on a server that could show itself
to be unreliable. Not exactly confidence building is it?. Maybe you
could also set your ErrorDocument lines to point to apache.org ;-)

Stick a few cindy crawford gifs on hoohoo and you'll be guaranteed
a steady load :-)

rob
(for the humor-impared, most of that was a joke)

Rob wrote:
> Beth wrote,
>
> > Because we test alpha software on hoohoo, it has intermittent reliablity
> > problems. If people have other locations where the documents are
> > available, they will tend to migrate to those site. The only way to
> > keep a middle to high load on our test server is to have a monopoly on
> > something. So, I've chosen to limit distribution of our html documentation.
>
> This sounds a bit assbackwards as Rob McCool might say. The main source
> of information about a server resides on a server that could show itself
> to be unreliable. Not exactly confidence building is it?. Maybe you
> could also set your ErrorDocument lines to point to apache.org ;-)

Yes, it is somewhat assbackwards, but we do monitor hoohoo and if the
alpha software is unrealiable we go back to a stable version. (There
are also problems with the IBM's TCP/IP if we forget the weekly reboot.)
We try to make it clear that the software running is ALPHA software. If
you've got a better suggestion I'd like to hear it.

> Stick a few cindy crawford gifs on hoohoo and you'll be guaranteed
> a steady load :-)

Unfortunately, the university frowns on this kind of thing.

> rob
> (for the humor-impared, most of that was a joke)
>


--
Elizabeth(Beth) Frank
NCSA Server Development Team
efrank@ncsa.uiuc.edu