SLOOOOOW Delivery

[wier@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Bob Wier)]

Just a short note to let you know we had some machine problems
today which slowed up things a bit. Those of you on ack probably received
several messages together as things got caught up. There was also a problem
with the digest distribution, so if you did not get number 1078, drop me 
a line and I'll e-mail it (but please wait until you get 1079 before
asking so you are SURE 1078 will not be showing up).

For Unix techno-freaques -

The problem we had was typical end of the semester stuff when students
are scrambling to get thier projects done and not being very careful.
There are a couple of people working on network software, which forks off
some additional processes. Today (twice!) their routine went into 
infinite process forking, and our load averages went up over 100 (normally
they are in the 0.5 range). What was worse was that we ran out of swap
space and the Bobcat was growling rather ominimously! Well, we killed
the errant processes, but one of these problems occurred right in the
middle of today's photo-3d digest distribution. Sendmail got very confused
when swap space ran out and hung with 6 mailings in progress. I eventually
had to cancel those (6 hrs later) and sendmail got off it's duff and
resumed doing useful things. However, since the digest distribution
was interrupted, there may be people who did not receive it successfully.

Classes end Friday and finals are next week, so hopefully things will
calm down shortly.

Also - first notice: There will be a DOMAIN name switch in January.
Bobcat will most likely become bobcat.cs.etsu.edu rather than
bobcat.etsu.edu. Hopefully we can put in a bunch of links, SOA and MX
records to make this as painless as possible. Nothing need to be done
right now.

THANKS!



 -------- Bob Wier ----- wier@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx -----
 keeper of the Photo-3d, Motorola MC68HC11, ICOM
   Radio, Overland-Trails mailing lists and the
         LDS Genealogy State Research Outlines
      "Error, no keyboard - Press F1 to continue"



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