Subject: Re: Parsons is dying
From: Shaw Terwilliger (sterwill@sourcegear.com)
Date: Tue Jan 08 2002 - 10:41:27 CST
F J Franklin wrote:
> > On the other hand, I would be willing to pay the first year of a commercial
> > web-host, including the domain name registration, if the "cabal" decides
> > that is the way to go.
>
> Would SF be willing to buy new hardware and continue hosting us? If so,
> how much would such hardware cost? Is it just a SCSI card & a couple of
> discs (approx. $1000 ?) or would it have to be a whole new computer
> ($2000-$50000 ?)
I've been the one dealing with most of the physical administration issues
for parsons. I'm honestly not sure what the problem with the machine is.
I've replaced every disk in the machine at one time or another, with
different brands and models. I've taken the tape and CD-RW drives off the
SCSI chain so it's just disks. The kernel it's running is known to work
very well with the hardware. SourceGear has many servers almost identical
to parsons, and those machines have never exhibited the same problems with
the SCSI chain.
Last time the SCSI bus threw lots of errors and parsons needed rebooted
I knocked the max transfer rates of all the drives from 80 MB/s to 40 MB/s.
We'll see with time if that has any effect.
My best guess is the problem lies in the SCSI card (I could try flashing it
with newer firmware; it's an Adaptec 2940 Ultra2 SCSI adapter), the
PCI bus on the motherboard, or in some environmental circumstance in the
chassis (excess static buildup). The last occurred to me because of the
delayed nature of the problems. The machine has to be up for a few weeks
for the disk errors to start. With the exception of one hard drive that was
in parsons a few months ago, running bad block scans on the disks show nothing
shortly after a boot.
If we consider the disks good, which I think is a good assumption, and
consider the scenario with the static in the chassis unlikely or easily
fixed with the right bit of knowledge, the jobs of replacing the problem
parts seems expensive as a use of my time, not so much as a use of
SourceGear's dollars. If anyone who has an account on parsons notices
SCSI bus warnings/errors (dmesg would show these) let me know soon, and
I'll poke around to see if I can gather any more information.
-- Shaw Terwilliger <sterwill@sourcegear.com> SourceGear Corporation 217.356.0105 x 641
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