🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1993Jan23.194204.15246@macc.wisc.edu> anderson@macc.wisc.edu (Jess Anderson) writes:
>
>Background: Several people have suggested solving the
>archive server space crunch by asking users to kick in money
>to purchase additional drives for sonata and orst.  I've
>volunteered to collect pledges and to contact Purdue and
>Oregon State to see what they think of the idea.  I'll do
>that at the beginning of next week.  Five people pledged
>money in the first hour, six counting me.  The amounts so
>far are like $10-$20 for each server site.
>

Humm. One of my support buddies told me a while back that he was
busy installing the 1.4 Gig disk that NeXT had donated us because orst
was keeping archives. I wonder if the additional space is 
necessary... but hey, if you want to give us even MORE space...

>Although this seems to be an idea whose time has come,
>please be aware that the universities involved might not be
>as enthusiastic about it as we are.  There are always
>bureaucracies, policy implications, and hidden costs to be
>involved in such enterprises, as well I know, having worked
>at universities for 40 years.
>
Humm, I'm just a student, but one thing that oregon state has never 
said no too is donations.

I just wish we had more NeXTs around here. It's weird going to the
school that has a huge NeXT software archive, and as of now our CS 
department has ONE NeXT (a 68030 with 8MB RAM) - the other one having had
it's RAM stolen out of it by some low life. cs.orst.edu is an HP 9000/375.

Actually, there are quite a few NeXT's around here - all student owned.
Anybody who does programming of and who has used a NeXT seems to like them,
but I haven't seen a single CompSci class yet for NeXT programming..not
surprising considering the one 68030 NeXT. 

- Vareck Bostrom
bostrov@research.cs.orst.edu

In article <1993Jan23.194204.15246@macc.wisc.edu>
	anderson@macc.wisc.edu (Jess Anderson) writes:
>Background: Several people have suggested solving the archive server
>space crunch by asking users to kick in money to purchase additional
>drives for sonata and orst.  I've volunteered to collect pledges
>and to contact Purdue and Oregon State to see what they think of
>the idea.  I'll do that at the beginning of next week.  Five people
>pledged money in the first hour, six counting me.  The amounts so
>far are like $10-$20 for each server site.
>
>Respondents so far think it's a cool idea and are making other
>useful suggestions too.

I would be willing to toss in a couple bucks.  My problem, though,
is that I am not certain if I wish to donate money for disk space.
It seems to me that the major problem at Purdue is _not_ diskspace,
it is management.  I've talked to Allen (the student manager)
before, and he's a great guy, but I suspect he's been a bit busy,
lately.  Cleaning up the submissions directory would probably free
up a number of meg right off the bat.

Furthermore, one poster on the net has put forth the opinion that
they think that using a better compression algorithm isn't the way
to go, so rather than waste everyone's time, buy more disk space.
Well, yes and no.  I have no doubt that even if we purchase a gig
or two of disk space, it will soon be gone in _any_ case.  I have
a feeling that most system administrators would back me up on that
point!  In my experience, zip (or gzip) would reduce the disk needs
by up to %40, which is a pretty substantial improvement.  Furthermore,
compression is free and works even if new disk space is purchased,
so investment in a reasonable compression scheme is going to keep
paying back in the future.

So, in my view it comes down to three things, management, disk
space, and compression.  Compression is actually contained within
management, and so, to a certain extent, is disk space.  Just
throwing hardware at the problem is not going to solve it.  Of
these, I think that if we put forth the bucks to help defray
management costs, we'll get the best return on our dollar.

Later,
---
scott hess <shess@ssesco.com>                        <To the BatCube, Robin>
12901 Upton Avenue South, #326  Burnsville, MN 55337 (612) 895-1208 Anytime!
--
scott hess <shess@ssesco.com>                        <To the BatCube, Robin>
12901 Upton Avenue South, #326  Burnsville, MN 55337 (612) 895-1208 Anytime!

In article <SCOTT.93Jan24203511@nic.gac.edu>
scott@nic.gac.edu (Scott Hess) writes:

>I would be willing to toss in a couple bucks.  

That would put you in with 49 others so far.

>My problem, though,
>is that I am not certain if I wish to donate money for disk space.

I suppose we all would rather not, but I'm impressed that
people seem to be willing to pony up, too.

>It seems to me that the major problem at Purdue is _not_ diskspace,
>it is management.  I've talked to Allen (the student manager)
>before, and he's a great guy, but I suspect he's been a bit busy,
>lately.  Cleaning up the submissions directory would probably free
>up a number of meg right off the bat.

When I talk to the various places, I'm intending to discuss
management issues.  A key factor in all this is in fact the
cost of labor.  It's entirely possible that the schools will
not have funds available to support a gift of hardware.  The
common perception that such gifts are "free" is simply
mistaken.  It's also true that labor is quite a lot more
costly than the hardware we're talking about: for the cost
of my time, we could buy a gig every week!

>Furthermore, one poster on the net has put forth the opinion that
>they think that using a better compression algorithm isn't the way
>to go, so rather than waste everyone's time, buy more disk space.
>Well, yes and no.  I have no doubt that even if we purchase a gig
>or two of disk space, it will soon be gone in _any_ case.  I have

Of course, there's no such thing as *enough* when it comes
to memory, disk space, time, money, or fast living!  Not to
mention sex, drugs, and rock'n'roll!  :-)

>a feeling that most system administrators would back me up on that
>point!  In my experience, zip (or gzip) would reduce the disk needs
>by up to %40, which is a pretty substantial improvement.  Furthermore,
>compression is free and works even if new disk space is purchased,
>so investment in a reasonable compression scheme is going to keep
>paying back in the future.

Unquestionably better compression technologies are a wise
investment.  They pay back not only for the servers, but for
the user community as well, because most of us are anything
but swimming in extra disk space.

But of course there are practical problems, as with any kind
of technology update, not the least of which are plain old
human nature (I don' wanna if I don' hafta) and politics
(don' tell me what I oughta).  

There are significant labor costs in this dimension too.
F'rinstance, were I to update my MS-DOS archive, which is
stored on 800 floppy disks, from ARC to ZIP, I'd be looking
at the time it takes to do this on a 12 MHz AT clone,
feeding the disks one at a time.  I have 300 more disks
before I run out, at which time it could be cheaper to toss
stuff away, most of it being software I'll probably never
need again, and better versions being readily available if I
should need them.

And this last is one of the major reasons for having an
archive server in the first place -- they keep it so we
don't have to.

Yet another dimension, one I will be looking into, is
freeing up space on the servers by discarding things no one
really needs or wants.  Ticklish, to be sure, but not to be
overlooked.  Still another is duplication.  Geographical
factors become less and less an issue as networking
technology develops.  This brings in turf issues that I will
also be discussing with the site management people.

>So, in my view it comes down to three things, management, disk
>space, and compression.  Compression is actually contained within
>management, and so, to a certain extent, is disk space.  Just
>throwing hardware at the problem is not going to solve it.  Of
>these, I think that if we put forth the bucks to help defray
>management costs, we'll get the best return on our dollar.

As you see, I agree with all your points but not with your
conclusion, Scott.  Management costs 50 times as much as
disk space.  That doesn't mean that the management aspect
shouldn't be pursued, of course it should; but it does mean
the tradeoffs are more complicated than your model allows
for.

To conclude, I propose to continue collecting pledges for at
least another week.  I can report that hardware vendors have
contacted me who are willing to help out.  I'll know more in
a couple days about a lot of the implementation details and
snags (there are sure to be some), and will report to y'all
then.

-- 
[Jess Anderson <> Madison Academic Computing Center <> University of Wisconsin]
[Internet: anderson@macc.wisc.edu <-best, UUCP:{}!uwvax!macc.wisc.edu!anderson]
[Room 3130 <> 1210 West Dayton Street / Madison WI 53706 <> Phone 608/262-5888]
[---------> Discrimination, Bigotry, and Hate are not Family Values <---------]

In article <1993Jan23.194204.15246@macc.wisc.edu> anderson@macc.wisc.edu (Jess Anderson) writes:
>
> a bunch of stuff about contributing to disk space

Here's a thought:  If there were enough people interested in contributing
a small amount of money towards this sort of thing, you might want to
consider seeing if you could just hook up a dedicated next-ftp machine
hooked somewhere off the net (I could hang one off the UW department
of genetics, I just don't want to move my machine from home!)  This way
you basically wouldn't have to deal with the admins at purdue, since the
stuff would be privately-owned, or owned by  a "coalition" or something.

PS I'd be willing to chip in $10.

-Sean

-- 
Sean T. Lamont                           |   "Don't oppress me, It's
zeno@genetics.washington.edu             |    'computer of color!' "
lamont@abstractsoft.com                  |_______________________________
Abstract Software