[AC-Admins] Trash talking servers / admins

[Mirage]

Recently we've switched Datacenters. With any major switch there are 
usually a few glitches.

I've had several people forward this log to me already, but it looks 
like Scott is already well aware.

I think Inaki's comments are *completely out of line*. The whole our 
servers = garbage is just straight up
disrespectful, and I'm pretty offended. Trolls have root on lion's box? 
That's just completely not true at all.
Even if you do think that, there's a right way and a wrong way to handle 
your opinions.

I don't think downtime on lion has been really bad. A few services 
glitches here and there, but over the span of
many years. I don't think its significant enough to really be considered 
high risk or anything.

I really wouldn't mind getting monthly or bimonthly meetings back into 
effect. There have been many changes
made to Anthrochat, and I think it would be nice if everyone got on the 
same page.
-I think its time we looked at optimizing the network again. I certainly 
think it wouldn't hurt.
-We have a few new IRCops
-What could make our network better?
-I try in some form or fashion to advertise our network at conventions, 
but I certainly think we should maximize
our efforts in this. Also maintaining our current members is important. 
For example, I noticed that #pounced.org
now has a channel, and I took the time to send Galen (an admin on 
pounced.org) a thank you on behalf of us for
choosing anthrochat.
-Network security methods and recommendations.

I'm also really glad to say that we had a very productive chat in #opers 
today among a lot of admins. It lasted about
2-3 hours and it was really nice to see everyone come together and work 
as a team.

-Mirage

Scott 'Simba' Garron wrote:
>       After grepping through some channel conversations today, I noticed 
> this little snippet (irrelevant conversation removed):
>
> 06:03PM <Inaki> you know, if we reduced the network to glider, cheetah 
> and husky, it'd be perfectly stable
> 06:03PM <Pippin> and otter, I think?
> 06:04PM <InvinPoomie> which servers are where?
> 06:04PM <InvinPoomie> any server in the UK?
> 06:04PM <Inaki> ya otter's pretty stable
> 06:04PM <Inaki> lion and snowleopard are garbage
> 06:04PM <InvinPoomie> i wonder where they are located
> 06:04PM <Pippin> squirrel=germany, husky=UK, lion=florida, 
> otter=texas(?), glider=califhornia, snowleopard=virginia(?)
> 06:05PM <Pippin> oh, and cheetah=chicago
> 06:05PM <Inaki> er ya =D
> 06:05PM <Pippin> there was a map somewhere.
> 06:06PM <InvinPoomie> So Simba's is junk? ;)
> 06:06PM * >Pippin made a whizzy google maps map ages ago but, of course, 
> never actually got round to telling anyone about it :p
> 06:07PM <Inaki> Lion's been okay recently, but ya.. it had all sorts of 
> problems
> 06:08PM <Pippin> lion is on a network whose uplinks tend to have outages 
> sometimes.  lion itself is stable as far as I know, but with a crummy 
> network connection and services hosted with it, it tends to disrupt the 
> whole irc network if it hiccups.
> 06:08PM <InvinPoomie> i know nothing about IRC networks
> 06:08PM <Inaki> Pippin: yep.. thats the problem
> 06:09PM <Inaki> also trolls have root on that box >.>
>
>       In particular, I'm pointing out the "lion and snowleopard are 
> garbage", "lion is on a network whose uplinks tend to have outages 
> sometimes", and "also trolls have root on that box" comments.
>
>       Now, if our own admins have such low opinions of our network 
> servers and don't discuss those opinions, how can we continue to operate 
> effectively?
>
>       First, I'd like to point out some facts:  After reviewing the 
> admin's list archives from the beginning of the archive (May 2006), I 
> see that, according to Nagios, lion was out a total of about 490 minutes 
> between then and the end of January 2008.  There are a total of 871200 
> minutes of time that passed during that timeframe.  490 is about .06 
> percent downtime (ie. 99.94% uptime).  Granted, it's not a stellar 
> "99.999%", but it's still not "garbage".  That's using the absolutely 
> highest number of downtime minutes that I could generate.  That includes 
> the 220 minutes that I brought the whole machine down when Yappy 
> mistakenly did an rm -rf in the wrong directory and I was trying to do 
> data recovery for him.  That also includes the minutes that Nagios may 
> have had issues on its end when lion was still operational on this end 
> (those minutes are very few and far between.  Kudos to Pippin for having 
> stellar uptime with that).
>
>       Prior to the archives (2005 and 2004), lion had lots of problems 
> that were related to the machine itself.  I admit that it was running on 
> old, failing hardware, and that has been rectified.  If you're referring 
> to that, I don't know what else I can do.
>
>       I haven't bothered calculating uptime for the rest of the servers 
> using the same method, but I'll bet that you'll find similar results 
> with all the rest of the servers.  Lion was never down for days at a 
> time during the recorded archive due to datacenter moves, IP address 
> changes, or switch ports being bad.  It's still in the same data center 
> with, I think, the same IP address that it has had since the beginning.
>
>       The "trolls" comment had me kinda floored, though.  The people 
> with root on the physical machine are:  simba, harik.  People with root 
> on the virtual machine with the IRCd:  simba, harik.  People with root 
> on the virtual machine with services:  simba, harik, mach, yappy, 
> simtra, ratchet, rasvar, mrbrain.  mrbrain is an ex-sysadmin at ao.net. 
>   simtra used to be involved in the furry fandom, but is also an ex AO 
> employee.  Neither of them are trolls.  That leaves ratchet, mach, 
> yappy, and rasvar.  Mach is anti-troll.  Rasvar wouldn't troll and 
> doesn't have time to troll.  Ratchet is mostly anti-troll.  Yappy is 
> anti-troll.  That leaves harik, simba.  I've been known to troll Furnet, 
> 'cause like... lol-Furnet.  harik is in a category all his own, but is 
> generally only chatting in #furry, somewhere that he is considered "old 
> guard".  I'm *really* interested in where this whole "trolls" comment 
> came from unless you're talking about me.  I suppose, "if the shoe 
> fits", I'll wear it, but "trolls" was used in plural, and I'm certainly 
> not more than one person.
>
>       Now...   With those facts, what's really on your minds?  If 
> there's a perceived problem, I'd like to know about it and attempt to 
> correct it.
>
>