Date: Wed, 12 Jun 2002 16:05:23 -0700
Reply-To: Jim Arnott <jrasite@EONI.COM>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: Jim Arnott <jrasite@EONI.COM>
Organization: http://WetWesties.org
Subject: Re: Uh oh, new Bus a go! (list ancient history)
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
It wasn't *that* bad...
Jim Ellis wrote:
>
> Cleaning it up for public consumption, I'd mention that Jim Arnott has informed
> me of the vanagon@yahoogroups.com SPARE list.
>
> OK, I feel *MUCH* better informed and a like my ass is a bit lop-sided with
> that chunk bit out of it... Yeeeks!
Regarding the "spare" list:
(Remember, I'm old. I didn't take notes. Others may have corrections.
(JOEL!!!!) Errors may occur...)
Unlike many mailing lists, the (generic) Type 2 lists all run on their
own hardware. Vanagon lives on a system in the possession of Tom
Carrington and the type2 and vintagebus lists live on a server currently
kept in a server farm in the Seattle area. Each of these servers are
owned by the respective list(s).
The Vanagon list was originally hosted on a server at the University of
Minnesota by Gerry Skerbitz. Eventually, Gerry felt that it was time for
his creation to go out on its own and list contributions purchased an HP
dual Pentium for list hosting. The List (capitalized because at the
time there was but one list) was then migrated from the University's
system to the new box. This new box was then packed up and sent to Chris
Smith for installation in San Diego. IIRC, Chris handled the hardware
issues and Coyote (Ron Lussier) dealt with the list admin tasks.
The spare list was created when gerry, the Vanagon list server (so named
that we never forget our roots), was moved from its home in (IIRC) the
San Diego Supercomputer Center (Chris and Coyote, list admins) to the
wilds of Quesnel, British Columbia (David Marshall, list admin). This
move took nearly a month to accomplish and for that time the 'spare'
list was 'the' list. The spare list was again called to action when
gerry was moved from BC to Tom on the east coast USA.
Before the gerry server came into the possession of our beloved and
patient list admin Tom, gerry had a habit of losing his mind every so
often. Because of this propensity, I continued to maintain the spare
list to keep many from asking, "Is gerry down?" of gerry when gerry was
in fact down. It allowed us to have a means of communicating the fact
that gerry had, yet again, bit the dust.
A side note here: To determine if gerry is up, simply send a message to
listserv@gerry.vanagon.com with a message of 'thank you'. If gerry's
healthy, he'll reply 'You're welcome' within a few minutes. DO NOT send
the message to vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com. If you send it there and gerry
is down it just gets added to the message queue. This creates more
traffic to sort out when he comes back up. Messages sent to the list
address are queued and sent out. Messages sent to the listserv address
are commands.
An additional benefit of having the spare list is Yahoo!'s (boy, will
that make my jr. high school English teacher cringe!) server to store
photos and files. There is a finite amount of space there, but we
haven't filled it in five or six years. If we do fill it, I have a
couple of options. I can either delete older stuff or I can just create
another 'spare' group to hold the additional stuff. I'll cross that
bridge when I come to it...
So ends today's history lesson.
Now, just out of curiousity, how many of the original vanagon@lenti
listmembers are still here? P-mail please. I'll tally and publish
Friday. Please make the subject "Vanagon@lenti" to ease tracking.
Jim Arnott
"Spare" Vanagon admin
