Conference 7.286::digital

    You may have noticed interruptions of service to HUMAN for the past
    several weeks. This was caused by a longstanding couple of bad bits in
    the DIGITAL note conference causing a BUGCHECK in the field test
    version of VMS. This BUGCHECK is not normally present in released
    versions, but is used in test versions to catch errors.
    
    Thanks to Dave Cantor, who has patched DIGITAL.NOTE to remove the
    problems. This should provide a more reliable service. If you notice
    any peculiar behavior when accessing the conference, please notify the
    moderators (via the command SEND/MODERATOR).
    
    Thank you.

	Over the last two weeks I have added keywords to all base notes
	in this conference. This should in theory make it easier to find
	topics that have been discussed before by using the DIR/KEYWORD
	command. Keyword creation is not restricted so please feel free
	to add keywords (using the ADD KEYWORD command) to your own topics
	and replied.

			Alfred

    More links have been enabled to this conference. This appears to
    make it somewhat easier to get in. However, response time appears
    to still be slow. I am making available a read only copy of this
    conference at CVG::DIGITAL at this time. If you are a read only Noter
    or if you read this conference via batch job then you may want to
    try the shadow conference. It is being updated hourly.

    New notes and replies still require that you open HUMAN::DIGITAL.

    			Alfred Thompson

	The CVG::DIGITAL shadow problems have been cleared up. If you are
    	using the shadow copy though you will want to re-set your seen map.
    	SET SEEN/BEFORE=11-JUN-1990 is recommended.
    
	In any case the continued existance of the CVG::DIGITAL
	shadow is in doubt for the long term. A second shadow is now
	available at CNOTES::NOTES$SHADOWED:DIGITAL. I'd suggest that
	people think about using it for the future.

			Alfred

    Lately there seems to have been a lot more activity here (Thank
    you Jack Smith :-)) If you are a read only Noter here you may want
    to try using one of the shadow copies of this conference. These
    copies are updated very regularly (hourly) and using them will 
    allow more people access to the conference.

    The primary shadow is at CNOTES::NOTES$SHADOWED:DIGITAL with a
    secondary one at CVG::DIGITAL. Try them, you'll like the access
    speed.

    		Alfred

    With the move to HUMANE and the existence of
    CNOTES::NOTES$SHADOWED:DIGITAL the need for the shadow on
    CVG, which I originally intended as a temporary experiment,
    appears to be less reduced. I will be closing the CVG::DIGITAL
    shadow an the end of February. (1 March 1991 some time during the
    day.)

    I encourage read only Noters to use the copy on CNOTES.
    MOD ENTRY DIGITAL/FILE=CNOTES::NOTES$SHADOWED:DIGITAL

    		Alfred

The Digital notes conference will be unavailable Saturday, March 14 from
approximately 8 AM to 1 PM Eastern Standard Time.  This is due to fire alarm
testing which will shut off power to the computer room that houses HUMANE.

Paul

The Digital conference will be unavailable Wednesday, July 1, from 9 a.m. to
12 noon Eastern Daylight time.  We are doing a hardware and software upgrade on
node HUMANE.

Paul

A number of people have said that they had problems during batch extractions of
notes from the Digital conference.  Last week, during the hardware and software
upgrade, the conference was rebuilt via CONVERT.

If anyone still has problems accessing HUMANE::DIGITAL, please send me mail.

Paul

FUNYET::ANDERSON
Paul Anderson @OFO

Node HUMANE, the home of this conference, is moving from OFO in Burlington to
OGO in Stow over the weekend.  Therefore, the Digital conference will be
unavailable Friday afternoon, September 25.

It is expected that the conference will be available again by Friday evening. 
It will take a little longer for everyone's network database to be updated.  I
will post the new network address as soon as it is assigned.

Paul

This conference will be moving tonight.

Until Tuesday, September 29 at 5 PM EDT, node HUMANE will be at its old network
address of 35.813 (36653).  At that time, the conference will be moved and will
be unavailable for a short period of time.

Later this evening, HUMANE will be at its new network address of 56.286 (57630).

It will take a few days for everyone's network databases to become up-to-date,
assuming your system runs NETUPDATE.  I would hope the corporate DNS namespace
would also be updated shortly.

Paul

The preferred way to access this conference is via a DNS object.  If you access
the conference this way, you will never have to change your notebook entry even
if the conference moves or changes nodes.

If you use the DECwindows version of VAX Notes, choose the Show/Modify option
on the Options menu and specify the Object Name as

	easynote.confs.other.digital

If you use the character cell version of VAX Notes, type the following at the
Notes> prompt:

	MODIFY ENTRY name /OBJECT=easynote.confs.other.digital

where "name" is the entry name you use for the Digital conference.

Paul

The Digital conference will be unavailable for a short time Saturday,
October 10.  Node HUMANE is being upgraded to OpenVMS VAX V5.5-2.

Paul

Due to work on Ken Olsen's new office in Stow, the network to Stow, and
therefore, this conference, will be unvailable for two hours Friday, November 6.
The interruption in service will begin at 9 PM EST and last for about two hours.

The reason for the downtime is the installation of a UPS system for Ken's
private network.  It requires installing UPS on the backbone for the whole site.

Paul

This conference has been unavailable a number of times since last week.

There was a power failure at OGO early Friday morning, which caused the network
to be down even after HUMANE had rebooted.  There were sporadic network problems
until yesterday morning.

Yesterday morning, I took advantage of the unreachability of HUMANE to install
a new disk drive.  The new drive will soon be part of a stripe set to improve
response time on HUMANE.

The conference will be unavailable for a while this Sunday, December 6.  The
purpose of this down time is to set up the disk stripe set for the DIGITAL
conference, optimize the RMS structure of the conference, and to update DECnet
software.

Paul

HUMANE has been reborn!  As if there weren't enough reachability problems last
week, HUMANE's system disk failed on Saturday.  Field Service replaced it on
Monday and I took the opportunity to totally rebuild the disk from scratch even
though I did have a recent backup.  ;-)

Here are the improvements made in the last ten days:

	� System disk totally rebuilt
	� DECnet/OSI (Phase V Wave 2) installed
	� Notes conference structure optimized
	� Conference placed on two-DSSI-disk Volume Shadow set

The last two items should increase the read performance of the conference.  I
will still be doing some tweeking in the next few days, and the system may be
down for brief periods.  Barring another hardware failure, there will be no more
long periods when the conference is unavailable.

Thanks to all for their patience.  I know this is an important time for the
conference to be available and I apologize for the down time.

Paul

See note 2209 for information about a batch extract mailing service for
the DIGITAL conference.

			Steve

HUMANE has been upgraded from a VAX 3600 CPU to a VAX 3900 CPU.  This 40%
increase in processing power should improve performance.

Paul

    
    This conference has a new shadow copy available on the enet at node
    
    			MORTAL - DECnet address 2.324
    
    MORTAL is a DEC 3000/500 AXP System which is part of a Mixed
    Architecture VMScluster in ZKO. As such MORTAL should provide extremely
    responsive performance to those conference participants who chose to
    use MORTAL to gain read-only access to the DIGITAL conference. Some
    brief testing by some of the moderators found that MORTAL gave a
    complete directory listing of all notes and replies authored by one
    individual in 4.5 minutes while HUMANE didn't even get a directory
    window up in 4.5 minutes. SEARCH seems to be lightning quick as well.
    MORTAL is updated every 30 minutes with the most recent notes and
    replies from HUMANE. The conference file can be found at:
    
    			MORTAL::DIGITAL
    
    In addition to MORTAL, CNOTES is another node, which also offers a 
    shadowed copy of this conference. CNOTES is physically located in MKO
    and the conference file can be found at:
    
    			CNOTES::NOTES$SHADOWED:DIGITAL
    
    Note that shadow conference are read-only in nature, yet it is our
    experience that most conference participants are read-only most of the
    time so please take advantage of these alternate locations for faster
    access to this conference and to offload HUMANE of some of its
    workload, which will make everyone happier.
    

After HUMANE's hardware upgrade Sunday, power to the internal drives failed
Sunday night.  The problem was finally resolved this morning.

Thank you all for your patience while the conference was mostly unavailable the
last three days.

I would also like to thank two people who have donated equipment to the cause. 
Jon Crowell of ESB Engineering sent the MicroVAX 3900 CPU and Joe Bates of
OpenVMS Software Marketing sent the new CPU cabinet and two disk drives. 
HUMANE's hardware is now more up-to-date and hopefully faster than before.

Paul

HUMANE will be down starting Friday April 30 at 5 PM EDT for a hardware upgrade.
The system will be back up within a couple of hours.

Paul

As most people know, HUMANE's performance has been less than spectacular.
Sometime in the near future, it will be upgraded to a 2-node cluster.

Bob

HUMANE will be down part of this weekend as part of its move to a two-node
VMScluster.

Paul

There was a power failure at OGO Saturday afternoon and HUMANE did not reboot. 
Due to the Memorial Day holiday, I was not able to boot the system until this
morning.  My apologies to all.

Paul

 	    *** Network Address Changes Effective Immediately ***


	The MORTAL cluster will be moved from ZK2-1 to ZK3-2 this 
        Tuesday, 21-Sep-93.

	As part of this move, the DECnet address for the cluster will change 
        on Saturday, 18-Sep-93. The new addresses are:

			MORTAL	19.078	(Cluster Alias)
			BEAVIS  19.054  (DEC 4000-610)
			BUTHED  19.074  (VAX 4000-600)

	

HUMANE will be unavailable for about an hour sometime Sunday, October 31, for a
software upgrade.

Paul

HUMANE has been having some trouble this week.

Performance has suffered with increased use due to the lack of updates on the
MORTAL shadow.

There have also been a number of crashes and reboots.  This is being
investigated, but there may be some interruptions in service until a solution is
found.

Paul

    
    The Shadow copy of this conference is back online and available at
    
    		MORTAL::NOTES$LIBRARY:DIGITAL
    
    After some serious debugging by Field Service and replacing the CPU
    board it was finally determined that a bad thinwire cable was causing
    BUTHED to bugcheck when it executed an NCP SET KNOWN LINES ALL. Once
    the cable was replaced all worked flawlessly.
    
    The conference on MORTAL is now back in synch with the master copy on
    HUMANE.
    
    -Joe
    

To aid in the investigation of HUMANE's occasional crashing, the system will be
brought down this afternoon around 5 PM EST.  The system should return by 7 PM.

Paul

Node HUMANE, home of this conference, is moving on Friday and will be off the
network most of the day.

The machine will be shut down at 9 AM Friday December 10.  It will then be
physically moved from OGO in Stow to MRO1 in Marlborough.

This move also involves a DECnet address change, which will be made on Friday
and start propogating itself around the network over the weekend.  When I know
the new address, I'll post it here.

HUMANE may be back up in its new home Friday afternoon, but please count on it
being unavailable until Monday morning.

Paul

In the ideal world, everyone would be able to access HUMANE::DIGITAL after its
move to Marlborough.  In the real world, not everyone's system will know about
HUMANE's new address right away.

You can avoid problems in advance by modifying your notebook entry to point to
the DNS object, if you haven't already done so.  The Notes> command is

	SET ENTRY DIGITAL /OBJECT=.easynote.confs.other.digital

or choose Entries | Show/Modify... from the Motif interface.

If don't use the DNS object to point to the conference, and you can't get to
the conference at its new location, your system's network database may be out
of date.  In this case, you could use 7454::DIGITAL, which uses HUMANE's new
DECnet address of 7.286.

Paul

    
    HUMANE has been experiencing serious network problems over the last
    several days. As a temporary fix we have moved this conference from a
    MicroVAX 3800 running OSI to a DEC 3000-500 AXP running Phase IV. We will 
    be evaluating this new configuration to see if it eliminates the
    performance and availability problems that conference participants have
    been experiencing over the past several months.
    
    The daily notes mail extract service for this conference is not yet 
    operational on this new system. (stay tuned for further details)
    
    Thank you for your patience during the period this was being resolved.
    
    We regret any inconvenience that conference participants may have
    experienced.
    
    -Joe Bates
    co-Moderator Digital
    

The HUMANE system managers have decided to keep the Digital Notes conference on
the DEC 3000 Model 500 system, where it was moved temporarily two weeks ago. 
The network problems in Marlborough have long been resolved, but the wonderful
performance offered by OpenVMS on Alpha AXP offers us no choice!

As a result, the system will be unavailable for a few short intervals this
weekend, February 19 and 20 for software installation and system reconfiguration.

The daily extract service, unavailable since the move from the MicroVAX 3900,
will also be added to the system.

Paul

    
    HUMANE will be unavailable for a short period this afternoon so that
    service can replace the system disk which has been generating hard
    errors over the last several days.
    
    -Joe Bates
    co-Moderator Digital
    

HUMANE has finally moved to its permanent home.  The conference now lives on a
DEC 4000 Model 610 system (Cobra) running OpenVMS AXP V1.5, DECnet/OSI V2.0A,
and DEC Notes V2.5.  It is physically located at MRO1.

While the old HUMANE, last used a couple of months ago, was a MicroVAX 3900 and
ran at saturation levels 24 hours a day, the Alpha AXP system usually barely
breaks a sweat.  This is true even during the last week, when two or three
hundred Notes users were accessing the system at once.

Paul

    As a temporary measure to (for a short time) prevent automatic
    reposting of a note which has been returned by the moderators,
    creation of new topics in this conference has been disabled.
    Replies to existing topics can still be added.
    
    The moderators are working with Corporate Employee Relations to
    resolve this issue.  Your patience is appreciated.
    
    					Steve

Node HUMANE will be unavailable for a while Monday evening for a software
upgrade.

The system will be shut down at 6 P.M. U.S. Eastern Daylight Time Monday, May 9,
and return within a couple of hours.

Paul

New topic creation has been re-enabled for the conference and note 3050 has been
unlocked.

HOWEVER, should further abuse of the conference occur, the measures in 2.36 may
be re-instated.

Thanks for your patience and understanding.

Bob

Unfortunately, abuse of the conference has immediately resumed.  As a result,
new topic creation has been disabled.  Please see topic 3061 for information
on new topic creation.

Bob - Co-moderator DIGITAL

    
    New topic creation for this conference has been re-enabled.
    
    As such, conference participants are now free to create new topics in
    this conference that conform to corporate P&P and the charter of the
    conference (same ground rules for the conference as existed prior to this
    recent incident)
    
    As a result, the new topic topic and the discussion of the new topic topic
    along with the respective replies has been deleted.
    
    we now return you to your regularly scheduled program...
    
    -Joe       
    co-Moderator Digital
    
    

    
    CONFERENCE TEMPORARILY WRITE-LOCKED WHILE REGENERATING NEW SHADOW COPY
    

    
    This conference is write enabled again on HUMANE.
    
    The Read-Only shadow copy on MORTAL has been replaced with a new copy
    of this file.
    
    DECnotes on MORTAL has been updated to version 2.5
    

At the suggestion of a reader, I have corrected the titles of a number of
notes which misspelled TFSO as TSFO.  I've also added a TFSO keyword which
points to many notes which discuss TFSO (and there are a LOT of them - please
think twice before starting yet another!) 

					Steve

Due to an office/power reconfiguration, the shadow of this conference on
MORTAL:: will be unavailable for an unpredictable amount of time on
Tuesday, 6 September 1994.  As soon as the power poles (and MORTAL::) are
moved, access will be restored. 

The read/write copy on HUMANE:: will not be affected.

Here's the status on HUMANE's network connections.

DECnet:  There are serious problems with Digital's corporate namespace involving
a combination of hardware and DNS software.  Until the problems are resolved, or
until HUMANE goes back to running DECnet Phase IV, there will be periods of time
during which connecting to the system will be slow.

TCP/IP:  At the moment, TCP/IP is not running on HUMANE.  The system has just
moved from building MRO1 to MRO2.  I am in the process of obtaining a new TCP/IP
address for HUMANE, after which it will be running TCP/IP Services for OpenVMS
V3.2.

Paul

This Notes conference is now available via TCP/IP in addition to DECnet.

	DECnet/OSI:	  .mro.humane::digital
	DECnet Phase IV:  HUMANE::DIGITAL
	TCP/IP:		  [email protected]

Paul

Due to personnel and hardware changes, the read-only shadow copy of the Digital
conference on node MORTAL is being discontinued.  Please use the read/write
version on node HUMANE instead.

If anyone feels there is a need for a new shadow copy and is willing to host it,
please let me know.

Paul

Node HUMANE has moved from building MRO2, which is closing, to MRO1. 
Unfortunately, its TCP/IP address does not work at its new location.

I'm working on getting a new address assigned so TCP/IP access to HUMANE can be
restored.

Paul

TCP/IP access to HUMANE has been restored.  The name and address remain the
same:  humane.mro.dec.com at 16.34.208.85.

Paul

This conference will be unavailable today from about 3 to 5 PM EDT for hardware
maintenance on the HUMANE system.

Paul