[02] WHAT ARE SDF'S ORIGINS AND HISTORY? (LONG SUMMARY) (For related information on SDF and the history behind this public access UNIX system, read "The HACKER CRACKDOWN" by Bruce Sterling) 1987 - SDF was originally an APPLE ][e microcomputer running "Magic City Micro-BBS" customized by Ted Uhlemann (iczer). The system was run as a Japanese Anime SIG and was known as the SDF-1. The SDF-1 at that time was just your typical BBS: One phone line plugged into a 1200bps modem, 128 kilo-nibbles of core and two flexible disk drives with 280 kilo-nibbles storage capacity each. Stephen Jones (smj) helped locate a 5 megabyte mass storage unit for the micro. Ted was only able to get about 3 megabytes out of the disk. By adding a 2400bps modem and this new mass storage unit, SDF's users noticed a substantial performance increase. In 1989 Ted and Stephen began running SDF as a CITADEL BBS. It was the filesystem like structure of the Bulletin Board that piqued their interest. Both the Apple ][e and the IBM PC XT served logins. Ted, Stephen and Daniel Finster (df) had been dialing into a system run by an AT&T employee named Charlie Boykin. Charlie's system was called The UNIX Connection (AKA attctc or killer.dallas.tx.us). Charlie's public access UNIX was such a breath of fresh air compared to restrictive BBS menus that when killer was abruptly shutdown (20-Feb-90) during Operation SunDevil, it was greatly missed. At that point the three decided they would form a replacement for killer. 16-Jun-91 - SDF.LONESTAR.ORG At this time UNIX had been runable on i386 machines for a couple of years. Ted took on the responsbility of setting up the machine and contacting UUCP network administrators around town to get UUCP mail going. After trying to use an inexpensive UNIX clone (COHERENT) which turned out to be a CROCK, Ted decided to go with Kodak's Interactive release of UNIX SYSTEM 5 r3.2 1.0. The caseless computer ran laid across Ted's desk. 01-Aug-91 - SDF.LONESTAR.ORG Interest in the public access UNIX system began to grow and it was decided that the system be moved to another location so that more phone lines (4) could be installed. Richard Losey (rlosey) contributed to the project so that an AST four port board could be purchased to support the 4 - 2400 dialups. There was also a sidewalk sale booth which was mostly comprised of donated goods and half of Aaron Schmiedel's (aaron) garage. From that point, SDF grew. Summer-92 Ted and Daniel talked with David Lippke, a network manager at the Unversity of Texas at Dallas (UTD), about an ARPANET connection for the SDF. By then SDF had been running as a UNIX system for about a year. The idea was considered by David, but eventually turned into a proposed commercial venture. By the Fall of 1992 Ted, Daniel and three SDF users Steven Parker (sp), Steve Linebarger (srl) and Bill Middleton (wjm) had left SDF to form Texas Metronet, Dallas' first (if not in Texas) commercial internet service provider. Stephen remained behind continuing to administer to the SDF. 04-Aug-93 With the help of Charlie Boykin(SMU) and Rich Andrews(SMU), Stephen was able to replace the INTEL based PC UNIX with a hardworking and reliable WE32100 based minicomputer designed by AT&T (the 3B2). Brian Rogers (brogers) helped Stephen install 9 - 14.4kbps telephone lines. At this time, SDF's configuration was as follows: uname Machine Description ------------------------------------------------------------------ sdf 3b2/400 4 Megs Memory, 2(72) Meg disk sdf1 3b2/400 4 Megs Memory, 2(72) Meg disk SCSI HA 338 Meg disk sdf2 3b2/310 4 Megs Memory, 1(72) Meg disk sdf handled dialup access, sdf1 handled UUCP and sdf2 handled USENET news processing. The machine used RFS (Remote File Sharing) over a STARLAN network to share data. Spring-94 4 3B2/400 machines were purchased from South Carolina State University. Two were put in immediate service along with the original 3B2/310 system. The machines were networked over a 1 megabit local area network (STARLAN) and shared resources to give the illusion of one machine. Also purchased were several terminals and an AT&T UNIX PC 7300 called 'minmei'. 04-Aug-95 The system is made up of one AT&T 3b2/400 and one AT&T 3b2/310. The 310 has a SCSI BUS and handles the majority of USENET processing. The 310's SCSI BUS has an EMULEX ESDI to SCSI converter which gives support to 4 ESDI drives and only takes up one SCSI ID. By using this, the SCSI BUS could very easily support 24 hard drives. The 400 handles all user sessions. When you dialup into SDF you are connected to the 400. The 310 and the 400 are on a STARLAN network. STARLAN is a local area network which can be 1mbit or 10mbit in speed. The two machines share disks through the Remote File Sharing package. When you read USENET news on the 400 (sdf) it is actually reading the articles over the network from the 310 (news) machine. 03-Mar-96 ANONBBS Ted and Stephen got together very late one night and decided to start a short lived project they called 'ANONBBS'. ANONBBS was just as it sounds, it ran on an i386sx25 toshiba laptop with 60mb of storage and 10mb of RAM under Digital Research DOS 5.0 .. The entire BBS was written in TELIX SALT with an extremely functional, but minimalistic interface that Ted and Stephen literally hashed out over tacos and nachos at 3am in a Taco Cabana. The asethetic proved extremely useful and the system became busy. Users would type up messages on their machines and then upload them to the 'C:\BBOARD>' directory. Files were stored in 'C:\XFER>' .. some users signed their handles on messages while others just remained anonymous. It was an experiment to see what people would do in an environment where they had completely anonyomity and control. 01-May-96 SDF Lucent Technologies/AT&T Bell Laboratories donated a 3b2/500 with an XM (disk) cabinet that replaced the older setup. Special thanks to Michael Dolan (Lucent) and John Marinho (AT&T) for their help. AT&T 3B2 SYSTEM CONFIGURATION: Memory size: 8 Megabytes System Peripherals: Device Name Subdevices Extended Subdevices SBD Floppy Disk SCSI (S.E. BUS ID0) SD01 ID1 155 Megabyte Disk ID0 ST01 ID2 Tape ID0 SD01 ID5 155 Megabyte Disk ID0 155 Megabyte Disk ID1 155 Megabyte Disk ID2 NI EPORTS MAU VCACHE SBD System Board. This board contains the 3b2's main processor. It is possible to have up to 3 processor boards in this machine. SCSI Small Computer Systems Interface. This BUS allows the system to support up to 24 storage devices. NI Network Interface. This feature card is a 10base5 interface which support ETHERNET protocol. EPORTS Enhanced PORTS. This feature card supports 8 38400bps serial connections. MAU Mathematics Accelerator UNIT. VCACHE This board aides the processor by CACHE'ing commonly used 3b2/32200 32100 processor instructions. 30-Mar-97 Aaron Schmiedel (aaron) donated several large disk drives and a higher capacity tape backup system. The system was reconfigured to take advantage of the new storage resources. 24-Nov-97 Vincent Helliwell (thecave) donated a 2.1 gig SCSI drive which was used to replace the old /udd (user directory directory) filesystem and allow the last remaining 5.25" full height drive to be decommissioned. 15-Dec-97 A new server built almost entirely out of user donated parts was configured and installed. The initial plan was for it to run NetBSD (and it just may someday) but for the interim it runs a highly modified GNU system with a slightly modified Linux kernel. Donated hardware that makes up a portion of this machine: P166+ CPU and 16megs RAM (aaron) 1.0 gig HD (cjc) (Traded for old SDF SCSI drives) 170 meg HD (iczer) 210 meg HD (wmills) case w/ PS, motherboard, cabling, ethernet and video adapters (smj) For the moment the machine spools news and serves NNTP connections to both SDF hosted users and SLIP/PPP dialup users. It also batches news up for UUCP hosts and for outbound local posts. X windows has been installed on it along with CMU Common Lisp system for UNIX so that we can begin porting tons of SDF specific programs to LISP. 24-May-99 The domain "freeshell.org" was registered as an alias for sdf.lonestar.org as a marketing strategy to help sdf grow. Since the "arpa" vote that occured early in this year, SDF's amount sponsorship as grown. We are hoping by making this general marketing step that sdf can continue to grow and make a more obvious name for itself. 23-Aug-99 A secondary server 'sdf-2' is now acting as the main http server. It is a PII/450MHz with 256mb of RAM and about 18 gigs of hard drive space. it has a 13 gig file system which it sdf mounts so that shell users can setup their homepages without having to login to the other machine. 01-Jan-00 System Configuration: 'sdf' P233, 94mb of RAM, 20gig mixed mass storage (EIDE/SCSI) linux 2.0.37 kernel (modified), GNU software and 'linux' utilities role: shell server, primary dns, secondary http server, mail server, pop3 server, ftp server. 'sdf-2' PII/450MHz, 256mb of RAM, 18gigs mass storage (EIDE) linux 2.2.14 kernel (modified), GNU software and 'linux' utilities role: http server, secondary dns (others will migrate) Network connectivity: DSL 1.4mb/768kb, 10mbit ethernet, 2b+d ISDN 11-May-00 'sdf' as a P233 has been decomissioned along with support hardware. 'sdf' AMD Athlon 750MHz, 384mb of RAM 36gig mixed mass storage (UDMA/SCSI) linux 2.0.36 kernel (modified), GNU software and 'linux' utilities same roles. 31-Oct-00 'sdf-2' now has two 30 gigabyte disks and has taken over as the primary mail server for 'sdf.lonestar.org'. It handles incoming and outgoing SMTP/POP3 requests as well as primary webservice and minor functions. 'sdf-1' role is to primary that of a shell server. Mail can be sent outgoing from it and ~login webpages will still be served. This sort of modification should help greatly with uptime and load balancing. 15-May-01 Major hardware failure (sdf-2, now called 'otaku') basically overheated and fried its motherboard when its powersupply fan died. On top of that, SDF's root disk (main drive) decided to give up and die. This is the third disk we've lost this year. Crappy consumer hardware. 09-Aug-01 , , /( )` \ \___ / | BYE BYE LEENOX! /- _ `-/ ' BYE BYE x86! (/\/ \ \ /\ / / | ` \ | ) / | `-^--'`< ' ? (_.) ) / _o) `.__ ` / /\\ __ `-----' / (O_ _\/V / \---. __ / __ \ (o< //\ \\/---|====O)))==) \) /==== //\ V|/_ (._ (o_/\ >-)---' `--' `.__,' \ V_/_ | /\\<--)-> , | | (:_ (~< //\ \_/_\/ \ / / /\ //\ V_/_ (._ ` ______( (_ / \_____ \/_/_ (o_ V\/_ (/) , ,' ,-----' | \ (\) (o_ (-< . `--{__________) (smj) \/ (O_ >O) //\ (~< //\.- (fl) / (\) V_/_ _|_ V\/_ . //\ //L\\ Oo.V|/_ V\_/V - - 10-Aug-01 - The minicomputers return! System Configuration: 'sdf' Dec ALPHA 5305, 1024mb of RAM, 55gig SCA SCSI-2 UW NetBSD 1.5.1 performance tuned and hacks role: 'users' shell server, primary dns, secondary http server, anonymous ftp server 'otaku' Dec ALPHA 5305, 1024mb of RAM, 60gig SCA SCSI-2 UW NetBSD 1.5.1 performance tuned and hacks role: 'arpa' shell server, secondary dns, primary http server 00-SEP-01 THE FATE OF THE OLD 3B2/500 THAT WAS SDF I just learned what happened to the 3B2/500 I lent to user '*****' who had hopes to buy it when he got money. It came into his possession in late 1997 or 1998 when I decided to try to run SDF on x86 with linux (the biggest mistake I've made, and I apologise). I gave '*****' the complete 3B2/500 setup, a full set of manuals, software and a 4425 AT&T Death Star terminal. When he moved out of his mother's house in 1999 he put it in the trunk of his car. It stayed there for 6 months!! through the Texas heat. He once went to '**'s house to pick up his friend and they decided they needed some trunk space, so they took the 3B2 out and brought it up to the house. '**' really hates UNIX and refused to allow the machine in the house, so they left it on his porch. It sat there for 3 months, through the rain and elements. '**' finally put into 'storage' with some other computers, but I seriously doubt it will ever run again. '*****' never paid a cent to sdf and will not respond to my emails from is new email address (he no longer uses sdf). 10-OCT-01 SDF Public Access UNIX System, INC. On this day, the entity SDF Public Access UNIX System was formed as a NOT-FOR-PROFIT corporation in the state of Delaware. 22-DEC-01 - 27-DEC-01 MULTIHOMED DS3 CONNECTION The 'sdf' along with 'otaku', 'sverige', 'neguse' and 'norge' were moved to a new datacentre location in Bellevue Washington. Besides the luxury of having a cooled machine room, high availability UPS and monitored site security, we also gained a multi-homed 155mbit connection to the net. Although only 'sdf' and 'sverige' were production machines at the time, the others were installed in preparation for 'SHIT DAY 01-JAN-02' Total 'sdf' downtime was exceptionally minimal during the move (1 hour). 25-JAN-02 - ALL MACHINES ONLINE - björk runs NetBSD-current SMP today! All machines are now online at the datacentre .. configuration info: uname platform version storage memory function --------------------------------------------------------------------- sdf dual alpha 5305 1.5.3 64gigs 1024mb Primary shell/UUCP otaku dual alpha 5305 1.5.3 118gigs 1024mb SMTP & ARPA member droog dual alpha 5305 1.5.3 118gigs 1024mb freeshell.org.uk bjork dual alpha 5305 1.5ZA SMP 9gigs 512mb Experimental test norge dual sparc ss20 1.5.3 18gigs 512mb ROBOT (irc 'bot') sverige dual sparc ss20 1.5.3 18gigs 512mb MUD server 21-Sep-02 - DISK REPLACEMENT SDF purchased roughly 30 36.4GB SCA SCSI disks to replace the old 4.3GB and 9.1GB as necessary. 20-Nov-02 - ICELAND ONLINE SDF purchased four API CS20 machines to replace the old ss20s and act primarily as shell servers. This will help to keep resources free on 'sdf' and 'otaku' so they can fileserve to the API machines. iceland.freeshell.org a dual 833MHz CS20 w/ 1024mb of RAM went online. 10-Jan-03 - VINLAND ONLINE The second of the CS20s went into service. It has the exact same configuration as iceland. 27-Jan-03 - MOVE TO THE GIGAPOP Today NWLINK had its Bellevue co-location customers move to the SIX (Seattled Internet Exchange) AKA the Gigapop. The move took about 3 hours. 30-Jan-03 - NWLINK TERMINATES SDF CONTRACT NWLink.com has decided to terminate sdf.lonestar.org's co-location contract because of a DDoS attack which apparently was directed at sdf. The termination notice was not written and was carried out immediately (approximately 10:30am today). We attempted to quickly get another co-location contract with two other prominent providers, but were turned down because of what happened at NWLINK. Fortunately, we were able to bring services back up late in the evening of February 4th, with DNS updating by the afternoon of the 5th. This was made possible by a free hosting offer with SiteSpecific.NET Many SDF members have expressed the need for recourse as we all are a victim in this. If you feel inclined to do so, you may file a personal complaint against NWLINK online via the NW Better Business Bureau. If you choose to do this, please be sure to give concise, mature and correct information. NWLINK has released a letter via the BBB which quotes a director of SDF even though it was explicitly stated in a telephone conversation that any joint statement would have to be approved by the SDF board. 04-FEB-03 - SITESPECIFIC.NET PROVIDES FREE CO-LO FOR SDF Sitespecific has graciously given SDF a free lease while we arrange our own site (we've decided to move back to Dallas). The Dallas site is to be composed of brand new machines with two circuits that we will own to prevent any ISP from doing what NWLINK did to us. 15-MAR-03 - MIGRATION TO OUR NEW HOME droog (sdf-eu.org) was the first to migrate and was basically done over the internet in less than a day. ol was created to do fileservice and was setup so that only the DEC SBBs (disks) would have to be shipped from Seattle to Dallas, saving us quite a bit. ol currently has 14 disk drives in two StorageWorks SCSI arrays. sdf, otaku and norge were all recreated as client machines which slave off of ol. The whole migration took less than a week, with users being able to access either site at anytime making the migration extremely smooth and transparent to most. The disks drives, which held old mail, web and home directories were plugged in with 16 hours of them leaving Seattle for Dallas next day air. 31-MAR-03 - AS1200 DECOMMISSION PARTY 50 members were in attendence in 'com' as we decommissioned the DEC AS1200 computer which served as SDF. The four AS1200 systems were then auctioned off to the users. Summer and Fall 2003 A number of new hosts (DS10Ls and CS20s) were brought online. As well, all of the 4.3GB and 9.1GB drives were replaced with 36GB 10K SCA SCSI drives. A third t1 was installed to aide with peering and dialup was expanded to include 16323 numbers in the USA and Canada. A mirror for 'otaku' was brought online called 'ukato'. ARPA member websites were split between these two hosts. 'mx' became the primary pop3/imap server with its mirror 'xm' balancing out requests. Spring 2004 'sverige' is now soley for MetaARPA member use. 'screen' is now allowed on this machine with limited usage background processes. 10-Jun-2005 After patience and extensive testing all machines were updated from NetBSD 1.6.2 to 2.0.2. The upgrade event was mostly automated and was performed in about 2.5 hours which included updates to the fileserver and mail server as well as all 6 NFS client systems. Apart from external problems (such as power and UPS related datacentre issues) the NFS performance problems we saw with 1.6.2 have seem to have been minimised. 15-Jun-2005 SDF-EU.ORG TEMPORARILY OFFLINE Due to inconsistencies in the power at the datacentre we seem to have lost the DS10L that was 'sdf-eu.org' .. The DEC StorageWorks disk array is fine, and all incoming sdf-eu.org mail is queuing via UUCP. However we had to wait about 5 days for the datacentre technician to get to the machine to replace it with a spare. This was due to a back injury he suffered (please note, the site technician is NOT smj ;-) 20-Jun-2005 NEW DOMAINS Victor Bragga (vothr) has donated the 'shellacct' domains to SDF. These domains will soon be available to ARPA members for website vanity domains as well as virtual email addresses to VPM and MetaARPA members. 22-Jun-2005 THXMOO A MOO (virtual world) is currently being designed and implemented on SDF. It is based on the post world war III THX-1138 world where humans live underground and are dependent on pills, television and prayers to keep their mental states in subservient check. The beta THXMOO should be available this fall. Further updates will be posted on thxmoo.org August - September 2006 DISK MAINTENANCE AND UPGRADES All of the 36.4GB disks in the three arrays were slated to be replaced. This was mainly for preventative maintenance, though one or two drives had gone bad of their 3 years or so of service. 28 73.8GB SCA2 15KRPM drives were installed during this time and a subsequent ARPA vote increased the base disk quota to 600MB. MetaARPA members were given an 800MB quota with an increase of files to 15000 per filesystem. // Last revision: be8284a58099f354aac0d89e6863aec6// [[basics|back]]