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faq:basics02 [2011/04/30 18:33] – georgfaq:basics02 [2012/05/01 18:15] (current) – ivan
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 +[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.
 +</code>
 +
 +// Last revision: be8284a58099f354aac0d89e6863aec6//
 +
 +[[basics|back]]
 +
 +