At 10:06 PM -0400 8/20/99, Ian Trudel wrote:

>Minnow's server is one of great use and reference for Squeakers. I have
>been registered to this mailing for serveral months now and this messages
>come back over and over. Wouldn't it be good if Minnow's admin(s) send a
>little sweet and simple message to warn us when maintenance has to be done?
>
>Regards,
>Ian
>

Someone already pointed out that there was such a notice yesterday. But, be
that as it may,  Minnow doesn't actually have all that much *scheduled*
downtime. When it goes down, tyically it's because of a crash. This has
been made *much* more common by the addition of upload capacity to the
Swiki, though it seems to be a more generic problem with heavy loads. I've
spent some time trying to replicate the problem and track down the bug(s),
but haven't had a *lot* of luck...yet.

Mark and I have discussed some alternative mechanisms to keep access, at
least, (if not editing) up even when Squeak crashes. Either way, I hope
that we can get the situation stabilized soon.

(Note also that there was some thought that it might be a hardware problem,
but, afaict, that doesn't seem to be the case.)

FWIW, my current thought is that there's something funky going on with a
process conflict. But it's *really* hard to tell since we're not even clear
on the conditions under which there's a crash.

A lot of this discussion takes place on the PWS list, if you're interested.

Cheers,
Bijan.