[46] in Hotline Meeting
[kewms@ATHENA.MIT.EDU: Aphrodite?]
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Henry Mensch)
Thu Apr 12 13:23:48 1990
From: Henry Mensch <henry@MIT.EDU>
To: hotline@ATHENA.MIT.EDU
Date: Thu, 12 Apr 90 13:23:21 EDT
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From: kewms@ATHENA.MIT.EDU
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To: bugs@ATHENA.MIT.EDU
Subject: Aphrodite?
Date: Mon, 09 Apr 90 02:50:54 EDT
I am an Athena fan. I used Athena when it consisted of a few PCs in
the Student Center connected to a few very overworked timesharing
machines. I was around when the workstation environment was
implemented. I was one of the unfortunate mortals who, having their
accounts on Poseidon, discovered that Poseidon didn't like the rest of
Athena very much and wouldn't talk to it, at least at first. I've
survived network crashes and flakey servers and even the time when
almost the entire contents of my account disappeared through no fault
of my own. And I've still remained an Athena fan.
Now, I'm a senior working on my thesis, and I had the misfortune to
draw Aphrodite as my file server. Though Aphrodite ostensibly
replaced Poseidon in order to improve reliability, I have experienced
more server failures and crashes since the beginning of this term than
in my entire stay at MIT. Inevitably, those crashes happen when I am
editing and haven't saved the file recently. My thesis has not been
adversely affected, yet. But I am beginning to think that it's only a
matter of time. Being an Athena fan, I have not sought out other
resources which might be available, nor do I have the time to do so
now. So, I am worried.
What is the problem with Aphrodite anyway? Is anything being done to
fix it? Or will my otherwise positive experience with Athena be
tarnished as I watch my thesis proceed by fits and starts between
server failures and repetitions of the dreaded "NFS server aphrodite
not responding, giving up?" And will Athena be able or willing to
intervene with my advisor and possibly my department when an Athena
failure causes me to miss a deadline?
As I said, I am worried.
Katherine Williams
kewms@athena.mit.edu
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