BYTE Magazine

[Samir]

I was hoping that they would talk about the computer onboard NCC-1701-D and Voyager.

 

Kinda hard to do being that the magazine article predated the next series by ten years and Voyager by 18 years

lol.

 

I have to take my mirrors down to scrub one of the drives in the server and re-build it. It started clicking about a week ago. Not to worry though, as the drives in the system are mirrored. I just don't want to risk anything going wrong so I'm going to shut the system down until the drive is put back in service.

[Samir]

Mirrors are back online while I'm doing some final testing with the drive back in service. If the drive passes this test, then I guess there wasn't anything wrong.

[Samir]

Looks like the drive passes all the tests. I'm glad I didn't have to scrub it and reformat and all that jazz.

 

Mirrors are back online. There will be an outage in the next 12hrs for a bit when I put the case back on the server and put it back where it was.

 

Oh, and a tip for really utilizing the mirrors--if you're getting multiple files, use multiple mirrors in parallel. There's three different addresses because each one has its own bandwidth even though they connect to the same server. And the server has never been maxed out except in my internal testing, so feel free to hammer it.

[ThumpNugget]

Ga! What the hell? almost 800 users reading this topic currently?

[ThumpNugget]

Hey! 700 users currently reading this topic... I have an audience

 

If you read the main topic you know that there are still BYTE magazines missing from the collection that would be nice to have scanned.. If you have any of these and would like to contribute email: thumpnugget@gmail.com

 

Also I am currently scanning atariuser magazine and am missing two issues.. They current work can be downloaded here: AtariUser Magazine

 

 

 

Oh and visit my sons websites www.threwmycontroller.com (a comic he and his brother just started) and www.ghostcrawlerfacts.com (chuck norris / WOW fusion jokes) :)

[exobuzz]

my server is struggling today. outgoing traffic for today is 226gb and rising - . web stats states currently only 100gb of that is from byte but i suspect more. I've now rate limited the downloads. please cycle my mirror to the bottom of the mirror list no more offering up to 10mb/second downloads then. stuck it at 256kb/second so at least machine io isnt affected.

 

i assume this topic has been linked from a popular site somewhere. and everyone went to download all the pags from my mirror. ouch!

Edited January 27, 2011 by exobuzz

[ThumpNugget]

my server is struggling today. outgoing traffic for today is 226gb and rising - . web stats states currently only 100gb of that is from byte but i suspect more. I've now rate limited the downloads. please cycle my mirror to the bottom of the mirror list

 

 

Done.. The offending site that linked to us is reddit.com .. Specifically here: Reddit BYTE mention

[exobuzz]

my server is struggling today. outgoing traffic for today is 226gb and rising - . web stats states currently only 100gb of that is from byte but i suspect more. I've now rate limited the downloads. please cycle my mirror to the bottom of the mirror list

 

 

Done.. The offending site that linked to us is reddit.com .. Specifically here: Reddit BYTE mention

 

aha that would explain it. my ftp at home is busy too (hosting the jpg images). in hindsight, I probably shoudnt have had it so they can be downloaded at 100mbit speed. ill probably increase it from 256kB to 512kB or something in a few days. im at 1.7tb for the month and didnt plan to go over 2tb

[Samir]

Yeah I've been slammed as well. Looks like I got the mirror back up just in time!

[ThumpNugget]

I put a coment in the reddit post to see if they will use the direct links more.. 1.7tb on one mirror... I had no idea the mirrors were seeing that much. I figured only new people hit the mirrors on thier first visit so the spikes from tweets/blogposts/web site mentions would be painful but the day to day would be the direct downloads.

[exobuzz]

I put a coment in the reddit post to see if they will use the direct links more.. 1.7tb on one mirror... I had no idea the mirrors were seeing that much. I figured only new people hit the mirrors on thier first visit so the spikes from tweets/blogposts/web site mentions would be painful but the day to day would be the direct downloads.

 

it wasnt 1.7tb only for byte though, that's everything including some 1gb linux images and my retro amiga website. byte was probably closer to 500gb perhaps.

[exobuzz]

root@malus:/# for day in `seq 23 27`; do echo -n "Jan $day : "; grep "$day/Jan.*GET.*\.pdf" access.log | wc -l; done
Jan 23 : 642
Jan 24 : 244
Jan 25 : 140
Jan 26 : 1464
Jan 27 : 5511

 

there was probably a bunch of downloads in progress when i restarted the webserver, so not all maybe "complete". anyway, hosting provider has said it's ok if/when i got over 2tb this month. phew I see some comments on reddit saying none of the mirrors work. strange.

Edited January 27, 2011 by exobuzz

[erd]

there was probably a bunch of downloads in progress when i restarted the webserver, so not all maybe "complete". anyway, hosting provider has said it's ok if/when i got over 2tb this month. phew I see some comments on reddit saying none of the mirrors work. strange.

 

I personally use 'wget -c' for fetching (and re-fetching) such things, but perhaps those commenting that the mirrors don't work are just using a browser and eventually timing out?

[exobuzz]

I personally use 'wget -c' for fetching (and re-fetching) such things, but perhaps those commenting that the mirrors don't work are just using a browser and eventually timing out?

 

could be. Although I couldn't find any problems with mine currently - does it work for you ? . the others did seem a little slow currently (I think the first one isnt responding at least).

[Samir]

I figured only new people hit the mirrors on thier first visit so the spikes from tweets/blogposts/web site mentions would be painful but the day to day would be the direct downloads.

That's my thoughts as well. But I think the reddit post brought in a bunch of new people. It was actually dying down quite a bit.

I personally use 'wget -c' for fetching (and re-fetching) such things, but perhaps those commenting that the mirrors don't work are just using a browser and eventually timing out?

That could be happening on my mirrors because I've had issues downloading large files even via wget from amazon's cloud. I found that using wget -T 5 works well as it automatically retries and continues if there's a lag for more than 5 seconds.

 

I would be interested in hearing if anyone is having problems though. I've noticed one of the modems isn't getting any traffic, which is strange with this type of load.

the others did seem a little slow currently (I think the first one isnt responding at least).

I've got 56 concurrent connections right now on 10Mb bandwidth, so it'll be a bit slower than normal. If the other modem was being utilized, that would be another 5Mb to add to the cause. Let me know what type of problems you're having accessing my mirrors. I think I my router needs to be rebooted.

[exobuzz]

Sorry to spam your magazine thread again

 

If you replace the mirrors with

 

http://files.exotica.org.uk/byte/

 

it will redirect users to a weighted random mirror to try and distribute things better (weighted to my mirror, due to more bandwidth available).

Edited January 27, 2011 by exobuzz

[erd]

perhaps those commenting that the mirrors don't work are just using a browser and eventually timing out?

could be. Although I couldn't find any problems with mine currently - does it work for you ? . the others did seem a little slow currently (I think the first one isnt responding at least).

I'm getting 150K-250K/sec from exotica right now - seems fine to me.

[exobuzz]

Let me know what type of problems you're having accessing my mirrors. I think I my router needs to be rebooted.

 

http://24.96.150.90/events/byte/index.html isn't responding here.

[exobuzz]

the ip 182.149.124.169 and a couple of others i think is doing some sort of sync flood attack against my server. 54000+ (since i had to ctrl+c it) lines of netstat output. i might have to tweak the firewall.. automated attack or some idiot.. who knows.

 

[edit] ok. restricted max connections now with ip tables. always people trying to spoil the fun eh.

 

[edit] during quick reconfiguration of firewall,

 

root@malus:~# wc -l netstat.txt

1987507 netstat.txt !!

 

now down to 262 lines..

Edited January 27, 2011 by exobuzz

[erd]

the ip 182.149.124.169 and a couple of others i think is doing some sort of sync flood attack against my server. 54000+ (since i had to ctrl+c it) lines of netstat output. i might have to tweak the firewall.. automated attack or some idiot.. who knows.

What a bummer - FWIW, here's what a reverse IP location reports for that address...

 

CHINA, SICHUAN long/lat 35.122098 105.480318

[exobuzz]

What a bummer - FWIW, here's what a reverse IP location reports for that address...

 

CHINA, SICHUAN long/lat 35.122098 105.480318

 

yeh. could be unrelated, and just bad timing that a zombie pc hit me. Maybe tomorrow will be a quieter day! I do hope these downloaders do actually read the mag!

 

just for interest:

 

once the download limits were in place, the system recovered somewhat.

[gdement]

I wonder how many people click on the links, and just view the magazine inside their web browser, then close it without saving to a local file. That could waste a lot of bandwidth if they then return later, downloading the file fresh for a second or third time.

 

As distasteful as it is, it might be a good idea to put the PDF inside a ZIP or something, just to ensure people save the files locally.

[Keatah]

I wonder how many people click on the links, and just view the magazine inside their web browser, then close it without saving to a local file. That could waste a lot of bandwidth if they then return later, downloading the file fresh for a second or third time.

 

As distasteful as it is, it might be a good idea to put the PDF inside a ZIP or something, just to ensure people save the files locally.

 

I personally do not do that. I'm an offline kinda-guy, I mean, what if the internet explodes or something?

 

I have a separate directory for every magazine series.. But almost everybody else I know reads them on-line. Seems that if it is online, then people will just come back, online, to re-read anything. Very easy.

 

As soon as you present the idea of downloading, they stop and get all flustered about hard drive space, and the time it takes to download and unpack. Their panties get all bunched up and everything. Like as if it is a ritual to be carefully considered and if it is worth doing. As if, somehow, reading it online is far less intensive by some orders of magnitude.

 

Downloading large files, just like x-fering floppies years ago, is a major undertaking for most folks. Downloading a file and saving it takes work, REAL WORK! You have to create a directory and do it in a way that you'll remember where you put it. Good god!!! AND I have been told (by noobeez no less) that reading on-line in the browser takes less resources than doing a full download. Somehow, reading one article is better than doing the full download, even if you constantly go back and read more articles from the same rag..

 

Some chick just tolted me that she didn't want to pollute her brand new SSD with dirty magazines. She said all the paper dust from handling and scanning could gum up the works!! It was best to leave it online and out of the house.

 

By the way, the thing I like about Byte is that they never glorified fans and heatsinks and air-flow issues like MaximumPC does these days. AND, best of all, they didn't get into overclocking. Seems today every rag discusses overclocking and framerates. The shit is either playable or it isn't. Who gives a frak about 109FPS vs. 112FPS with a certain driver revision. How boring. Elegant computing is not about blowing air through a box or trying to see if your parts will run out-of-spec!!

Edited January 27, 2011 by Keatah

[Mirage]

 

I personally do not do that. I have a separate directory for every magazine series.. But almost everybody else I know reads them on-line. Seems that if it is online, then people will just come back, online, to re-read anything.

 

As soon as you present the idea of downloading, they stop and get all flustered about hard drive space, and the time it takes to download and unpack. Their panties get all bound up and everything. Like as if it is a ritual to be carefully considered and if it is worth doing. As if, somehow, reading it online is far less intensive by some orders of magnitude.

 

Wow, yeah. That sure isn't an issue for us data-hoarders, now is it? LOL

[Keatah]

 

Wow, yeah. That sure isn't an issue for us data-hoarders, now is it? LOL

 

 

I tend to think that if there is a major world problem that these could be the only surviving treatises on the early history of micro-computing. Or that if I ever get abducted by extra-terrestrials I might only have time to grab my usb drive before we leave. And if so, then I'd have some good reading material for the flight to their homeworld. And to boot, I'd have some materials with which to barter.