[rescue] ss2 under load

[Julius Sridhar]

On 15 Feb 2002 jwbirdsa at picarefy.com wrote:

>    Princeton University, 1986-1990, VAX 8600, rumored to be dual-processor,
> running Ultrix. Became unusably slow with about 50 users logged on, usually
> crashed if it hit 70. The problem was self-limiting because once it reached
> the danger zone, it was normally almost impossible for more users to log in:
> the one-minute timeout would fire before login finished collecting all the
> characters in your password.
>
>    It was replaced with a Sun, IIRC a VME Sparc (4/3xx? 4/4xx? 4/6xx?), which
> completely toasted its butt.
>
>    Did we just have a lemon? Was Ultrix that bad? I admit I have a soft
> spot in my heart for VAXen because that 8600 was my first Unix, and I have
> several in my collection (MVII, Vaxserver 3100-??, 4000VLC) which I hope to
> put into service someday, but I have never thought of them as being fast.
> At my first workplace we had an 11/780 NFS-serving a couple racks of
> Fujitsu Eagles. Trying to use it interactively was agonizing -- the Sun
> 3/60 on my desk ran rings around it -- but I suspect that it was getting
> cratered by NFS traffic from a hundred or so workstations, so it had some
> justification for sluggish response.

The problem was more likely due to Ultrix than to the machine.

Peace...  Sridhar