From owner-freebsd-hackers Mon Jun 5 05:55:01 1995 Return-Path: hackers-owner Received: (from majordom@localhost) by freefall.cdrom.com (8.6.10/8.6.6) id FAA27538 for hackers-outgoing; Mon, 5 Jun 1995 05:55:01 -0700 Received: from brasil.moneng.mei.com (brasil.moneng.mei.com [151.186.20.4]) by freefall.cdrom.com (8.6.10/8.6.6) with ESMTP id FAA27521 ; Mon, 5 Jun 1995 05:54:58 -0700 Received: (from jgreco@localhost) by brasil.moneng.mei.com (8.7.Beta.1/8.7.Beta.1) id HAA06627; Mon, 5 Jun 1995 07:54:26 -0500 From: Joe Greco Message-Id: <199506051254.HAA06627@brasil.moneng.mei.com> Subject: Re: 2.0.5-A: Very disheartening? To: jkh@freefall.cdrom.com (Jordan K. Hubbard) Date: Mon, 5 Jun 1995 07:54:26 -0500 (CDT) Cc: hackers@freebsd.org In-Reply-To: <18743.802350153@freefall.cdrom.com> from "Jordan K. Hubbard" at Jun 5, 95 04:02:33 am X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] Content-Type: text Sender: hackers-owner@freebsd.org Precedence: bulk > I respect that you are having this problem and never intended to > belittle it. It think you truly read far more into my little > off-the-cuff comment than was there! Fine, we can leave it at that.. > Also try to respect that we can only try to fix what we can repeat, Of course I do. > and if we are unable to test a certain failure mode on the hardware > WE have available, then by the only definition we know of (what we > can see and feel) the OS is "ready for release." This should be open to debate, probably based in part on some sort of reasonable statistics... (i.e. if you have a 10-1 success ratio on folks installing it, fine)... > Now 2.0.5R, as it were, may be more than a bit green still and I'm > certainly working overtime on it. We all want to get it out the door > though, and if there should come a point where we're pretty happy with > the general install and are getting lots of _success_ stories back, > then we may very well release it even with your machines still in a Yes, but I'm not yet hearing that at this point.. > twist! I'm sorry, but that's life! If a previous release runs on > them then that's great! By all means, continue to run what works > until such time as we can diagnose and fix the problem in the main > line (which we'll certainly try to do!), but don't dictate to me that > the release can't possible go out until Your Specific Problem is > fixed! Can you imagine if I listened to every single user who said > that? The release would _never_ happen, that's what! I never said that the release can't possibly go out. But I did say that there are demonstrable, repeatable problems on at least a small set of what I would consider to be average PC systems! That suggests, at least to me, that IF 2.0.5-R were to go out the door, that a statistically significant number of people might encounter serious problems with it, and THAT would not be a good thing for FreeBSD's reputation (or for much else). As for being My Specific Problem, if it really IS just a quirk on the two completely different systems that I have here, fine! I can live with THAT - I'd simply buy different machines. But if it's NOT, then it will end up being Your Big Problem, when you have hundreds of user-type FreeBSD users all wondering why their systems die so often. That's what all of this is supposed to avoid. > Honestly, sometimes it gets *me* just a little pissed at what people > often seem to demand for free! Look, this is an ALPHA. You asked people to test it. I tested it. I had problems. I let you know that. And to me, a system which has been 100% unreliable so far (granted that the sample size is only 2 machines so far, which will be at least 3 by the end of today) is a bomb, and I consider it likely to be a bomb for unsuspecting newbies somewhere out there. If you don't like me saying so, I'm sorry, but I just don't have any warm fuzzies about it. > Now let's end this conversation (at least at this tone) before we all > go wasting a lot of time and energy that would be far better applied > elsewhere. I have no trouble discussing further ALPHA test goals with > you, and we can keep the "business tone" of our conversations > emotionless and precise if that would be less likely to inadvertantly > cause you distress in the future. I don't particularly care either > way right now, it's entirely up to you. I have only one goal: To get > 2.0.5R into the best possible shape and release it. If you'd like to > help further in this process, then welcome! All help sincerely > appreciated! Well, I was hoping somebody might come forward and recognize the problem I was having... :-/ ... Joe ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Joe Greco - Systems Administrator jgreco@ns.sol.net Solaria Public Access UNIX - Milwaukee, WI 414/342-4847