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Date:      Fri, 27 Sep 1996 12:38:39 -0400 (EDT)
From:      Charles Owens <owensc@enc.edu>
To:        questions list FreeBSD <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org>
Subject:   a freebsd testimonial
Message-ID:  <Pine.FBS.3.93.960927120639.19048J-100000@dingo.enc.edu>

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Hi,

I hope nobody minds, but I'm just _so_ happy with the stability of my
FreeBSD servers of late that I feel that I must share this with whoever's
listening.  (I guess, as my wife claims, that I really am a nerd ;-)
Perhaps this may serve as a message of hope for those who may be
currently battling stability problems.

Anyhow, one of my main servers happily tells me:

  > uptime
  12:10PM  up 139 days, 13:37, 10 users, load averages: 0.02, 0.04, 0.00

This box runs FreeBSD 2.1-stable (circa 3/16/96) and serves as
	Web server (www.enc.edu)
	email server (pop, imap, and telnet access)
	NIS master for ~900 users (and rising)
	DNS server
	various other tasks

Other info, for the curious:
	ASUS P55TP4XE motherboard, 90 MHz Pentium, 512k pburst cache
	64 MB RAM (60ns)
	Acculogic PCIport/20 Fast/Wide SCSI controller
		(NCR 53c825 based)
	1 gig FAST SCSI2 drive
	4-gig SCSI-2 FAST/WIDE drive (Seagate Hawk)
	Digital PCI Ethernet board

I used to have loads of problems with this box.  The following steps
brought it to its current state:

	1. New motherboard (was some flukey SiS-chipset no-name board)
	2. New SCSI controller (was a noname board, same NCR chipset,
		but generated scsi bus errors and lousy performance)
	3. A realization about quotas:  I'd heard somewhere that
		its a good idea to turn the quota system off (quotaoff)
		before changing a user's quotas (edquota).  I'd been
		doing this in my adduser script and whenever I added
		a user the system would crash shortly thereafter.
		Apparantly some nasty system bug was being triggered.
		Not toggling the quota system on and off before using
		edquota got rid of a good portion of my system crashes.
		#1 and #2 took care of the rest.
		Anyone have any ideas why this (the quota thing) was
		happening?

	A lesson:  Insist on quality hardware!!  (and note:
		expensive and/or big-name does not always mean
		quality)

Anyway, I'm a _very_ satisfied FreeBSD user.  All you FreeBSD
contributors:  you do _great_ work!

Thanks,
---
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  Charles Owens                                  Email:  owensc@enc.edu
                                       "I read somewhere to learn is to
  Information Technology Services     remember... and I've learned that
  Eastern Nazarene College            we've all forgot..."   - King's X
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