ftp load

ftp load

[Stan Shebs]

OK, so while it's nice that some projects have lots of mirrors
to redirect people, my little Xconq project doesn't have that;
so when the ftp connections are maxed out, nobody can get to
my just-released development version.  They seem to be maxed-out
all the time now - what's going on, and is this going to change?

Stan

Re: ftp load

[Jeffrey A Law]

  In message < 38CE6B44.33DCDE6D@shebs.cnchost.com >you write:
  > OK, so while it's nice that some projects have lots of mirrors
  > to redirect people, my little Xconq project doesn't have that;
  > so when the ftp connections are maxed out, nobody can get to
  > my just-released development version.  They seem to be maxed-out
  > all the time now - what's going on, and is this going to change?
It is believed we are saturating the dedicated T1 for the sourceware
machine, so we've throttled the FTP connections (again).

The best thing to do is to get some mirrors :-)  You might even have some
that you're not aware of (a number of sites appear to just mirror everything
on sourceware they can find).  It might be worth a little time to scan the
mirror list and see which are mirroring xconq.

As for long term plans, there has been talk of co-locating sourceware, but
it hasn't progressed beyond "just talk" yet.

It would be nice if we had the capability to limit connections on a
per-project basis.  But I don't think we have that kind of capability
right now.
jeff

Re: ftp load

[Chris Faylor]

On Tue, Mar 14, 2000 at 09:38:57AM -0700, Jeffrey A Law wrote:
>In message < 38CE6B44.33DCDE6D@shebs.cnchost.com >you write:
>>OK, so while it's nice that some projects have lots of mirrors to
>>redirect people, my little Xconq project doesn't have that; so when the
>>ftp connections are maxed out, nobody can get to my just-released
>>development version.  They seem to be maxed-out all the time now -
>>what's going on, and is this going to change?
>It is believed we are saturating the dedicated T1 for the sourceware
>machine, so we've throttled the FTP connections (again).

Wow.  We're about to release a new version of cygwin, too -- watch out.

cgf

Re: ftp load

[Bart Veer]

>>>>> "Chris" == Chris Faylor <cgf@cygnus.com> writes:

    Chris> On Tue, Mar 14, 2000 at 09:38:57AM -0700, Jeffrey A Law wrote:
    >> In message < 38CE6B44.33DCDE6D@shebs.cnchost.com >you write:
    >>> OK, so while it's nice that some projects have lots of mirrors to
    >>> redirect people, my little Xconq project doesn't have that; so when the
    >>> ftp connections are maxed out, nobody can get to my just-released
    >>> development version.  They seem to be maxed-out all the time now -
    >>> what's going on, and is this going to change?
    >> It is believed we are saturating the dedicated T1 for the sourceware
    >> machine, so we've throttled the FTP connections (again).

    Chris> Wow. We're about to release a new version of cygwin, too --
    Chris> watch out.

And an eCos release is planned for the middle of next week (assuming
all goes well), although that should cause only a fraction of the load
of a new cygwin release.

Bart

Re: ftp load

[Mark Galassi]

    Jeffrey> It would be nice if we had the capability to limit
    Jeffrey> connections on a per-project basis.  But I don't think we
    Jeffrey> have that kind of capability right now.  jeff

Something like what Jim Kingdom just suggested for anoncvs?  A
different anonymous ftp user for each project?

Re: ftp load

[Jim Kingdon]

> It is believed we are saturating the dedicated T1 for the sourceware
> machine, so we've throttled the FTP connections (again).

I may have started that rumor but I'm not sure I was right.  If anyone
wants to crunch the numbers at
http://sourceware.cygnus.com/sourceware/bandwidth/ please do.  Right
now I'm getting:

1.5 M bits/sec / (8 bits / byte) * 3600 seconds/hour * 24 hours/day *
7 days/week = 113 Gbytes/week capacity of a T1.  Compared with 75
Gbytes/week on the usage report.  So maybe we are saturated....  I'd
feel better about this if we had someone who knows about such things
look at the situation, rather than just my back of the envelope
scribblings where I keep wondering if I forgot something obvious.
Fuzz factors like "CVS is not counted" and "2-4(?) factor between peak
and off-peak" are obvious but there could be others.

Marc Rovner plans to switch around the NIC's (he has bought two new
NIC's), and he thinks that will help.  He is more likely to know than
I.  He's really busy right now (Ian Elverson, one of the other
sysadmins, left the company, for those who didn't hear) but it seems
high priority to me (especially with all those new releases - and new
projects - coming up).

> The best thing to do is to get some mirrors :-) You might even have
> some that you're not aware of (a number of sites appear to just mirror
> everything on sourceware they can find).

Exactly, the list is at http://sourceware.cygnus.com/mirrors.html
Plan on people needing to use mirrors for the foreseeable future.

> As for long term plans, there has been talk of co-locating sourceware, but
> it hasn't progressed beyond "just talk" yet.

I haven't heard anything about that in months.  As far as I know, we'd
need to justify the $$$ if we want more bandwidth and we haven't
really been trying to do that recently (nor did we have much luck when
we - Donnie Barnes specifically - did try.  Speaking of which Donnie
is at the Red Hat Center for Open Source and we should probably hit
them up for money if/when we have a plan for what we need it for).

Those of you in Red Hat have probably seen my hosting.html (or ask if
not) about the funding and all that jazz.

But since it is you asking, Stan, does Apple want to host a mirror or
something like that?  Mirrors don't require the same kind of
bureaucracy that anything involving money seems to.  Well not on our
end that is ;-).

Re: ftp load

[Jason Molenda]

On Tue, Mar 14, 2000 at 04:56:17PM -0500, Jim Kingdon wrote:

> I'm not sure I was right.  If anyone
> wants to crunch the numbers at
> http://sourceware.cygnus.com/sourceware/bandwidth/ please do.  Right
> now I'm getting:


The numbers here really aren't (IMHO) that useful when comparing
against the actual line bandwidth.  All service-protocol overhead
and TCP/IP-level overhead goes unaccounted for.  Some protocols,
like HTTP, are chatty and many connections are short-lived, so the
overhead is not insignificant.  And CVS, rsync, and mail go completely
unmeasured in the bandwidth reports (and mail, at least, is a couple
of GB a week).

BBN can give us network usage graphs -- these are what you want.
I used to be able to get these from Ian Elverson.  Maybe if you
ask Marc real nice he could ask for them.  Or maybe give you a
contact addr at BBN where you could get them to send the things to
you.

The overall bandwidth number isn't very useful because it tells
you nothing about how loaded the network is during the prime-time
hours, i.e. the time we really care about.

You can see what the graph looks like here (this is measuring the
Cygnus T1 on the week when sourceware went to its own net):

   http://sourceware.cygnus.com/sourceware/bandwidth/net-usage-1999-12-12.jpg

On the topic of colocation -- this is something that the RH IS guys
came to IanE about right near the beginning, so _someone_ had it in
mind or in a plan at some point.  I don't know who had contacted Ian
about this or how serious they were about doing it.

Jason

Re: ftp load

[Bart Veer]

>>>>> "Jim" == Jim Kingdon <kingdon@redhat.com> writes:

    <snip>
    >> As for long term plans, there has been talk of co-locating
    >> sourceware, but it hasn't progressed beyond "just talk" yet.

    Jim> I haven't heard anything about that in months. As far as I
    Jim> know, we'd need to justify the $$$ if we want more bandwidth
    Jim> and we haven't really been trying to do that recently (nor
    Jim> did we have much luck when we - Donnie Barnes specifically -
    Jim> did try. Speaking of which Donnie is at the Red Hat Center
    Jim> for Open Source and we should probably hit them up for money
    Jim> if/when we have a plan for what we need it for).

For whatever it is worth, I raised this with my manager yesterday to
try to get some progress. If enough people do so it might have some
effect. Possibly.

Bart

Re: ftp load

[Chris Faylor]

On Wed, Mar 15, 2000 at 11:28:55AM +0000, Bart Veer wrote:
>>>>>> "Jim" == Jim Kingdon <kingdon@redhat.com> writes:
>>>As for long term plans, there has been talk of co-locating sourceware,
>>>but it hasn't progressed beyond "just talk" yet.
>
>Jim> I haven't heard anything about that in months.  As far as I Jim>
>know, we'd need to justify the $$$ if we want more bandwidth Jim> and
>we haven't really been trying to do that recently (nor Jim> did we have
>much luck when we - Donnie Barnes specifically - Jim> did try.
>Speaking of which Donnie is at the Red Hat Center Jim> for Open Source
>and we should probably hit them up for money Jim> if/when we have a
>plan for what we need it for).
>
>For whatever it is worth, I raised this with my manager yesterday to
>try to get some progress.  If enough people do so it might have some
>effect.  Possibly.

I would love to see this but I've heard that next quarter is supposed
to be pretty tight so I'm dubious that anything will be approved in
the next three months.

Nevertheless, I'll ping Eric Bachalo about this.  He's acting Kim
Knuttila this week.  Maybe he can just approve this himself.  :-)

cgf

Re: ftp load

[Jim Kingdon]

> Nevertheless, I'll ping Eric Bachalo about this.  He's acting Kim
> Knuttila this week.  Maybe he can just approve this himself.  :-)

I'm kind of suspecting that mgmt may want a slightly less random sales
pitch before they actually spend money :-).  But hey, I'm not going to
discourage anyone since I doubt I'll have much time to play politics
on this myself.  If you hear anything interesting keep me/us informed
(via the overseers list, I guess, or some approximation thereof if you
think it is a Red Hat matter rather than a matter for the whole list).

While we are on the subject of randomness, I've been meaning to look
into whether priority.redhat.com
( http://www.redhat.com/now/priority_info.html ) wants to mirror the
site.  That's how we got increased bandwidth for ftp.redhat.com (the
public site as well as the priority one) - by pointing mgmt to
illusory revenue (did I say "illusory revenue"?  I meant "potential
future revenue" ;-)).  Now, for priority.redhat.com to allocate 3Gbyte
of disk space across all 6 (or 4?  I forget the exact number)
priority.redhat.com machines does involve actually spending money on
new disks (last I heard anyway), so I don't know whether I expect big
success.  But so far I haven't even asked (nor has anyone else as far
as I know).

Re: ftp load

[Chris Faylor]

On Wed, Mar 15, 2000 at 09:26:47AM -0500, Jim Kingdon wrote:
>While we are on the subject of randomness, I've been meaning to look
>into whether priority.redhat.com
>( http://www.redhat.com/now/priority_info.html ) wants to mirror the
>site.

I wish that the main www.redhat.com site did more than just reference
sourceware.  People are often confused about where to find cygwin stuff.

I guess it's probably overly optimistic of me to think that the major
open source projects that Red Hat hosts could be mentioned on our
main page.

cgf

Re: ftp load

[Jim Kingdon]

> I wish that the main www.redhat.com site did more than just reference
> sourceware.  People are often confused about where to find cygwin stuff.

Have you asked Louis (a former Cygnus guy, now on the web team working
from Sunnyvale and tasked with integrating Cygnus and Red Hat web
sites)?  Or someone else with actual responsibility for this?  I
suspect it would be relatively easy to add cygwin info to
http://www.redhat.com/apps/download/ or some other suitable place if
you just figure out who to ask.

I agree that cygwin is popular enough to warrant more prominent links
than it has now.

Re: ftp load

[Chris Faylor]

On Wed, Mar 15, 2000 at 09:46:07AM -0500, Jim Kingdon wrote:
>> I wish that the main www.redhat.com site did more than just reference
>> sourceware.  People are often confused about where to find cygwin stuff.
>
>Have you asked Louis (a former Cygnus guy, now on the web team working
>from Sunnyvale and tasked with integrating Cygnus and Red Hat web
>sites)?  Or someone else with actual responsibility for this?  I
>suspect it would be relatively easy to add cygwin info to
> http://www.redhat.com/apps/download/ or some other suitable place if
>you just figure out who to ask.

I was actually thinking that we should advertise links to gcc, gdb, cygwin,
and xconq (of course) on the Red Hat main page.

The problems that I usually see are that someone has figured out how to
download the cygwin stuff but they don't know where to ask questions.  It
should be fairly obvious from the cygwin web page but, inexplicably, they
don't know where that it.

I see things like "I looked all over the web and couldn't find any information
about cygwin" (sic).

I don't know if gcc and gdb suffer similar fates but a little extra exposure
should be good for everyone.

I've Cc'ed louisc with this email.  Maybe he'll think this is a wonderful
idea and we'll have links on www.redhat.com today. :-)

cgf

Re: ftp load

[Chris Faylor]

On Wed, Mar 15, 2000 at 09:46:07AM -0500, Jim Kingdon wrote:
>> I wish that the main www.redhat.com site did more than just reference
>> sourceware.  People are often confused about where to find cygwin stuff.
>
>Have you asked Louis (a former Cygnus guy, now on the web team working
>from Sunnyvale and tasked with integrating Cygnus and Red Hat web
>sites)?  Or someone else with actual responsibility for this?  I
>suspect it would be relatively easy to add cygwin info to
> http://www.redhat.com/apps/download/ or some other suitable place if
>you just figure out who to ask.

I was actually thinking that we should advertise links to gcc, gdb, cygwin,
and xconq (of course) on the Red Hat main page.

The problems that I usually see are that someone has figured out how to
download the cygwin stuff but they don't know where to ask questions.  It
should be fairly obvious from the cygwin web page but, inexplicably, they
don't know where that it.

I see things like "I looked all over the web and couldn't find any information
about cygwin" (sic).

I don't know if gcc and gdb suffer similar fates but a little extra exposure
should be good for everyone.

I've Cc'ed louisc with this email.  Maybe he'll think this is a wonderful
idea and we'll have links on www.redhat.com today. :-)

cgf

Re: ftp load

[Chris Faylor]

On Tue, Mar 14, 2000 at 09:38:57AM -0700, Jeffrey A Law wrote:
>In message < 38CE6B44.33DCDE6D@shebs.cnchost.com >you write:
>>OK, so while it's nice that some projects have lots of mirrors to
>>redirect people, my little Xconq project doesn't have that; so when the
>>ftp connections are maxed out, nobody can get to my just-released
>>development version.  They seem to be maxed-out all the time now -
>>what's going on, and is this going to change?
>It is believed we are saturating the dedicated T1 for the sourceware
>machine, so we've throttled the FTP connections (again).

Wow.  We're about to release a new version of cygwin, too -- watch out.

cgf

Re: ftp load

[Mark Galassi]

    Jeffrey> It would be nice if we had the capability to limit
    Jeffrey> connections on a per-project basis.  But I don't think we
    Jeffrey> have that kind of capability right now.  jeff

Something like what Jim Kingdom just suggested for anoncvs?  A
different anonymous ftp user for each project?

ftp load

[Stan Shebs]

OK, so while it's nice that some projects have lots of mirrors
to redirect people, my little Xconq project doesn't have that;
so when the ftp connections are maxed out, nobody can get to
my just-released development version.  They seem to be maxed-out
all the time now - what's going on, and is this going to change?

Stan

Re: ftp load

[Jim Kingdon]

> It is believed we are saturating the dedicated T1 for the sourceware
> machine, so we've throttled the FTP connections (again).

I may have started that rumor but I'm not sure I was right.  If anyone
wants to crunch the numbers at
http://sourceware.cygnus.com/sourceware/bandwidth/ please do.  Right
now I'm getting:

1.5 M bits/sec / (8 bits / byte) * 3600 seconds/hour * 24 hours/day *
7 days/week = 113 Gbytes/week capacity of a T1.  Compared with 75
Gbytes/week on the usage report.  So maybe we are saturated....  I'd
feel better about this if we had someone who knows about such things
look at the situation, rather than just my back of the envelope
scribblings where I keep wondering if I forgot something obvious.
Fuzz factors like "CVS is not counted" and "2-4(?) factor between peak
and off-peak" are obvious but there could be others.

Marc Rovner plans to switch around the NIC's (he has bought two new
NIC's), and he thinks that will help.  He is more likely to know than
I.  He's really busy right now (Ian Elverson, one of the other
sysadmins, left the company, for those who didn't hear) but it seems
high priority to me (especially with all those new releases - and new
projects - coming up).

> The best thing to do is to get some mirrors :-) You might even have
> some that you're not aware of (a number of sites appear to just mirror
> everything on sourceware they can find).

Exactly, the list is at http://sourceware.cygnus.com/mirrors.html
Plan on people needing to use mirrors for the foreseeable future.

> As for long term plans, there has been talk of co-locating sourceware, but
> it hasn't progressed beyond "just talk" yet.

I haven't heard anything about that in months.  As far as I know, we'd
need to justify the $$$ if we want more bandwidth and we haven't
really been trying to do that recently (nor did we have much luck when
we - Donnie Barnes specifically - did try.  Speaking of which Donnie
is at the Red Hat Center for Open Source and we should probably hit
them up for money if/when we have a plan for what we need it for).

Those of you in Red Hat have probably seen my hosting.html (or ask if
not) about the funding and all that jazz.

But since it is you asking, Stan, does Apple want to host a mirror or
something like that?  Mirrors don't require the same kind of
bureaucracy that anything involving money seems to.  Well not on our
end that is ;-).

Re: ftp load

[Bart Veer]

>>>>> "Chris" == Chris Faylor <cgf@cygnus.com> writes:

    Chris> On Tue, Mar 14, 2000 at 09:38:57AM -0700, Jeffrey A Law wrote:
    >> In message < 38CE6B44.33DCDE6D@shebs.cnchost.com >you write:
    >>> OK, so while it's nice that some projects have lots of mirrors to
    >>> redirect people, my little Xconq project doesn't have that; so when the
    >>> ftp connections are maxed out, nobody can get to my just-released
    >>> development version.  They seem to be maxed-out all the time now -
    >>> what's going on, and is this going to change?
    >> It is believed we are saturating the dedicated T1 for the sourceware
    >> machine, so we've throttled the FTP connections (again).

    Chris> Wow. We're about to release a new version of cygwin, too --
    Chris> watch out.

And an eCos release is planned for the middle of next week (assuming
all goes well), although that should cause only a fraction of the load
of a new cygwin release.

Bart

Re: ftp load

[Jeffrey A Law]

  In message < 38CE6B44.33DCDE6D@shebs.cnchost.com >you write:
  > OK, so while it's nice that some projects have lots of mirrors
  > to redirect people, my little Xconq project doesn't have that;
  > so when the ftp connections are maxed out, nobody can get to
  > my just-released development version.  They seem to be maxed-out
  > all the time now - what's going on, and is this going to change?
It is believed we are saturating the dedicated T1 for the sourceware
machine, so we've throttled the FTP connections (again).

The best thing to do is to get some mirrors :-)  You might even have some
that you're not aware of (a number of sites appear to just mirror everything
on sourceware they can find).  It might be worth a little time to scan the
mirror list and see which are mirroring xconq.

As for long term plans, there has been talk of co-locating sourceware, but
it hasn't progressed beyond "just talk" yet.

It would be nice if we had the capability to limit connections on a
per-project basis.  But I don't think we have that kind of capability
right now.
jeff

Re: ftp load

[Bart Veer]

>>>>> "Jim" == Jim Kingdon <kingdon@redhat.com> writes:

    <snip>
    >> As for long term plans, there has been talk of co-locating
    >> sourceware, but it hasn't progressed beyond "just talk" yet.

    Jim> I haven't heard anything about that in months. As far as I
    Jim> know, we'd need to justify the $$$ if we want more bandwidth
    Jim> and we haven't really been trying to do that recently (nor
    Jim> did we have much luck when we - Donnie Barnes specifically -
    Jim> did try. Speaking of which Donnie is at the Red Hat Center
    Jim> for Open Source and we should probably hit them up for money
    Jim> if/when we have a plan for what we need it for).

For whatever it is worth, I raised this with my manager yesterday to
try to get some progress. If enough people do so it might have some
effect. Possibly.

Bart

Re: ftp load

[Chris Faylor]

On Wed, Mar 15, 2000 at 11:28:55AM +0000, Bart Veer wrote:
>>>>>> "Jim" == Jim Kingdon <kingdon@redhat.com> writes:
>>>As for long term plans, there has been talk of co-locating sourceware,
>>>but it hasn't progressed beyond "just talk" yet.
>
>Jim> I haven't heard anything about that in months.  As far as I Jim>
>know, we'd need to justify the $$$ if we want more bandwidth Jim> and
>we haven't really been trying to do that recently (nor Jim> did we have
>much luck when we - Donnie Barnes specifically - Jim> did try.
>Speaking of which Donnie is at the Red Hat Center Jim> for Open Source
>and we should probably hit them up for money Jim> if/when we have a
>plan for what we need it for).
>
>For whatever it is worth, I raised this with my manager yesterday to
>try to get some progress.  If enough people do so it might have some
>effect.  Possibly.

I would love to see this but I've heard that next quarter is supposed
to be pretty tight so I'm dubious that anything will be approved in
the next three months.

Nevertheless, I'll ping Eric Bachalo about this.  He's acting Kim
Knuttila this week.  Maybe he can just approve this himself.  :-)

cgf

Re: ftp load

[Jim Kingdon]

> I wish that the main www.redhat.com site did more than just reference
> sourceware.  People are often confused about where to find cygwin stuff.

Have you asked Louis (a former Cygnus guy, now on the web team working
from Sunnyvale and tasked with integrating Cygnus and Red Hat web
sites)?  Or someone else with actual responsibility for this?  I
suspect it would be relatively easy to add cygwin info to
http://www.redhat.com/apps/download/ or some other suitable place if
you just figure out who to ask.

I agree that cygwin is popular enough to warrant more prominent links
than it has now.

Re: ftp load

[Chris Faylor]

On Wed, Mar 15, 2000 at 09:26:47AM -0500, Jim Kingdon wrote:
>While we are on the subject of randomness, I've been meaning to look
>into whether priority.redhat.com
>( http://www.redhat.com/now/priority_info.html ) wants to mirror the
>site.

I wish that the main www.redhat.com site did more than just reference
sourceware.  People are often confused about where to find cygwin stuff.

I guess it's probably overly optimistic of me to think that the major
open source projects that Red Hat hosts could be mentioned on our
main page.

cgf

Re: ftp load

[Jim Kingdon]

> Nevertheless, I'll ping Eric Bachalo about this.  He's acting Kim
> Knuttila this week.  Maybe he can just approve this himself.  :-)

I'm kind of suspecting that mgmt may want a slightly less random sales
pitch before they actually spend money :-).  But hey, I'm not going to
discourage anyone since I doubt I'll have much time to play politics
on this myself.  If you hear anything interesting keep me/us informed
(via the overseers list, I guess, or some approximation thereof if you
think it is a Red Hat matter rather than a matter for the whole list).

While we are on the subject of randomness, I've been meaning to look
into whether priority.redhat.com
( http://www.redhat.com/now/priority_info.html ) wants to mirror the
site.  That's how we got increased bandwidth for ftp.redhat.com (the
public site as well as the priority one) - by pointing mgmt to
illusory revenue (did I say "illusory revenue"?  I meant "potential
future revenue" ;-)).  Now, for priority.redhat.com to allocate 3Gbyte
of disk space across all 6 (or 4?  I forget the exact number)
priority.redhat.com machines does involve actually spending money on
new disks (last I heard anyway), so I don't know whether I expect big
success.  But so far I haven't even asked (nor has anyone else as far
as I know).

Re: ftp load

[Jason Molenda]

On Tue, Mar 14, 2000 at 04:56:17PM -0500, Jim Kingdon wrote:

> I'm not sure I was right.  If anyone
> wants to crunch the numbers at
> http://sourceware.cygnus.com/sourceware/bandwidth/ please do.  Right
> now I'm getting:


The numbers here really aren't (IMHO) that useful when comparing
against the actual line bandwidth.  All service-protocol overhead
and TCP/IP-level overhead goes unaccounted for.  Some protocols,
like HTTP, are chatty and many connections are short-lived, so the
overhead is not insignificant.  And CVS, rsync, and mail go completely
unmeasured in the bandwidth reports (and mail, at least, is a couple
of GB a week).

BBN can give us network usage graphs -- these are what you want.
I used to be able to get these from Ian Elverson.  Maybe if you
ask Marc real nice he could ask for them.  Or maybe give you a
contact addr at BBN where you could get them to send the things to
you.

The overall bandwidth number isn't very useful because it tells
you nothing about how loaded the network is during the prime-time
hours, i.e. the time we really care about.

You can see what the graph looks like here (this is measuring the
Cygnus T1 on the week when sourceware went to its own net):

   http://sourceware.cygnus.com/sourceware/bandwidth/net-usage-1999-12-12.jpg

On the topic of colocation -- this is something that the RH IS guys
came to IanE about right near the beginning, so _someone_ had it in
mind or in a plan at some point.  I don't know who had contacted Ian
about this or how serious they were about doing it.

Jason

Re: ftp load

[Jim Kingdon]

> I am wondering what ideas you all might have for a single word or title 
> might work in place of sourceware.cygnus.com....something that would be 
> more telling.  thoughts?

To me the interesting words are "GCC" and "Cygwin" (with longer lists
of projects in less prominent places like the existing
http://www.redhat.com/apps/community/hosting.html or maybe new page(s)
which list projects we are involved in (whatever that means) such as
the Linux kernel, even if we don't host it).  I pick those two based
simply on statistics of what is most popular.

Trying to figure out what belongs on the home page and what belongs on
a sub-page is what keeps your job interesting, Louis :-).  Just think
of GCC and Cygwin in the same breath as RPM, GNOME and Linux (or
whatever else is prominently featured) and you'll figure something out
(whether it is the top-level page or a "download" page or a
"help write Linux" page or whatever form it takes).

P.S. On the subject of xconq (which is near and dear to our heart as
we know :-)), those of us who want to should bug Stan to make a new
release.  Compare http://sourceware.cygnus.com/xconq/screenshots.html
with http://sourceware.cygnus.com/xconq/x11.html and I think it is
pretty clear which one is more PR-worthy.

Re: ftp load

['Chris Faylor']

On Tue, Mar 21, 2000 at 10:11:27PM -0800, Louis Stone-Collonge wrote:
>okay I have a question.
>well...more of a pontification really...
>don't you all think the Red Hat homepage is cluttered enough?  There is a 
>movement afoot to remove links rather than add more.  comments?

Possibly, but I think that advertising our major open source projects
is worth a lot.  I guess I think they should be sitting in an obvious
little box somewhere on the web page.

cgf

RE: ftp load

[Louis Stone-Collonge]

okay I have a question.
well...more of a pontification really...
don't you all think the Red Hat homepage is cluttered enough?  There is a 
movement afoot to remove links rather than add more.  comments?

I am wondering what ideas you all might have for a single word or title 
might work in place of sourceware.cygnus.com....something that would be 
more telling.  thoughts?

Louis "listening to way too much Adam and the Ants tonight" Stone-Collonge

PS:  the good news is that more and more people are learning that Red Hat 
is more than just Linux :)

On Wednesday, March 15, 2000 7:00 AM, Chris Faylor [SMTP:cgf@cygnus.com] 
wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 15, 2000 at 09:46:07AM -0500, Jim Kingdon wrote:
> >> I wish that the main www.redhat.com site did more than just reference
> >> sourceware.  People are often confused about where to find cygwin 
stuff.
> >
> >Have you asked Louis (a former Cygnus guy, now on the web team working
> >from Sunnyvale and tasked with integrating Cygnus and Red Hat web
> >sites)?  Or someone else with actual responsibility for this?  I
> >suspect it would be relatively easy to add cygwin info to
> > http://www.redhat.com/apps/download/ or some other suitable place if
> >you just figure out who to ask.
>
> I was actually thinking that we should advertise links to gcc, gdb, 
cygwin,
> and xconq (of course) on the Red Hat main page.
>
> The problems that I usually see are that someone has figured out how to
> download the cygwin stuff but they don't know where to ask questions.  It
> should be fairly obvious from the cygwin web page but, inexplicably, they
> don't know where that it.
>
> I see things like "I looked all over the web and couldn't find any 
information
> about cygwin" (sic).
>
> I don't know if gcc and gdb suffer similar fates but a little extra 
exposure
> should be good for everyone.
>
> I've Cc'ed louisc with this email.  Maybe he'll think this is a wonderful
> idea and we'll have links on www.redhat.com today. :-)
>
> cgf

Re: ftp load

[Stan Shebs]

Jim Kingdon wrote:
> 
> P.S. On the subject of xconq (which is near and dear to our heart as
> we know :-)), those of us who want to should bug Stan to make a new
> release.  Compare http://sourceware.cygnus.com/xconq/screenshots.html
> with http://sourceware.cygnus.com/xconq/x11.html and I think it is
> pretty clear which one is more PR-worthy.

I know, I know - "release early and often".  It's got so many bugs
and missing features though... :-(

Re: ftp load

[Stan Shebs]

Jim Kingdon wrote:
> 
> P.S. On the subject of xconq (which is near and dear to our heart as
> we know :-)), those of us who want to should bug Stan to make a new
> release.  Compare http://sourceware.cygnus.com/xconq/screenshots.html
> with http://sourceware.cygnus.com/xconq/x11.html and I think it is
> pretty clear which one is more PR-worthy.

I know, I know - "release early and often".  It's got so many bugs
and missing features though... :-(

Re: ftp load

[Jim Kingdon]

> I am wondering what ideas you all might have for a single word or title 
> might work in place of sourceware.cygnus.com....something that would be 
> more telling.  thoughts?

To me the interesting words are "GCC" and "Cygwin" (with longer lists
of projects in less prominent places like the existing
http://www.redhat.com/apps/community/hosting.html or maybe new page(s)
which list projects we are involved in (whatever that means) such as
the Linux kernel, even if we don't host it).  I pick those two based
simply on statistics of what is most popular.

Trying to figure out what belongs on the home page and what belongs on
a sub-page is what keeps your job interesting, Louis :-).  Just think
of GCC and Cygwin in the same breath as RPM, GNOME and Linux (or
whatever else is prominently featured) and you'll figure something out
(whether it is the top-level page or a "download" page or a
"help write Linux" page or whatever form it takes).

P.S. On the subject of xconq (which is near and dear to our heart as
we know :-)), those of us who want to should bug Stan to make a new
release.  Compare http://sourceware.cygnus.com/xconq/screenshots.html
with http://sourceware.cygnus.com/xconq/x11.html and I think it is
pretty clear which one is more PR-worthy.

Re: ftp load

['Chris Faylor']

On Tue, Mar 21, 2000 at 10:11:27PM -0800, Louis Stone-Collonge wrote:
>okay I have a question.
>well...more of a pontification really...
>don't you all think the Red Hat homepage is cluttered enough?  There is a 
>movement afoot to remove links rather than add more.  comments?

Possibly, but I think that advertising our major open source projects
is worth a lot.  I guess I think they should be sitting in an obvious
little box somewhere on the web page.

cgf

RE: ftp load

[Louis Stone-Collonge]

okay I have a question.
well...more of a pontification really...
don't you all think the Red Hat homepage is cluttered enough?  There is a 
movement afoot to remove links rather than add more.  comments?

I am wondering what ideas you all might have for a single word or title 
might work in place of sourceware.cygnus.com....something that would be 
more telling.  thoughts?

Louis "listening to way too much Adam and the Ants tonight" Stone-Collonge

PS:  the good news is that more and more people are learning that Red Hat 
is more than just Linux :)

On Wednesday, March 15, 2000 7:00 AM, Chris Faylor [SMTP:cgf@cygnus.com] 
wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 15, 2000 at 09:46:07AM -0500, Jim Kingdon wrote:
> >> I wish that the main www.redhat.com site did more than just reference
> >> sourceware.  People are often confused about where to find cygwin 
stuff.
> >
> >Have you asked Louis (a former Cygnus guy, now on the web team working
> >from Sunnyvale and tasked with integrating Cygnus and Red Hat web
> >sites)?  Or someone else with actual responsibility for this?  I
> >suspect it would be relatively easy to add cygwin info to
> > http://www.redhat.com/apps/download/ or some other suitable place if
> >you just figure out who to ask.
>
> I was actually thinking that we should advertise links to gcc, gdb, 
cygwin,
> and xconq (of course) on the Red Hat main page.
>
> The problems that I usually see are that someone has figured out how to
> download the cygwin stuff but they don't know where to ask questions.  It
> should be fairly obvious from the cygwin web page but, inexplicably, they
> don't know where that it.
>
> I see things like "I looked all over the web and couldn't find any 
information
> about cygwin" (sic).
>
> I don't know if gcc and gdb suffer similar fates but a little extra 
exposure
> should be good for everyone.
>
> I've Cc'ed louisc with this email.  Maybe he'll think this is a wonderful
> idea and we'll have links on www.redhat.com today. :-)
>
> cgf