Snips from an e-mail shared with the Sysops.

Ed gave permission to post it and involve the MoD team on the project, also gave him the password to the MoD forum...

Date: Sun, 10 Oct 1999 08:56:57 -0600
From: Ed Yourdon < ed@yourdon.com >
To: sacredspaces@yahoo.com
Subject: What if MIT goes down?

Diane,

You raised an interesting question in this morning's thread about whether we all plan to stay on the forum after the Big Rollover...

What if MIT is experiencing severe disruptions of its own? Would it be possible that Phil Greenspun might be directed to stop giving away CPU cycles for free, and simply take down ALL of the forums on whatever machine he's using? For that matter, is it possible that all of MIT might be shut down?

I did a little work on Y2K contingency planning for [snip details--per request (not MIT)], and their opinion was that NONE of the major universities in the [snip specifics--per request] area had begun doing any serious contingency planning. When you start looking closely at what goes on in a major university at the end of the calendar year, the complexity is staggering. The only thing MIT has going, in its favor, is that they have their own independent power supply -- they're not dependent on Boston Commonwealth Edison. But aside from that, I suspect that all they've done is worry about the "obvious" IT systems, without thinking about the larger issues like a failure in the Boston water supply, etc, etc.

Anyway ... perhaps you and I, and Chuck and Big Dog, should do some contingency planning of our own, for the sake of the forum regulars we've come to regard as family. What kind of alternative, backup forum environment might we attempt to create in the event of an MIT failure? Do you know anything, for example, about the mechanisms of setting up a new Usenet newsgroup? Obviously, newsgroups are listservs, which have an entirely different look-and-feel than our web-based discussion forum, but it would be better than nothing. I vaguely recall an old friend of mine telling me, years ago, that it was easier to simply "take over" a near-dormant newsgroup, rather than going through the bureaucracy of creating a new one. That is, if an existing newsgroup has only two or three postings a year, but is still "officially" in good standing, then we could simply invite all of our forum regulars to move over there.

Feel free to pass this message on to the other sysops, and let me know if you want to have a discussion about it. At this point, I suspect that it would confuse the situation to discuss the idea with the entire forum community, but if you and the others think it would be a good idea, I won't object.

Cheers,
Ed

-- Anonymous, October 11, 1999

Answers

My response...

Hi Ed,

Actually I've been thinking about that... a lot lately.

Suggest we should try to find three alternate back-up locations. One in the mid-west and one on the West Coast, and the third? Was thinking that long about December we could start mentioning the alternate locations... in case.

It will take some research to find good alternates. We could turn the Moderator team onto it, and discuss it in the private Mod Forum. We tend to use it, to communicate among us, when something big "hits" the forum.

The other issue that concerns me, is HOW can we get a back-up copy of the archives? Once brought up the issue with Phil and he basically says the staff to do it at MIT is non-existant. Maybe you can broach the issue with him on behalf of all three forums.

[snip]

Diane

c.c. Russ/BigDog, Patrick & Chuck

### We've had a couple rounds of comments since then, but would like ta get y'all involved too.

Diane

-- Anonymous, October 11, 1999

All we need is a server with Oracle (don't remember, but could probably use MSSQL Server). The basic Lusenet and Phil-stuff is free. The how-to's can be downloaded from his online Web Guide. As I recall, ramping up seemed pretty straight forward.

If it's a matter of human resources, I'd be willing to go to Cambrdge and export the data from TB2000, the Prep Forum, and Hu7mpty Dumpty on to tapes.

Critt

-- Anonymous, October 11, 1999

This current Forum format, with thread messages all on one page, is the best we've EVER seen for community dialog. Excellent. Can Ed Yourdon or one of the Forum programmers replicate this feature?

We know of a man who keeps a much smaller Forum on his own server at home. He uses a program called anyboard at
http://netbula.com/anyboard/anyboard.html

To quote him: "The program I am using now is anyboard
http://netbula.com/anyboard/anyboard.html
That also is a good program all though the cgi script is using too much internet service cpu time and some other problems.
I have nt4.0 setup on a server at home and the script works.
With a dsl connection I am hoping to run the message board from home.
I like to be able to change the code (or script from anyboard) to display the message board the way that looks best for our purposes."

Y'all might want to check that URL out.

One thing we really want is the entire Forum on a CD. Have heard there are companies that can download overnight fast and will cut the whole thing on a CD. Personally we would pay $100 toward having our own CD of the entire Forum, from the very first post. Wow, to be able to search the CD! That would be worth $100.

This is a must, it seems. Too valuable to lose. And if one has it all on CD, one could copy to HD, no, and retain it for archiving?

Brian mentioned on a thread he has a way to download the whole thing. Will search for that thread ...

-- Anonymous, October 11, 1999

For other locations, might I suggest two on the east coast--let's say Virginia north and North Carolina south. The population density over on this side of the country seems to justify two regions.

For the regions, there ought to be regional coordinators, each with two back-up persons (at least!). Their job would be to forward via e-mails, phone, radio, smoke signal, or, God forbid it's the only damn thing working, snail-mail details of important news and discussions in the event that part of our "emergency grid" goes down. I can certainly impart (if possible) info gleaned from my scanner which might be pertinent to other areas.

I don't know anything about the technicalities; just tell me which buttons to push for an alternative site or sites an' I'll 'ave a go.

I've finally accepted my limitations of short-term memory problems and, occasionally, confusion (I mean even more than before!), but I'll do my damnedest to help keep info flowing.

-- Anonymous, October 11, 1999

Ed and I both were simultaneously thinking that the third back-up should be "offshore," or at least out of the U.S.

Canada? NZ or Australia?

Critt,

We may take up up on that. Russ has a suggestion to the Sysops and Ed, which I hope he'll post. Since he just got back from a trip, it may be tomorrow.

Old Git,

Think we need to know what areas can be "reasonably" assumed to stay up, power-wise. Humm. Sounds like an e-mail to Rick Cowles is in order. He's certainly got a "Greenspun" interest too.

Diane

-- Anonymous, October 11, 1999

Zounds! I've entered secret territory!

Hi moderators, one and all,

Glad to have checked in and see where you all "live," when you're out of sight. Re the idea of a backup alternate forum: I have no specific technical expertise to contribute here, having stumbled upon Phil's technology entirely by accident two years ago.

But I'm happy to participate, and I'll certainly match Ashton/Leska's offer of a financial contribution if it's needed.

Will check in here from time to time...

Cheers, Ed

-- Anonymous, October 11, 1999

From what I've read here and on Rick Cowles' forum, the Eastern seaboard, with its heavy dependence on nuclear generating capacity, seems more vulnerable to serious power interruptions than somewhere in the West or Midwest. Is it prudent to locate 2 out of 3 (?) sites in this region?

If power and telecommunications remain functional, the physical distance from the server won't matter. Same applies if there are local outages -- those in the region of outage will be out of the loop until it's corrected.

As for off-shore siting, is there any assurance that Oz or NZ or Sweden would be more secure than the U.S.?

The Internet is tough and redundant in regard to pathways --- but of course depends on telecomm and satellites and major nodes. How much attrition can it withstand and still stay alive?

-- Anonymous, October 11, 1999

Tom,

I've sent off an e-mail to Rick sort of explaining the situation. Likely I'll hear back from him tomorrow.

Zounds, Ed?

Ya outta read the old "hot" Mod thread about c4i if ya want secrets.

;-D

Diane

-- Anonymous, October 12, 1999

I won't have time to check things out until Wednesday, however...

If we can use MSSQL Server as the RDBMS, there are plenty of inexpensive options to choose from.



-- Anonymous, October 12, 1999

Critt, how much would it cost to have a CD of the Forum cut? One now and one around December 26?

-- Anonymous, October 12, 1999

Response from Rick... an idea to consider?

Subject: Re: MIT Forum Back-Up Plans?
Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 09:27:50 -0400
From: "Rick Cowles" < rick@csamerica.com >
Organization: CSAmerica

Diane,

I have a couple of ideas with regards to "backup plans".

I've got my own forum software to run on my site. The only reason I haven't switched to date is that I want to maintain continuity in the forum. However, this segues to a broader concern - the internet itself, and the interconnectedness. Quite a few major nodes could go down, and there would still be routing - however, there's little doubt that bandwidth access would then become a problem, and certainly, some areas of the country could experience phone problems.

So here's a unique suggestion that you folks may not have though of, and one that I'm going to implement myself. As you may be aware, I've been online for many, many years. I used to run a dialup fidonet BBS before the internet was a gleam in most people's eye. I took the BBS down in 1995, as the internet began to explode and local dialup users decrease to basically zero. However, I archived the BBS, and sometime between now and the end of the year, will be putting it back online, at least temporarily. If you have any old BBS operators in your midst, you might want to consider doing that - have a few non-internet dialup BBS's up and running in various locations in the country. The BBS's could then act as an "emergency communications" vehicle, and exchange mail packets between them.

This is just another angle on the problem. Maybe you folks thought of this solution; maybe not. I may also start up a forum on my site that's independent of the greenspun software / MIT servers, as a backup.

Let me know what you think.

Best,

Rick

Rick Cowles
CSAmerica
35C S. Broad St.
Penns Grove, NJ 08069
(856)299-7936 Ext. 205
(856)299-7962 (fax)
email: rick@csamerica.com
website: www.energyland.net

-- Anonymous, October 12, 1999

For Brian,

Are there "free" Canadian internet forum services, in your neck of the woods, that could be an out-of-U.S. TBY2K back-up discussion spot after the roll?

How does B.C. Power look?

The reason I personally lean towards Canada--specifically British Columbia--is it's still on the continent and Brian, lives in Victoria on... Vancouver Island. And they speak English. (Better than we do). They are an "independent" lot up there. I know it well, cause my Dad grew up on the island. I still have many relatives in B.C. and it's my "second" home. (Just doubt the ferry's will work well. Oh well, lot's of sailboats in those waters).

If the internationl telecom goes out, likely Canada will be better than overseas sites... I hope.

Contingencies... contingencies.

Diane

-- Anonymous, October 12, 1999

Brian may be able to archive the Forum.

-- Anonymous, October 12, 1999

From Russ/BigDog... (posted with permission)

All --

[snip]

We're running on a T3 at BBN in Cambridge (Ed knows them, of course) (ie, my biz is) and we are heavy users/abusers of Domino/Notes (big security, document, workflow and forum strengths, though somewhat idiosyncratic Web-wise). We are also mirrored to a T1 here in NY locally (important because I'm real tight with the ISP guys and have physical 24/7 access).

That would be a possibility, perhaps to mirror Greenspun, if possible or to provide a back-up. I have a programmer who could probably mimic Greenspun pretty quickly, for that matter, though not sure I can spare him.

FYI, I also have the y2krecover.com domain registered. Haven't decided what, whether, when or how to use that yet.

Anyway, use this for brainstorming if you wish.

Best,

Russ/BD

-- Anonymous, October 12, 1999

From TB2K:

http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=001Nh0
Government Monitoring of the Boards

"Actually "lurking" in a manner of speaking would be kind of pointless. What an entity would do is download the whole forum on to their hard drive and do word searches. I could do it myself overnight (got cable) with no problem and use sherlock (on a mac) to get a overview on differant subjects. Then a entity would only have to down load the "new answers" to get updates on how we think. Piece of cake.

I would need a larger hard drive to do it myself but was considering trying it out with the Prep Archive I built.

Is that a bit of forum insight or what eh?"

-- Brian (imager@home.com), September 10, 1999
-----------------------
And this is one cool tool. I use ICab in combination with Netscape 4.6. Each has their good and bad points but ICab is PPC natural so it is VERY fast. Good for poking around the internet and has an awesome download feature. Not only that it has been just upgraded and there is a new thing on the gentlemans site that is some sort of web archive thingy that I have not checked out before. ICab is still in the developement stage so it is quirky and crashes.

By the way I have 8.6, Thank you Steven Jobs for raising Macs from the grave. There is now a G4 mac out and the top model is three times faster than a 600 pentium.

I need a new machine. Just have a 6400/180. If you want to do 3d rendering a FAST machine is needed.

iCab - Internet Browser

iCab Homepage. Worldwide your guide.

iCab is a new web browser for the Macintosh.
The development of iCab is not finished at the moment, some features of the final version are missing. But you can try the iCab Preview at the download page. In the next few months better versions of iCab will be offered on our site. After the first final release, we will offer "iCab Pro" for $29. You will also be able to download a version for free.

http://www.icab.de/

-- Brian (imager@home.com), September 10, 1999.
--------------------------

-- Anonymous, October 13, 1999

A & L: I can burn a CD for the cost of a blank.

Back when EUY2K was small, I copied all the threads I wanted and added/updated from the alert emails. I stuffed the data into an Access .mdb. That allowed me to use the functionality of MSAccess. As Brian knows, once you get something to start with, you want you can pretty much go wherever you want.

If the internet is disrupted.... At Rick Cowles suggestion, I'm looking at an old dial-up hypertext-BBS system I used 10 years ago. Checking out how to run it on Linux.

-- Anonymous, October 13, 1999

Critt, do it! Put the entire Forum, TB2K, plus the Prep, plus the Egg, onto a Mac CD, from first post to today. When finished, and it tests out accurately, send us your address and we will promptly send you $100 check. WheeHee! Seems like this should be done right away. It should work just as it does now, same URLs for threads, etc, correct? All responses on same page, etc?

Critt, please do this!

-- Anonymous, October 13, 1999

Oh yeah, and when you get our check you send us the CD :-)

-- Anonymous, October 13, 1999

Quick Note,

I'll be happy to help researching alternate forums (as one back-up strategy) in a few days time. Have a project deadline I'm working on for the Silicon Valley Forum group so need to focus on that right now.

Diane

-- Anonymous, October 13, 1999

well, I guess I better check my "other" e-mail address (mt4design) more often.

I think the idea regarding a BBS is excellent and should be one of the contingencies. If the phones stay up then at least there would be some kind of dial up access and flow of information.

Regarding my little corner of the world in Southern California. I'm not sure how we're going to do, really. Looking at the list of 100 largest cities in the U.S. you'll find that we have many cities in So Cal on that list and at least a few in the top 10.

Any chance that public communications could be cut off intentionally during civil unrest to conserve limited assets for use by the military/law enforcement?

I have no technical expertise to offer regarding setting up other avenues of communication but I'll be here to do what I can to make sure the Postman gets the mail through : )

Mike

===========================================================

-- Anonymous, October 14, 1999

Micheal:

<>

In my own humble opinion, absolutely - the encroachment is ever faster - and now ALL fed agencies and national media are talking/emphasizing terrorism/cyber-terrorism, and NO groups are complaining about the militarization of the fed agencies, the political/policing of the military itself, and of the recent massive increases in surveillance, reports, etc. - such as from banking, gun registration, voter files, voter/medical databases, ssn databases, etc.

-- Anonymous, October 14, 1999

In Pakistan the first thing the coup folks did was cut the phone lines ... :_(

-- Anonymous, October 14, 1999

Just a small thought. Won't all that old pre-internet BBS software be non-Y2K compliant?

;-(

Diane

-- Anonymous, October 14, 1999

I have a guy at VERIO- the DSL supplier here in Cleveland (he's go muckety-muck in his title) and I'll ask him about costs, capabilities, etc.

Chuck

-- Anonymous, October 14, 1999

All

Diane Emailed me to post :o) Where I live is very likely to experiance little disruption (British Columbia) The power, telco and gas corps are virtual monopolies out here and have been saying together for months that its fixed. I will check out forum sites up here (possibly a university?) this weekend and see what is out there. The problem is the type of forum and what we could live with.

Has anyone Emailed Phil for his opinion?

-- Anonymous, October 15, 1999

Brian,

Chatted with him a few times, but not specifically on this issue.

Phil's a DWGI on Y2K and thinks we're all a bit crazy. Plus he uses Unix and Oracle, and doesn't "think" beyond that box... into critical infrastructure, etc.

Diane

-- Anonymous, October 15, 1999

Keep active.

-- Anonymous, October 20, 1999

In light of Michael Hyatt's hacking experience... to the top.

Diane

-- Anonymous, October 31, 1999

We need to revive this topic next week.

We have Arnie's board... but need some options of "public" forum software where we can set up free forums as a back-up.

What are the parts of the country most likely to have the fewest power problems?

Ideas?

Diane

-- Anonymous, December 04, 1999