On Jul 14, 2010, at 14:09:53, Robert Nesius wrote:

> 
> 
> On Wed, Jul 14, 2010 at 1:20 PM, Eric F Crist <ecrist at secure-computing.net> wrote:
> On Jul 14, 2010, at 13:00:06, Mike Miller wrote:
> 
> > One is Western Digital and the other is Samsung.  I was having the same
> > problem with either one.  Check this out:
> >
> > $ uptime
> >  12:54:24 up 224 days, 23:59, 23 users,  load average: 0.10, 0.12, 0.09
> >
> > I really want to reboot this machine, but I'm always using it for some big
> > job.  Probably within the next month or two I'll shut it down, upgrade
> > some components, install Ubuntu 10.04 and bring it back up.  Then I can
> > test the file transfer speed again.
> 
> *cough*
> 
> ecrist at puma:~-> uptime
>  1:15PM  up 787 days,  3:17, 11 users, load averages: 0.00, 0.04, 0.07
> 
> It would have 1005 more days, but our data center where this box resides had a PDU failure which knocked out half the customers.  You know who you are, data center.  Oh, that's a FreeBSD box, so I don't suspects many on a LUG list to see numbers that big. :P
> 
> Before you all jump on me for not having it updated, it's a FreeBSD 4.11 box on a private LAN running internal software.  Rest assured this box is on it's way out in the next 6 months.
> 
> Anyone beat that?
> 
> This reminded me of an anecdotal statistic.  While in college only faculty and grad students had access to workstations on the network that they did not have to close their sessions on (This is pre-linux, you young whipper-snappers).  As such it became some sort of a geek-bragging-right to have a shell that was idle for ridiculous amounts of time.  It was like saying "I don't have to log out and I have so much computing power at my disposal I don't NEED that shell!  In fact I have so many shells I've LOST that shell." 
> 
> So when I finally got my own workstation/office as a student intern I had an xterm that I very very carefully never typed in to let it's idle time climb up so that when people ran finger they could see one of my sessions was idle for MONTHS!  I'd run the command myself sometimes and congratulate myself for being a made man, with my own ridiculously high idle-time shell.  Yeah.  My office mates even knew about my "special shell" that I was cultivating, and thus were immensely amused when I finally accidentally typed 'ls' in my super-idle shell one day.  GAH!   
> 
> Anyway - you can all laugh at me now. 

Nowadays, we have things like screen that make this REALLY easy, you old-fogey.  :P

---
Eric Crist