A number of LISTSERV maintainers have asked me to consider removing
LISTSERV@FRMOP11 from the LISTSERV backbone, in view of the recent RSCS
problems that they have experienced. After discussing the problem with several
LISTSERV maintainers, I have decided to perform that change for the following
reasons:
1. FRMOP11 has installed PUT 8806 on RSCSV2 without checking the bucket first.
As a consequence of this, they were hit by a highly pervasive bug causing
valid files to be overlaid with garbage.
2. All DIST2 jobs going through FRMOP11, which includes all LISTS database
update jobs, the VMSHARE/PCSHARE files, and the distribution of most
international mailing lists, are being corrupted as a result of this. LISTS
update jobs are, fortunately, rejected (thanks to the checksum function),
but they cause each affected server to request a reship of the whole LISTS
information from the originating site, which means several thousands of
lines times about a hundred backbone servers just for FINHUTC. Netwide
SIGNOFF and DELETE are rejected, causing a syntax error and an error
message being sent back to the originator by each server.
3. Rather than immediately restoring the previous version of RSCS as soon as
they found about the problem, and until IBM provides them with a fix, they
have decided to keep the new, buggy version online. To prevent too many
files from being garbled, they have decided to stop MAILER and LISTSERV in
the meantime, thus completely paralyzing the distribution of most mailing
lists.
FRMOP11 has caused major damage to the network through this irresponsible
behaviour, and this is more than enough to justify their removal from the
LISTSERV backbone. I hesitated to do this, because of the significant amount
of extra traffic this would cause on the international lines. However, until I
come to an agreement with EARN and the LISTSERV community about the
maintenance of EARN LISTSERVs, *I* am still the person responsible for the
smooth operation of the LISTSERV backbone, EARN or overseas, and I am not the
kind of person who will live with such a major problem until IBM provides a
fix.
Effective 10 minutes ago, LISTSERV@FRMOP11 is no longer on the LISTSERV
backbone, and will not be re-added to it until (1) I come to an agreement with
EARN wherein EARN staff is responsible for deciding what EARN sites are on the
backbone, in which case it is no longer my business, or (2) Mr. Ippolito makes
a formal statement about the support of RSCS and all related network products
at FRMOPxx, stating that in the future, FRMOPxx staff shall follow the
elementary rules of systems programming and respect of the users community. In
any case, this should provide an immediate relief to the problem and allow the
distribution of most mailing lists to resume, regardless of the fix FRMOP11 is
expecting from IBM.
I would like to suggest that the EARN-NOG should discuss the problem of
quality of maintenance of networking tools in international nodes, and make a
few directives to (supposedly) prevent this kind of problems from happening in
the future.
Eric
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