All the Perl that's Practical to Extract and Report

From the Company that Gave Us Java...

hfb on 2002-03-25T22:43:51

hfb writes "From the be-careful-what-you-wish-for department:

A couple of weeks ago I was feeling a bit frustrated from the load on the two boxes that answer to the name search.cpan.org as I watched them being crushed by their own success. On a whim, I sent an email to a friend at Sun asking him if, haha, Sun might have some spare hardware they would like to donate to help ease the CPU bound load.

Two weeks ago they shipped us a 2-way E250 with 1GB memory and enough disk to do some squid caching. I configured it and drove it out to St. Louis this past weekend and, other than a minor burp that I fixed last night, it would appear to be running smoothly and hardly straining at the load.

So, if you should notice or care that the CPAN search engine is running a bit faster these days, thank Sun and the generosity of a few engineers who felt like sending us a box to help out in a time of need.

Please join me in sending Andrew.Roach@sun.com, Tim.Sparlin@Eng.Sun.COM, and Alan.Burlison@sun.com a big Thank You! :)

I've put a few pictures of Ben, Sarah, the machine and the road trip adventure on-line.

Thank them

belg4mit on 2002-03-26T00:06:23

Here

Paste in the Article URL as the URL in form.

Excellent

ajtaylor on 2002-03-26T00:26:04

I haven't gotten search responses back this quickly in a LONG time! Thanks Sun, and thanks hfb for driving out there to get it installed.

PS. You need to update the FAQ and site info now. Gotta tell people about your sexy hardware...

Re:Excellent

hfb on 2002-03-26T01:36:58

hey, cut me some slack :) I just drove 2600 miles in 2 days and the info page is a little low on my priority list...sleep is far higher on that list. :)

Re:Excellent

ajtaylor on 2002-03-26T14:54:24

Note I didn't specify a time frame. :-) Yes, you are nuts to drive that far over a weekend! But thank you so much. You rock (and so does Sun for that matter).

PS. I did NC to UT in 2 days (28 hrs) a few years ago, so I know your pain.

Thank you!

gnat on 2002-03-26T02:23:45

Big speedy smoochies to Sun and hfb. I have trouble motivating myself to drive 20m for a pie, I can't conceive of a Boston-St Louis haul! Thank you!

--Nat

Re:Thank you!

hfb on 2002-03-26T04:31:02

I've already told Mr. Jark that next time I think about doing something stupid like this that he lock me in the basement. :) I'm fucking nuts.

Re:Thank you!

pne on 2002-03-26T15:28:12

And what do the nuts have to say about the way you're treating them? ;)

Re:Thank you!

hfb on 2002-03-26T22:48:03

They're just cowering in the corner for now :)

Re:Thank you!

gnat on 2002-03-27T22:39:00

And what do the nuts have to say about the way you're treating them? ;)

They just lie back and think of Brazil.

--Nat

Thanks

solhell on 2002-03-26T03:22:27

Thanks to Sun for the hardware; but bigger thanks to hfb for the extraordinary effort.

Thank-you

Damian on 2002-03-26T07:12:12

Fantastic work, Elaine. Thank-you!

And thanks to Sun for their generosity.

(Though I bet you're sorry now that you didn't also ask if they happened to have a spare villa in the south of France, eh? ;-)

It does not work for me...

Random Logic on 2002-03-26T07:40:07

I just tried to do a search on CPAN, but all I got was a pretty black page, with the title "Chaos!" written in real bad HTML (seem like some poeple can hack before the can think or write)

search.cpan.org resolves to 198.246.0.28, hope that is correct.

Maybe you should get the real search.cpan back in place ;)

Re:It does not work for me...

jhi on 2002-03-26T14:10:30

Your DNS is still pointing to the old box.

Great thanks!

darobin on 2002-03-26T13:05:15

Great thanks to hfb for being insane(ly helpful), and to Sun for the hardware.

Is anyone else getting some trouble with Mozilla 0.9.9 on linux for this query ? Mine simply freezes, but I'm very tempted to believe it's a problem on my side.

Mozilla 0.9.9

vek on 2002-03-26T13:26:45

It looks like a Mozilla thing. I get the same results as you (i.e the freeze) with Mozilla 0.9.9 on Windows XP. Works like a charm with IE 6 though, hmmmm...

Re:Great thanks!

solhell on 2002-03-27T11:39:30

off topic, but since I upgraded to 0.99 from 0.98, there are several new problems I am experiencing with mozilla.

Sweet

KM on 2002-03-26T13:30:28

Thanks e., and thanks Sun. And, thanks to all those who use CPAN and don't re-invent the wheel :)

Thanks, SUN. And... how funny!

bronto on 2002-03-26T14:12:25

I'm happy to partecipate to the general thanksgiving to SUN. Yep, how fun it is that one of the most important Perl site is being helped by a "rival" language company!

Yes, yes, I know there is no rivality but... hey! I can't traslate better the Italian that's in my head :-)

Re:Thanks, SUN. And... how funny!

Alan Burlison on 2002-03-26T16:12:04

Rival languages? Surely you mean complementary? ;-)

After all, we do ship perl as part of Solaris...

Re:Thanks, SUN. And... how funny!

bronto on 2002-03-26T16:39:33

Yep! Did I tell I couldn't translate my Italian in a better way?

:-P

again, THANKS, SUN!

Re:Thanks, SUN. And... how funny!

hfb on 2002-03-26T22:46:59

Be nice :) Alan is one of the people responsible for the machine being given to us :)

Re:Thanks, SUN. And... how funny!

bronto on 2002-03-27T13:58:59

I didn't mean to be rude :-(, sorry if you had that impression. I am really grateful to SUN for what they did for CPAN, I really mean it. I have no reason to be rude with people at SUN, Solaris is one of three preferred UNIXes of mine (the other two being Debian Linux and SGI IRIX).

Anyway, since you published the email addresses to send the thanks to, I'll do it RSN.

Sorry again for the misunderstanding, it really was a translation problem from my mother tongue (Italian) to english.

Cheers

vek on 2002-03-26T14:12:32

Nice one hfb. Searching on CPAN is nice and fast and lovely now.

Way to go!

pjscott on 2002-03-26T17:05:47

"Above and beyond the call of duty" is hollow and inadequate. Nice work, Elaine!

Sun and Perl

barryp on 2002-03-26T17:49:08

Sun are big Perl users ... to the best of my knowledge, a lot of their benchmarking work performed here in Ireland uses an Sun-internally modified release of Perl. It may not be called Perl, but that's what it is. I'm even pretty sure they send a lot of their new-hire grad students on training courses for the language. So, it does not surprise me that Sun is being good to the Perl community.

Re:Sun and Perl

Alan Burlison on 2002-03-26T21:31:36

I know nothing about the existence of a modified version of perl (seems unlikely...), but we shipped perl 5.005_03 as part of Solaris 8, 5.6.1 will be in Solaris 9. Perl is included in the base OS, and you can even write JumpStart scripts in perl if you wish (it is in the Solaris install image). The kstat(1) command is a perl script, as are the proj[add|del|mod] commands. We also use perl in several parts of the Solaris build environment. We have an active internal perl mailing list, at least one internal CPAN mirror that I know of. In short, yes we use it too!

Like most other folks, we use perl because it makes our lives easier :-)

Thank you!

clintp on 2002-03-27T13:23:56

..to Sun for the equipment. It probably means a lot more to us than it did to you!

..to hfb for installing and maintaining the search box (with others!). All this and no nicotine: double karma for you.

They also gave us "duct-tape of the internet"

merlyn on 2002-03-27T18:13:10

"Duct Tape of the Internet" was from the sun.com webmaster. So, Perl's already gotten a lot from Sun. {grin}

Thanks for all the thanks :-)

Alan Burlison on 2002-03-28T23:38:38

The sun.com webmaster has just forwarded the comments that you have all posted to the feedback page on www.sun.com, and I have had quite a few hit my inbox - many thanks to everyone who took the time to express their appreciation, it is much appreciated :-)

Speed ?

gbarr on 2002-04-03T01:22:12

Hah, you think it is fast now ? You ain't seen nothing yet :-)