acme.com hardware

01 May 2004 - present

A 3.2 GHz Pentium-IV with 2 GB memory and 200 GB disk in a RAID mirror. The box was built by Fine Tec Computer for $1688 based on my specifications, using the SuperMicro P4SCT motherboard. The OS is now FreeBSD 4.9. Connectivity is still via the Speakeasy 1.5 Mbps SDSL line.

17 March 2004 - 01 May 2004

Now running on a temporary machine in my office. It's the same CPU speed as the previous machine, 450 MHz, but it has 160 MB memory and 60 GB disk. The OS was FreeBSD 4.5. Connectivity was via a 1.5 Mbps SDSL line to Speakeasy.net costing $300/month.

25 November 1999 - 17 March 2004

A 450 MHz K6-2 PC with 64 MB memory and 8 GB disk, custom built by ACME Microsystems for only $665. The box was co-located at Explosive.net for $150/month, where it shared a T1 link to Above.net. The OS was FreeBSD 3.3. The web daemon was my own thttpd.

03 November 1995 - 25 November 1999

The first ACME incarnation to provide web service ran on one of Best.com's servers, a shared 200 MHz Pentium Pro running FreeBSD 2.2.8, for $50/month. My disk quota was 70 MB and I was allowed 200 MB/day of data transfer.

17 April 1991 - 03 November 1995

During this period ACME Labs was an email-only UUCP site running on a Sun 3/50 in my office.

List of downtimes:

• 24 September 2007: Reboot due to running out of mbufs.
• 02 January 2005: Reboot to do an fsck; no problems found.
• 17 June 2004: All the spam and worm mail made acme run out of mbuf clusters and kind of die. I built a kernel with a lot more of them and rebooted.
• 28 May 2004: Brief downtime for installation of a hefty new UPS. It should give at least an hour and a half of runtime during power failures.
• 17 May 2004: Reboot to fix mail system cloggage due to a denial of service attack.
• 06 May 2004: Reboot to install Clam AV, an anti-worm/virus mail filter. It's working great! I used these step by step installation instructions for FreeBSD.
• 02 May 2004: Reboot to try a new arrangement of ipfw rules so that web and mail packets don't go through natd, which is somewhat inefficient. The new rules work great.
• 01 May 2004: About two hours of downtime while switching to the real new hardware.
• 30 April 2004 8am: Reboot because natd was acting up. I think the real problem was a denial of service attack, though.
• 27 April 2004 10pm: Reboot to fix network outage.
• 24 April 2004 4pm: Crash.
• 24 April 2004 10am: Reboot to fix network outage.
• 21 April 2004: Reboot to fix network outage.
• 08 April 2004: Crash.
• 25 March 2004 1pm: Crash.
• 25 March 2004 9am: Another reboot for kernel tuning, this time without incident.
• 22 March 2004: Reboot with a reconfigured kernel to fix some network issues. After the reboot, the SDSL modem was non-responsive. I had to go out and get v. drunk before I figured out how to fix it: unplug the DSL line from the modem, cycle power, wait for it to self-test, then plug the DSL line back in.
• 18 March 2004: First crash on the temporary hardware.
• 17 March 2004: About an hour of downtime while switching to temporary new hardware.
• 08 March 2004: ipfw was acting up so: reboot.
• 24 February 2004: Reboot to try and get rid of lingering slowness after the MyDoom worm; didn't help.
• 29 January 2004: Reboot because syslogd was stuck.
• 28 January 2004: Reboot after I wedged things while debugging an ipfw script to deal with the latest Microsoft worm.
• 13 January 2004: Crash.
• 18 November 2003: Crash.
• 21 September 2003: Reboot to fix a screwup while upgrading sshd.
• 21 August 2003 through 10 September 2003: Numerous reboots trying to reconfigure sendmail to limit problems from SoBig.F worm.
• 30 July 2003: Froze from 1:40am until reboot at 12:40 pm.
• 09 June 2003: Reboot to unstick syslogd.
• 24 April 2003: Crash.
• 14 March 2003: Crash.
• 07 February 2003: Crash.
• 13 December 2002: Unexplained lockup around 3am, down until 8am.
• 10 October 2002: Crash.
• 23 September 2002: Crash.
• 26 June 2002: Reboot to upgrade sshd.
• 25 June 2002: Reboot to upgrade sshd.
• 03 June 2002: Crash due to runaway batch job.
• 18 May 2002: Reboot to upgrade sshd.
• 20 April 2002: Unexplained lockup around 8pm, down until noon 21apr2002.
• 10 April 2002: Unexplained crash around 3pm.
• 06 April 2002: Two unexplained crashes around midnight.
• 02 April 2002: Reboot to install some new system software.
• 17 February 2002: Reboot to clear unexplained sshd problem.
• 16 February 2002: Crash.
• 6 February 2002: Crash.
• 05 December 2001: Reboot to upgrade sshd.
• 14 September 2001: Reboot to upgrade sshd.
• 04 September 2001: Reboot to install name server.
• 14 August 2001: Reboot to change IP addresses.
• 29 April 2001: Reboot.
• 8 May 2001: Rolling blackout + loose battery cable.
• 4 March 2001: Power re-cabling at explosive.net.
• 23 February 2001: Explosive.net moved to new quarters.
• 19 February 2001: Reboot.
• 7 February 2001: Non-rolling blackout.
• 1 February 2001: Crash.
• 19 January 2001: Crash.
• 27 August 2000: Crash.
• 3 November 2000: Crash.