uptime 2 years!

[Mihai Donțu]

On Wednesday 08 October 2008, Jeremy Chadwick wrote:
> On Wed, Oct 08, 2008 at 08:54:47AM -0700, Chad Marshall wrote:
> > Would like to share a success story which I'm sure you've had in the
> > past but one of my servers running FreeBSD will have an uptime of 2
> > years tomorrow. I plan on putting on my blog but as it doesn't have much
> > reach but wanted to share with you since your community has made this
> > possible. Please indicate where I could post this to have a bit more
> > reach or if you'd like to put a link to my blog, I'd be more than happy
> > to provide that.
>
> I don't want to rain on your parade, but uptime ultimately means squat.
> I can install FreeBSD on a box under my desk at home, on a UPS, and
> leave it powered on for the next 30 years -- it tells people absolutely
> nothing about the reliability of the OS, or what kind of stress it's
> undergone during that time.
>
> Additionally, long uptimes also reflect directly on sysadmins: I take it
> to mean "the administrator is very lazy".  There are security holes
> (kernel or userland/library-level) which are exploitable on boxes which
> have been up for that kind of time.  I'm also making the assumption that
> said boxes have Internet connectivity, hence my point.
>
> Food for thought.  :-)

Or to put it mildly and not alienate Chad :), what was the box used for and, 
if it had Internet connectivity, how were the potential security issues 
handled within the last two years?

A Guy Ritchie kind of story will do just fine. :)

-- 
Mihai Donțu
unices.bitdefender.com