Title: beastie is up again
Date: Thu, 24 Feb 2022 05:41:29 +0000
Categoy: Misc

# beastie is finally up

`beastie` is a new accessible host inside sdf clusters
which uses OpenBSD as the OS and same `$HOME`
directory as other sdf's hosts.

While `beastie` is great, frequent fsync errors may
occur randomly because there are chances that NFS
mount shared between sdf clusters is being
non-responsive. The last of this error causes several
days `downtime` on `beastie` host.

The last time I encountered the problem on `beastie` is
several days ago. During the downtime period, users
are unable to establish new ssh sessions to `beastie`
for several days.

# One host is down, but the cluster is accessible

Fortunately, sdf has several hosts that can be used to
log in. The available hosts can be accessed via
`tty.sdf.org` and each provides access to the same
`$HOME`, so one's inability to access `beastie` host
is actually no problem at all.

# As of today

`beastie` is up and running. I am impressed with
lightweight memory use of `beastie`, several days
uptime with very minimal memory usage. Probably
`beastie` doesn't run as many service as other
`tty` hosts.

```
      _____       mydeardiary@beastie
    \-     -/     -------------------
 \_/         \    OS: OpenBSD 7.0 amd64
 |        O O |   Host: Supermicro X7DBT
 |_  <   )  3 )   Uptime: 10 days, 33 mins
 / \         /    Packages: 192 (pkg_info)
    /-_____-\     Shell: mksh R59 2020/10/31
                  Terminal: /dev/ttypo
                  CPU: Intel Xeon X5460 (8/8, SMT off)
                  Memory: 198MiB / 16367MiB

```

So as my preferred host on sdf is up, I can get back
enjoying `sdf.org` as `$HOME`, far away from home.

If you are fellow `sdf` user, give `beastie` a try by
logging in to `beastie.sdf.org`. Remember to set up
`~/.ssh/authorized_keys` beforehand to make logging in
easier.

# One useful tip: be patient

It seems that one needs some *patience* when one of
the host on the cluster is not accessible.

Well, done. Long life `sdf.org` as the oldest public
access system.