From: Olivia X
To: users
Subject: WASTE is 10!
Before there was Amazon or Slashdot or MP3s or ICQ, before cable
modems and DSL and wireless, before animated GIFs or Java or Windows
95, before dotcoms and banner ads and email viruses, and yea before
even the endless September, there was a humble 386SX named WASTE with
4MB of RAM running Linux kernel 0.99pl13f. And on this historic day
those many long years ago, it served its first web page:
Date: Thu, 13 Apr 1995 12:25:09 -0500 (CDT)
From: root
Subject: Web server up and running
The NCSA web server is up and running.
To create your own web pages, create a directory in your home
directory called WWW, use "chmod 755 WWW" to make it readable to the
world, and throw your files in there. You should also make those files
world readable as well. Your documents will then be accessible by
http://waste.winternet.com/~username/filename
If the server response is too slow, I can switch it to standalone so
it runs continuously. The current configuration should conserve the
scarce memory.
The internet ftp, mail, finger, telnet, rlogin, and so on servers also
appear to be operational.
Lynx is mostly configured (I got the binaries but not the
configuration files) and there is a login "lynx" password lynx that
will take you right into it.
I also added archie, which could conceivably come in handy.
I've downloaded the caching web proxy from CERN as well, which is what
we need to access the net without the class C address. Class C will
cost us $275 a year, I discovered last night, about another $25 a
month. Sucks.
WASTE once again lives in the living room of a small apartment,
quietly humming away. But now it serves millions of web pages and
transfers millions of emails per month for its users. And we hope to
continue for some years to come. As always, if you have a friend you
think ought to have a WASTE account, let us know!
Some snapshots of WASTE when we were young:
1995: http://www.waste.org/older/
1996: http://web.archive.org/web/19961221095645/http://waste.org/
1998: http://web.archive.org/web/19981212022059/http://waste.org/
2002: http://web.archive.org/web/20020525170717/http://waste.org/
Some historic dates:
Feb 1, 1995 Move into original WASTE estates
? Set up coax LAN to dial in to the U of M
? Get dedicated dialup from Winternet
Apr 13, 1995 NCSA webserver, waste.winternet.com
Apr 23, 1995 386DX 33, 4MB
Apr 25, 1995 486DX 33, 8MB 19.2kbps link
Apr 30, 1995 waste.org registered
May 3, 1995 waste.org live, 28.8 link back
Jun 25, 1995 Dial-in (28kbps), 420M drive
Aug 13, 1995 Acquired Convex C1 vector supercomputer
Sep 23, 1995 Spinner webserver
Nov 10, 1995 Pentium 120, 32MB RAM
Dec 18, 1995 second dialin (14.4), duct-taped power supply
Jan 7, 1996 Dial-ins switched to PPP only with "masquerading" (aka NAT)
Jan 22, 1996 FAQ created
Feb 26, 1996 Zmailer
Mar 30, 1996 Convex dismantled
May 27, 1996 WASTE relocated to Zonemage's closet, 30 minutes of downtime
Jun 17, 1996 Kernel upgrade 1.3.57 -> 2.0.0
Aug 17, 1996 Relocate server to new WASTE, downtime 30 minutes
Oct 9, 1996 ISDN, two dialins
Apr 22, 1997 Slackware to Redhat
Jun 16, 1997 Hacker deletes my home directory
Sep 2, 1997 128MB RAM, 4G UW SCSI drive, UPS
Nov 18, 1997 5 dialins
Nov 23, 1997 Apache webserver
Jan 19, 1998 t-shirts!
Mar 8, 1998 OS upgrade? 4.2 -> 5.0
Jun 11, 1998 Initial DSL experimentation via USWest
Aug 14, 1998 Dialin limits
Jan 29, 1999 DSL via Orbis
Mar 10, 1999 First USWest cut-off (50 hours)
Aug 10, 1999 Second USWest cut-off, fall back to modem uplink (one week)
Dec 30, 1999 K6-2 400, 256MB RAM
Jan 13, 2000 Third USWest cut-off (12 days)
Jun 6, 2000 Back to Sendmail
Aug 24, 2000 Dump USWest DSL for Rhythms
Dec 27, 2000 Flooding in server room leaves WASTE standing in a
couple inches of water while running
Jan 1, 2001 Upstream provider Orbis gets bought by infiwhatever,
service goes to hell
Jul 9, 2001 Added basic webmail access
Sep 10, 2001 Rhythms goes out of business, we switch
back to USWest (now Qwest) DSL
Nov 15, 2001 Script kiddies exploit hole in SSH but
humorously fail to get any further
Nov 16, 2001 New 900MHz Athlon server with 512MB of RAM and
150G of LVM storage, running Debian
Mar 11, 2002 Squirrelmail installed
Mar 20, 2002 Mailman installed, but ancient Majordomo remains
May 22, 2002 Sporadic system behavior traced to dead fan
Jun 1, 2002 Telnet server shut down
Oct 12, 2002 System-wide email virus scanner installed
Oct 25, 2002 FTP server shut down
Dec 9, 2002 Astroturf group Center for Consumer Freedom puts out a
press release calling WASTE domestic terrorists for
hosting vegetarian e-mail lists
Mar 12, 2003 Drive failure; upgraded to RAID5 array
Apr 2002 Various visits from the Joint Terrorism Taskforce
May 9, 2003 Network link flakes out, problem eventually
attributed to squirrels chewing through line
Jun 11, 2003 Phase-out of dialins begins
Jul 10, 2003 Network outage due to gross incompetence at Pixius
Aug 17, 2004 Large collection of obsolete hardware from WASTE recycled
Sep 2004 Begin mirroring of WASTE to future home in San Francisco
Sep 21, 2004 Second batch of t-shirts printed
Dec 10, 2004 Remaining three dial-in lines disconnected
Dec 14, 2004 Hard drive failure in Minneapolis; WASTE brought online
on new Athlon 2100+ server with 1G RAM in San Francisco
Jan 14, 2005 Power supply dies in new server, moves over to tempory
home in dual 64-bit Opteron with 3G of RAM
Jan 26, 2005 Nearby fire causes a several hour power outage
--
"Love the dolphins," she advised him. "Write by W.A.S.T.E.."