[Dxspider-support] Problems with command " dx by "

[Ian J Maude]

On Mon, 2003-12-29 at 12:38, Dirk Koopman wrote:
> Angel, Charlie and others
> 
> I shall be having a tidy up over the next couple of weeks. If this is
> the consensus I will happily remove the 'dx by' or else raise the
> privilege for it so that it can only be used by 'trusted' users.
I vote to change the privilege level.


> What happens then I am not really certain. I think the software is as
> developed in its current state as it can go. I have made various
> attempts at adding a 'new protocol' but without any lasting success. 
> 
OK, the question here, it seems to me is...

Do we continue with PC protocol or not?  I might be wrong (and I usually
am ;-)) but the difficulty has been back compatibility in the past.
So, making that assumption, do we scrap the whole idea of
inter-operability with non-spider clusters?  Back to the old debate I
guess.  From my point of view, I would go for a completely new protocol
and AK1A protocol be damned.  As long as we keep the compatibility, we
are potentially holding back the future development of cluster software
and there is no real need for AK1A clusters to make the jump.  There are
a LOT of spider clusters out there and the vast majority keep updated I
think.

The next question is as difficult.  If we go down this track, how is the
new code controlled.  By that I mean, how do we ensure that people
upgrade?  Leaving it to them may cause more problems than anything
else.  We have seen problems in the past due to sysops not updating
their software to fix bugs etc, indeed we have seen questions on here
from sysops seeing bugs that have already been fixed in CVS.  I guess
the real question is, should there be a control of any kind?  That one
is down to you Dirk I guess.

> The problem is that that core of the software needs to be rewritten
> and
> a completely different way of passing the necessary data between nodes
> needs to be used. It also could do with some things written in C
> adding
> to it but that will bring some distribution problems for our Windows
> users.
So, are we back to Spinet again here?  It would be perfectly possible to
set up a separate network to test new code with new protocol using a
connection/hook into the old Spider code I guess.  A lot of people have
moved from Windows to Linux now, although I have no numbers for sysops
using Spider under Windows.  I remember a certain software developer
saying that Spider would never be ported for Windows ;-)

HNY all

Ian

-- 
Ian Maude G0VGS Morecambe Lancs UK | ian at gb7mbc.net
Sysop of GB7MBC, the Morecambe Bay Cluster
Running Linux and DXSpider
 
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