Polarhome.com server status numbers

[papa]

What do the numbers mean that are shown after each server name listed at the top of Polarhome web pages?

[zoli]

The numbers beside the server mean how many shells are active at that time (5 min cache) on that particular server - most of the cases mean logged in user sessions.
The server names are links that would show the exact finger information... like

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Debian/ppc:   2 


clicking on the link http://www.polarhome.com/service/network/finger.php3?host=debian-ppc.polarhome.com

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Looking up host: debian-ppc.polarhome.com on port 79

Login    Name                    Tty      Idle  Login Time   Office     Office Phone
jhi      Jarkko Hietaniemi (jhi  pts/0    3:19  Dec 10 03:15 (c-50-176-226-51.hsd1.ma.comcast.net)
zoli     Zoltan Arpadffy        *:0             Dec  6 20:54

[papa]

I thought it was something like that, but was wondering why off-line hosts like Alpha are shown with active shells.

Maybe the counting process is something simple like taking the number of lines in the output from finger and subtracting for the column headings line ("Login Name TTY ...") and "No one logged on" if they appear in the output. So hosts like Alpha that respond with an error message or other unexpected output get a count of 1 mistakenly.

[zoli]

hahaha this is a know bug in the implementation.

Namely, when the host is down, not reachable the old finger information is not overwritten and shows the old value.
I'll try to fix it soon.

[papa]

VAX has a problem of its own. FINGER replies "No interactive logins at this time" even when I enter it on VAX's own command line.

[zoli]

This is not a VAX but general VMS finger implementation issue.
I have already rapported to Compaq/HP back in the beginning of 2ks - nothing happened - or it has happened, just polarhome runs on too old VMS systems (but this is needed because of the development compatibility)

[papa]

Impressive.

Maybe we can come up with a workaround for our own use.

[zoli]

It is not worth the effort.
This is a well known issue

The server can handle hundreds concurrent users - we are not in the risk to reach the upper limit... polarhome is on a lower usage limit and counting zeros is not fun anyway.

If you have a solution, I would be happy to implement - otherwise the 5 minutes delay polarhome header is good enough for the information purpose (because it uses system information and not finger)

[papa]

I realize it is not a very important issue, but when I am working on VAX or Alpha it would be nice to know if anyone is connected at the same time. It is beyond my ability to do anything very fancy, but I will let you know if I have any ideas for a quick-and-dirty solution.

[zoli]

For the header display I use the following command

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SYSTEM@alpha$ show users
      OpenVMS User Processes at 11-DEC-2015 11:45:36.68
    Total number of users = 1,  number of processes = 1

 Username     Interactive  Subprocess   Batch
 SYSTEM            1


This command is able to inform you if there are any other user logged in - interective.

You may use the PHONE command... in fact not just on a single host but between all polarhome VMS hosts.

[papa]

I found that in an online manual just now. Works like a charm. Now to induce someone other than me to log-on.

[zoli]

Works like a charm. Now to induce someone other than me to log-on.

hahaha this will be the harder part