Below is a message I (and other list owners) received from Brian at RootsWeb. Just to let you know, I have sent in a donation to help RootsWeb with equipment etc. It is not a requirenent to be subbed to this list, but if you have a few dollars to spare I'm sure it would be appreciated. I am happy to send what I can to be able to have the lists. Unlike MAISER, which was free from the university, Brian has expences that he should not have to bare alone, to support our lists. I sent a US Money Order, paying the exchange on this end, rather than a personal cheque. I addressed it to Dr. Brian Leverich RootsWeb Genealogical Data Cooperative P.O. Box 6798 Frazier Park, CA USA 93222-6798 Of course, those of you in the US don't have to worry about exchange:-)) Thanks for reading this. Ruth Davison > >Hi - > >Here's what's going on. > >When RootsWeb adopted the Maiser lists, we set three goals for >ourselves: > > (1) Deliver messages to accessible hosts in less than 30 > minutes on average. > > (2) Have essentially no unplanned down times. > > (3) Have the list archives be fully indexed and searchable. > >That requires a lot of CPU power and, given our existing hardware, >it looked like the cheapest way (a couple of thousand dollars) to >get that power was going to multiple CPUs in each of server boxes. > >The good news is that multiprocessing did get us the CPU cycles so >we could do fast turn-arounds and have power left over for >searchable archives. > >The bad news is that multiprocessing seems to be unstable with our >current operationg system and we're having far too many unplanned >downs. > >So we're falling back to single processor machines. The lists have >been down while we reconfigured servers and balanced loads again so >we can get the mail delivered quickly. > >We should have the lists back up within an hour or so. > >However, this means we have no spare capacity at the moment for >searchable archives. We'll buy and install more capacity as fast as >we can, though. > >Without intending to beg and grovel too much for financial support >of RootsWeb, I would like to mention in passing that if you intend >to become a RootsWeb Member or Sponsor (or mention that to your >subscribers), now would be a particularly good time to do so. > >Thanks much, B. > > >-- >Dr. Brian Leverich Co-moderator, soc.genealogy.methods/GENMTD-L >RootsWeb Genealogical Data Cooperative http://www.rootsweb.com/ >P.O. Box 6798, Frazier Park, CA 93222-6798 [email protected] > > > ------ Ruth (Schauer) Davison [email protected] RR1 Box 2088 VE7EJI Clearwater, BC "Gateway to Wells Gray Park" Canada V0E 1N0 Ph: 250-674-3400 Fax: 250-674-3846 To subscribe to a list send a message to "Name you wish to sub"[email protected] in message body put subscribe turn off your sig. file [email protected] SCHAUER/SHAUER/SHOWER [email protected] CREED/CREEDE/CREEDON [email protected] HARVEY/HARVIE [email protected] WILCOX/WILLCOX/WILCOXSON