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Uptimes.net sort of did this; their client would keep the database updated and indicated the type of system it is running on. Unfortunately the project got canned since too many firewall products complained about the outbound connections made by the client.

I love OpenBSD more than most people, (Shown Here and Here) but I know of at least one remote SSH vulnerability that led to a root exploit in any OpenBSD version before 2.8. It bothers me greatly that they'd put something I see as quite untrue on their front page.

This is kinda useless. Yes, they tell us that they are running 15 servers total all on 1Ghz PCs, but they do not tell you what kinda hits they take on it.

K5, for example, has been able to take several direct Slashdottings on 1 VA Fullon box. 1 box which does MySQL, Apache w/ Mod_perl, and plain image serving Apache. (DNS is handled by other boxen). We handle about 65,000 to 70,000 hits a day (on average, mod_perl only.. no images traffic) with that one dual processor box. Vs the two dedicated dual proc DB servers, 11 web servers, two load balancers, etc of Anandtech. And we're at 8 months uptime with our single server. Sounds a bit better than requiring a load balancer which has to remove downed NT servers from the pool..

I could theorize on how well their Cold Fusion/NT solution stacks up against my Slackware/Apache/mod_perl/MySQL solution IF they were so kind as to give info on hits. Without that, this is just another point-and-drool at some RAQmount stuff which performs a job somewhere, somehow.
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Although it probably doesn't even have a TCP/IP stack enabled, does this thing qualify to be added to the Uptimes.net list?

Just musing.

http://www.uptimes.net

Using this site, you can see your Windows machines trail far behind the *nix machines. Yeah, I have one listed here. It's only been booted about twice. Once to add a 2nd nic, and once to move to another location for it's permanent use. It's a Linux box of course.

I've been up for 4 days, 7 hours and 22 minutes. I don't think I'm going to make it to 48 days but I'll be damned if I'll be beaten by Windows.

Since I began tracking them with the Uptimes Project, the two servers I maintain at work (a dual PII-266 and a PII-350, both running NT4 SP6) have a maximum uptime between them of just under 42 days. I had a DVD/MP3 player box at home once running Win95 OSR2 that seemed like it was up a few weeks before it needed a reboot, but I don't have any hard numbers for it.

By comparison, my home workstation (a K6-III 450 running SuSE Linux 6.3 and Win98 (the latter under VMware)) has been up 46 days and counting. The home server (a K6-2 300 running SuSE 6.4) would've been up longer than that if I hadn't taken it down a few times to test my UPS (wanted to make sure it'd shut down if the power went out). A mail server I set up for work (a P5-166 running SuSE 6.3) hits 200 days tomorrow.

Of the top 25 active hosts on the Uptimes Project, only one runs Windows (NT, specifically...don't know which version). 10 of the other machines run *BSD, 8 run Linux, 5 run SunOS, and 1 runs NetWare. The longest uptime belongs to a 386 running NetBSD, which has been up nearly 1609 days...about 4 years, 5 months.

> The "uptime" command should come in handy.

Better still, www.uptimes.net

It's been up 18 days now, which is also impressing the techies in our M$ shop.

Either they're easily impressed or profoundly incompetent if they can't keep an NT box going more than 18 days. A couple of servers (here and here) at work have been up a maximum of about seven weeks since we began tracking them with uptimes.net, and they had some longer uptimes before that. (I don't think they ever went as long as the 187 days (and counting) that our mail server, which runs SuSE Linux 6.3, has been up, though...I'm not claiming that NT is an über-stable OS on the same level as Linux, but decent admins should be able to get more than 18 days out of it. Hell, I've gotten more uptime out of Win9x than that!)

_/_
/ v \
(IIGS( Scott Alfter (remove Voyager's hull # to send mail)
\_^_/

It's been up 18 days now, which is also impressing the techies in our M$ shop.

Either they're easily impressed or profoundly incompetent if they can't keep an NT box going more than 18 days. A couple of servers (here and here) at work have been up a maximum of about seven weeks since we began tracking them with uptimes.net, and they had some longer uptimes before that. (I don't think they ever went as long as the 187 days (and counting) that our mail server, which runs SuSE Linux 6.3, has been up, though...I'm not claiming that NT is an über-stable OS on the same level as Linux, but decent admins should be able to get more than 18 days out of it. Hell, I've gotten more uptime out of Win9x than that!)

_/_
/ v \
(IIGS( Scott Alfter (remove Voyager's hull # to send mail)
\_^_/

It's been up 18 days now, which is also impressing the techies in our M$ shop.

Either they're easily impressed or profoundly incompetent if they can't keep an NT box going more than 18 days. A couple of servers (here and here) at work have been up a maximum of about seven weeks since we began tracking them with uptimes.net, and they had some longer uptimes before that. (I don't think they ever went as long as the 187 days (and counting) that our mail server, which runs SuSE Linux 6.3, has been up, though...I'm not claiming that NT is an über-stable OS on the same level as Linux, but decent admins should be able to get more than 18 days out of it. Hell, I've gotten more uptime out of Win9x than that!)

_/_
/ v \
(IIGS( Scott Alfter (remove Voyager's hull # to send mail)
\_^_/

If you wanna look at uptimes for most NOS's check out Uptimes Project. Look at the all-time Top 10. The leader is an old NetBSD 1.1B box with about 1,500 days which is a runaway lead over the next box which just happens to a Linux one. The one who dominates the top 20 is FreeBSD though and the rest of the pack is just overflowing with the sheer quantity of everybody and their grandma's Linux box. Which then brings up the Quality vs. Quantity debate :)

Sorry, my url didn't come out right. It is right here.

You actually turn your machine off?

Scratches head Why? http://www.uptimes.net

Blah. Unix is such a generic term now a days. Who cares if the FreeBSD is descended from Unix that came out 15 years ago.

I do. I have to disagree that UNIX is a generic term nowadays. It refers to a specific lineage of software written by people who are considered to be gods among men because of what they've done. I could, because of Open Sourcing, take a Linux distribution, make a few changes, and still call it Linux. If I tried to call it BSD, it wouldn't even get out the door, because it's not BSD. Linux was written to emulate UNIX in many ways, but it had absolutely no access to the UNIX/BSD code base from which FreeBSD 4.0 and all other BSD flavors originate. It is, to be honest, a UNIX work-alike. It's like asking someone to choose between a car made by professional auto manufacturers in Detroit or a car-like object made by a grad student with some friends from a BBS in Finland. To me, the choice is obvious. Go with the product that has the 30 year track record of excellence, not the upstart. Frankly, Linux is good, but with a new kernel release every couple of weeks, it's obvious that they're still trying to "get it right."

Anyone have ANY proof of this? I here this all the time, but I have yet to see one study that proves it right. Just saying something is true does not make it true.

Slashdot and the requisite offsite link indicate the truth about uptimes according to OS.

I have ran Linux in a production environment

It sounds to me like you have a pretty good network set up there. Others aren't so lucky, especially considering that there are a lot of malicious hackers and crackers out there looking for a big corporate fish to fry. Regardless of how problem-free Linux has been for you, there are networks out there that get attacked nearly every single day because someone wants access to information they shouldn't have. Situations like these call for a serious OS that can handle the abuse. Of course, now I need to say that OpenBSD is the most secure OS in the world. It's a hefty sword to wield, but if you know how to work it, it can keep your data far safer than NT, or even Linux. That's because it was redesigned from BSD code with security in mind as the top priority. If I ran a calm network like yours that didn't have much in the way of cracking attempts, I might go with BSD and I might go with Linux. If I had a sneaking suspicion that my security knowhow would be put to the test, I'd go with OpenBSD in a heartbeat.

And you should, too.


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Blah. Unix is such a generic term now a days. Who cares if the FreeBSD is descended from Unix that came out 15 years ago.

I do. I have to disagree that UNIX is a generic term nowadays. It refers to a specific lineage of software written by people who are considered to be gods among men because of what they've done. I could, because of Open Sourcing, take a Linux distribution, make a few changes, and still call it Linux. If I tried to call it BSD, it wouldn't even get out the door, because it's not BSD. Linux was written to emulate UNIX in many ways, but it had absolutely no access to the UNIX/BSD code base from which FreeBSD 4.0 and all other BSD flavors originate. It is, to be honest, a UNIX work-alike. It's like asking someone to choose between a car made by professional auto manufacturers in Detroit or a car-like object made by a grad student with some friends from a BBS in Finland. To me, the choice is obvious. Go with the product that has the 30 year track record of excellence, not the upstart. Frankly, Linux is good, but with a new kernel release every couple of weeks, it's obvious that they're still trying to "get it right."

Anyone have ANY proof of this? I here this all the time, but I have yet to see one study that proves it right. Just saying something is true does not make it true.

Slashdot and the requisite offsite link indicate the truth about uptimes according to OS.

I have ran Linux in a production environment

It sounds to me like you have a pretty good network set up there. Others aren't so lucky, especially considering that there are a lot of malicious hackers and crackers out there looking for a big corporate fish to fry. Regardless of how problem-free Linux has been for you, there are networks out there that get attacked nearly every single day because someone wants access to information they shouldn't have. Situations like these call for a serious OS that can handle the abuse. Of course, now I need to say that OpenBSD is the most secure OS in the world. It's a hefty sword to wield, but if you know how to work it, it can keep your data far safer than NT, or even Linux. That's because it was redesigned from BSD code with security in mind as the top priority. If I ran a calm network like yours that didn't have much in the way of cracking attempts, I might go with BSD and I might go with Linux. If I had a sneaking suspicion that my security knowhow would be put to the test, I'd go with OpenBSD in a heartbeat.

And you should, too.


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Off course not all systems run under the same conditions; windows computers are probably more often turned off at night than VMS systems, SunOS is usually used on high-end hardware while Linux often runs on crappy hardware and OpenBSD-systems probably have better admins than Linux-systems (no offense, but most unix-newbies tend to use Linux, not *BSD). But still I dare say that the uptime is a real good measurement for the stability of an operating system.

Apart from that I agree with the fact that one should not fail to upgrade because one wants to get the highest uptime possible. On the other hand, people shouldn't upgrade when there's no need to; if there are no new features/fixes in the new kernel which apply to your system, don't upgrade :)

Check http://www.uptimes.net for a list of uptimes per OS. There are about 500 hosts in the list, so it ought to give a rather clear view of the situation.

Just figured I'd mention it..

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Please update the story on the main page.

The Uptimes project has moved to http://www.uptimes.net/

Also the protocol has changed, so everyone going to http://uptime.hexon.cx/ will be downloading and running old clients.

Come on, Slashdot people, research a story for 5 seconds before you post it.