[Dovecot] Follow-up re: gcc 2.96 - Re: PATCH: compile dovecot-1.1.beta14 with gcc 2.95

Stephen Usher Stephen.Usher at earth.ox.ac.uk
Fri Feb 29 12:36:29 EET 2008


Scott Silva wrote:
> How much longer can a system be expected to run? 8+ years at 24/7 is 
> about a half a million hours. Drives are getting old and expensive to 
> replace. Processors are probably slow. Energy use is high. Motherboard 
> capacitors are probably drying up. The systems are past a safe point and 
> are getting closer to the "great e-waste pile in the sky".

I retired a 13 year old DEC AlphaStation 5/266 yesterday... Legacy systems are 
still doing useful things. You just have to make sure that they're isolated from 
the outside as they can't be patched or upgraded. (e.g. newer versions of 
OpenSSH won't compile under Digital UNIX 4.2C)

Steve

P.S. For the record, the DEC box has only ever needed to be shut down for power 
outages and (in its early life) OS upgrades. It ran 24/7 and never had a 
hardware fault (and still doesn't). Now that's reliable hardware!
-- 
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