From: mneeley@nyx.cs.du.edu (Mark Neeley)
Subject: Re: Colorado Amendment 2: The First Fatality
X-Disclaimer: Nyx is a public access Unix system run by the University
	of Denver for the Denver community.  The University has neither
	control over nor responsibility for the opinions of users.
Organization: Nyx, Public Access Unix at U. of Denver Math/CS dept.
Date: Fri, 13 Nov 92 14:56:27 GMT

In article <1992Nov12.162917.1913@uni.edu> my friend mglads@catbox.cc.uni.edu 
(Melvin Gladstone) writes:
>Tell us about nyx. 

Okay.  If you look hard, you'll see a reference to Carasso.

	Mark


=======================================================================

                Welcome to Nyx, The Spirit Of The Night.


Nyx phone numbers: (2400 bps) 871-3324 (3 lines) -4824 (4 lines)
                   (1200 bps) 871-4812, -4770, -4772  (300 bps) 871-4803
                   (9600 - HST/V.32:) -3323 (V.32:) -3319 -3326 (PEP/V.32) -4771

Disclaimer:  The University of Denver disclaims everything it can
relating to Nyx.  DU doesn't support Nyx in any way.  There.  We said it.

Reminder:  Uploads are very appreciated and get you more time on-line.
(Though, programs are much preferable to gifs.)

Stats: 5.7Gb disk space, 480Mb downloads, 2161 conferences, 7834 user accounts.
Read nyx.misc for Nyx news.

Nyx will go down for backups at approximately 1am daily.

        *** 1200's reconnected
        *** New modems & new disk getting more necessary - see 'fund'

===============================================================================

                        A history of Nyx
                        [Last update: 9/28/92]

I (Andrew Burt, your system admin.) was once asked about the history and
usage statistics of Nyx, and unfortunately, had no ready answers.  It
was suggested that I write a history before I forget, as it might
interest users -- so here is one.

                        The early days...

About 1987, one of DU's deans, Peter Warren, convinced Zimmerman Metals
in Denver to donate their aging DEC PDP 11/70 to DU (I believe they
replaced it with a Microvax II).  It was offered to the Math & Computer
Science department.  At that time, M&CS had only one departmental
system, a Pyramid 90x (named Isis), used for departmental mail,
research, etc., so I initially thought the PDP might make a good "toy"
system for my operating systems class, so I recommended accepting the 11/70.

It arrived, all ten tons of it :-)  (So I exaggerated.  But the size --
about 20' long, 6' high, 3' deep -- is no joke.)  It had:

        - 1 Mb memory
        - 3 RP06 disk drives (washing machine sized with
                removable packs; 166Mb each)
        - 16 ports: 2 DZ-11 8-port boards
        - a rack of 16 Racal-Vadic 1200 baud modems that didn't work
        - a 1600 bpi tape drive
        - a row of front panel switches (pink and purple!) and LED's

(Via other donations and purchases, this eventually became 3Mb memory
and 5 RP06's (4 running, 1 spare).)

Initially, the 11/70 hardware was not functional.  Don McCarthy, M&CS's
operations manager, spent untold hours piecing it back together and making
repairs.  Eventually, some time in 1988, it was functional enough to try
to load an operating system.  I had obtained a tape of Unix,
2.9 BSD from Berkeley, and got that going.  (Not much later 2.10
arrived, which was much more like 4.3 (2.9 was based on 4.2) and I
loaded that; this would now be January 1989.)

Before the system was operational, the OS class had already begun
for the year (it's a year long class) so I felt it would be more interesting
to use the 11/70 as a BBS.  I began writing code for a simple menu system,
one that would be obvious to users, but easy to write menus for.  I did
the first round in shell script (180 lines of code).  A master's degree
student, Dinesh Punjabi, was interested in doing a project, so I had him
write a C version that strictly emulated the shell script, plus some
enhancements I had been planning on.  He finished it promptly, about 1000
lines of C. (I have since rewritten large parts, but I preserved his
style for continuity.)

Nyx was not an entirely popular idea with the department chairman, Jim
LaVita.  He was afraid of (a) the liability issues raised by running a BBS
(i.e., if some user loses a file, or if Nyx dies forever, will users
come screaming to DU demanding that things be put right, or what about
users uploading pirated software, or seeing/posting offensive things on
netnews, etc.); (b) the security issue of users breaking into our
other machines via Nyx; (c) the "appropriateness" issue -- should a
University be engaged in running a bulletin board at all?; and (d)
would it take too much of my time.

I convinced him that if we had a disclaimer saying Nyx was not a supported nor
guaranteed entity, and might go away at any time, that would take care
of the liability (DU lawyers basically said there was no real
precedent, which neither helps nor hurts); that security was not an
issue - it neither increased nor decreased it; that Nyx was
educational, thus appropriate for a university; and that I would volunteer
my time, so it wouldn't be done as paid DU time.  He warily allowed
Nyx to start; these arguments come up every so again, so far with the
same results.  Nyx is thus, basically, "tolerated".

When the system became operational, I brought in a Racal-Vadic 3451 1200baud
modem I had, and Don found three others (the rack of modems was beyond
help).  Every system needs a name, and DU's convention has been to name
systems after mythological figures (Persephone, Eos, Orion, Diana, Isis, etc.)
I enjoy the hunt for naming a system, and I scoured my mythology books
for a good name.  One I'd never seen before suddenly leaped out at me --
Nyx, the Greek "spirit of the night", from which the word "night" itself
is derived.  Since (a) pronouncing it as "nicks" makes it rhyme with Unix;
(b) BBS's typically get their heaviest traffic at night (indeed, Don says
at 3am when he shuts it down for backups it sometimes has more people than
during the middle of the morning); (c) it is short; and (d) nobody else in
the uucp maps had taken the name already -- what could be more appropriate?

Thus Nyx was born.

I installed the Bnews software so users could read news.
Nyx polled Isis, which received a full news feed from uunet, and maintained
a complete copy of news (then only a few Mb/day).  Transfers were at 9600
baud via a direct serial link from Nyx to Isis.

In June 1989 I shipped ten tapes to White Sands Missile Range in NM, home
of the"simtel20" archives, and obtained a copy of their archives.
  Unfortunately,
the tapes were written at 6250 bpi, and the only 6250 bpi tape drive
was across campus at the computing center.   The tapes were written on
a non-unix machine, and the local tape drive had a bear of a time just
reading the tapes -- constant errors.  I managed to load two of the
three IBM PC tapes onto their system, then copied the data onto 10 tapes at
1600bpi, and read those in on Nyx.  I also rearranged all the Simtel
files into categories more to my liking.  The whole process was so much
work I never read in the remaining eight tapes (now quite outdated).

With News, e-mail (uucp and internet, via Isis), some files to download,
and user access to the shell (via a menu option and also the 'learn'
program), I announced Nyx's existence to the world, quietly.  I didn't
want thousands of users crushing in, so I only announced it on one or
two local BBSs and told various people I knew.  Users started trickling
in.  Usually I was the only one on, but every now and then, all four
lines would be in use.

One minor problem was that the boot sequence it came with wouldn't autoboot -
after a power failure or other crash, it would just sit there, waiting to
be rebooted from the front panel switches (load the address of the boot
ROM, tell it which device ID to boot from, and go).  Eventually I wrote
a boot module (PDP assembly, ugh) to fix that.

About, oh, six months after it was being used, it suffered a near fatal
power supply death.  Don didn't have the parts, and spending money on
it wasn't an option.  Don finally got it back running, but it had been
down for over six months.  I figured we'd have to start from scratch to
build a user base, but surprisingly, users started calling pretty quickly.

We later connected five lines from the campus port selector ("the micom")
to Nyx.  These had the advantage that users could dial in at 2400 baud and
log in; on-campus users could log in at 9600 baud.  This worked - for a while.
Usage got moderate (average of 1-2 people on all the time), but whenever
someone started using 9600 heavily, it crashed.  The DZ-11 terminal boards
interrupted the CPU for every character, so it really ran "too fast" for
the system to keep up.  This only caused a crash, oh, once a week or so.

There were other crashes, one apparently caused by a bug in the unlink()
system call code (used by the 'rm' command).  It began to crash the system
more and more often, as usage increased, and the amount of netnews increased.
It eventually reached the point that it crashed about every eight hours
from this bug (seeing maybe 3-4 users all the time).  This would be about
early 1990.

It had other hardware failures - memory boards went out, cpu boards
went out.  At one point, Nyx was down for two months.  The tape drive
was very unreliable at this point, and made it difficult to do backups.
(The tape drive also generated a lot of heat, and couldn't be left on
except when in use.  The system, even without the tape, kept the room
so warm that the machines crashed several times during cold weather
(-20F) because the room reached over 100F!  (The cooling in the machine
room was comprised of two wall mount 1950's vintage air conditioners,
which froze during cold weather; later one was replaced with just fan,
which could be set to blow outside air into the room when cold.)

Eventually, the PDP was crashing nearly constantly as a result of bugs
and hardware problems, sometimes staying down for days at a time.

Luckily for Nyx, in September 1990, M&CS moved departmental operations
from the Pyramid to a network of Suns (sparcstation 1+'s with a 4/390
server).  The main reason for the switch was that the Pyramid cost
$25,000 per year for the maintenance contract (2% of the original cost,
per month), and the cost for new equipment was about half, and
provided workstations for faculty (rather than Televideo 925 terminals).

The department investigated selling the Pyramid, but found nobody
interested at any decent price.  I lobbied for it to become the new
home for Nyx, still on the same terms as the PDP -- if it breaks, and
can't be easily repaired, Nyx dies.  The department chairman seriously
considered just throwing out the Pyramid, but I convinced him that it
was much better than the PDP and well worth keeping.

                        Nyx moves in with Isis...

So, by mid-October 1990, I had moved everyone off Isis onto the Suns,
and moved all the user files (about 150 users) over from the PDP to the
Pyramid, and the PDP was powered down.  The Pyramid had several
advantages over the PDP:

        - Much faster: the 90x is about a 2mips machine
        - More memory: 10Mb
        - More disk space: 2 Fujitsu Eagle drives, 450Mb each
        - More modems: the Pyramid had 4 2400 baud modems on it,
                which were not moved to the Sun since the Sun was
                reachable via DU's Cisco terminal server ("Sibyl").
        - More ports: 32 ports, though only 16 support modems
        - More micom lines: 11 lines from the micom were connected
        - Stable operating system: Pyramid's "OSx" (version 4.1) is a "dual
                universe" system, providing two working environments,
                both a "pure" BSD 4.2 (+ some 4.3 enhancements) and
                system V release 2.  I'd also run the system since
                purchased in 1983, so I knew it well, and had most
                software, like netnews, already installed.
        - An ethernet card, allowing access to the internet "for real"

True to Murphy's Law, as soon as the system was off the maintenance
contract on 12/31/90, it started breaking.  One of the 16-port boards
died.  The other port board caused crashes if it ran any port faster than
4800 bps.  One of the disk drives kicked the bucket.  It started having
random crashes.

Anticipating that this might happen, in October I wrote to the
president of Pyramid, and requested them to donate the maintenance
contract for Nyx.  It wasn't until February that I heard anything,
but they agreed.  I offered them publicity, usage, etc.; but they
agreed only on the condition that it NOT be publicized, as they didn't
want every customer to come begging for free support.  But, they came out
and put Nyx back together.

The old 11/70 hardware was put up for sale; there were no takers,
and in June 91 it was delivered to a scrap metal dealer.

                        Out of the Frying Pan...

Given that Nyx now had a direct link to the internet, and all users
had access to the shell and all commands, instant access to 'telnet'
(both in and out) spurred immense growth.  The number of local logins
became essentially unlimited via Sibyl, DU's terminal server.  Once on, users
found they could telnet to other sites, e.g., to play "muds".
Further, since *anyone* could log into Nyx, under any name, the
network was open to invasion from unknown users (so what else is
new?).

These three factors (unlimited logins from Sibyl and telnetting out)
caused the computing center to (nearly instantly) shut Nyx off from
the net -- all packets to or from Nyx's ip# were discarded.

We had a "big meeting" with representatives of M&CS (me, Prof. Ottis
Rechard, and Don), CaIR -- Computing and Information Resources, aka DU's
computing center (Director Jim Tuccy, Asst.
Director Bob Stocker, system admin Matt Brookover, network manager
Byron Early), Colorado SuperNet (Director Ken Harmon, public access
system project manager Dave Menges), and Westnet (Carol Ward) -- and
probably some folks I've forgotten to list.  The agenda was to decide
under what (if any) terms M&CS ought to operate a free BBS.  The
issues were:

        - Security - can't let "just anyone" have access to the net;
                should users be validated?
        - Appropriate use - what should users be allowed to do with the net?
        - Competition - is Nyx competing with CSN and their system
                that provides uucp/login/internet for $2/hr?
        - Politics - should M&CS run a system that isn't only used by
                M&CS, or should CaIR run it?
        - Liability - is DU liable (same old argument)?

Security was seen as the biggest issue.  The first suggestion was that
EVERYBODY who uses Nyx must prove who they are, by PHYSICALLY showing
their ID at DU, before being able to use Nyx.  Clearly preposterous;
this would have the effect of killing Nyx, since nobody would come
down to campus, before being allowed to log in, on the off chance that Nyx
might be of interest to them.  I lobbied for status quo -- anyone who
wants a login gets one immediately, and everyone has access to the
shell and network.  We finally comprised when I suggested that the
menus could be made sufficiently safe to prevent all but the most
determined hackers from getting a shell; thus creating two classes of
users - those who get no shell (hence no access to the network
programs like telnet or ftp, nor access to compilers so they can't
write their own telnet), and those who come to campus, show ID, sign a
disclaimer form, and can then get a shell and limited access to the
network.

There was still great fear that telnet access would lead to trouble,
so the only approved access was to ftp.  (News and mail of course, but
those aren't interactive network agents.)  Talk, IRC, etc. were also
forbidden as "games" are not considered "appropriate use" for the
internet.  To ensure users with a shell and compiler access were not
able to write their own telnets, the socket() system call was removed
from the standard C library (not that it's impossible to write, but
it should stop most trivial attempts).

Users apparently liked Nyx well enough to drive to campus and show ID:
30 in the first week (11/6/90-11/13/90), and 150 within a year.  I
obtained permission to also valid users who had a "valid" account on
the internet already, which has led to about 300 validations.  [But see below.]

The competition issue was settled easily enough - Nyx isn't
guaranteed (no good for a business), and has limited uucp access (e.g.,
we can't supply a full feed), and CSN is fairly cheap - so Nyx isn't
likely to take anyone from CSN (and, Nyx has info on CSN for those who
want to learn about it).

The other arguments were not serious threats, and were mostly
dropped.

Once the "secure" menu was installed, Nyx was back on the net.


                Enhancement through Donations...

Once Nyx's life was no longer threatened, users began asking questions
like, "Can we get a 9600 bps modem?"  I, for one, intended to buy one
for myself (even though DU has remained solidly in the 1980s with 2400
baud).  The idea came up that we could do a public-TV-like "fund drive",
where users who wanted to could send money.  One user (Tryg Lode) posted that
he saw a used USRobotics "dual standard" (HST and V.32) modem for $575 at a
local store.  We made this our goal, and the pledges started rolling in.
Eventually, about 20 users contributed the money, in chunks from $10 to $200.
When the pledges exceeded the magic number, the modem was bought (about mid
December 91; and the pledges were received eventually to cover it).

With my success asking for donations from Pyramid, I tried it on
Practical Peripherals, having recently bought one of their v.32 modems
for myself.  Via their public relations firm, I convinced them that Nyx
was a worthy cause, and in December 91 they donated two v.32 modems
($700 each).  (Out of gratitude, I also wrote a review of said modems
for the Rocky Mountain News, Denver's largest paper.)

A long time news feed site, scicom, wanted to be able to transfer news
faster; and in May 91, the wives (so I'm told) of the owners wanted to get into
computing, and also wanted to help worthy causes - donated a Telebit
T2500 modem ($1500 or so).

While on the subject of donations, see the end of the introductory info
about Nyx for a complete list of other donations to Nyx.  During 5/90-6/91
equipment worth over $40,000 was donated from many sources.


                        ... and Into the Fire

Nyx had another brush with controversy, this time external to DU:  A
user began posting extremely anti-Semitic articles to netnews from Nyx.
He began slowly, testing the waters I suppose, with what I considered
incredible stupid and "national enquirer" level unbelievable articles
about how lawyers and oilmen "run the world".  I even rebutted one of his
first postings, it was so stupid.  (He never replied to what I said.)
He moved on, however, to accusing lawyers, oilmen, and Jews.  Some of his
postings were of the foaming at the mouth type, making incredibly
ludicrous claims.  I won't even do them the honor of repeating them.

This was all posted internationally, mind you.  I started receiving messages
of the "hey, you're the sys admin, shut him off" type, with the reasons
for shutting him off being excessive reposting of the same articles and
denying that he posted articles that he did (he first said his account
was broken into, then admitted doing it).  Between e-mail to me and postings,
I saw, oh, 15-20 or so different requests to shut him off; nobody cried "no,
let him post".  DU authorities found out, of course, and I was
told to definitely shut him off (or Nyx would be shut off).  I asked him
to stop posting, and he complied.

Now, when the net found out he was shut off, all hell broke loose.  I
received over 50 messages, and saw probably double that many postings,
accusing me, personally, and DU, of blatant hideous censorship.  I
posted the reasons, etc., and only fueled the fire.

I, personally, abhorred what he wrote (my mother's family fled from Hitler
in the 30's once the Gestapo tried to pressure my grandfather to switch
his nationality from French to German, so I have some understanding of
persecution); and found most of it truly preposterous (but nonetheless
very offensive).  It was as if someone earnestly believed that 2+2=5,
and posted all sort of stupid proofs.  However, I believe
deeply in the right to free speech -- and that the only way to stamp out
racism is to expose it to the light of reason, in the open; otherwise
it festers in the dark and grows.  The net, thankfully, agreed; the
consensus was that he should be allowed to post (following netiquette
guidelines; I would add that I surveyed numerous people I know who are
Jewish, and they universally agreed).  I convinced DU of this as well,
and I posted a lengthy note about why he would be allowed to post.

Fortunately for all involved -- he never posted any further notes and
his account expired.  Nyx is still fragile, a potential tinderbox with
respect to this, and the future outcome of a similar event might be that
Nyx dies (so if you want to post inflammatory material, only use Nyx as a
system of last resort!).  Nonetheless, I'm glad the outcome favored free
speech, and that the "light" of the net did its job on his dark idiocy.

A similar event occurred not long after that, regarding a fellow who
called himself a "Messianic Jew" and posted various articles to
soc.culture.jewish, trying to "educate" the readers about Messianic
Judaism.  If you're not familiar with this, the synopsis is that
Messianic Jews are extraordinarily disliked by non-Messianic Jews.
The s.c.j readers descended on me to, you guessed it, told me to shut
him off "or else".  I negotiated a truce; his position was that he
wanted a place to talk about his religion, and s.c.j was the most
appropriate place; s.c.j readers felt he should go jump in a lake,
since what he was posting was intolerable to them and didn't belong
on the net anywhere.  My solution was to creat alt.messianic, and he
(grudgingly) agreed to move there.  A true compromise, since s.c.j
readers were against creating the group, and he was against leaving s.c.j.

A third, but not so near-calamity, was the breakin of some DU systems
from an account on Nyx.  Now, my philosophy on hackers can be read in
the /.hacking file.  However, as far as other DU systems go, Nyx is
too fragile to be a base for hackers, so I kindly asked them to leave
(and they complied).

In that I view Nyx as a wishful prototype of what personal computing
could be like in the future, I'm glad Nyx weathered all these tribulations,
and that what I consider the most rational solution was found to all
of them (or Nyx wouldn't be here!).  I see other systems facing similar
problems (e.g., Tragedy, er, I mean, Prodigy, and their censorship
woes); I hope they come to similar solutions, so the future of
networking has a precedent to follow (rather than government imposed
solutions based on ignorance of what "the net" is all about).

                        More Troublemakers

In February '92, we had more trouble.  First, I was called by a Detective
Johnson of Scotland Yard (for real!) who was investigating some harrassing
e-mail some professor in England had received from a user on Nyx.  In the
end, after lots of brouhaha, I ended up having to put disclaimers in all
outgoing mail and news postings, saying, essentially, not to trust whatever
the message says.

A second problem came when some hackers abused the shell access via an
existing internet account, by using Nyx accounts to break into other
sites on the network.  This nearly resulted in Nyx being shut down, nearly
resulted in no more shell access, and nearly resulted in no more shell
access without a personal appears on campus (in that order).  At this point
I successfully argued that beyond a personal appearance, a notarized form
or a personal check are just as secure.

                        Popularity

I haven't tracked Nyx usage as well as I should have, but I gather
it is one of the biggest BBSs that is entirely free.  To my recollection,
in 10/90 there were about 150-200 "regular" users (defined as having an
account that was used during the prior three months); and 1500 different
logins had been created (roughly equal to the number of people who have
ever tried Nyx).

Note Nyx is also used by various groups for internal communications, including
the TTCC (Teaching Teachers Computer Competency)
project, which connects public school teachers in the state
(they dial in for e-mail, talk, news, files, etc.).  The local Sun
users group (SLUG) uses Nyx, as does the local ACM.  (Other groups
are welcome!)

By 2/91, after moving to the new system, and now being reachable by
telnet, the number of users grew enormously as various postings
mentioned Nyx.  (One, on alt.sex.pictures, directed readers to log into
Nyx; we had about 50 *simultaneous* logins requesting new accounts,
which lasted until I had to tell a.s.p users to go elsewhere).  In
2/91, there were 900 accounts, 600 of which had been used within the
previous three months; over 2000 different users had tried the system.
Each day saw around 300 logins, from over 100 unique individuals, using
the 12 dial-in ports (4 "micom" + 8 modems), plus some telnets.

By September 91, there were 2000 active accounts (after removing
500 users not active during the prior *two* months).  There were as
many as 50 new users per day, and 25-30 users logged in at any given
time.  Above 30, the system became so slow that the 60 second "security"
time given to logging in expired before users had a chance to log in
(a feature I consider to be useful - keeps the number of users at the
threshold of usability!), so the number could have been higher.

By 10/91, there were approximately 2,300 user accounts (i.e., users
who have logged in at least once in the last two months)
of which about 1600 are "regular" (i.e., they use the system at least
twice a month).  Each day sees over 1000 logins, from over 400 unique
individuals.  At present, Nyx has 16 dial-up ports, which are usually
all in use; other users telnet in (from all over the world -- Australia,
Israel, Korea, etc.).  Since Nyx began, over 5000 individuals have tried Nyx.

At this point, Nyx was so slow it started getting unusable, so another
fund drive was undertaken, with the goal of raising money to purchase
a faster machine.  As of 12/1/91, $6500 was pledged from 100 users.
The goal is to purchase a sparcserver II, for about $9500.

At the end of November 91, there were 2500 users who had used the system
during the previous *six weeks*.

By 12/91, current users were at 3500, with 7000 total having tried Nyx.

[I'll keep updating this section as time goes on.]

May 1992:

We still have 3500 active users, though this is likely a result of the
usage restrictions (only 10 network ports, since the load was astronomical
with more).  The fund drive has just completed, raising almost $9,000 which
is being used to purchase a Sun SparcServerII with 32Mb memory and a 400Mb
SCSI system disk plus some v.32bis modems.  The Pyramid will remain as a
terminal and disk space server (since the ss2 will have no ports nor
SMD disk controller).

A very selfish hacker, running an irc client at high priority, removing
files, etc., has been a bother, even after being told to stop, but after
a week of putting pressure on him he seems to have grasped the concept
that some things in society are worth more than his personal pleasure.

I have also just convinced the Rocky Mountain News, Denver's largest
newspaper, to enter into an on-line venture whereby they will post their
editorials and letters to the editor, and accept on-line replies.  We'll
see how this flies...

September 1992:

Current user count at about 7,000.  Have had to impose maximum of 300k
per user home directory since users abused the voluntary policy too much.


                        Where to?

I believe that ultimately Nyx will have to become a network of machines
itself, not just one cpu.  The menu code is freely available, so I suppose
some Nyx-clones could spring up elsewhere.  Generally, though, I see it
marching forward, bringing the latest networked pleasures to the public
and proving that public access computing is viable.  Indeed, I see Nyx as
a model for what everyday electronic communication could be like in the
future, as compared to Prodigy, Compu$erve, etc.


Newsgroups: alt.flame