Earlier this afternoon (Tuesday, 10 December 1996 at about 2pm) the
interactive system (Sea) of the Digital OpenVMS cluster in Oxford (MiaVX1) was
rebooted to recover from a severe slowdown.  For the period of the slowdown
(from approximately 1:15 or 1:30pm) and through the end of the reboot process,
most if not all services on Sea would have been (or at least seemed, by virtue
of slow-to-non-existent response) unavailable, including World Wide Web (WWW).
 
The cause of the slowdown was an unintentional infinite loop in a Common
Gateway Interface  (CGI) program being written by an individual MiaVX1 user for
deployment through his / her WWW pages.
 
MCIS is currently exploring means of preventing occurrences of this and similar
events.
 
If you are unsure of a program you are attempting to develop or use may affect
system resources, the right answer is always to contact the MCIS Help Desk (by
electronic mail at [log in to unmask] or by telephone at 529-7900).  Your
question or concern will be referred to the appropriate resource staff for
assistance.
 
John
 
--
 
          Miami University
 
          John B Harlan
          Campus Wide Information Systems (CWIS) Coordinator
 
          Miami Computing & Information Services (MCIS) Client Services
          137 Hoyt Hall
          Oxford, Ohio 45056-1618
          (513) 529-5330 voice  (513) 529-5058 fax
          [log in to unmask]
          http://miavx1.muohio.edu/~harlanjb/