[COFF] Re: The Web Service on Minnie is 30 Years Old Today

On Wed Feb 23 16:33, 1994, I turned on the web service on my machine "minnie", originally minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au, now minnie.tuhs.org (aka www.tuhs.org) The web service has been running continuously for thirty years, except for occasional downtimes and hardware/software upgrades. I think this makes minnie one of the longest running web services still in existence :-) For your enjoyment, I've restored a snapshot of the web site from around mid-1994. It is visible at https://minnie.tuhs.org/94Web/ Some hyperlinks are broken. ## Web Logs The web logs show me testing the service locally on Feb 23 1994, with the first international web fetches on Feb 26: ``` sparcserve.cs.adfa.oz.au [Wed Feb 23 16:33:13 1994] GET / HTTP/1.0 sparcserve.cs.adfa.oz.au [Wed Feb 23 16:33:18 1994] GET /BSD.html HTTP/1.0 sparcserve.cs.adfa.oz.au [Wed Feb 23 16:33:20 1994] GET /Images/demon1.gif HTTP/1.0 ... estcs1.estec.esa.nl [Sat Feb 26 01:48:21 1994] GET /BSD-info/BSD.html HTTP/1.0 estcs1.estec.esa.nl [Sat Feb 26 01:48:30 1994] GET /BSD-info/Images/demon1.gif HTTP/1.0 estcs1.estec.esa.nl [Sat Feb 26 01:49:46 1994] GET /BSD-info/cdrom.html HTTP/1.0 shazam.cs.iastate.edu [Sat Feb 26 06:31:20 1994] GET /BSD-info/BSD.html HTTP/1.0 shazam.cs.iastate.edu [Sat Feb 26 06:31:24 1994] GET /BSD-info/Images/demon1.gif HTTP/1.0 dem0nmac.mgh.harvard.edu [Sat Feb 26 06:32:04 1994] GET /BSD-info/BSD.html HTTP/1.0 dem0nmac.mgh.harvard.edu [Sat Feb 26 06:32:10 1994] GET /BSD-info/Images/demon1.gif HTTP/1.0 ``` ## Minnie to This Point Minnie originally started life in May 1991 as an FTP server running KA9Q NOS on an IBM XT with a 30M RLL disk, see https://minnie.tuhs.org/minannounce.txt By February 1994 Minnie was running FreeBSD 1.0e on a 386DX25 with 500M of disk space, 8M of RAM and a 10Base2 network connection. I'd received a copy of the BSDisc Vol.1 No.1 in December 1993. According to the date on the file `RELNOTES.FreeBSD` on the CD, FreeBSD 1.0e was released on Oct 28 1993. ## The Web Server I'd gone to a summer conference in Canberra in mid-February 1994 (see pg. 29 of https://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Documentation/AUUGN/AUUGN-V15.1.pdf and https://minnie.tuhs.org/94Web/Canberra-AUUG/cauugs94.html, 10am) and I'd seen the Mosaic web browser in action. With FreeBSD running on minnie, it seemed like a good idea to set up a web server on her. NCSA HTTPd server v1.1 had been released at the end of Jan 1994, see http://1997.webhistory.org/www.lists/www-talk.1994q1/0282.html It was the obvious choice to be the web server on minnie. ## Minnie from Then to Now You can read more about minnie's history and her hardware/software evolution here: https://minnie.tuhs.org/minnie.html I obtained the "tuhs.org" domain in May 2000 and switched minnie's domain name from "minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au" to "minnie.tuhs.org". Cheers! Warren P.S. I couldn't wait until Friday to post this :-)