News: Server Upgrade

Author: Rat
Last Update: Tuesday, July 9 1996

BayMOO is now running the LambdaMOO 1.8.0p5 server. The new server allows us to make the MOO even cooler, stabler, and even less laggy. We believe that the transition over to this new server should be smooth with few problems, however, there's always the demon hiding in an obscure program somewhere waiting to come out and haunt us, so if there are any problems with features or programs that don't work the same as they did before the upgrade, please let a janitor know.

The key features of 1.8.0p5, summed up, are as follows:

*) Error handling. It is now possible to do away with tracebacks completely in some cases, and it'll help programmers hunt down pesky bugs with even more ease...
*) More accurate quota measurement stuff. Yep, where now how much quota you use is only an estimate, once we install the new 1.8.0-friendly quota utilities, it'll be a definate measurement. It'll also cause less lag when you measure stuff.
*) Read my lips: NO MORE FORKBOMBS. All people now have a limit on how many tasks they can have in use.
*) Floating point arithmetic. This is only really useful if you're trying to create some sort of highly accurate flight/space simulator thingy, but it's still cool.
*) Multi-Port Listening. Okay, so we already had a web server, but this is more standardized and will let people port BayWeb to other MOOs without changing so much. (You still have to get permission from Dr.J or Phantom in order to port it.)

For more info, point your web brouser at ftp://parcftp.xerox.com/pub/MOO/html/ProgrammersManual_toc.html. Note that some words you were allowed to use in programs, such as break, continue, any, try, and endtry, are reserved now, so you might notice some problems when compiling verbs with these keywords in them. (The ones that had them were changed when we upgraded.)

Three Cheers to Pavel Curtis's greatest and final MOO server! We hope that the transition to it goes smoothly for all.

The Janitors