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Testbed Support for GridPP member institutes > [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Gordon, JC (John) said: > The user sets the lifetime for each file. You can set a > maximum lifetime for the SA MaxPinDuration. Well, except that we only have classic SEs and they have no way to set a lifetime or anything else. Those of us at RAL have just been to a seminar by Jenny Schopf about her "ten biggest problems with grids" (incidentally, she said that nearly all grid users are unhappy, and examples of successful grid projects are very rare - but LCG is one such. I can't imagine what the others are like ...) Anyway, she used an analogy about cars, which started me thinking about how I would characterise our situation in those terms. What I think we have are lots of separate groups of people building components, like wheels, brakes, gears, steering assemblies, engines etc. Some of them are well-designed and some not; some of the well-designed ones are well-made and some not. Then there is a totally different group of people trying to take those components and assemble a car out of them. Unfortunately they find that nothing fits together, e.g. the wheels and brakes are different sizes, so they have to build their own components to get them to fit. Then they find that the brakes overheat so they add a water jet to cool them - and then realise that they need a water tank to hold the water. And there is no reverse gear in the gear assembly, so they add a button which completely reverses the gearbox action. And there are no indicators at all. And so on and so forth ... (oh, and some people have put a huge amount of effort into building things like propellers and control systems for sails). And every so often someone comes along, takes away one of the components, and replaces it with something totally different which they claim is much better. About 30% of the way into the process some people come along and say they want to enter a formula-1 race; they are dismayed that the vehicle looks more like a Mini, and anyway can only go 2 miles before it runs out of petrol and has a top speed of 15 mph. They can't understand how anyone could possibly have designed such a thing, they must clearly be incompetent, so they go away to do it themselves from scratch, despite having less expertise and less manpower than the people already doing the job ... Stephen PS It is Friday evening :)