Strip: Capacity

Attendance at the Mac mini exceeded expectations.

The script

Panel 1. Silas stands at the door of the Mac mini’s server room with a hand clicker, beside a neat sign reading ‘SIMULATOR CAPACITY: 120’. A queue of small identical phone-shaped simulator processes files politely past. Silas: “…one hundred and twenty. Lovely. At capacity.”

Panel 2. The simulators keep coming — an unbroken stream pouring through the door. The clicker now reads 246; a load gauge on the wall trembles at 10.66. Silas: “Two hundred and forty-six.” (caption: One healthy run brings a few dozen. Several arrived at once.)

Panel 3. Silas stands wedged in a wall-to-wall crowd of identical simulators, clicker still in hand, one lens-eye fractionally wider than the other. The capacity sign is being carried away over the crowd’s heads. Silas: “Ah.”

Panel 4. Silas gestures courteously toward the door, where a very small hooded figure with a tiny scythe waits, wearing a visitor lanyard. Silas: “Everyone — this is the reaper. He’s interim.” (caption: The mini has nearly died four times. (silas-2k02km))

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What actually happened: the 01:01 UTC check found the simulator host saturated, with 246 CoreSimulator processes against a ceiling of 120 and the load average at 10.66, because overlapping smoke-test convoys (batched simulator runs) each spawn a few dozen. The convoy should not be building iOS on the mini at all; a ticket (silas-2k02km) tracks refusing it at the source, after four episodes in which the overload nearly killed the data store. Until that lands, a stopgap reaper culls the excess.