Well, the time is coming, I'm going to be livestreaming on YouTube starting at 2PM ET to try to re-habitate the infrastructure, and get ready for steps going forward. I'm going to be streaming this as part of an ongoing charity stream, and VTubing, as show of solidary with others who get harassed because they choose to use an avatar than not. I'll talk more about this at the start, and then we're going to do what we can to try and at least make the situation "less bad". Current goals is to try and at least get the machines to more up-to-date software, rebuild the nginx web frontend, and determine a long term plan for handling email
Hope to see you all there, ~ N
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Site Overhaul Work Starting at 2PM EST - Watch Live!
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(Score: 5, Funny) by ilPapa on Saturday November 12 2022, @07:29PM (1 child)
You're wild, NCommander. Livestream site maintenance is like TikTok for nerds.
You are still welcome on my lawn.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Saturday November 12 2022, @08:23PM
Yeah, it's super cool (I guess I've passed the nerd test).
I'm weak with vi. Way back I was stunned at how backward it seemed, so I learned to install simple text editors first thing when I'm new to an OS install (nano, joe...)
He's making some major changes / fixes. Why am I feeling like a rat in a biology lab... :)
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Saturday November 12 2022, @08:38PM (8 children)
What's 2PM ET in UTC?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Saturday November 12 2022, @08:40PM (7 children)
OK, apparently some time in the past, since the stream is already going. :-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Saturday November 12 2022, @09:00PM (6 children)
This will last for days so you haven't missed too much. Like, for some reason he's brute-force upgrading the old boxes to recent ubuntu from upstart era instead of nuking everything from orbit and putting together docker instances fresh...
compiling...
(Score: 4, Informative) by janrinok on Saturday November 12 2022, @09:48PM
There is a sound reason behind this. If we start with a fresh load - which we will do for the containers - we would have to recompile Apache from scratch to include over 100 CPAN modules - it takes days! This way keeps the configuration static and Apache continues to work.
(Score: 2) by dwilson on Sunday November 13 2022, @12:57AM (4 children)
Rattlin' round somewhere in the back of my head is the notion that SN runs on Gentoo. Did that change somewhere along the way? Was it ever true?
- D
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Sunday November 13 2022, @05:38AM (1 child)
One of the computers that could be seen (in the form of terminal output) on the live screen was indeed running on Gentoo.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by drussell on Sunday November 13 2022, @10:55AM
NCommander converted that one to Ubuntu also, at least for now, for consistency and ease at least while converting rehash to work inside a container.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by janrinok on Sunday November 13 2022, @06:47AM (1 child)
No, you are (partially) correct. The plan was to move away from Ubuntu to Gentoo. Two boxes were swapped over but additional problems were encountered - I do not have the details. I think (?!) it was difficulty in getting all of the ancient software to run but I could be wrong - so I will stick with 'problems were encountered' for now.
Ubuntu receives a fair amount of ciriticism, some of it entirely deserved IMO. However, it works and there is plenty of Ubuntu knowledge out there to tap into. Furthermore, NCommander worked for Canonical for a while and he has a lot of knowledge of the software. We may swap to Debian but we need to do some testing first. Nothing too difficult but Ubuntu is making minor changes that are slight divergencies from what most people expect from a distro.
Once all the work is done we should be able to reduce our running costs by divesting ourselves of a few servers. Some consideration is also being given to out-sourcing our email support and IRC so as to further reduce costs and remove some of the maintenance burden that currently has to be done in-house. Having everything under our own control meant that we also had to have the support staff to maintain it. The loss of many of our community has had the same effect on the number of volunteer staff.
As long as the community still has full and total control over how the site is managed and the direction we take in the future it is currently more cost effective and practical to let somebody else worry about emails and IRC etc. It is not without some compromises (e.g. what happens to all of the emails if the company providing the service decides to pack up?) but it should be manageable.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by drussell on Sunday November 13 2022, @10:58AM
Farming out the mail seems like a silly idea to me, we'll see what NCommander feels once he's not quite as sleep deprived...
Sleep deprivation leads to decisions that lead to lack of disk space that lead to live database corruption without double checking backups, etc...
(Score: 5, Informative) by NCommander on Saturday November 12 2022, @09:42PM (7 children)
We upgraded the web frontend, and all I got was this lousy comment ...
Still always moving
(Score: 2, Touché) by fab23 on Saturday November 12 2022, @09:43PM (3 children)
Even a regular user can comment.
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Saturday November 12 2022, @09:45PM
yeah works fine.
compiling...
(Score: 2) by SomeGuy on Sunday November 13 2022, @12:06AM (1 child)
Posting from Windows 95....
Upgrade? What's that? Oh, that's when you want yet another boot stomping on your face forever. :P
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Sunday November 13 2022, @05:40AM
Windows 95? Go away with this newfangled stuff. Windows 3.11 for Workgroups FTW!
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Saturday November 12 2022, @09:44PM
Interesting to see that you use the same colour scheme as I do. :-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Saturday November 12 2022, @09:45PM (1 child)
(Score: 4, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Sunday November 13 2022, @05:41AM
Well, I stopped watching when my local time approached midnight and I decided that getting some sleep was the better choice at that point.
But yes, it works. Good job!
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.