As many of you are aware, SoylentNews uses Let's Encrypt certificates to protect the vast majority (all?) of our networking connections.
Under the watchful eyes of The Mighty Buzzard and SemperOSS I have updated our certs and deployed them across our servers and services. At this point, all seems to be working fine. That said, I have a well-earned reputation of being able to break nearly anything, so it would not entirely surprise me if you find something awry. If so, please let us know! You can comment on this story and/or jump over to the "#dev" channel on IRC and let us know there.
For completeness' sake, the updated certs were rolled out at 20190611_140630 UTC.
NOTE: Do be aware it takes time for updated DNS records to work their way across the internet, so if you do encounter a problem, try clearing your cache and trying again before assuming things are borked.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Snow on Tuesday June 11 2019, @04:04PM (5 children)
That martyb guy... so good looking. And such a gentleman. I hear he always smells good too. I bet he wakes up with perfect hair every morning.
The ladies all want him and the men all want to be him.
What a dreamboat! 3 3
(Score: 4, Informative) by martyb on Tuesday June 11 2019, @04:28PM (4 children)
Well, "Morning Hair" is much easier to avoid when one has an absence of hair.
And, given how seasonal allergies are currently kicking my butt, I'm not smelling too well, either.
As for "looking good", that is abetted by corrective lenses.
=)
Wit is intellect, dancing. I'm too old to act my age. Life is too important to take myself seriously.
(Score: 3, Funny) by kazzie on Tuesday June 11 2019, @05:18PM
So, more like "mourning hair"?
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Tuesday June 11 2019, @05:58PM
"And, given how seasonal allergies are currently kicking my butt, I'm not smelling too well, either."
I hear you there!
Just getting over a cold and found I wasn't coughing because of the cold anymore: had to start taking allergy pills and a puffer.
Sheeeeeeeeeeeit.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. I have always been here. ---Gaaark 2.0 --
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday June 11 2019, @11:04PM
Remember folks, you read it on S/N first!
The new hairstyle fashion is here: disheveled baldness.
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 11 2019, @11:20PM
Like... literally?
Ewww, give your butt a rest
(Score: 4, Informative) by ikanreed on Tuesday June 11 2019, @04:37PM (4 children)
N/T
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Tuesday June 11 2019, @08:03PM (3 children)
That was deliberate, they wanted an excuse to force "upgrades" to install an NSA backdoor and enable more analytics options and cripple Adblock. Time to bail from that bitch before it becomes more unbearable, and it most certainly will. You'd think they'd have a little class since they're sucking from the Google teet.
(Score: 3, Touché) by ikanreed on Tuesday June 11 2019, @08:19PM (2 children)
Checking...
Yep, drawing the attention of every single dev in the entire goddamn world with any time to spare to look at your latest release for the cause of a defect is definetly the best way to slip spyware into a open source product unnoticed. Theory holds up perfectly.
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Tuesday June 11 2019, @09:23PM (1 child)
I'm still right about enabling analytics options (new options that are default-checked) and the crippling of Adblock.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Tuesday June 11 2019, @09:33PM
That was chrome though.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Tedderouni on Tuesday June 11 2019, @04:58PM (3 children)
You might be able to automate this using Certbot, if you haven't already. https://certbot.eff.org/ [eff.org]
(Score: 3, Informative) by martyb on Tuesday June 11 2019, @05:42PM (1 child)
Yes, we are aware that we could automate this using certbot. And, yes, there is something to be said for reducing the potential for human error. That said, a decision has been that, at least at this point, something that messes with our DNS entries should be done by a human with eyes wide open for any potential difficulty.
You may not be aware, but SoylentNews has much more infrastructure than meets the eye. Of course there is the web site. We also have our own IRC system'. And e-mail. And we have a dual-homed MySQL database cluster. Oh, and dual front ends with nginx, IIRC. Of course we run apache. And there's modperl in there. We also have inherited slashd which is a daemon which basically spins around and functions like a home-grown cron system. That's just off the top of my head; I am certain I have forgotten something.
The stability of the site is due in huge part to the careful and watchful eyes of our sysadmins who labor behind the scenes attending to all the fiddly bits. They seem to work under the premise that you should not notice that they are there!
I did mention fiddly, didn't I? There are some things that were crafted to work together with a sledgehammer, if you know what I mean.
So, for the foreseeable future, we are willing to take the manual approach and make sure that things continue to work as expected. Unless you want to volunteer and try to navigate around hosed secure connections while trying to get all the spinning bits back together again? I know I sure do not!
Wit is intellect, dancing. I'm too old to act my age. Life is too important to take myself seriously.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday June 11 2019, @11:14PM
Eh, in my times this was shorter and more honestly put as 'Gone fishing'
Coz a good sysadm is like insurance, you pay her/him for just-in-case and should be happy to hear s/he has nothing to do better than fishing.
(grin)
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Tuesday June 11 2019, @11:55PM
I believe they specifically don't automatically renew their certifications for security reasons.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 4, Insightful) by SemperOSS on Tuesday June 11 2019, @05:14PM
I would like to thank martyb very much for good work well done! His dedication to this site is well known. (Or should be, if it has passed you by!) Also thanks to The Mighty Buzzard, whose vigilant eyes made sure the path trodden led to the desired destination.
As opposed to Snow, I cannot in earnest comment on martyb's physical attributes, but I can agree that he is the epitome of a gentleman to me and find that he is a man of wit as well as wisdom.
And for once, no sarcasm expressed or intended, neither implicitly nor explicitly.
Open Source Solutions and Digital Sovereignty is the new black
(Score: 3, Insightful) by BsAtHome on Tuesday June 11 2019, @05:32PM
Well, you, almost, broke my heart, so you may add it to your list for future goals.
Seriously, you are all doing a great job at high-availability. Any small bumps on that road, if encountered, do not diminish the quality of service IMHO!
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Tuesday June 11 2019, @06:15PM (2 children)
It's nice to see the stretch goal is almost halfway met.
Nice seeing funding like this coming in. If it could come in regularly......
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. I have always been here. ---Gaaark 2.0 --
(Score: 3, Interesting) by martyb on Tuesday June 11 2019, @07:04PM (1 child)
Yes, that is a *very* nice thing to see. We had a big push last year, IIRC, to make our funding goal. We have a few more weeks to go, so I suspect some folk will notice their subscriptions from the last time are running out and will renew them.
That said, we run a very lean organization (hence our using Let's Encrypt certs), so we are fortunate that we are not beholden to large donor(s) to "keep the lights on."
There will be more details when we wind up the funding period, but the largest subscription so far this year was $200 and we had 2 of those. We also have a few folk who have set up a recurring payment with Paypal for $4 or $5 per month.
SoylentNews really *is* the product of the community!
Wit is intellect, dancing. I'm too old to act my age. Life is too important to take myself seriously.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Wednesday June 12 2019, @01:57AM
"SoylentNews really *is* the product of the community!"
You're making me hungry! ;)
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. I have always been here. ---Gaaark 2.0 --
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 11 2019, @07:37PM