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posted by janrinok on Monday June 17, @08:34AM   Printer-friendly

Although it might seem that the site is not progressing there is nothing that could be further from the truth...

The New Company and Transfer Of Assets

A new company has now been formed, along with IRS agreement that we are a registered as a 501(c)(3) company (donations will be tax deductible for anyone under the US IRS system) , and we have our own bank account and Board. Therefore, I informed the current Board of this at the end of last week requesting that we initiate the transfer of site ownership and its assets. I also proposed a way that we could do this with the minimum of disruption to the site itself. Ideally, it should from the community point of view be nothing more than a redirection of URLs to different IP addresses. The proposal has to be studied and accepted by the current Board, or they might suggest an alternative proposal. NCommander is moving home for much of this week and so I do not expect a response in the next few days.

Site Downtime

We are experiencing a recurring problem with a drive that keeps filling up. Several of our community have offered suggestions which have been implemented but they do not appear to be having the desired effect. Further investigation is ongoing but, for now at least, the problem has been resolved by freeing up space by moving files that did not have to be on that particular drive to a different drive on that server. I would like to thank the community for their patience but there are only 3 people who have easy access to that particular server, and I am one of them. The configuration of the infrastructure is not straightforward, and I am not a sys-admin. So to some extent we are still reliant on NCommander and kolie for some of the technical expertise or advice that is sometimes necessary, and to whom I am grateful for any assistance that they can give.

Submissions

We have had a small number of our community helping by making submissions that meet our stated interests and topics of discussion. There has also been a handful of submissions on the '/dev/random' topic which have also received a very healthy number of comments. But for the majority we are still relying on upstart and Arthur (both bots) to bring fresh material to our submission queue. Any relevant submissions from the community would be welcome and I encourage you to think about the more unusual and loosely-tech-related topics that you would like to see discussed. A fully prepared submission would be ideal but if all we get is a URL then that is just putting a greater workload on the small number of active editors that we currently have. Try to at least provide some kind of summary and perhaps ask your own questions to prompt the community to respond. We can do all of the formatting to meet the site's needs for you. But if all you have is a URL then we will try to make a submission from it. Off-topic submissions that are just a URL will probably not be processed.

Spamming

There has been a significant reduction in the amount of spamming anywhere on the site over the last few weeks. It hasn't gone completely but it is currently manageable by normal moderation by the community, and occasionally by the staff.

Complaints

Complaining about things you don't like on the site by means of public comments is not recommended and is usually a waste of your time and ours. If it is something that can be rectified immediately then we will, of course, do so but anything more significant takes a lot of time for the few staff that we have. Complaining anonymously will not be actioned. If you wish to make a complaint then we must have a way of contacting you privately. This can be any email address that you choose, providing that it lasts until the problem can be investigated and any necessary action taken to remedy the problem. We will probably have further questions to help us resolve the Issue and we will also need to inform you of the progress of our investigations and the final decision. That will be at least several days as an absolute minimum. If you keep repeating the same complaint anonymously in different threads and over a period of time it will be treated as spam - as was explained about 3 years ago in a Meta by Martyb.

If it is not important enough to justify an email then it is possibly your personal problem and not something on the site that must be changed. Any alternative response could result in the staff being tied up in malicious anonymous complaints which we have not got the resources to address.

This discussion was created by janrinok (52) for logged-in users only, but now has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
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  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Monday June 17, @08:36AM (3 children)

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Monday June 17, @08:36AM (#1360774) Journal
    If I hit the donate button right now, who does it go to?
    • (Score: 4, Informative) by janrinok on Monday June 17, @08:45AM

      by janrinok (52) Subscriber Badge on Monday June 17, @08:45AM (#1360776) Journal

      It goes to the CURRENT site. Until the switch over takes place (and we have also to create PayPal and Stripe accounts for the new company) then the site you are dealing with is the one created in 2014. Your donation might still reach us eventually when the funds are transferred as part of the site assets.

      --
      I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.
    • (Score: -1, Offtopic) by melyan on Monday June 17, @08:56PM (1 child)

      by melyan (14385) on Monday June 17, @08:56PM (#1360842) Journal

      hey, I tried mar***set email. Reach out to me ( I was a bit euphoric in 2021)

      • (Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday June 18, @05:45AM

        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday June 18, @05:45AM (#1360877) Journal
        I'll look it up. I don't get on email much - I haven't figured out how to work it in my home lifestyle.
  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by pTamok on Monday June 17, @10:04AM (2 children)

    by pTamok (3042) on Monday June 17, @10:04AM (#1360782)

    I am happy to see the work being done to enable progress with the site. I very much appreciate the work being done by a small number of people with the objective of keeping the site going.

    I hope that the transfer goes without problems, and once done, that we shall have enough experienced server/service wranglers to resolve the ongoing issues.

    • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 17, @01:31PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 17, @01:31PM (#1360793)

      Seconded, thank you for taking the time to write a comprehensive update.

      In the meantime, I'll keep looking for interesting stories to send in. My goal is at least one a week (usually more), nice to hear that they are appreciated.

      • (Score: 3, Insightful) by janrinok on Monday June 17, @03:08PM

        by janrinok (52) Subscriber Badge on Monday June 17, @03:08PM (#1360808) Journal

        They are certainly appreciated - you can see the number of comments for yourself! Thank you for your recent submissions - I hope to be seeing more of them.

        --
        I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.
  • (Score: -1, Flamebait) by melyan on Monday June 17, @08:53PM (1 child)

    by melyan (14385) on Monday June 17, @08:53PM (#1360840) Journal

    rm -rf /dev/your/mom

    • (Score: 5, Touché) by Tork on Monday June 17, @09:32PM

      by Tork (3914) Subscriber Badge on Monday June 17, @09:32PM (#1360845)
      Does anyone know the proper syntax for mount? 🤡
      --
      🏳️‍🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️‍🌈
  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by mrpg on Monday June 17, @10:02PM (2 children)

    by mrpg (5708) <{mrpg} {at} {soylentnews.org}> on Monday June 17, @10:02PM (#1360848) Homepage

    Any plans for the future? I understand the current setup is a clusterfuck and we are tied to Perl so nothing's gonna happen soon, like changing to $LINUX_DISTRO or docker or something. I suppose the plan after the change will be first to document everything, but, is there anything else?

    • (Score: 2) by janrinok on Tuesday June 18, @04:27AM (1 child)

      by janrinok (52) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday June 18, @04:27AM (#1360867) Journal

      There is already a working docker site - dev.soylentnews.org. This has been created by kolie initially, I believe, at the behest of NCommander. It has a significantly reduced list of users and contains testing data.

      Initially the intention is to reconfigure that site to become the main site, and have a duplicate created elsewhere (and kept up-to-date) to avoid having a single point of failure.

      There has also been mention of replacing Perl which perhaps need not be done all at the same time but in a modular, functional fashion. It is a technical debt that we cannot continue to carry indefinitely. Nothing concrete has yet been decided regarding this task.

      Longer term will be for others with much better hardware and infrastructure knowledge than i possess to decide how best to configure the site.

      --
      I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.
      • (Score: 2) by janrinok on Tuesday June 18, @04:31AM

        by janrinok (52) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday June 18, @04:31AM (#1360868) Journal

        Of course, using docker means that any Linux distro can be used - we do not even need to have the same distro on each server.

        --
        I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.
  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Gertlex on Tuesday June 18, @01:07AM (6 children)

    by Gertlex (3966) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday June 18, @01:07AM (#1360860)

    The "not a sysadmin" prompted the thought, "do we need better documentation, or more eyes on existing documentation?"

    I tend to like documenting projects... it might not be applicable in this case, as documenting stuff I can't test out is definitely harder. But if it seems like this is something that could be worth exploring, feel free to DM me or whatever mechanism we have here.

    • (Score: 2) by janrinok on Tuesday June 18, @04:02AM (1 child)

      by janrinok (52) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday June 18, @04:02AM (#1360864) Journal

      The reasons that the documentation is not up-to-date (and hasn't been since Nov 2022) have been discussed here many times. I do not think it is wise to reopen old wounds and have the same discussions that we were having 12 months ago. However, it is one of the contributory factors leading to NCommander wishing to close the site (May 2023) and the reason that we have created a new business entity to purchase all of the assets and to hopefully give the site at least another 10 years of activity.

      The previous sys-admins have left the site during the last 12 months. We have new sys-admins (and a new Board) waiting in the wings to work on the new site but they do not have access to the current site.

      Nobody is going to expend much effort to documenting what we have when it will not be relevant in a few weeks time. The site is being rebuilt with a different, less expensive (and hopefully more easily understood) infrastructure. This will undoubtedly have some teething problems but nothing to the extent that we are currently experiencing.

      --
      I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.
    • (Score: 2) by janrinok on Tuesday June 18, @04:10AM (3 children)

      by janrinok (52) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday June 18, @04:10AM (#1360866) Journal

      Check your site email please.

      --
      I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.
      • (Score: 1) by Gertlex on Tuesday June 18, @04:46AM (2 children)

        by Gertlex (3966) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday June 18, @04:46AM (#1360870)

        Not seeing anything in gmail's spam/all mail. I'm getting the email notifications for the replies to my post, though.

        • (Score: 2) by janrinok on Tuesday June 18, @04:59AM (1 child)

          by janrinok (52) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday June 18, @04:59AM (#1360872) Journal

          I sent an Admin-to-User message - it should show up in the site email box (not gmail) usually on the right hand side of the screen.

          Basically please stay in touch and thanks for the offer.

          --
          I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.
  • (Score: 2) by jman on Tuesday June 18, @10:12AM (4 children)

    by jman (6085) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday June 18, @10:12AM (#1360888) Homepage
    Just curious what plan is being used at Linode. Looks like it's hosted at their Dallas DC.

    Am also at Dallas, on their $72/mo 'dedicated' plan (used to be $60 before Akamai took over), but having been with them since '08 have gotten a couple of free 'upgrades' over the years, so 200G storage instead of 160, 10G memory instead of 8.

    Have also recently sprung for backup service ($15/mo), security against an OS upgrade in case things went blooey. It can be turned off if things are working well, but $15 isn't going to hurt me and I am comforted by the ability to restore with the push of a button (albeit maybe a little loss of data, depending on when the last automatic backup occurred). Think I'll keep it.

    If current storage isn't enough, rather than go to a more expensive plan they also offer block storage at .10/G, so an add'l 100G would be $10/mo.

    So, my current bill is around $100/mo. Even without donations being tax-deductable, even a small pool of folks would cover that. My own normal annual donation would handle a little under one month.

    BTW, would not consider myself a perl expert but am fairly comfortable with servers. If an extra hand would be needed for maintenance, troubleshooting, etc., please let me know.
    • (Score: 2) by janrinok on Tuesday June 18, @02:09PM (3 children)

      by janrinok (52) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday June 18, @02:09PM (#1360912) Journal

      I do not know what plan we are on - but we have more than 1 server! I think that we are down to 4 or 5 now but have been a few higher in the past.

      We think we have found a more cost effective solution for the future.

      At some time now or in the last decade we have had Hydrogen, Helium, Lithium, Beryllium, Boron, Carbon, Nitrogen, Oxygen, Fluorine, Neon, Sodium, Magnesium and Aluminium .... but probably not all at once!

      --
      I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.
      • (Score: 2) by jman on Wednesday June 19, @11:28AM (2 children)

        by jman (6085) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday June 19, @11:28AM (#1361017) Homepage
        'k, am sure there's a good reason for all that.

        Not asking you to reveal what you pay, but maybe take a look at a recent Linode invoice?

        My base plan is $72/mo.

        Just out of curiosity, are all those servers actual, separate physical machines?

        Things are so strong these days, Apache/Maria/etc. (or whatever the underlying software infrastructure may be) can all live in one box. Add backup to that and you're pretty safe against disaster.

        Htop shows my server to be using around 5 of its alloted 10G of memory, and each CPU core ranges up to maybe 15% utilization max. It's got a bunch of server daemons running: DB, web, SSH, DNS, mail, etc. All sorts of stuff.
        • (Score: 2) by janrinok on Wednesday June 19, @12:30PM

          by janrinok (52) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday June 19, @12:30PM (#1361019) Journal

          Things are so strong these days, Apache/Maria/etc. (or whatever the underlying software infrastructure may be) can all live in one box. Add backup to that and you're pretty safe against disaster.

          That is exactly what the dockerised system does. And the purchase of a server is actually cheaper than the hiring of a server over 3 - 4 years. There are connection prices to pay etc but the long term costs are quite competitive nowadays.

          As for looking at the current bill, I only wish I could.

          --
          I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.
        • (Score: 3, Informative) by drussell on Wednesday June 19, @02:21PM

          by drussell (2678) on Wednesday June 19, @02:21PM (#1361031) Journal

          Not asking you to reveal what you pay, but maybe take a look at a recent Linode invoice?

          Nobody who is currently actively involved in site operations has access to any paperwork, financial information, or even some aspects of the servers themselves and the Linode controls and those servers' account information.

          This is the reason that the site is currently in transition to a new corporate entity with a new bank account, new server and internet connectivity arrangements, etc. which are controlled by those now actively involved.

  • (Score: 2) by mcgrew on Wednesday June 19, @10:01PM

    by mcgrew (701) <publish@mcgrewbooks.com> on Wednesday June 19, @10:01PM (#1361094) Homepage Journal

    I'll try to submit more. What's your outside size limit on article length?

    --
    We not only don't have all the answers, we don't even have all of the questions.
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