SoylentNews

So, in previous posts, I've talked about the fact that SoylentNews currently is powered on Ubuntu 14.04 + a single CentOS 6 box. Right now, the sysops have been somewhat deadlocked on what we should do going forward for our underlying operating system, and I am hoping to get community advice. Right now, the "obvious" choice of what to do is simply do-release-upgrade to Ubuntu 16.04. We've done in-place upgrades before without major issue, and I'm relatively certain we could upgrade without breaking the world. However, from my personal experience, 16.04 introduces systemd support into the stack and is not easily removable. Furthermore, at least in my personal experience, working with journalctl and such has caused me considerable headaches which I detailed in a comment awhile ago.

Discounting systemd itself, I've also found that Ubuntu 16.04 seems less "polished", for want of a better word. I've found I've had to do considerably more fiddling and tweaking to get it to work as a server distro than I had to do with previous releases, as well as had weird issues with LDAP. The same was also true when I worked with recent versions with Debian. As such, there's been a general feeling with the sysops that it's time to go somewhere else.

Below the fold are basically the options as we see them, and I hope if the community can provide some interesting insight or guidance.

Earlier today, we ran an article detailing that Oracle released 270 critical security updates for many of its products, including MySQL cluster which we use here to provide high uptime and reliability for SoylentNews. Needless to say, it was time to upgrade both NDB backends, and the four MySQLd frontends. While the upgrade did not go completely smoothly due to the fact that MySQL strict mode got enabled, and broke the site briefly, our total downtime was less than five minutes or so. Right now, we had to do a full flush and purge of all caches, which means the site is running a bit larky until they can repopulate but I'm pleased to announce we're up to date and secure!

ndb_mgm> show
Cluster Configuration
---------------------
[ndbd(NDB)]	2 node(s)
id=2	@redacted (mysql-5.7.17 ndb-7.5.5, Nodegroup: 0)
id=3	@redacted (mysql-5.7.17 ndb-7.5.5, Nodegroup: 0, *)

[ndb_mgmd(MGM)]	2 node(s)
id=101	@redacted (mysql-5.7.17 ndb-7.5.5)
id=102	@redacted (mysql-5.7.17 ndb-7.5.5)

[mysqld(API)]	4 node(s)
id=11	@redacted (mysql-5.7.17 ndb-7.5.5)
id=12	@redacted (mysql-5.7.17 ndb-7.5.5)
id=13	@redacted (mysql-5.7.17 ndb-7.5.5)
id=14	@redacted (mysql-5.7.17 ndb-7.5.5)

If you notice any unusual breakages or slowdowns, please let me know in the comments. Otherwise, keep calm and carry on!

~ NCommander

A couple months ago we ran a story asking the SoylentNews community for volunteers to help with editing and the community did not let us down; we received a full dozen inquiries! You've probably noticed a few new names art the top of the stories and quite frankly, their contributions made it possible for the staff to survive the holiday season — many, many thanks!

If, for whatever reason, you did not want to be an Editor, but still wish to contribute, there are many other areas:

Submit stories

Click the Submit Story link in the "Navigation" slashbox on the left-hand side of the main page. It is not necessary to write perfect prose (though we sure appreciate it when we see it!) If you find a story that you find interesting and think that others might also enjoy it, too, send it in! We publish, on average, about 450 stories a month. If 1% of the community submitted a story or two each month, it would make a huge difference!

Post comments

You don't need to be a subject-matter expert to comment on a story! (Though we sure do appreciate when such people chime in!) Sometimes the best discussions come about simply because someone asked a question.

Perform Moderation

Moderation is like Olympic Scoring. Everything from a "-1" (not worth the electrons used to store it) to a "5" (one of the best on the site). Each registered user gets 5 mod points per day. Concentrate on promoting the good rather than hiding the bad... we want to make sure the most insightful, interesting, and informative comments are visible.

Help site development and operation

Something bugging you about site behavior? Have experience in running a web site? Know how to run an IRC server? Know your way around a Wiki? Can code Perl in your sleep? Have experience doing QA and/or test? Don't have this knowledge but would like to learn? Join our development and/or operations team.

Support the site

Your financial contributions are critical to our continued operation. Subscribe to SoylentNews or buy SoylentNews swag.

Other?

See something else where you'd like to help out? Let us know — the more the merrier! There's a lot of fun and camaraderie in our team... in large part it's why I continue to contribute to the site. Join in on the fun!

There are many rewards for contributing. Just to be a part of such a diverse and knowledgeable team is indescribable. I have learned so much from some amazingly helpful people. So join up as an editor, submit stories and comments, moderate, or help the site to keep running.

Lastly, spread the word. Share a link to the main page, to a particular story, or even to a single comment.

--martyb

Phoenix666 writes:

Hi Guys, Soylent's Editors do a lot behind the scenes to keep the community going. As a gift idea for them this year, please consider submitting lots of stories over the next two days to get the queue nice and full. Then they'll be able to schedule in their appearance on the home page ahead of time and take Christmas (or Hanukkah) off to spend time with their friends and families.

If you've never submitted a story before, here are guidelines for composing a story submission. You submit it here.

My own method is to find tech/science articles from SN's RSS-bot or a dozen other sources like the BBC or sciencenews.org, grab the title, and a couple of paragraphs that communicate the gist. Often I'll add a quip, question, or note of my own, but that's up to your personal taste. It's easy and takes under 5 minutes per story.

Thanks for reading, and have a happy holiday!

[Ed Note: The week between Christmas and New Years is always slow for submissions and time is a precious commodity for all of us. The more subs in the queue, the further out we can get the story queue, and the more time we have to spend with our loved ones. Any help you can give would be appreciated!]

Original Submission

Hopefully you will have noticed a number of new editors that have appeared to help keep this site running. They have been active for over a week but you might not have noticed them if you have been enjoying the Thanksgiving Day holiday, or just spending money during Black Friday (which seems to last longer each year!)

Snow, Charon, FatPhil, Fnord666, and GreatOutdoors have completed their training and are busy making their contributions to the team, and there are several more volunteers who will begin training in the near future. I hope that you will welcome them and keep them busy by providing more and varied submissions for them to battle with. They have already significantly reduced the strain on the editorial team and we are all breathing a collective sigh of relief back here. Thank you for volunteering guys!

I will put this to you, the community, in a very straight, simple (hopefully understandable) way.

The editorial staff is a small, hardworking group. There are currently about 5 of us that are actively pushing stories out on a regular basis, and we need help.

We humbly come to you, the community, to solicit for a volunteer or two. We will provide all the necessary training, at a cost of just 3 easy payments of $999.99US, or entirely free if you apply before 1 Apr 2099.

For that pittance, you can expect to learn:

• The editing process
• How to get onto the bouncer for IRC
• The best ways to abuse The Mighty Buzzard
• The secret staff handshake
• How to be abused, and learn to like it
• How to deal with having your name in lights
• and much much more!

In all seriousness, we all are busy and have lives. So do you, and we get that, but for this community to continue to thrive, we need a little fresh blood on the editorial staff. Some of us have been at this since the site went live almost 3 years ago (janrinok and martyb have posted over 3000 articles EACH). To put it in perspective, the site has only run about 14,500. Some of us came on almost a year later, but like any organization, there has been attrition, and we need to replenish.

We are starting to see some of the tell-tale signs of burnout, and to avoid that, we need your help.

If you are interested, please feel free to reach out in the comments below, via email ([nick] at soylentnews dot org), or hit us on IRC. If we aren't there (we all LOOK like we are logged in all the time due to the bouncer, but we may not actually be there), /join #editorial and leave a message — we will get back to you.

Remember, it isn't all doom and gloom! Working on staff, you will be on a team with a fantastic group of REALLY smart (myself excluded) people. I can honestly say I have made some really good friends from this experience, and I've even gotten to meet one of the guys in meat space. It is something that I am truly glad I took advantage of when the opportunity came around.

Thanks for listening, and with a little luck, we will see one or two of you pretty soon.

Live Long and Prosper,

-cmn32480

[TMB Note: Seriously. You really don't want me having to pick stories.]

[Update: see this comment below if you've expressed interest in volunteering.