Possible List Downtime

From: Jay West <jwest_at_classiccmp.org>
Date: Fri Jan 28 08:24:59 2005

There is a chance (homelife schedule permitting) that I will be moving the
drives from the temp classiccmp server to the new (old) classiccmp server
this weekend. If I do get around to it, it would be during the day -
slightly more likely sunday than saturday. Then again, I may not get to it
at all this weekend. We'll see. Wanted to give a heads up in any case.

When I do this, the list will be down for an hour or so if all goes well. If
it doesn't go well.... could be much longer :)

Bear in mind a few things:

1) There WILL be bumps. There is at least 63 separate software packages that
are installed & configured on the server that provides the classiccmp
services. You can bet that I (and YOU) will find snags and things will be
broken for a bit (days or weeks afterwards, depending on urgency and my
ability to fix). Some of the packages have been tested thoroughly, some of
them I simply cant really test until they go live. You can expect some
problems.

2) When I moved subscriber lists from the old server to the new server a few
weeks ago, there is one setting that mailman doesn't migrate with subscriber
export/import - the "no mail" flag that many of you use. So if you subscribe
to both lists (silly) or have your account temporarily set to "no mail"
you'll start getting mail to both until you go back and set your no mail
flag. I'm not going through 1000 accounts individually by hand to preserve
the nomail flag.

3) Mailman also doesn't transfer passwords it would appear. I will try to
remember to force mailman to send out a password reminder after the upgrade,
so hopefully you'll get your mailman password sent via email. I may forget
to do this, I'm a forgetfull guy. Give me a shout if you get stuck.

4) There are a lot of classic computer related websites that I host on the
classiccmp server for people at no charge. It is entirely likely that during
this time period of being "half on one server, half on another"... that
files & content you put on your website went to the wrong server and you'd
notice it after the switch. If so, give me a shout and I'll get the content
fixed for you. If the files are on one of the two servers, it's a lot faster
for me to copy them than for you to reupload them. The "old" drive will be
put up in a different machine on the same network, so I will be able to copy
stuff easily that got stranded. Keep your shirt on. See #1 above.

5) Many chunks of the archives have been located on the drive. However, I am
sure there are holes of missing posts. This really torques me off. Someone
who did list maintenance before me had moved the defacto copy of the list
archives into a different spot on the server and I didn't realize they were
in an area I routinely mess up and later clean up. It's possible I deleted
them, but in any case I can't find them. Again, many of them have been
located but not all. After I finish the server drive migration, I will be
regenning all the html archives from scratch - going against the original
mbox files. If there's any posts in the archives that you want me to remove
(from time to time someone posts their home address by mistake, etc etc.)
now is the time to let me know and I'll clean the archives. After the
archives are completely reassembled, you can be damn sure I will be copying
them to DVD and sticking a copy in my vault off-site.

6) The newer version of mailman has a pretty much revamped logic for
handling bounces and automatic subscription disables due to bounces. It will
be interesting to see how that part works.

Regards,

Jay West
Received on Fri Jan 28 2005 - 08:24:59 GMT