[ADMIN] This newsgroup/mailing list is moving!
David Miller
related projects are no longer a pet project of Netscape, yet the
newsgroups we are using for public discussions still bear the Netscape
name. We've been planning for years to move from
netscape.public.mozilla.* to just mozilla.*, and the time has finally come!
In August, we announced a partnership with Giganews Newsgroups
(http://www.giganews.com/) to provide NNTP services for our
news.mozilla.org domain. It's taken a few months of planning to make it
happen, but we're now in the final stages, and the move will be
happening shortly.
For general information and frequently asked questions about the move to
the new news and list servers, see
http://www.mozilla.org/community/giganews-migration.html
Here's how this will affect netscape.public.mozilla.webtools and the
mozilla-webtools mailing list:
netscape.public.mozilla.webtools is being split into four separate
groups! Those of you who come here looking for support with Bonsai,
Tinderbox, Mozbot, and so forth, no doubt get drowned in
Bugzilla-related traffic. So in the new world, Bugzilla is getting its
own newsgroups.
In addition to splitting Bugzilla off on its own, both Bugzilla and the
rest of the Webtools will have separate newsgroups for development
discussion and user-support discussion.
The new newsgroups/mailing lists will be:
NNTP: Email:
mozilla.dev.apps.bugzilla dev-apps...@lists.mozilla.org
mozilla.dev.apps.webtools dev-apps...@lists.mozilla.org
mozilla.support.bugzilla support-...@lists.mozilla.org
mozilla.support.webtools support-...@lists.mozilla.org
What do you need to do to maintain your subscriptions?
Right now we're aiming for Wednesday, January 4th, 2006 as the cutover
date. That date is subject to change still, since mozilla-webtools is
the guinea pig (because I subscribe to it, so that makes it easy for me
to notice if anything goes wrong), but unless I post again saying
otherwise, we'll assume it'll be January 4th.
Before that date, you won't be able to do anything.
If you read this newsgroup via NNTP, you will need to change your
subscriptions manually after January 4th to point at the appropriate
groups from the list above. Please note that at this time, these
newsgroups will NOT be propagated to Usenet in general, so you must be
using news.mozilla.org to access them (see the FAQ link near the top of
this message).
If you read this list via the email list, your subscription will
automatically be moved for you to both of the support mailing lists,
since it's evident from the postings that the vast majority of the
current membership fits that classification (I've seen very little, if
any development discussion here). If you came here only for Bugzilla
discussion, or only for discussion of other webtools, you can
unsubscribe from the inappropriate list once the move is made, either
via the unsubscribe instructions included in the headers, or from the
http://lists.mozilla.org/ website (after the new lists go live).
This is a good thing in the long run, but it'll be a rough ride next
week while we switch.
If you have any questions that aren't answered here, and aren't answered
in the above FAQ, please reply to this message on-group and ask.
--
Dave Miller http://www.justdave.net/
System Administrator, Mozilla Corporation http://www.mozilla.com/
Project Leader, Bugzilla Bug Tracking System http://www.bugzilla.org/
Chris Ilias
> If you read this newsgroup via NNTP, you will need to change your
> subscriptions manually after January 4th to point at the appropriate
> groups from the list above. Please note that at this time, these
> newsgroups will NOT be propagated to Usenet in general, so you must be
> using news.mozilla.org to access them (see the FAQ link near the top of
> this message).
Does that mean that news.mozilla.org will point to Giganews on January
5th (ie. "after January 4th")? If so, how will that affect subscriptions
to other Mozilla newsgroups?
--
Chris Ilias - Mozilla Champion
Netscape/Mozilla Links <http://ilias.ca>
Mozilla Help <http://mozillahelp.com>
David Miller
> _David Miller_ spoke thusly:
>> If you read this newsgroup via NNTP, you will need to change your
>> subscriptions manually after January 4th to point at the appropriate
>> groups from the list above. Please note that at this time, these
>> newsgroups will NOT be propagated to Usenet in general, so you must be
>> using news.mozilla.org to access them (see the FAQ link near the top of
>> this message).
>
> Does that mean that news.mozilla.org will point to Giganews on January
> 5th (ie. "after January 4th")? If so, how will that affect subscriptions
> to other Mozilla newsgroups?
All of the newsgroups are moving, this one is just first. The rest of
them will probably happen the following week. All of the existing
newsgroups will still be available, their use will just be discouraged
once we've got the new one up and running.
Chris Ilias
> Chris Ilias wrote on 12/29/05 3:03 PM:
>> _David Miller_ spoke thusly:
>>> If you read this newsgroup via NNTP, you will need to change your
>>> subscriptions manually after January 4th to point at the appropriate
>>> groups from the list above. Please note that at this time, these
>>> newsgroups will NOT be propagated to Usenet in general, so you must be
>>> using news.mozilla.org to access them (see the FAQ link near the top of
>>> this message).
>> Does that mean that news.mozilla.org will point to Giganews on January
>> 5th (ie. "after January 4th")? If so, how will that affect subscriptions
>> to other Mozilla newsgroups?
>
> All of the newsgroups are moving, this one is just first. The rest of
> them will probably happen the following week. All of the existing
> newsgroups will still be available, their use will just be discouraged
> once we've got the new one up and running.
For clarification: During this transition period, one would presumably
be able to subscribe to mozilla.support.webtools and
netscape.public.mozilla.seamonkey with the same news account
(servername: news.mozilla.org), which would carry both groups.
I'm just having trouble understanding how the newsgroup transition can
happen one group at a time. I figured news.mozilla.org would be switched
to the new hierarchy in one move.
David Miller
> _David Miller_ spoke thusly:
>> Chris Ilias wrote on 12/29/05 3:03 PM:
>>> _David Miller_ spoke thusly:
>>>> If you read this newsgroup via NNTP, you will need to change your
>>>> subscriptions manually after January 4th to point at the appropriate
>>>> groups from the list above. Please note that at this time, these
>>>> newsgroups will NOT be propagated to Usenet in general, so you must be
>>>> using news.mozilla.org to access them (see the FAQ link near the top of
>>>> this message).
>>> Does that mean that news.mozilla.org will point to Giganews on January
>>> 5th (ie. "after January 4th")? If so, how will that affect subscriptions
>>> to other Mozilla newsgroups?
>>
>> All of the newsgroups are moving, this one is just first. The rest of
>> them will probably happen the following week. All of the existing
>> newsgroups will still be available, their use will just be discouraged
>> once we've got the new one up and running.
>
> For clarification: During this transition period, one would presumably
> be able to subscribe to mozilla.support.webtools and
> netscape.public.mozilla.seamonkey with the same news account
> (servername: news.mozilla.org), which would carry both groups.
Yes, that's correct.
> I'm just having trouble understanding how the newsgroup transition can
> happen one group at a time. I figured news.mozilla.org would be switched
> to the new hierarchy in one move.
The problem is a little more complicated than that because there's 85
mailing lists that gateway to various newsgroups which also have to
move. The other newsgroups will be getting created when their
corresponding mailing lists are set up and ready to go. So the entire
mozilla.* hierarchy won't all be there at once initially, but will grow
over the following few weeks.
The news.mozilla.org domain will be getting pointed at the new server
shortly before we start moving things.
Chris Ilias
> The problem is a little more complicated than that because there's 85
> mailing lists that gateway to various newsgroups which also have to
> move. The other newsgroups will be getting created when their
> corresponding mailing lists are set up and ready to go. So the entire
> mozilla.* hierarchy won't all be there at once initially, but will grow
> over the following few weeks.
>
> The news.mozilla.org domain will be getting pointed at the new server
> shortly before we start moving things.
I subscribe to n.p.m.* groups via Giganews (I'm a GN customer), and in
early October, I noticed the new groups had been created.
http://ilias.ca/screenshots/tb-newgroups1.png
But I found them to be inaccessible.
http://ilias.ca/screenshots/tb-newgroups2.png
After learning that the groups would not be on Usenet, I figured that
set of groups I saw on the GN server would only be accessible if the
client is accessing them via the server name news.mozilla.org.
So, when you say that the mozilla.* groups won't all be there, and will
be created when their corresponding mailing lists are ready, is it just
a matter of opening access (via news.mozilla.org) to those groups,
rather than actually creating them?
David Miller
> After learning that the groups would not be on Usenet, I figured that
> set of groups I saw on the GN server would only be accessible if the
> client is accessing them via the server name news.mozilla.org.
>
> So, when you say that the mozilla.* groups won't all be there, and will
> be created when their corresponding mailing lists are ready, is it just
> a matter of opening access (via news.mozilla.org) to those groups,
> rather than actually creating them?
Correct. Or at least something similar (we'll get them to figure that
out by the time it goes live :)
Chris Ilias
> Chris Ilias wrote on 12/29/05 7:29 PM:
>
>> be created when their corresponding mailing lists are ready, is it just
>> a matter of opening access (via news.mozilla.org) to those groups,
>> rather than actually creating them?
>
> Correct. Or at least something similar (we'll get them to figure that
> out by the time it goes live :)
Thanks a lot for the answers, David. I really appreciate it. I have a
few more questions:
As I understood it, access to the groups via Google was to be read-only;
but I don't see that specified on giganews-migration.html. Is Google
access still going to be read-only?
giganews-migration.html also says that the new groups will propagate to
Giganews. Does that mean GN customers will be able to access the groups
using news.giganews.com? If so, will /that/ be read-only?
With the switch to Giganews happening before the migration, the n.p.m.*
groups will be accessible via news.mozilla.org; yet on
giganews-migration.html, it talks about alternative methods to access
the n.p.m.* groups, including the possibility of an oldnews.mozilla.org
alias. Does that mean each n.p.m.* group will be inaccessible once its
corresponding mozilla.* group is available?
A couple of months ago, I talked to Frank Hecker about a
news.mozilla.com alias, so Firefox and Thunderbird users would have
domain name continuity, when trying to access the support groups. Will
there be an alias of news.mozilla.com for news.mozilla.org?
Once again, thanks for the answers. :-)
David Miller
answers for and had to go track them down first. :)
Chris Ilias wrote on 12/30/05 3:59 AM:
> As I understood it, access to the groups via Google was to be read-only;
> but I don't see that specified on giganews-migration.html. Is Google
> access still going to be read-only?
Yes. Although there's been some discussion about that recently, so that
might change, but at the moment we're still planning on them being
read-only.
> giganews-migration.html also says that the new groups will propagate to
> Giganews. Does that mean GN customers will be able to access the groups
> using news.giganews.com? If so, will /that/ be read-only?
That was only intending to refer to our news server hosted by them.
Although if they do wind up visible to anyone with a Giganews account, I
don't think we'll complain. :)
> With the switch to Giganews happening before the migration, the n.p.m.*
> groups will be accessible via news.mozilla.org; yet on
> giganews-migration.html, it talks about alternative methods to access
> the n.p.m.* groups, including the possibility of an oldnews.mozilla.org
> alias. Does that mean each n.p.m.* group will be inaccessible once its
> corresponding mozilla.* group is available?
More likely we'll drop the entire hierarchy from being accessible via
news.mozilla.org once the entire migration is complete.
One downside of this that I just realized is that the article sequence
numbers (Xref IDs?) won't match between the existing news server at AOL
and the GN server. This means when we switch the domain name over,
everyone's read/unread statuses for newsgroups they're subscribed to
will get toasted, since I'm pretty sure most clients use those for that
purpose. For example, the message I'm replying to, on the AOL server says:
Xref: secnews.netscape.com netscape.public.mozilla.webtools:26134
and on the GN server, says:
Xref: number1.nntp.dca.giganews.com netscape.public.mozilla.webtools:19832
> A couple of months ago, I talked to Frank Hecker about a
> news.mozilla.com alias, so Firefox and Thunderbird users would have
> domain name continuity, when trying to access the support groups. Will
> there be an alias of news.mozilla.com for news.mozilla.org?
That sounds like a good idea.