The old server is down, along with osg-users

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Robert Osfield

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Jul 19, 2007, 4:43:31 AM7/19/07
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Hi All,

This morning I got online and started reviewing my inbox, and found it
refreshingly empty, ahh no need to spend two hours trawling through
support emails...

But then I work up to the possibility that mailing list was down, and
yep, it looks like Don has taken down the old server, and done so
without completing some of the tasks required to get the mailing lists
moved on to the new Dreamhost server, and without giving Jose or
myself any warning.

With the server down and likely being refurbished I can't get the
mailing lists files that I need to pass on to Dreamhost to import. I
will contact Don to see if we can get these files from backups.

Right now I don't have a full understanding of the situation on the
server, or how long it will be down, how long it will be before Don
gets the domains passed over to our control, this is something I've
been waiting for 6 months, so its all a bit out of my hands.

What is under my and Jose's control is new servers, the Dreamhost
server already hosts a number of professional service lists and works
fine. Its straight forward for me to set up a
osg-...@lists.openscenegraph.com and
osg-sub...@lists.openscenegraph.com, but... I don't have the
membership list which I can pass on to Dreamhost to import. Worst
comes to worst we'll just have to post a message on the front of
openscenegraph.com and get users subscribe themselves.

Thoughts?
Robert.

Mathieu MARACHE

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Jul 19, 2007, 5:40:31 AM7/19/07
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Hi Robert,

Sad...

I take this opportunity to ask you a sensible question. We have number
of french users on this list, and most of them are fluent in
english... Most but not all, and while OSG is gaining more and more
french users, we are pretty sure that a french language OSG
mailing-list would boost their learning curve and attract more users.

I'm willing to commit on this but I would like to have your thoughts
and others on the crew list about it ?

Regards,
Mathieu

2007/7/19, Robert Osfield <robert....@gmail.com>:


--
Mathieu

Robert Osfield

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Jul 19, 2007, 6:15:16 AM7/19/07
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Hi Mathieu,

On 7/19/07, Mathieu MARACHE <mathieu...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Sad...

It could be simply a machine failure, hopefully know a bit more once
Califorina wakes up.

> I take this opportunity to ask you a sensible question. We have number
> of french users on this list, and most of them are fluent in
> english... Most but not all, and while OSG is gaining more and more
> french users, we are pretty sure that a french language OSG
> mailing-list would boost their learning curve and attract more users.
>
> I'm willing to commit on this but I would like to have your thoughts
> and others on the crew list about it ?

As the community expands around the world we will obvious bring in
more non native English speakers, as someone who really struggles with
foreign languages I can really understand how difficult it must be for
many osg users to keep track of things let alone write messages to the
lists. So from this aspect I can see a need for a range of language
supports lists.

There is the other side, I can't do support in languages other than
English, I can't track bugs reports in languages other than English,
and I even if I did I wouldn't be able to keep track of multiple
supports lists anyway. This all means that the non English lists
basically go it alone without my help. This also applies to others
who provide support and help track bugs and feature requests - as you
split the community it up into different lists the expertise level
drops in each of the lists. For the non English lists to be viable
they'll need enough OSG experts on each of these lists who are willing
to hand hold new users otherwise they will end up be detrimental to
users experience. If these OSG experts are supporting their own
language lists, then they will have less time available to help out
with other language lists so there might be a danger of expertise
being spread too thinly.

Don started up the Spanish speaking list, which has a little traffic
but not huge amount. Do we have any members of the Spanish list on
osg-crew? Have you found it useful?

Are there other projects of similar size to the OSG that have vibrant
multiple language communities that we can learn from?

My guess is largely an issue of critical mass - if you don't have the
critical mass then a community flounders and dies, if you do then it
thrives. If a community is too big then itself can hinder things, so
have multiple related communities could avoid overload, but splitting
up a community into multiple micro communities could lead to none of
the communities having a healthy size and all struggling as a
consequence.

In my own ideal world we'd keep one community, but all have a babel
fish in our ears/and equivalent for our retina so we can all talk,
read and write in the language that we feel most comfortable, but have
communication automatically translated perfectly on demand when
communication comes in a different language.

There is certainly scope for someone to come up with a web
forum/mailing list/browser that can do the above... yes its impossible
dream, but we could get someone there with present technology.

Robert.

Bob Kuehne

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Jul 19, 2007, 9:01:57 AM7/19/07
to osg-...@googlegroups.com
On Jul 19, 2007, at 4:43 AM, Robert Osfield wrote:

> membership list which I can pass on to Dreamhost to import. Worst
> comes to worst we'll just have to post a message on the front of
> openscenegraph.com and get users subscribe themselves.

hi robert, i'd avoid trying to create another list. i hope you and
don can
get this hashed today, and things back up. my main concern is a
worry about fracturing the community between two lists.

i think a posting to the frontpage stating that the list is down is a
good
idea - but i'd avoid pointing them somewhere else, at least for now. if
this proves hard to resolve, then a new list is necessary. either on
whatever
host (dreamhost) or maybe even a google group...

bob

Robert Osfield

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Jul 19, 2007, 9:23:41 AM7/19/07
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Hi Bob,

On 7/19/07, Bob Kuehne <bobk...@gmail.com> wrote:
> hi robert, i'd avoid trying to create another list. i hope you and
> don can get this hashed today, and things back up. my main concern is a
> worry about fracturing the community between two lists.

There isn't and hasn't been any plans for having two lists. Rather
osg-users would migrate to the new servers. This migration has been
stalled waiting on Don to pass on control of the domains. Don has
been planning on revamping the old server and removing all the old
lists from it, the outage could be simple server failure, or perhaps
Don taking down the server to revamp it in which case it won't be
coming back up with osg-users on it at all.

FYI, the way that Dreamhost manage mailing lists is by using a lists
subdomain, so far I've been setting upi the prof. support lists using
mailing-...@lists.openscenegraph.com, the intention was to have
a osg-...@lists.openscenegraph.org which replaces
osg-...@openscenegraph.net.

> i think a posting to the frontpage stating that the list is down is a
> good
> idea - but i'd avoid pointing them somewhere else, at least for now.

Added.

>if
> this proves hard to resolve, then a new list is necessary. either on
> whatever
> host (dreamhost) or maybe even a google group...

The new list is necessary and will be hosted on Dreamhost - everything
is ready, its just the domain transfer that we've been waiting for.
Our (Jose and I) plan was to get everything in place then provide
Dreamhost the archive and user list to import into the new lists so
everybody would automatically move out without having to lift a
finger, beyond emailing osg-...@lists.openscenegraph.org rather than
osg-...@openscenegraph.net.

Robert.

Bob Kuehne

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Jul 19, 2007, 9:25:31 AM7/19/07
to osg-...@googlegroups.com
On Jul 19, 2007, at 9:23 AM, Robert Osfield wrote:

> everybody would automatically move out without having to lift a
> finger, beyond emailing osg-...@lists.openscenegraph.org rather than
> osg-...@openscenegraph.net.

i like this last bit - less work! :)

bob

Don Tidrow

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Jul 19, 2007, 10:46:32 AM7/19/07
to osg-...@googlegroups.com
Don mentioned yesterday on the Producer mailing list that he was moving his server, so it looks like the osg-users mailing list was an unintended casualty of that.  I'm kinda suprised too, I thought that they had all been moved over already.

Don

Robert Osfield

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Jul 19, 2007, 11:10:04 AM7/19/07
to osg-...@googlegroups.com
On 7/19/07, Don Tidrow <drti...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Don mentioned yesterday on the Producer mailing list that he was moving his
> server, so it looks like the osg-users mailing list was an unintended
> casualty of that. I'm kinda suprised too, I thought that they had all been
> moved over already.

Thanks for the info, even its a less good variation of what might have
happened...

Hopefully the mailman files will be recoverable so we can import them
into a new list. I've emailed d...@andesengineering.com but this
bounces, also email don....@gmail.com in the hope that this is his
email account.

Did Don say how long things would be down?

Robert.

Don Tidrow

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Jul 19, 2007, 2:55:05 PM7/19/07
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It was supposed to be back up this morning at the latest, so I'll send a message to the Producer mailing list and see if that one is back, at least.

Don

On 7/19/07, Robert Osfield <robert....@gmail.com> wrote:

Robert Osfield

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Jul 19, 2007, 3:36:45 PM7/19/07
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On 7/19/07, Don Tidrow <drti...@gmail.com> wrote:
> It was supposed to be back up this morning at the latest, so I'll send a
> message to the Producer mailing list and see if that one is back, at least.

I've got a reply from Don now. The server won't be coming back up
with an OSG mailing lists running it, and he said he's too busy right
now to help out get things migrated.

Jose and I have been waiting on Don to get name servers redirected,
something we needed done before we could set up
list.openscenegraph.org so were waiting on Don to get back to us. It
turns out that Don did this for us but told neither Jose and I about
it, and he didn't tell either of us about pulling the plug on the
server this week. This has left us rather unprepared, something that
was frustratingly avoidable given a little bit of consideration and
communication.

I guess Jose and I need to practice being clairvoyants...

At my end I've have tried to set up
osg-users/osg-sub...@lists.openscenegraph.com, but alas scripts
up on Dreamhost seem to have been foobared as its getting the names of
the lists wrong, tried and failed four times. I set up a couple of
prof. serv. lists list week using the same Dreamhost pages and it all
worked perfectly, so I guess its just make luck this week. I have a
support request in with Dreamhost to get this sorted out.

Robert.

Robert Osfield

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Jul 20, 2007, 5:36:07 AM7/20/07
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Hi Guys,

The new osg-users lists is now up and running. Until we can get the
membership and archive files Don's backups we can't import the old
members lists, this means for now we have to subscribe to the new
list.

http://lists.openscenegraph.org/listinfo.cgi/osg-users-openscenegraph.org

I've added notification of the new list on the OSG front page.

I've also set up osg-news and osg-submissions lists, but Dreamhost
scripts for setting up the lists have screwed up again... so the name
of the lists are wrong. I have support open with Dreamhost about
this, it looks like they fixed things, then it broke again... at
least osg-users is now back alive albeit without the 1700+ members
that used to be on it.

Argghgh what a mess. I've been trying to get things migrated for six
months, we've had the capacity to migrate the lists for a long time,
but has been held up waiting for Don to redirect things and pass on
domains to my control. I've not wanted to hassle Don about it and
deliberately have him space and let things go at his pace. I was
hoping that having Jose work with Don would help, both of them being
native Spanish speakers, but alas no. Perhaps other members of
osg-crew can pick up with getting Don to be a little more helpful.

Things that have been under Jose and my control have been migrated
pretty seamlessly - svn, website migration has all gone very smoothly.
Kudos to Jose for his many hours of assistance and his department for
funding the server and bandwidth.

Robert.

Bob Kuehne

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Jul 20, 2007, 9:32:14 AM7/20/07
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hi gang,

i know this transition is frustrating, but let's just get this
straightened
out - i'm sure there's responsibility to be shared many places, but
having
this deteriorate into another spate of 'Don V. Robert, Round 8, Blood
Sport -
Last One Standing' is deleterious to the community.

the new list is up, it sounds like the old membership will be xferred
at some
point, and let's just be happy to be in business again.

now, how about that osg 2.2? ;)

bob

Robert Osfield

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Jul 20, 2007, 11:13:23 AM7/20/07
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On 7/20/07, Bob Kuehne <bobk...@gmail.com> wrote:
> i know this transition is frustrating, but let's just get this
> straightened
> out - i'm sure there's responsibility to be shared many places, but
> having
> this deteriorate into another spate of 'Don V. Robert, Round 8, Blood
> Sport -
> Last One Standing' is deleterious to the community.

This isn't a Don VS Robert issue. Its a Don dumping us all in it issue.

Don is the one who pulled the plug on the server without telling me or
Jose that he was about to do. If he'd just written one email one hour
before pulling the plug we could have got the mailing list info off
the server and made good the transition.

> the new list is up, it sounds like the old membership will be xferred
> at some point, and let's just be happy to be in business again.

I was happy till you starting stirring the pot.

Jose and I have been trying to get things migrated safely for the past
six months. Everything else we got migrated safely and without
improvements with service along the way too. Everything that was
fully under out control we got migrated.

Trying to play games of oh everyone has to share responsibility not
help one bit. I take responsibility for things I have control over, I
can even take responsibility for rubbing Don up the wrong way. But
what Don did here was not nice, to you to me, to Jose, to everybody in
the OSG community.

None of us are Saints. We all have bad days. That's life.

What I'm interested in here is resolving the issues that are left. We
still need to sort out the archives and importing the members lists.
I can't sort some of these issue out - I can't get the archives or
members lists, and domains transferred without Don's help. After
what's happened this week, I'm really pissed off with Don, I really
have no interests in communicating with him again, Don still clearly
has contempt for myself too. So.. to get this sorted we need others
to step in, one more diplomatic than myself, and perhaps more
diplomatic than you Bob given your last email.

This stuff won't get sorted auto-magically. Jose and I have done what
we can at our end. The new lists are up. So far only 31 members have
made it across. This means another 1700 more... how many might we
loose along the way? Is there any point in having discussions or
broadcasting messages till more than a 2% of the community are
listening?

Clearly not having the membership lists imported is serious issue for
the community. I'm not a mailman expert, so could one with a little
more expertise indentify which files we need to get from Don's backup?
If we can pass on exactly which files we need then perhaps Don will
be able to get these too us more quickly. We also need someone other
than myself or Jose to chase up Don on this.

There is also the matter of the ownership of the openscenegraph.net
and openscenegraph.org domains. Don still owns these and we had
discussed his passing these own to me. This hasn't happened in the
past 8 months since he jumped ship. Perhaps we need to get another
independent entity/persons to take over the domains so avoid any need
for Don to assign them to me.

> now, how about that osg 2.2? ;)

Until the community is back online line any discussion of 2.2 is
probably premature. We need the community to do testing for us.

I will make a 2.1.2 next Monday, but this just requires me to make a tag.

Robert.

Jan Ciger

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Jul 23, 2007, 4:22:44 AM7/23/07
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-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Hi Robert,

Robert Osfield wrote:
>
> Clearly not having the membership lists imported is serious issue for
> the community. I'm not a mailman expert, so could one with a little
> more expertise indentify which files we need to get from Don's
> backup?

The subscribers list can be produced using the list_members command:
http://www.penguin-soft.com/penguin/man/8/list_members.html

E.g. list_members osg-users

Redirect the resulting output into a file (or use the -o switch) and
then you can load/copy&paste the content into the list administration
interface where you can mass subscribe users. It is probably possible to
subscribe them from command line too, but this was simpler to do.

If Don has removed the list from his Mailman installation already, then
it will be more messy - we will need to recover the installation from
backup, get it "installed" so that the commands will find the files in
right places and then extract the data. The main problem is that the
information is stored in binary databases, not straight text files, so
it is easier to extract it while the old system is still running.

Regarding the archives - it should be enough to copy & unpack the
correct archive files, they are by default in
/var/lib/mailman/archives/, but the location can be changed by the admin.

Here is a good case study on how to move a Mailman installation between
servers:
http://www.nsrc.org/helpdesk/mailman-move.html

>
> There is also the matter of the ownership of the openscenegraph.net
> and openscenegraph.org domains. Don still owns these and we had
> discussed his passing these own to me. This hasn't happened in the
> past 8 months since he jumped ship. Perhaps we need to get another
> independent entity/persons to take over the domains so avoid any need
> for Don to assign them to me.

Well, if he doesn't willingly pass them over to either you or somebody
else, you will have to either sue or find another domain name, I am
afraid. Why do you think that he will transfer them to e.g. me or
somebody else if he didn't do it for you in the previous 8 months?

Regards,

Jan
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