[CIMC-work] Server status

[Ian Bicking]

I thought I should give a little status on the server.

Sorry I didn't make the last meeting.  I also haven't been keeping that 
up-to-date with other stuff.  My fault, I just haven't been as involved 
as I should be.  People should feel free to bug me about these things.

I asked Micah, and it looks like a new server is being set up 
("Calyx"... I think that's the name of the hosting provider, I'm not 
sure what the server's name will be), and it should be ready on Monday 
or so.  The plan is to move to dada on this server.  I'll be trying as 
fast as I can to get a dada installation up and configured.  
Configuration will mostly be in the form of style and layout, vaguely 
like our current site (but I'm not going to try too hard -- that of all 
things is easy to change later).  I probably will leave most things 
like they are out of the box -- we can always change stuff later.  I'll 
set up an administrator and editor account, using the same password we 
are using now.  Then we shut down publishing on our current site, 
migrate content, and redirect the nameservers to our new site.  
Hopefully this last step can be done in less than a day.

Considering the time frame (Stallman disappearing on December 1st, I 
believe -- the option exists to pay to extend that time, but I haven't 
heard either way about that), and the interruption of Thanksgiving (I'm 
going back to Minneapolis for a couple days at least), time is short.  
So I probably won't have a chance to get a lot of feedback.  But we've 
already discussed all this stuff, so I don't think there should be any 
surprises.  I wish I could give people ways that they could help, but 
there aren't that many that I can think of.  Certainly if you want to 
keep track of some of the stuff going on, joining the imc-tech list can 
give you some idea.  The chat room at #tech or #server_crisis on 
irc.indymedia.org is often where most of the nitty gritty goes on, 
though (and, in general, the best place to go for a quick answer).  The 
www-migration list also is discussing this, but I haven't followed that 
list -- I think it's largely about migrating www.indymedia.org (they 
are also changing codebases, which as you might imagine is a much more 
complex process, politically and technically, than for the local IMCs).

Anyway, that's the status.  I really will start working on this... I 
feel a little better about being lazy, though, since the server isn't 
actually ready yet.  (I really have to check, I'm not sure how we can 
be shutting down Stallman on Dec 1).

   Ian