[Seattle-editorial] Fwd: [Seasc] URGENT: Your IMC site

Tue Nov 4 11:01:33 PST 2003

in case this hasn't come to the editorial list.  
====== Forwarded Message ======
Date: 11/4/03 10:06 AM
Received: 11/4/03 6:13 PM -0000
From: imc-tech at lists.indymedia.org
To: seasc at indymedia.org

Dear $IMC tech contact,

This message contains *URGENT* time-critical information that you and
your IMC absolutely have to act on, or the IMC-tech group will be
forced to make some decisions for you. Please read this message
completely. We regret we have not had more time to contact you further
in advance.

Topics contained in this email:
o Background: Stallman is going away
    . Whats going to be done?
    . Whats the impact on me and my IMC?
    . Why do we need to migrate the code also?
    . What are our options for migration?
    . How much time do we have to decide on a new code-base?
    . What do I need to do?
o Great! We wanted to redesign the site anyways, can you help with that?
o Donations needed!

* Background: Stallman is going away

Stallman, the primary webserver for Indymedia is losing[1] its
colocation on DECEMEBER 1st. You are being contacted because your IMC
website is on this machine. Free hosting ends DECEMBER 1st, with the
option of keeping the box at its current location until JANUARY 1st
for $250/mo, at which point, the plug gets pulled.  This does not come
as a complete surprise as we've long known that the centralization
represented in Stallman, while instrumental in some of IMC's rapid
growth and accessibility is also a vulnerability. 

We have been working over the last year and a half to decentralize our
hosting to minimize such a problem. We have done good hard work, at
one high-point stallman hosted over 82 IMC sites, now there are
currently only about 30 sites remaining on Stallman using a sustained
160kB/sec of traffic, the largest being www.indymedia.org.

In order to prevent something like this happening again, and to
continue to embrace our decentralized model, we strongly urge local
collectives to be looking into hosting options for themselves, or into
allying with other regional IMCs for hosting.  Similarly we feel that
it is important that each local collective, to the extent of its
available resource take over maintence, up keep, and migration of its
website.  IMC-Tech will try to migrate sites remaining on Stallman to
a new server, and a new codebase, but we can't guarentee there won't
be downtime, performance loss, or even, worst case, lost data.

* What is going to be done? 

PANIC! OH NO! WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO! AGGH CRISIS!! PANIC!@ OMG!!!!
ITS THE FBI, WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE!!! RUNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN!!!!! CALL UP
AUNT MAY, TELL HER TO DUST THE BOMB SHELTER, GO BUY ALL THE RAMEN,
SALTED BEEF, AND HARDTACK FROM THE STORE!!@!#@#!@#

Don't panic, we'll do that for you. We've got a number of options that
we are pursuing to relocate the Stallman hosted sites, we've secured
replacement hardware, and have a number of alternative colocation
options available that we are working on. We are coordinating things
on this[2] wiki page, and also on IRC.

* Whats the impact on me and my IMC?

Two things impact you, as a hosted site on Stallman. One is that we
have to move your site, the second is that we actually have to
*migrate* your site to a different code-base. Your site is one of the
sites that is running very old legacy IMC code, called "Active". In
order to move your site, we need to migrate it to a different, more
modern code-base. 

* Why do we need to migrate the code also?

The reasons why you need to switch are the following:

	. we cannot support Active code, nobody knows how to, and nobody
	  wants to

	. the active code is not being developed any more

    . we consider active to be a waste of resources (human, database,
	  disk) in comparision with the newer alternatives

	. the currently hosted sites on stallman all are various different
	  revisions of the Active code, unknown versions, half upgraded,
	  half patched in some places, completely hacked in others, this
	  makes dealing with these sites a major pain

	. the more modern code is easier to manage, is nicer on our hardware
	  and bandwidth (it makes much more effective use of our resources)

    . most people think the other more modern code options are more 
	  visually appealing from the outset

 	. the more modern code options make administrative and technical tasks
	  far more easier and obvious: customizing the look and feel, dealing
	  with newswire spam, etc.

	. the newer code has many more delightful features, such as categories,
  	  templating, multilingual support, calendaring, searching,
	  syndication, most importat, they are being currently worked on
	  and supported!

* What are our options for migration?

There are three alternatives to Active that we will be migrating sites
to, Mir, SF-Active, or Dada. There are some other options available,
but we have chosen these because we feel they are the most supported
and we have the knowledge and resources at our disposal to migrate to
these. These are the only alternatives that we will be migrating to
from Stallman. 

You are welcome to pick something else and set up your own server and
migrate your site, but it has to be done before our deadline. If you
want to do something different, please have a look at various
options[3] available, also you can see people's opinions and
experiences with the different code bases here[4].

* How much time do we have to decide on a new code-base?  

Unfortunately, not much time. Due to the time critical nature of this
issue, we have to make the deadline of two weeks from the date of this
email. We are in the process of setting up servers to migrate your
site to, and if you have not chosen a replacement code-base at the end
of this deadline, we will be forced to migrate your site to whichever
we chose among Dada, Sf-active and Mir according to the resources
available at our discretion.

* What do I need to do?

You need to talk to your IMC collective and make a decision about
which code-base you want to migrate to. We will work with you to
transfer your existing content to the new code, and help you get
everything up trying to limit any significant down-time in the
process. Once you have decided, please send an email to
imc-tech at lists.indymedia.org.

We *will* move all IMCs hosted on stallman off of old Active, so if
nobody from your IMC ever responds, at some point we will make a
choice for you. 

* Great! We wanted to redesign the site anyways, can you help with that?

Unfortunately, we don't even have enough time to migrate sites to the
new servers, much less do a redesign of them all. This is a big
project, and we are already swamped with work. A lot of people are
dissatisfied with the layout of their current IMC site and want to
change that, we understand that. The good news is part of the
migration to a new code-base means your look-and-feel of your IMC site
will change to the default layout of the particular code-base that you
choose, all of these are incredible improvements over Active's default
design. In addition, Active was very difficult to customize, the newer
code-bases have the advantage that they are much simpler to make
design changes to them. So we ask that you hold off on any cosmetic
design changes until the site has been migrated.

* DONATIONS NEEDED!

The IMC-Tech working group needs your immediate donations in order to
purchase new servers and locate new hosting spaces by the 01 Dec 2003
deadline. Donations of hardware or hosting are also very welcome!

We are asking anyone who can to make a donation of $5. With a positive
response from the large numbers of Indymedia contributors and
sympathizers, we hope to raise the funds necessary. If you have more
resources, we encourage you to donate whatever you can: $25, $50,
$100, $500.

Please email imc-tech at lists.indymedia.org. Let people know that they
can donate via Paypal. Or if you know anyone who might have the
following to donate, please contact us:

Server class hardware:

    * Pre-built rackmount or tower servers
    * Server components for custom-built servers
    * PC Weasel's (please email imc-tech at lists.indymedia.org
                   for info first)
    * Additional hard drives
    * Additional memory

Server hosting:

    * Colocation or bandwidth

1. http://lists.indymedia.org/pipermail/imc-sysadmin/2003-October/002450.html
2. http://docs.indymedia.org/view/Sysadmin/ServerCoordination
3. http://docs.indymedia.org/view/Devel/WebHome, also you can see
4. http://docs.indymedia.org/view/Devel/OpinonsExperiences.
_______________________________________________
Seasc mailing list
Seasc at lists.indymedia.org
http://lists.indymedia.org/mailman/listinfo/seasc

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