[Balug-admin] http://www.balug.org/ updated! :-) (& related information)

[Michael Paoli]

http://www.balug.org/ updated! :-) (& related information)

Ah, ... at least our most immediate "crisis" has been solved "well
enough" for now, anyway.  Still lots more work to do, though.

As of 2007-05-26T19:47:19-0700
http://www.balug.org/
and
http://balug.org/
give a reasonably current view of reality - basically, updated
(rather simplified, for at least now, but at least current!) home
page.  At least that's probably the most pressing item that's now
finally (at least reasonably enough for the moment) taken care of.

Some more details for the curious and/or interested:

Those two URLs noted above still go to the "old" site (which I
finally got access to earlier today).  I just dropped in a working
index.html file (copied from the "new" site), which takes
precedence over the relatively (directly or indirectly) broken
index.php file - which is still there and viewable, just append
index.php
to the URLs noted above, and you'll still see it (appending
index.html
will also get you the new page on the "old" site).
Also, these will get you direct to the new site:
http://www.new.balug.org/
http://new.balug.org/

The "[www.]new.balug.org." DNS entries may be transitional and eventually go
away, but I'm inclined to have us keep them until a fair while after
we've settled any transition issues and such.

The DreamHost.com entanglements won't be exceedingly trivial to separate
out and migrate from when we wish to do so.  Although there's a *fair* amount
of flexibility on what we can do on there, there's also a lot we *can't* do
on there.  When we are ready to move off of DreamHost.com, it would probably
be best to move *entirely* off of DreamHost.com, but once we do that, it might
be much more difficult and/or infeasible to resurrect much of the web
stuff we've had on there (looks like the data's probably all there -
most likely just have to fix some stuff to pull things off in a more
easily useable format).

Here's a brief synopsis of the current situation, and a bit of the
more recent changes as to how we got to this situation (if anyone has
corrections, feel free to chime in, but this is my current
understanding of the situation and a bit of its history):
* Late last year, and perhaps into early(ish) this year, [www.]balug.org.
  was hosted on a dedicated DreamHost.com system (which Michael
  Hubbard was graciously paying for).
* Around that time, we needed to relocate [www].balug.org, as Michael
  Hubbard was changing hosting plans with DreamHost.com, and
  [www.]balug.org. would no longer be on a dedicated host.  The BALUG
  lists also had to be moved (or at least reconfigured or something
  like that).
* The lists went through some transitions - for a while they weren't
  working, but after things settled down a bit, they were working
  again, as before the move(/reconfiguration) ... with same URLs and
  e-mail addresses, and all that (at least as far as I'm aware).
* Meanwhile, [www.]balug.org. got moved (Michael Hubbard again took
  care of most of that for us).  But unfortunately some things broke
  (it was moved to a shared hosting service on a non-dedicated
  DreamHost.com host).  Most notably, the wiki stuff hasn't (at least
  yet, thus far) been returned to working operation since the move.
  We would like to very much get those wiki pages restored (or at least
  all the HTML page stuff from them), as it includes about 3 years of
  BALUG history and other useful resources (meeting minutes, presenter
  information, presentation/slides and such, and links to such,
  information for speakers, speaker coordination resources, updated
  spiffier information on directions to the meeting location, etc.). -
  anyway, lots of useful work and history there that we'd like to
  retrieve and make use of again - at least so long as such looks
  potentially feasible.  For a while, however, the main
  http://[www].balug.org/ web site page was still functional - so it
  did get updated (including information about the lists being
  temporarily down) ... then that main page subsequently broke such
  that apparently none of us (except Michael Hubbard) had the access
  necessary to get it working again (and there it mostly sat - at
  least until today, anyway).
* Also, in the meantime, myself and others (notably Jim Stockford)
  began work on a "new" (/alternate) site - the proposed future home
  of balug.org. (as of today it's in DNS as new.balug.org.).  The
  "new" box is one owned by Jim Stockford, and located in a colo
  facility.  The "new" system exists primarily for SF-LUG, but Jim
  Stockford and SF-LUG also graciously share its use with BALUG.  One
  can read more about that here:
http://www.sf-lug.com/wiki/doku.php?id=system:system_administration_rules_of_the_road_this_box
* present status and game plan is roughly this:
  * set up infrastructure on and for "new" system to take on all of
    the "old" balug.org. functionality and information we wish to preserve
  * as long as it remains feasible, pursue retrieving noteworthy pages
    that had earlier been working on the "old" balug.org site
  * move/transition to the "new" site
  * done:
    * basic web infrastructure for BALUG on "new" host
    * update http://[www.]balug.org/ (got access and completed today!)
    * DNS infrastructure on "new" host to accept delegation to "new"
      host as primary master of balug.org. domain
    * install list software on "new" host
  * pending:
    * retrieve noteworthy older balug.org. web pages (most notably
      last few years of wiki pages)
    * regular and automated off-site backups of all important data and
      meta-data (e.g. configuration data) of interest to BALUG that
      resides on the "new" host.
    * configure list software on "new" host to be poised to take over
      the existing BALUG lists and to have their archive history and
      subscribers (and if feasible their passwords and options) all
      transfered to the "new" host.  This should be done as smoothly
      as feasible (at least a few hundred or more users are
      impacted), and preserving functionality of existing URLs and
      such (e.g. so archive messages linked to won't all end up with
      their links broken).
    * DNS:
      * fully prepare infrastructure for delegation (slave setups
        still pending - looks like we've received good offers for
        slave DNS services)
      * delegate Internet balug.org. DNS to "new" host (as primary
        master) and the NS slaves.  To avoid potential nasty problems,
        it may be necessary to defer this until we're ready to move
        completely away from DreamHost.com.
    * configure mail software to more properly take over mail for
      balug.org. domain; separate out sf-lug.com. and ("new" host)
      balug.org.  entanglements - e.g. they should be able to have
      separate aliases, configurations, even be able to run
      independent mail software, if/when desired.
    * more advanced web infrastructure for BALUG on "new" host (e.g.
      integration with list software, perhaps addition of wiki, etc.)

references:
http://lists.balug.org/pipermail/balug-admin-balug.org/2007-May/000365.html