BALUG-Admin September 2007

balug-admin@lists.balug.org

3 participants
6 discussions

Re: [Balug-Admin] consider changing the format ... brief time that lets people make announcements
by Michael Paoli 21 Sep '07

21 Sep '07

I think we more-or-less already do that, ... just not all that formally. Typically, frequently, commonly just before the talk/presentation starts, and/or around when the more formal part of talk/presentation ends, we tend to make, and allow for brief announcements (e.g. plug our upcoming meetings events, other events of note, and if someone wants to make a quite brief announcement that's relevant, they can). Quoting jim stockford: > we might consider changing the meeting format > to allow what bayPIGgies call "mapping", a brief > time that lets people make announcements > (including a plea for a ride after the meeting) > such as hiring and other things. > seems to me possible good times for such an > interlude would be at the start of dinner or just > before the speaker begins. probably limit total > time to five or seven minutes, each speaker > getting maybe 60 seconds.

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BALUG "todo" list, volunteering, miscellaneous; etc.
by Michael Paoli 19 Sep '07

19 Sep '07

It's slightly out-of-date already, but a bit over 2 weeks ago, I started a BALUG "todo" list on a wiki page: http://sf-lug.com/wiki/doku.php?id=balug_todo_list Rough ideas and rationale on the list: * easier/better to have it in a (relatively) consistent spot, be able to update, etc. (as compared to archived list e-mails) * idea (thus far) to roughly rank things from highest to lowest priority down the list - but also group related/dependant tasks together where that makes sense. If there's stuff you feel needs or ought to be done (or even "wish-list" items - can go towards tail end of list), feel free to note/update on there ... especially if you're actively working on any of these various BALUG tasks and related stuff (e.g. general administrivia and organizational stuff, systems administration and/or web stuff for BALUG sites, speaker coordination, etc.) If folks want to do more with/for BALUG, feel free to volunteer. The "admin" list has probably been at least a slight bit quieter than it ought to. Much of the day-to-day administrivia happens via off-list communication - mostly using the BALUG e-mail aliases found under: http://www.balug.org/#Contact The "admin" list has a larger audience - and is also publicly archived (and thus not suitable for all of the communications). I try to encourage folks (and try to also remember myself) to - if there's no reason not to have it publicly archived and visible to all, to send it to the "admin" list, rather than just off-list e-mail alias(es) (all of us on those aliases are also on the "admin" list). Perhaps I (and/or others) will update the "todo" list soon, but some of the stuff we're working on: * new(er) web site stuff (beta.balug.org, etc.) * Dec. 2007 - no BALUG meeting * Feb. 2008 meeting date - any venue conflicts with Chinese New Year? * BALUG meeting food at restaurant (tweak/overhaul our "standard affair" food) * BALUG "steering" committee(?) - working to get some of us BALUG administrivia "movers and shakers" (okay, those who do some or much of that work) in a bit more regular real-time interactive communication to work on generally better planning and improving BALUG stuff (e-mail only gets us so far). In any case, hopefully the "todo" list (wiki page) gives one at least a rough overview of things BALUG would like to get done and in many cases where BALUG could make use of additional assistance/resources. If you want to volunteer and help BALUG, feel free to drop a note to balug-contact(a)balug.org (or one of the e-mail addresses under http://www.balug.org/#Contact if you're only interested in assisting with that particular role/area).

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BALUG announcment is out (John D. Mitchell), etc.
by Michael Paoli 08 Sep '07

08 Sep '07

The announcment is out: http://lists.balug.org/pipermail/balug-announce-balug.org/2007-September/00… I Bcced: John D. Mitchell when I sent it. I also forwarded a short note to 4 additional UGs - and have thus far seen it show up on 3 of those 4 UG lists (haven't seen it show up on Oakland perl Mongers - at least yet, anyway: http://mail.pm.org/pipermail/oakland/2007-September/date.html ): ----- Forwarded message from Michael Paoli ----- Date: Fri, 7 Sep 2007 23:30:44 -0700 From: Michael Paoli Subject: BALUG 2007-09-18: John D. Mitchell, Krugle Chief Architect - Find and reuse code; etc. To: Bay Area Debian <bad(a)bad.debian.net>, Berkeley Unix User Group <buug(a)weak.org>, SF-LUG <sf-lug(a)linuxmafia.com>, Oakland Perl Mongers <oakland(a)pm.org> Bay Area Linux Users Group (BALUG) BALUG 2007-09-18: John D. Mitchell, Krugle Chief Architect - Find and reuse code; etc. BALUG 2007-10-16: Paddy Sreenivasan of Zmanda The announcement (that and other details): http://lists.balug.org/pipermail/balug-announce-balug.org/2007-September/00… For the latest information, check the BALUG site: http://www.balug.org/ ----- End forwarded message -----

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Fwd: beta.balug.org. (?) and other useful ideas?
by Michael Paoli 05 Sep '07

05 Sep '07

Originally sent to the BALUG contact, webmaster, and sysadmins aliases, presented here slightly redacted: ----- Forwarded message from Michael Paoli <Michael.Paoli(a)cal.berkeley.edu> ----- Date: Fri, 31 Aug 2007 20:10:35 -0700 From: Michael Paoli <Michael.Paoli(a)cal.berkeley.edu> Reply-To: balug-sysadmins(a)balug.org Subject: beta.balug.org. (?) and other useful ideas? To: balug-contact(a)balug.org, balug-sysadmins(a)balug.org Cc: balug-webmaster(a)balug.org Anyway, a couple of (random?) thoughts/ideas that may be rather to quite useful - or perhaps at least so in part. A) beta.balug.org.? One of the issues that's been going on for a while is the "tension" between: Preserve/restore all the useful old stuff as much as feasible (and move it to new appropriate manageable home) - even if it means lots of newer/spiffier stuff is deferred for quite a while and: The heck with that, let's run from that old unmanageable mess as fast as possible even if we have to give up trying to save any of the old stuff, just start fresh, and kiss the old stuff bye-bye. One possible approach (there may be other approaches that would do similarly) on that that may rather substantially well cover *both* of the "competing"/"/conflicting" objectives might be roughly as follows: a) create beta.balug.org. We can mention/promote it on www.balug.org. (e.g. link to cool stuff on beta.balug.org. that isn't available/feasible to do (yet anyway) on www.balug.org.) - but continue to present core useful information on www.balug.org. (and presumably likewise include that or quite similar content on beta.balug.org.) We can create a separate beta.balug.org (highly analogous to how we've created new.balug.org ... doesn't even have to be on the same system ... could be anywhere). We could go *relatively* hog wild on beta.balug.org., but we'd want to observe a few "restrictions" ... just enough that would 1) allow us to later smoothly integrate www.balug.org. and beta.balug.org into a smooth homogeneous unified www.balug.org. and 2) provide *reasonably* consistent information between www.balug.org. and beta.balug.org. (e.g. we don't want them providing conflicting information) 1) would mostly involve some relatively simple rules on URL construction, such that in the future we could redirect http[s]://beta.balug.org/<whatever> to http[s]://www.balug.org/<whatever> and users(/bookmarks/search engines) would find essentially that same content they were looking for at the beta URL that would be then getting (301 "permanent") redirected (at some future post-unification date and time). Using this type of a beta.balug.org. approach could help us well cover both of the "competing" (save, preserve, and move, vs. drop and run) approaches on dealing with the "old" (DreamHost.com hosted) stuff. The name(s) used needn't be specifically and precisely beta.balug.org., but we would want to pick exactly what name(s) we'd be using quite carefully and with due technical and other considerations. Our DNS limitations with DreamHost.com impose some slight restrictions (we can't pick completely arbitrary names), but as long as we avoid name conflict with DreamHost.com DNS names (that are more-or-less effectively "mandatory" with a domain hosted there), we're relatively free to pick a name, and can delegate it via DNS - quite like the case is presently with new.balug.org. B) Additional colo box(es)? <redacted> may have a bit more to say on this. There was some talk(/offer?) of providing a (possibly virtual) new/additional host for BALUG (presumably in a colo, or other reliably hosted infrastructure/location). While at first reaction I may have stated/thought "Naw, we really don't need that, have the old stuff we're moving off of, and have stuff we can share and do on the SF-LUG.com box", since then my thinking and opinion has shifted, mainly because a) once we're finally and completely moved off of all DreamHost.com hosted, that would leave us with exactly one system ... though we may have backups of stuff elsewhere, it doesn't give us a highly reliable infrastructure (one significant booboo <redacted> or a significant hardware problem, or long maintenance outage, etc.), and that box could be effectively blown out of the water for days or more - and it could be quite a while before BALUG on-line infrastructure was operational again (approximately up to days or more). b) It would be quite nice to have BALUG have a much more robust infrastructure set-up. E.g. two independent systems (either or both of which could be virtual, or shared resources on a common box, so long as the two systems were highly independent (not both on same box or at same location)), so that BALUG infrastructure could continue to function at least reasonably, and perhaps identically or nearly so, if either system were to suddenly become unavailable for a while (even a fairly long while). As a random comment, I'll also note that this is (or will be) much more an issue for BALUG, than SF-LUG, as SF-LUG has two systems (SF-LUG.com and SF-LUG.org - highly independent and separate systems). Anyway, being able to reasonably gain a substantially independent system, that could be used for redundancy, failover, etc. could be a really good thing for BALUG - especially as and when we move fully clear of DreamHost.com ----- End forwarded message -----

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Fwd: new.balug.org vs.(?) beta.balug.org (Re: beta.balug.org. (?) and other useful ideas?)
by Michael Paoli 05 Sep '07

05 Sep '07

And some information/clarification on new vs. beta (somewhat different purposes). Also, since that earlier e-mail (later on 2007-09-01) some infrastructure has been put in place to automagically propagate at least some web content from http://www.new.balug.org/ to http://www.balug.org/ Also, at least some initial bits of the beta.balug.org. infrastructure have been put into place (DNS, a very minimal bit of web stuff - doesn't yet have it's own DocumentRoot separate from new.balug.org, but that will likely happen in the near future). references/excerpts: ----- Forwarded message from Michael Paoli <Michael.Paoli(a)cal.berkeley.edu> ----- Date: Sat, 1 Sep 2007 20:57:48 -0700 From: Michael Paoli <Michael.Paoli(a)cal.berkeley.edu> Reply-To: Michael Paoli <Michael.Paoli(a)cal.berkeley.edu> Subject: new.balug.org vs.(?) beta.balug.org (Re: beta.balug.org. (?) and other useful ideas?) To: balug-webmaster(a)balug.org, balug-sysadmins(a)balug.org Cc: balug-contact(a)balug.org This is primarily for our webmaster(s), but also for our BALUG systems administrators and (at least key) contacts, to be sure we're all at least reasonably "on the same page". A) new.balug.org. - please treat it (at least almost) like production - certainly at least in terms of web page content and the like (at least for stuff on/under http://www.new.balug.org/ on (default of) port 80. I will likely quite soon set up mechanism(s) to automagically replicate at least specific web content (page(s)) from http://www.new.balug.org/ (certainly at least including the main page there) to the main BALUG page (http://www.balug.org/) (for lazy (or efficient) typists, the www. can be ommitted in those URLs, and that will likely always be the case). This will also make life a bit easier for our webmasters :-) B) new.balug.org isn't the (proposed) beta.balug.org, nor will it be (though they may share the same IP address). new.balug.org. has mostly been and will become staging for production www.balug.org. Longer term, new.balug.org would likely replace www.balug.org (taking www.balug.org's name). Even longer term (at least as thus far proposed - exactly in what order things change might be subject to change) beta.balug.org would eventually merge its functionality into www.balug.org (and as beta.balug.org went or faded away, it would redirect what's migrated to the location of that material on www.balug.org.) C) beta.balug.org - at least thus far hearing mostly positive feedback on the idea, I'll probably soon start to proceed more in that direction (no "heavy" investments until I'm sure we have something between consensus and at least a quite overwhelming supermajority). ----- End forwarded message -----

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stats: list membership (~457 total uniques)
by Michael Paoli 03 Sep '07

03 Sep '07

list subscribers (does include also those with delivery disabled): $ wc -l */memb*`date -I` 27 balug-admin/membership_2007-09-03 264 balug-announce/membership_2007-09-03 258 balug-talk/membership_2007-09-03 And a rough approximation of unique e-mail addresses (note that some folks use unique per-list addresses): $ sort -u */membership_*`date -I` | wc -l 457 Note also that it appears we have a fairly large number of folks that are subscribed to "talk", but *NOT* subscribed to "announce". Theoretically (at least logically) that shouldn't be the case (in general - typically exceptions being per-list e-mail addresses), but it is totally under "user" control. A quick count of that: $ { sort -u balug-talk/membership_`date -I` > cat balug-announce/membership_`date -I` \ > balug-announce/membership_`date -I`; } | sort | uniq -u | wc -l 185 references: http://lists.balug.org/pipermail/balug-admin-balug.org/2007-July/000391.html http://www.balug.org/#Lists file://new.balug.org/home/balug/e-mail_lists/

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BALUG-Admin September 2007