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://%5Bwww%5D.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... * 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://%5Bwww.%5Dbalug.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