BALUG email was down on 2017-11-30, it's back up again. Sorry for any inconvenience.
I may put more details on relevant BALUG list(s) sometime later. In the meantime, for the interested/curious, see: http://linuxmafia.com/pipermail/sf-lug/2017q4/013009.html
And as for the balug VM (which hosts most everything BALUG), on 2017-11-30 it was updated from: Debian GNU/Linux 8.9 (jessie) x86_64 (oldstable) to: Debian GNU/Linux 9.2 (stretch) x86_64 (stable) excepting for the (non-Debian caused) email glitch, all went quite smoothly and service interruption was quite minimal. Key among minimizing service downtime in general, under: https://www.debian.org/releases/stretch/amd64/release-notes/ch-upgrading.en.... followed the procedures for: "If the system being upgraded provides critical services for your users or the network[2], you can reduce the downtime if you" ... and additionally, obtained/downloaded all needed packages in advance. E.g.: # apt-get -y -d upgrade; apt-get -y -d dist-upgrade ... and that was after pre-filling cache (/var/cache/apt/archives/) with .deb packages I already had (from earlier downloads of package(s) and/or on Debian ISO(s)).