[Balug-admin] I'd like to help

[Michael Hubbard]

Michael Paoli wrote:

>To do / wish list items (not necessarily a complete list):
>Mailing lists - get the "old(er)" publicly accessible list archives
>back on-line.
>  
>
Both balug-talk and balug-announce are public now.  Balug-admin is 
private.  Apparently the default option was private... I didn't notice it.

>Consistent URLs - seems the URLs of the archives have bounced about
>a lot - they should be consistent, so older links work (directly or
>via redirect), and all the archives for a given list (and its replacement,
>and its replacement's replacement, ...) should be reasonably findable
>under a common URL or URL scheme.  One of the things I noticed with
>some Google searching and peeking at Google cache last time the list broke ...
>apparently this recent episode isn't the first time the list has been broken
>and set up
>with a different list name and a different archive location (/URLs) ...
>get it together (literally, at least).
>The latest round of *replacement* list names are significantly longer
>e-mail addresses (both local part and domain) - we should carefully
>consider what they should be for the "permanent" e-mail addresses used
>for each list, and carefully work to get to that goal (e.g.
>balug-talk-balug.org@lists.balug.org
>is rather long, not-so-user-friendly and relatively redundant e-mail address
>for a BALUG talk list)
>  
>
This is a "dreamhost" issue.  Because I don't have direct access or 
control of their mailman setup, when I chose to setup the mailing lists 
there, I didn't realize that they would append balug-talk with all that 
other garbage.  This probably can't be changed unless the mailing lists 
are hosted elsewhere (someone else would need to take that on).

If anyone feels like taking this on, I will GLADLY give full access (as 
much as I have) to the site/mailing list data, etc.

>Quoting Rick Moen <rick@linuxmafia.com>:
>
>  
>
>>I'd be glad to help with the mailing list and Web site.  I've been with
>>BALUG since the beginning, and am an experienced Mailman listadmin and
>>Linux sysadmin.
>>    
>>
Great, hopefully Dick/Larry will get in touch with you about this (to 
see if they agree).  I will GLADLY help get you access to all the data 
for the big move.

>>1.  balug-talk's archive has always been publicly accessible.  Suddenly,
>>the new one isn't.  Problems:  (1) It's not what the membership 
>>has always wanted and expected, and (more primarily because) (2) a big
>>part of the point of answering questions publicly is to advance the
>>state of collective knowledge, e.g., by people finding the questions &
>>answers via Web search.
>>    
>>
Fixed... see above.

>>My 2 cents:  This change really shoots BALUG in the foot.  Please un-do
>>it ASAP.
>>
>>
>>2.  Host "lists.balug.org" doesn't accept mail to the postmaster account
>>as required by RFC2821 and numerous other SMTP standards.
>>(Specifically, it 550-rejects such mail with a "user unknown" message.)
>>This ensures that mail from BALUG will be (needlessly and avoidably)
>>discarded or rejected as probable spam, _and_ denies members of the
>>public to use of a required administrative contact in case there's
>>something wrong.
>>
>>(If this is something "dreamhost" screws up globally and is not under
>>Michael's control, please just say so.)
>>
>>    
>>
This is a dreamhost thing, not my doing.  Yet another wonderful reason 
for someone to take over the site / mailing lists.  :)

>>3.  http://lists.balug.org/private.cgi/balug-talk-balug.org/2005-March/
>>has some mis-parsed entries in it, that appear to be fragments of prior
>>years' mails to balug-talk.  This is almost certainly fixable, but will 
>>require command-line access (to edit the mbox file) and ability to
>>regenerate the Pipermail archive.
>>
>>To see what I'm talking about, look at the 15 entries marked "No
>>subject".
>>
>>    
>>
I doubt we would be able to fix this ourselves while the mailing lists 
are hosted with dreamhost... though I could submit a ticket for them to 
fix it.  Maybe this could wait until the mailing lists move again...

>>5.  Attempting to bring up the BALUG calendar 
>>
>>    
>>
>(http://www.balug.org/index.php?module=PostCalendar&func=view&tplview=&viewtype=day&Date=20050326&pc_username=&pc_category=&pc_topic=&print=)
>  
>
>>shows this at the top of the page:
>>
>>Warning: Smarty error: problem creating directory
>>
>>    
>>
>"modules/PostCalendar/pntemplates/cache/dad8523a2e18f1929871d45a6df8aac5/%%164/%%1643473877"
>  
>
>>in
>>
>>    
>>
>/home/.bluebellblender/miamlh1/balug.org/modules/PostCalendar/pnincludes/Smarty/Smarty.class.php
>  
>
>>on line 589
>>
>>    
>>
This is a known (to postnuke/postcalendar users) issue.  Any admin can 
clear the "smarty" cache to fix this.

>>6.  BALUG's "next meeting" information's out of date.  I'd fix it if I
>>had access!  ;->
>>    
>>
I've just added xavier and rick to the admin group on the site.  Just 
log in as usual and you will see another group of links, including the 
ever important "administration" link.  This is where you will find all 
the controls for the site.  Feel free to poke around and clean up/fix 
whatever you want!!!

Lastly - I've just (literally) moved into my new house today, and the 
movers will be moving everything in tomorrow, so I will be a bit busy 
over the next couple days.

Luckily a neighbor has an open access point (that I'm using now), so I'm 
not totally disconnected.

Regards,

Michael