From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Msuck: nntp://news.gmane.io/gmane.emacs.gnus.general/88948 Path: news.gmane.org!.POSTED.blaine.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: dick.r.chiang@gmail.com Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.gnus.general Subject: Interesting gmane developments Date: Mon, 06 Jan 2020 19:00:02 -0500 Message-ID: <87mub0rv99.fsf@dick> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Injection-Info: blaine.gmane.org; posting-host="blaine.gmane.org:195.159.176.226"; logging-data="265950"; mail-complaints-to="usenet@blaine.gmane.org" User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/27.0.50 (gnu/linux) To: ding@gnus.org Original-X-From: ding-owner+M37151@lists.math.uh.edu Tue Jan 07 01:00:38 2020 Return-path: Envelope-to: ding-account@gmane.org Original-Received: from lists1.math.uh.edu ([129.7.128.208]) by blaine.gmane.org with esmtps (TLS1.2:ECDHE_RSA_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:256) (Exim 4.89) (envelope-from ) id 1iocIW-0016vq-TW for ding-account@gmane.org; Tue, 07 Jan 2020 01:00:37 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1] helo=lists.math.uh.edu) by lists1.math.uh.edu with smtp (Exim 4.92.3) (envelope-from ) id 1iocIE-0002Nb-Sk; Mon, 06 Jan 2020 18:00:18 -0600 Original-Received: from mx1.math.uh.edu ([129.7.128.32]) by lists1.math.uh.edu with esmtps (TLSv1.3:TLS_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:256) (Exim 4.92.3) (envelope-from ) id 1iocIB-0002Kt-5S for ding@lists.math.uh.edu; Mon, 06 Jan 2020 18:00:15 -0600 Original-Received: from quimby.gnus.org ([95.216.78.240]) by mx1.math.uh.edu with esmtps (TLSv1.3:TLS_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:256) (Exim 4.92.3) (envelope-from ) id 1iocI8-0007LM-Qa for ding@lists.math.uh.edu; Mon, 06 Jan 2020 18:00:15 -0600 Original-Received: from mail-qk1-x733.google.com ([2607:f8b0:4864:20::733]) by quimby.gnus.org with esmtps (TLS1.3:ECDHE_RSA_AES_128_GCM_SHA256:128) (Exim 4.92) (envelope-from ) id 1iocI2-0004ah-8P for ding@gnus.org; Tue, 07 Jan 2020 01:00:08 +0100 Original-Received: by mail-qk1-x733.google.com with SMTP id j9so41549746qkk.1 for ; Mon, 06 Jan 2020 16:00:05 -0800 (PST) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gmail.com; s=20161025; h=from:to:subject:date:message-id:user-agent:mime-version :content-transfer-encoding; bh=TnRtUuDvkqPmQV3Mr3b1l+GZO+nf8UXpU93H5eek6jE=; b=P+07hsHd3Xy9wPt1TuwAbWW87DyhtBK8Yc0Ui2otZ8Zk3R0UMUorRdJB2zCFqGucBp 82UOnDyMe9JyDL9PXNhNAmnDAyaZQ6wHfe8SWzy5FXaONpL5el00afalcMFPXuVCMPkz 2Z/xGmsW1V8nLFTpYcLh+A9gP5S2gqtkFgRwssFea4uh4BFJ8PLYIFgO08HX1tlAVBQ+ ZlN9RlOb1DXsTa4WSMDz1zZ4M13SVfhtGfwMU0CxonrWBGGPkwoy/26FXq7WNqIqeStP xzTLGqTefPnKwEFK7xWMpdhBi88LKvW95hWm2TUqEjpOsXNRNhMF0YRFiWTZ9HTMqqkj mr3A== X-Google-DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=1e100.net; s=20161025; h=x-gm-message-state:from:to:subject:date:message-id:user-agent :mime-version:content-transfer-encoding; bh=TnRtUuDvkqPmQV3Mr3b1l+GZO+nf8UXpU93H5eek6jE=; b=rBoUnEkieblymfZNlT1aAQr1ilQvyY8xmE3XbHVWxQxRFUngkGE2eW1kEIv74c/Ly2 eHgOKdP8LwjHlX7bMI4dJ36v431DL7DjuaLcCbQXaiGz4iTO0PfzIn/GnR6rjFLGZKD2 G72ZBrkksBUuimTP14O5gEaHGj5w/ZBzu9+Vt3bAxFh0IQ0REnaX93Hz/xjnvZpBYAxb HFCZO9KJcBhki2UHvlybTzX8UuycRhiUuaFXOm32+OY7qEPae3XTQwp6UmS+XjzF6dP6 nIJlRcAx5uP0rjiTcX765COplfyqXrFKv6wFKKjZlR7wPGAPLcXy7dvGYyryQ1Izjh7O a0cQ== X-Gm-Message-State: APjAAAU5k+5uJt5M+d+UP3s9diCIlM1xjtrAhrzA7RrVeG4k3spmF3Ya gWiD2uOgMnj1Sb7HvxWn6jkqW5bf X-Google-Smtp-Source: APXvYqzYRFn4SiTtZLoJeihj4BJWd8wExy6roqWsq9eIwidEaQyWJaasmc7Ih2t9czr8mEQB+uUT6Q== X-Received: by 2002:a05:620a:84a:: with SMTP id u10mr83618997qku.182.1578355203976; Mon, 06 Jan 2020 16:00:03 -0800 (PST) Original-Received: from localhost (pool-100-33-98-8.nycmny.fios.verizon.net. [100.33.98.8]) by smtp.gmail.com with ESMTPSA id u24sm21716124qkm.40.2020.01.06.16.00.03 for (version=TLS1_2 cipher=ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256 bits=128/128); Mon, 06 Jan 2020 16:00:03 -0800 (PST) List-ID: Precedence: bulk Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.gnus.general:88948 Archived-At: dick> Something I came across on HN (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id= =3D21973589). dick> Apologies if this is already posted on gmane.general or some such new= sgroup dick> that I don't know about. I only subscribe to gmane.emacs.gnus.genera= l. Whatever Happened To news.gmane.org? By Mr. Ingrebrigtsen I fucked up. Short version: If you=E2=80=99re reading mailing lists with an NNTP news re= ader via news.gmane.org, you should update your news reader to point to news.gmane.io instead. Over the past few years, people have asked me what happened to Gmane, and I= =E2=80=99ve mostly clasped my hands over my ears and gone =E2=80=9Cla la la can=E2=80= =99t hear you=E2=80=9D, because there=E2=80=99s nothing about the story I=E2=80=99m now finally goi= ng to tell that I don=E2=80=99t find highly embarrassing. I had hoped I could just continue t= hat way until I die, but perhaps it would be more constructive to actually tell peo= ple what=E2=80=99s going on instead of doing an ostrich impression. So here=E2=80=99s the long, boring and stupid story. But first, just some background, because there=E2=80=99s no reason you shou= ld know what I=E2=80=99m blathering on about: In 2002 I started a mailing list arch= ive called Gmane. It was fun for many years: I got to write a whole bunch of software = for the web site, and it was a useful and satisfying hobby (with some quirks, l= ike not daring to visit India). After a decade or so I started getting burned o= ut, and that=E2=80=99s when my problems started. At that point I should have looked for somebody to take over Gmane in an orderly fashion, but there were (at least) two reasons I didn=E2=80=99t: I = felt a childish attachment to the entire project (I think the feeling can best expressed summed up as =E2=80=9CNO! MINE!=E2=80=9D), and while I could easi= ly see that somebody would want to take over the web part, the NNTP part (which was the one I used personally) seemed too obscure for anybody to be interested in. So things limped along, me not having any fun at all at this point, and whenever anybody approached me with feelers towards taking over, I would mostly not reply, because when formulating a reason to say no, I didn=E2=80= =99t really have a good reason. And then the DDoS happened, taking out both Gmane and my kind employer, and= I lost my shit. I can=E2=80=99t properly express how little I want to be typi= ng these paragraphs, because I=E2=80=99m so embarrassed by my inadequate handling of= the situation. But at least here was an opportunity to hand over Gmane to someb= ody who could continue running it responsibly. I got a whole bunch of nice offers from people, among them from somebody working at C, a company with a good reputation and huge reach. I thought it over, and I said yes to the offer from Y. Because I was thinki= ng =E2=80=9Cthose C. people are nice=E2=80=A6=E2=80=9D Somehow it had gotten = into my mind that Y was C. I have no explanation or excuse: I looked at two totally different compa= ny names, and I thought in my head that I was saying yes to one while sending email to the other. My proposal was that I would still own the gmane.org domain, but Y said they had to own it, so I just signed it over, sent them an SSD with the spool, a= nd continued running the NNTP news server (now hosted in a slightly different place). By that time I had realised that I=E2=80=99m in touch not with the company = I was intending to give Gmane to, but at that point I thought it would be churlish to yank Gmane away from them, saying =E2=80=9Coops! wrong company!=E2=80=9D Yes, everything here is embarrassing.=20 It took Y half a year to get the web site up again, and finally all those d= ead links stopped screaming. However, the site went down frequently (I didn=E2= =80=99t get much communication from Y, but apparently there were more DDoS attacks), and it=E2=80=99s been down completely for at least the last year, I think? Which brings us to last year, when the company I=E2=80=99d been a co-founde= r of back in 1997 and worked for since, entered into a sales process. (The other co-founder and majority owner got cancer and suddenly died some time earlie= r.) The new owner would probably not let me host the news.gmane.org server in t= he server room, so I got in touch with my contact M at Y to arrange a DNS chan= ge for the news.gmane.org server. And I heard nothing back. So I Cc=E2=80=99d everybody I=E2=80=99d ever known at Y, including the corp= orate counsel S, and then I got a response from M, CC=E2=80=99d to S, that started with: I already responded to this on 22nd January. So apparently M=E2=80=99s email can=E2=80=99t reach me unless he=E2=80=99s = Cc=E2=80=99in S? I guess they must have extremely high security email at Y or something, because I can=E2=80= =99t think of any other reason for M=E2=80=99s emails not reaching me. (I grepped the exi= m logs for the previous year: No contact from Y=E2=80=99s MTAs.) But I thought, well, now I have contact at least, so I can get the DNS upda= ted! Then S responded: You have contact with M, please follow through with him directly. I don=E2=80=99t need copying on any of this. And then=E2=80=A6 crickets: I didn=E2=80=99t get any further communication = with Y, and no DNS update for the NNTP server. So at this point, I definitely should have done=E2=80=A6 something=E2=80=A6= but instead the sale of my employer was progressing, and then it was done, and then I took a long holiday, and then=E2=80=A6 I=E2=80=99m an expert at procrastinating, especially when whatever I have t= o do involves some degree of confrontation. Time passes, until=E2=80=A6 two weeks ago, when I got a message that I real= ly have to have my server removed within a couple of weeks, so I sent off new emails to the Y people, even Cc-ing the guy I wasn=E2=80=99t supposed to Cc, and I he= ard nothing back, at all. So I have to assume the gmane.org domain can=E2=80=99t be upd= ated any more and I have to do something. I have set up a new server, and I have mirrored all the data to it, but the problem is the domain, of course. The name of the server is one thing: Upda= te your .gnus files to point to news.gmane.io now; the old name will stop work= ing in a couple of weeks (I got an extension, apparently). The bigger problem is all the mailing lists: When the server goes away, 15K mailing lists will start to bounce. So the question is: What should I do about that? There=E2=80=99s several op= tions: 1) Let them bounce: It=E2=80=99s not a major disaster, but I can imagine li= st admins at places like vger being annoyed (Gmane subscribes to hundreds of vger lists). 2) Unsubscribe them all and let news.gmane.org die a final death: The unsubscription has to happen before the server goes away, because the unsubscription emails have to come from the IP address mentioned in the SPF record for gmane.org. 3) Unsubscribe and resubscribe under a different domain: I have registered a new domain gmane-mx.org and done some experimentation. Of twenty lists un/resubscribed (I=E2=80=99ve scripted this bit so it=E2=80=99s not a lot o= f work to do a few hundred lists in a batch), two were successfully resubscribed. It seems the reason for this is that sourceforge lists can no longer be subscribed witho= ut creating a sourceforge account? And many of the other lists just bounced, despite being active, so it means that they=E2=80=99ve moved without the gm= ane.conf being updated, but the Gmane address is still subscribed. Fixing this will take manual intervention. But do I want to do this? Asking mailing lists admins to trust me again, with a new domain after the previous debacle, is a bit too much, isn=E2=80=99t it? 4) Somebody at Y could wake up and do the fucking DNS update: Make blaine.gmane.org point to 159.69.161.202 (that=E2=80=99s all you have to do= ) and we can at least have time to do whatever transition we=E2=80=99re doing in an = orderly fashion. I don=E2=80=99t know what=E2=80=99s going to happen, but list admins: If gm= ane.org addresses start to bounce, and you want to fix things manually, just replace =E2=80= =9Cgmane.org=E2=80=9D with =E2=80=9Cgmane-mx.org=E2=80=9D in all the email addresses. This works= already. OK, this blog post turned out to be even more meandering and unstructured t= han I had anticipated, but that=E2=80=99s probably because I don=E2=80=99t even= know what I want to do here, or what people want to have happen. * Should I just let news.gmane.org die? Is it even useful for anybody any m= ore?=20 * Should I resubscribe all the lists as gmane-mx.org to continue having a =E2=80=9Cfull=E2=80=9D archive, and then try to make somebody more responsi= ble and responsive take over it all again? I mean, there could be a new web= interface with similar links as the old one?=20 * Is the above point even relevant any more in these days of GDPR? What=E2= =80=99s the upside for anybody running such a service?=20 In many ways, I do want Gmane to go away and not have to think about it any more, because it=E2=80=99s all tied up in feelings of inadequacy. I hope I= =E2=80=99m not fishing for sympathy here; this has been really awkward to write, and the o= nly conclusion anybody can draw from reading this is that I=E2=80=99m a fuck-up= , and I fucked this up. But I guess I=E2=80=99m asking for some feedback as to what should happen n= ext. I think I have about a week until the old server goes away now, so whatever happens has to happen fast.