On Tue, 19 Sep 2006, Christopher Browne wrote:

> "Dave Page" <dpage at vale-housing.co.uk> writes:
>>> [mailto:slony1-general-bounces at gborg.postgresql.org] On
>>> Behalf Of Niels Breet
>>>
>>> The problem with pgFoundry atm is this: (correct me if I'm
>>> wrong, this all
>>> what I gathered from IRC chats)
>>> - current jail runs on a server that is not controlled by the
>>> community?
>>
>> Incorrect.
>>
>>> - current server is overloaded/ not reliable
>>
>> Incorrect. It was overloaded, but has long since been moved to a new
>> box. There is a new dedicated box waiting in the wings though for
>> someone with enough gforge-fu (and the time) to do the move.
>>
>>> - nobody has access to the database it is running on.
>>
>> Incorrect.
>>
>>> - it is running outdated and abandonned software. (Although
>>> that can be
>>>   fixed by installing the non-open version?)
>>
>> It is running an old release. The move to the new server was/is supposed
>> to include an upgrade to the latest FOSS release I believe.
>>
>>> - the replacement server has hardware problems that haven't
>>> been fixed for
>>>   a while.
>>
>> Incorrect as far as I'm aware.
>
> If Niels is wrong about all of these things, then there's a rather
> serious communications problem, because I and others were also hearing
> the same reports.
>
> Are we merely "wrong" because these problems have been (silently)
> repaired over the last few days?  If that's the case, then, in truth,
> we *haven't* been misinformed.  If these things *were* true, and there
> was no announcement of a fix, then for people to believe that these
> conditions might continue to persist is in no way unreasonable.
>
> Alternatively, are we "wrong" because these things *never* were true?
> If that's the case, then someone spread outright untruth, which is a
> different kind of distressing.

Specifically:

"server not controlled the community" ... I've been part of the community 
since day one, and have 100% control over the servers ... and all members 
of -core, as well as several (if not most) members of -www have 24/7 
access to me, and always have ... what 'failed' this summer wasn't that I 
couldn't be reached, it was that I was on a shit wireless network for a 
couple of weeks while moving ... the backup server was on a *slow* uplink, 
so although as soon as the problem arose, uploading everything was very 
very slow compared to our normal/permanent network (as mentioned before, 
40+ hours for gborg vs 5 hours normal) ...

"overloaded" ... postgresql related web sites have consistently been put 
onto our *newest* servers with the least # of users ... gborg was an 
exception, since it was schedualed to merge into pgfoundry ... the last 
upgrade was a bit more difficult, since it involved downtime to go from a 
32bit to 64bit platform, as well as upgraded from FreeBSD 4.x to 6.x, but 
both pgfoundry and postgresql.org were moved up to the new server(s) end 
of July, beginning of August ... before that, they were sitting on 32bit 
servers that were <6 months old ...

'replacement server with hardware problems' ... JoshB will need to confirm 
that, but as far as I knew, they were fixed long ago, as he's been using 
that server ... the big reason why pgfoundry hadn't been moved to it to 
date was the desire to upgrade gforge itself ...

> Focusing a bit on this one point, what's wanted is the ability for 
> community members to draw backups to eliminate this as a single point of 
> failure.  If several organizations can pull backups, whereever the 
> server may be, that can adequately answer that issue.

Dave Page, once I put his ssh key in place, will have full root access to 
*all* of my servers, not just those that run the postgresql vServers ... 
so, he'll be able to access both the live and backup(s) ... that backup 
is done every 30-60 minutes

there will also be a twice daily backup pushed to the server that JoshB 
setup in California, that he and several hours have full root access to 
...

> - Only one person with root access to systems

Dave Page will have full root access ...

> - Only one person with control of DNS

Dave Page will have full root access, including access to the DNS servers, 
and is being added as a tech contact at the registrar ...

> - Only one person with access to the backups

Dave Page, JoshB and several others, will have access to backups ...