META: Upgrading newsgroup infrastructure

[candycanearter07]

Russ Allbery <eagle at eyrie.org> wrote at 01:16 this Saturday (GMT):
> Hi all,
>
> I've been putting off upgrading the mailing list server that hosts the
> list version of this newsgroup for far too long, enough that it's blocking
> a couple of needed major operating system upgrades that will also affect
> the infrastructure for running this group.  I'm hoping to finally tackle
> that this weekend.
>
> Unfortunately (and this is why it's taken so long), this requires a major
> change to the mailing list software from Mailman 2 to Mailman 3.  The old
> software is end of life and no longer supported, and Mailman 3 is
> substantially different, mostly in ways that I'm not that excited about.
> I did some research into possible alternatives, and this still seems like
> the best approach that doesn't require I put more effort into this than I
> have readily available, but there will be a few annoyances.
>
> The main annoying changes are:
>
> * The archives are... weird.  They're a bit more like a message board than
>   a mailing list archive, they don't use a fixed-width font (although I
>   will look again if that's configurable once I get the migration done and
>   can upgrade to the latest version), and there are upvotes and downvotes
>   and other things like that which seem rather pointless to me but that
>   don't seem to be configurable.  All of the archives prior to this
>   cutover will also continue to be available in the old format, but going
>   forward new messages will be only archived in the new system (called
>   Hyperkitty) because the old stuff has to go away since it requires an
>   unsupported version of Python.  The new archive does offer an mbox
>   download of messages, so at least in theory you can still download the
>   message and view it in a regular mail client, and of course the regular
>   mailing list function of sending you the messages will work as always.
>
> * The new web site interface really wants you to create an account to use
>   it.  I would rather that you not have to do that, and I definitely don't
>   want to have even hashed versions of any important passwords, so if you
>   create an account, please use some password you don't use anywhere else.
>   You can still subscribe to the list without creating an account, but
>   unsubscribing from the list without creating an account can only be done
>   via email.  I think this is a poor design choice, but it doesn't appear
>   to be configurable.  You can always mail racc-leave at lists.eyrie.org to
>   unsubscribe (after the cutover) without having to create an account, or
>   just mail me directly if all else fails and I'll try to find your
>   address and remove it.
>
> I will also have to do some major surgery to make the integration with the
> newsgroup work properly.  I think I've figured out how to do that;
> hopefully it will work.
>
> I'm planning on doing this upgrade during this weekend.  During that time
> period there will be a lot of outages, a lot of software in motion, and
> probably a few bugs and unforseen problems.  Apologies in advance for the
> disruption, and make sure you keep anything you're posting over the
> weekend so that you can resend it if needed.  I will send the all-clear
> when I think everything is working.


Good luck!!
-- 
user <candycane> is generated from /dev/urandom