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Ducklings Volunteer Activities
by DuckCorp Admin Team 22 Jun '11

22 Jun '11

Coin, Here is a special news edition to talk about a new project: get a bit more help from you to improve our services. Working as a DC administrator is not always a sunbathing trip on the beach and we did not receive much applications from people willing to join us despite our calls for help. So instead of getting heavily involved in the project, you may still help us from time to time for specific tasks. We started listing a few tasks we lack time to handle. They are of different kinds and most can be handled at home without any privileges. Tasks have been added to a specific project here: https://projects.duckcorp.org/projects/dc-ducklings-volunteer-activities Most tasks are intended to generate contributions to the Free Software community. If you want to contribute, please log into the software with your LDAP account. Then, unfortunately, you would not have rights to apply for a task by yourself, as LDAP groups are ignored by the software (task!), so you need to contact us _once_ to fix it. Afterwards, you can claim a task and start working on it, asking for details and writing down progress on the issue tracker itself. Hope to see you soon! -- Marc Dequènes (Duck)

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You get off on annoying people, don't you?
by DuckCorp Admin Team 17 May '11

17 May '11

Coin, === Mail === First, it's time for major software upgrades and cleanups, so we'll be updating a few things this we, causing downtimes on the POP/IMAP services and incoming mail latency. If you go sunbathing somewhere nice instead of geeking all day long, you won't notice anything bad when you're back, i promise ;-). And you should already have noticed by the end of january that the webmail.dc.o application transformed into a portal, adding one more choice in the process. Someone asked about having the RoundCube webmail software, but at that time it was plain unusuable, so we postponed its installation until recently. === Backup === No housing sponsoring on sight, but space problems occuring once in a while. thus we decided to loose extra data security to get more space: our important data are not on RAID anymore. It should not be a problem, except in case of double disaster, and should hopefully help with the current issue. By the way, you had no way to know which data where saved or not, so a new wiki page was created to fill in the gap: https://users.duckcorp.org/index.php/Services/Backup You would notice an interesting feature allowing you to exclude data from backup, which could also help reducing backup size if it is not useful to do so. === Security === We were fed-up with SSL certificates and the mighty CAs, so, from now on, we do not trust them anymore on our servers. This gave a false impression of security when there was none. === Database === PostgreSQL was successfuly upgraded to 9.0 on 2011-04-06. Do not hesitate asking for a database. === FTP issues === Recently, people without anything better to do in life, or with a silly FTP client, caused DOS attacks. Automatic bans have been added to mitigate this behavior where previous connection limits could not help. Please tell us if you get any problem connecting, so we can adjust sensitivity. Btw, we're still looking for a housing, so if you get a lead, please tell us. Hugs. -- Marc Dequènes (Duck)

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Whadda you want?
by DuckCorp Admin Team 09 Jan '11

09 Jan '11

Coinyear everybody, Hope you had fun and good food/drink. We wish you plenty of pleasant things for 2011. === Plans for the Future === ==== Backup / Stats Machine ==== As the current backup process is done through Duck's personnal ADSL connection, borrowing a huge bandwidth, slowing down backup times a lot, it is not a very funny situation. Moreover, as data size is increasing slowly, we reached a point where the current capacity is not enough to keep up with the previous backup granularity. Before X-mas, we had to reduce the backup frequency of the big sources of data (www, ftp…). We recently acquired some hardware from a sponsor, which would be suited to build two small machines. We plan to use one of them to build a machine dedicated to backup and stats, hosted in a datacenter in order to get a proper network connection. For this, we need to buy disks, and find housing. ==== Free Party Machine ==== Currently, DC focus in providing managed services, for users who do not care about technical matter, or do not want to bother taking care of an infrastructure. We've been suggested that some people might want to go a step further and handle some kind of services themselves. That's why we plan to acquire a bigger machine in order to provide several virtualized hosts. This is of course a big investment and also requires housing. === Call for Help === There are three main areas in which you can help us: * apply for being an administrator (the selection is harsh and not only based on technical skills): this is the obvious way for non-financial help. A few less-sensitive tasks may also be delegated to "admin-helpers". * give a bit of money: we don't need much, and the goal is to survive without a huge recurrent investment. However, once in a not-so-often while, we need some to repair or improve things, and currently this is the right time for a helping hand * help us find sponsors: the best way to run smoothly without too much financial load, is to find kind and reliable sponsors; so, if you know dicks we can suck, please tell us ;-). This is mostly for housing purpose, but hardware donations may also help. Well, this said, and even if DC has no trace in its history of acting democratic in any way, you can express yourself and suggest improvements. We don't have much feedback, so sometimes it's hard to figure out what we could do better. === Misc Late News === ==== Thorfinn Reboot ==== 2010-12-27 afternoon, after a long network outage (~1h30) affecting Thorfinn, we took advantage of the resulting mess to reboot the machine on a new kernel. It should be a bit more secuuuuuuuuuure now. ==== Roaming SMTP Fix ==== Sending emails through GPRS/3G connections using IPs without reverse was problematic. Now, when SMTP Auth is used, many such checks are lifted. Have a Lot of FUN ! -- Marc Dequènes (Duck)

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Short maintenance on 2010-12-16
by DuckCorp Admin Team 16 Dec '10

16 Dec '10

Coin, Tomorrow afternoon we will restart Orfeo a few times in order to test things related to the kernel bug discovered after the recent power outage. And we may check a few other things btw. It should not last long, but nevertheless sorry for the inconvenience. In the meanwhile, i'm happy to announce we've got a new IRC server, so the world should not turn to black during the maintenance. Many thanks to Nohar who provided the previous server, and to mmenal who provides hosting for the new one. The service runs on a virtual machine managed by DC, allowing us an easier management of the service software, and is named Jinta[1]. Have a Lot of FUN ! [1] http://bleach.wikia.com/wiki/Jinta_Hanakari -- Marc Dequènes (Duck)

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Today's end of the world
by DuckCorp Admin Team 01 Dec '10

01 Dec '10

Coin, Today, at 12:03:14, Orfeo suffered from a power outage. It was restarted quickly, and Hivane/Alionis people assisted us efficiently. Unfortunately, a kernel bug [1] prevented the machine from booting correctly. A hardware problem might additionally be possible, even if not critical. Late in the afternoon we were able to diagnose the problem and work around it. Moreover, webmail.dc.o and webdesk.dc.o were unusuable until this evening due to a software upgrade problem (unrelated to the power outage). In the evening, we finished checking all services, and since then everything should be all right. Do not hesitate contacting us if you find an issue. Regards. [1] http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=3D605496 -- Marc Dequènes (Duck)

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Don’t keep me waiting.
by DuckCorp Admin Team 02 Nov '10

02 Nov '10

Coin, It's not yet X-mas time, but we're happy to have a few things done each time :-). === Toushirou _is_ stable _and_ fast === Since very recently, Toushirou's network interfaces are now at 1Gbps speed, so no doubt everything will be much faster now ;-). Unfortunately, network card vendors sux sometimes, and due to a firmware bug in the card controller, we had to reboot Toushirou on 2010-10-29 00:40:00. It should be ok now. === Wiki for Users === The wiki[1] made for users since the birthday is now mostly closed to non-users, in order to put sensitive information on our services if needed. [1] https://users.duckcorp.org/ === NSTX Reloaded === Our IP over DNS tunnel software, you know the stuff to break through WIFI accesses, was unmaintained didn't work well with recent WIFI setups. We've then switched to another software and it seems to work much better (SFR Portals 0wned !). Everything needed to use it is now in the wiki[2] [2] https://users.duckcorp.org/index.php/Services/NSTX === Antispam Forever === After a few fights with bugs in our antispam software, the situation has much improved, and learning is working better. If you still get many false negatives, remember the software needs to learn both SPAM and HAM in order to recognize things well; so you may consider using learning on all messages (TEFT mode) for a few weeks. We also improved our "front-gate rejection filters", in order to avoid several false positive conditions. === Secuuuuuuuuuuuuuure DNS === First, the zone tranfers between our servers are now fully secured. Our partner Hivane also upgraded its configuration for us (thanks a lot!). Second, the zone content can know be signed, to ensure it is not altered on the way. We have already secured several DC/MP zones and our servers now support extra zone validation (using the DLV Registry). From now on, securing SSH accesses using SSHFP (see previous news) is now a reality. If you want to know more about it, or switch your zone to secure, then have a look at the wiki[3] [3] https://users.duckcorp.org/index.php/Services/DNS === Misc === projects.duckcorp.org, hosting development code and bug trackers, is now opened for public registration, allowing hosted projects to share with the FOSS community. DC users do not need to register: they can login with their LDAP account. forum.duckcorp.org was unused for a long time, and not useful anymore, so it was removed. That's all Folks! -- Marc Dequènes (Duck)

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Gimme something to shoot
by DuckCorp Admin Team 31 Aug '10

31 Aug '10

Coin, Hope you had fun during the holidays. For DC Admins too, it's now time to go back to work :-/ (laaaaaaaazyyyy). === PHP Cleanup === As already advertised, the following PHP obsolete "features" are now deactivated for ever: * register_long_arrays: $HTTP_*_VARS * register_argc_argv: $argc / $argv * magic_quotes_gpc: "magic quotes" === Elwing Rebirth === A month ago, one of Elwing's disk died. Unfortunately, he had no RAID at that time, and much was lost (but hopefully not so important data). After a few problems during the silly not-for-raid WD "desktop-class" disks saga, we recently came back to normal operation. As Elwing was long not very reliable, we changed a few things: * the XMPP node was moved to Thorfinn, so that redondancy is available again (and not behind an ADSL link) * our beloved bots moved to Thorfinn too That's another step towards proper DL/DC separation, and "nothing behind weak links" target. Please note Daneel had to be shutdown, to make use of his almost identical hardware in order to perform the migration. Backup is back since 2010-08-25. === Antispam Problems === Our antispam software (DSPAM) caught a sunstroke and had difficulties remembering what you taught him. It is work in progress since a few weeks, and we hope to have made improvements (even if the bugs probably caused learning problems in the past and results may not be visible very quickly). Stay tuned. More on several other topics later. -- Marc Dequènes (Duck)

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Try Again
by DuckCorp Admin Team 28 Jun '10

28 Jun '10

Coin, === Toushirou is moving === Due to technical problems, the move had to be rescheduled, and is happening tomorrow evening. Beware of the short downtime. === Photos === You can find recent photos (mostly for the 10th Anniversary), in the gallery: http://photos.duckcorp.org/v/duckcorp/ Remember you can ask for a personnal photo directory. === User Wiki === We still lack documentation about the available services and how to use them, so you're welcome to contribute to the user wiki, especially starting from this page : https://users.duckcorp.org/index.php/AvailableServices \_o<~>o_/ -- Marc Dequènes (Duck)

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A world of dust
by DuckCorp Admin Team 23 Jun '10

23 Jun '10

Coin, === Toushirou is moving === As you may know, Sivit, one of our sponsor, was acquired by Nerim, so we have to move this machine in another location (Equinix). Tomorrow evening, Hivane folks, Yok, and me, will work on this move, and Toushirou will be down a short time. Nothing critical would lack, but a few services will be unavailable (mostly web related, except webmail/webdesk which is elsewhere). === More memory === Toushirou has now more memory (4GB instead of 2) since 2010-05-29, and is working fine. As our stability problem seemes to be memory bound, it is probably a stopgap, but anyway this machine needed more, so this is a good and not so expensive evolution. === Recent problems === * 2010-06-04 ~11:10: due to electrical problems in the bay, Orfeo was down during about half an hour. * 2010-12-06: the main Elwing's disk died, so it was quite a pain in the ass, as this machine had no RAID yet, but we managed to repair it quickly; nevertheless the disks or something in the OS is not working well, and we have horrible performance. It should not affect DC's services too much, as most of them moved or are duplicated elsewhere. * the second repaired disk for Daneel died after less than a minute of stress when rebuilding the RAID; happily the spare disk was here to take it over again until a new disk exchange is done... Hope this disease affecting disks will soon be eradicated... === Ruby for All === Recently, we removed the badly working mod_ruby apache extension, stopped using fcgid which was working but not so efficient/responsive, and switched to mod_passenger, which seems to behave quite well. You should be able to activate Ruby apps you need quite easily now, in your vhost, or in your personnal area (not limited to a single app). You can read more on this subject here: http://www.modrails.com/ and do not hesitate asking us if you need to override the ruby-app detection in your vhost, or need specific settings. _o< -- Marc Dequènes (Duck)

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Come again cap’n?
by DuckCorp Admin Team 24 May '10

24 May '10

Coin, === Server Maintenance === On 2010-05-20 afternoon, due to sponsor needs, Orfeo had to move a few steps away in the same datacenter, and was halted twice during a few minutes. I was not able to warn soon enough to be useful, sorry for the inconvenience. On 2010-05-29 in the morning, while visiting a datacenter with several users, we will halt Toushirou a few minutes in order to replace/improve its memory (both because it needs more, and to test if a complete memory replacement would improve the stability, even if memtest found no problem on the current memory). === Communication === On 2010-05-19 Bitlbee was finally stopped. Minbif has replaced it nicely. In April, we experienced a lot of problems with our XMPP (Jabber) server. A few weeks ago we installed a fixed version and it proved very stable since then. The IRC upgrade is still... postponed :-/. === PHP Migration === Yesterday, we moved to 5.3, as planned earlier, and things went quite well. Please note a few things that are now obsolete and will be deactivated on 2010-09-01: - $HTTP_*_VARS - $argc / $argv - "magic quotes" So please check your code before the deadline. === Dico === Absolutely needed, we now have an open access dictionnary[1], available both on the DICT port, and via web on: http://dico.duckcorp.org/ dict/dico text clients are available on Thorfinn and Toushirou. Happy Birthday DuckCorp ! :-)) [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DICT -- Marc Dequènes (Duck)

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