From jking at chambana.net Fri May 20 16:13:28 2016 From: jking at chambana.net (Josh King) Date: Fri, 20 May 2016 12:13:28 -0400 Subject: [IMC] Chambana.net Status and Updates Message-ID: <1463760808.2844.281.camel@chambana.net> Hi all, I successfully migrated everything on Chambana.net to a completely new server and software setup this last weekend, in many ways making it faster, more secure, more up-to-date, and better than it's ever been. I'm still wrapping up a few loose ends, but I figure this is as good a time as any to provide an overall statement on the status of Chambana.net. I should preface this by saying that CHAMBANA.NET IS NOT GOING AWAY. I use its services every day and plan on continuing to use them, and all currently hosted sites and lists will continue to be around for the foreseeable future. But for a variety of reasons (that I'll talk a little bit about below) it's been years since I've been able to provide a level of service and support that I'm comfortable with. Therefore, I'm officially putting Chambana.net into "stasis" or "maintenance mode." What do I mean by this? I'm basically just making official what's been the status quo for the past few years, namely that Chambana.net is not currently growing or seeking out new projects, and all services are provided on a best effort basis. However, I want the project to be something that others could pick up and grow if they wanted to. Therefore, I've been working for the past few months on rewriting Chambana.net's systems and configuration to be standardized and reproducible, as well as documenting all of those systems. I've also migrated all services to a server I'm paying for at Mayfirst, which will serve as its permanent home and archive for the foreseeable future. To give a bit of background on the project: Zach Miller started Chambana.net well over a decade ago. Officially, Chambana.net is a collaboration between UCIMC and Acorn Active Media and serves as a community technology and hosting project for email, lists, websites, and other services, with a focus on central Illinois and social justice. When Zach moved out of the country in 2005, it was handed off to Dan Blah and myself as administrators. Chambana.net was started a time when "cloud" services were not a thing, and hosting providers were smaller. There were a number of community or activist-focused hosts, and Chambana.net was a contemporary of projects like Riseup.net. What started as a single server hosting a few websites and lists grew at its height into a 7-10 server cluster hosted out of a DIY datacenter at the IMC and in two other locations around the country, supporting not just hundreds of lists and email accounts but also the websites of dozens of organizations and projects throughout Illinois and elsewhere. We also provided a number of other services like DNS, distributed authentication, social networking, instant messaging, sourcecode repositories, radio streaming, community wireless networks, and more. All of these services were provided and continue to be provided free of charge. When Dan Blah moved out to Washington, DC, I took over as primary administrator and continued to grow and maintain the platform, as well as building and maintaining the network and technical support for the IMC. Eventually in 2010, I ended up moving out to DC as well to work at New America's Open Technology Institute (OTI), but continued to help with administering Chambana.net from afar with the assistance of other volunteer administrators like Chris Ritzo and Brian Duggan. What I found when I got to New America was that their IT was in such disarray at the time that they were unable to support even the most basic functions of our work. As an experiment, I began building servers there in order to self-host a few things and continue to support Chambana.net and my organization. In retrospect, this was a huge mistake, because as OTI ballooned in size it quickly started using these services, and I was stuck supporting IT for the whole organization for the next few years, despite the fact that it was not my job. When Chris and Brian moved as well, the fact that these services were now entangled further complicated my ability to try again to hand off Chambana.net to local partners. In the meantime, the proliferation of inexpensive cloud hosting and services like Google Apps was affecting the ability of other small hosting projects to keep the lights on. That combined with the fact that I could not promise an acceptable level of support meant that many of our users migrated to other commercial solutions, or as projects that hosted with us ended new projects weren't getting added to our system. As a consequence, Chambana.net now hosts only a small amount of the active projects it did at its height. Today, the IMC is working on migrating their lists and email to Google Apps, and I have now left OTI to pursue independent projects. One thing that I needed to complete as part of this transition was finally disentangling Chambana.net from OTI's systems again. But it wasn't enough for me to just do that. I care a lot about this project that I've worked on for more than a decade, and even though I wasn't shutting it down I wanted to bring it to a state where I could legitimately call it "complete." And that's why I've systematized Chambana.net's services as a collection of over 20 git repositories containing all of the code for the project and providing a snapshot of what Chambana.net is, technologically. With these repositories, an experienced administrator could reconstitute the whole platform in just a few steps. I will be continuing to maintain, update, expand, and document these repositories over time, and they'll be public and free for anyone to use. To me, this is a way to bring a culmination to my work on a project that has been a big part of my life for the last 11 years. I hope that it's useful. https://github.com/chambana-net https://hub.docker.com/u/chambana/ https://chambana.net -- Josh King PGP Fingerprint: 8269 ED6F EA3B 7D78 F074 1E99 2FDA 4DA1 69AE 4999 -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 819 bytes Desc: This is a digitally signed message part URL: From blah at danblah.com Tue May 24 10:05:02 2016 From: blah at danblah.com (Dan Blah) Date: Tue, 24 May 2016 10:05:02 +0000 Subject: [IMC] Chambana.net Status and Updates In-Reply-To: <1463760149.2844.280.camel@chambana.net> References: <1463760149.2844.280.camel@chambana.net> Message-ID: Brilliant Josh. You've been an amazing steward of a critical community service. For what it's worth, by my count, you've also been the longest serving of stewards and responsible for at least two major upgrades (where the first was to clean up the mess left in my departure). Thank you for it mate :) On Fri, May 20, 2016 at 5:02 PM Josh King wrote: > Hi all, > > I successfully migrated everything on Chambana.net to a completely new > server and software setup this last weekend, in many ways making it > faster, more secure, more up-to-date, and better than it's ever been. > I'm still wrapping up a few loose ends, but I figure this is as good a > time as any to provide an overall statement on the status of > Chambana.net. > > I should preface this by saying that CHAMBANA.NET IS NOT GOING AWAY. I > use its services every day and plan on continuing to use them, and all > currently hosted sites and lists will continue to be around for the > foreseeable future. But for a variety of reasons (that I'll talk a > little bit about below) it's been years since I've been able to provide > a level of service and support that I'm comfortable with. > > Therefore, I'm officially putting Chambana.net into "stasis" or > "maintenance mode." What do I mean by this? I'm basically just making > official what's been the status quo for the past few years, namely that > Chambana.net is not currently growing or seeking out new projects, and > all services are provided on a best effort basis. However, I want the > project to be something that others could pick up and grow if they > wanted to. Therefore, I've been working for the past few months on > rewriting Chambana.net's systems and configuration to be standardized > and reproducible, as well as documenting all of those systems. I've > also migrated all services to a server I'm paying for at Mayfirst, > which will serve as its permanent home and archive for the foreseeable > future. > > To give a bit of background on the project: Zach Miller started > Chambana.net well over a decade ago. Officially, Chambana.net is a > collaboration between UCIMC and Acorn Active Media and serves as a > community technology and hosting project for email, lists, websites, > and other services, with a focus on central Illinois and social > justice. When Zach moved out of the country in 2005, it was handed off > to Dan Blah and myself as administrators. Chambana.net was started a > time when "cloud" services were not a thing, and hosting providers were > smaller. There were a number of community or activist-focused hosts, > and Chambana.net was a contemporary of projects like Riseup.net. What > started as a single server hosting a few websites and lists grew at its > height into a 7-10 server cluster hosted out of a DIY datacenter at the > IMC and in two other locations around the country, supporting not just > hundreds of lists and email accounts but also the websites of dozens of > organizations and projects throughout Illinois and elsewhere. We also > provided a number of other services like DNS, distributed > authentication, social networking, instant messaging, sourcecode > repositories, radio streaming, community wireless networks, and more. > All of these services were provided and continue to be provided free of > charge. > > When Dan Blah moved out to Washington, DC, I took over as primary > administrator and continued to grow and maintain the platform, as well > as building and maintaining the network and technical support for the > IMC. Eventually in 2010, I ended up moving out to DC as well to work at > New America's Open Technology Institute (OTI), but continued to help > with administering Chambana.net from afar with the assistance of other > volunteer administrators like Chris Ritzo and Brian Duggan. What I > found when I got to New America was that their IT was in such disarray > at the time that they were unable to support even the most basic > functions of our work. As an experiment, I began building servers there > in order to self-host a few things and continue to support Chambana.net > and my organization. In retrospect, this was a huge mistake, because as > OTI ballooned in size it quickly started using these services, and I > was stuck supporting IT for the whole organization for the next few > years, despite the fact that it was not my job. When Chris and Brian > moved as well, the fact that these services were now entangled further > complicated my ability to try again to hand off Chambana.net to local > partners. > > In the meantime, the proliferation of inexpensive cloud hosting and > services like Google Apps was affecting the ability of other small > hosting projects to keep the lights on. That combined with the fact > that I could not promise an acceptable level of support meant that many > of our users migrated to other commercial solutions, or as projects > that hosted with us ended new projects weren't getting added to our > system. As a consequence, Chambana.net now hosts only a small amount of > the active projects it did at its height. > > Today, the IMC is working on migrating their lists and email to Google > Apps, and I have now left OTI to pursue independent projects. One thing > that I needed to complete as part of this transition was finally > disentangling Chambana.net from OTI's systems again. But it wasn't > enough for me to just do that. I care a lot about this project that > I've worked on for more than a decade, and even though I wasn't > shutting it down I wanted to bring it to a state where I could > legitimately call it "complete." And that's why I've systematized > Chambana.net's services as a collection of over 20 git repositories > containing all of the code for the project and providing a snapshot of > what Chambana.net is, technologically. With these repositories, an > experienced administrator could reconstitute the whole platform in just > a few steps. I will be continuing to maintain, update, expand, and > document these repositories over time, and they'll be public and free > for anyone to use. To me, this is a way to bring a culmination to my > work on a project that has been a big part of my life for the last 11 > years. I hope that it's useful. > > https://github.com/chambana-net > https://hub.docker.com/u/chambana/ > https://chambana.net > > -- > Josh King > PGP Fingerprint: 8269 ED6F EA3B 7D78 F074 1E99 2FDA 4DA1 69AE 4999 -- Dan Blah pgp 0x36377134 ricochet:danblahp6j4vr45y -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From critzo at chambana.net Sat May 28 21:36:56 2016 From: critzo at chambana.net (=?utf-8?q?Chris_Ritzo?=) Date: Sat, 28 May 2016 17:36:56 -0400 Subject: [IMC] This UC-IMC list is scheduled to be archived on 6/3/2016 Message-ID: Hello subscribers! The UCIMC Board is moving its email and lists from Chambana.net's Mailman service to Google groups on 6/3/2016. Inactive lists will be archived and active lists will be migrated. is an inactive list and will be archived after 6/3/2016. This list will not be migrated to UCIMC's Google groups. The archive of messages prior to 6/3/2016 will continue to be available on chambana.net: If you have questions or concerns with this change, please contact an IMC staff or board member. Please note that the Chambana.net community hosting platform is not going away. All non-UCIMC listservs and other hosted services will continue to operate via Chambana.net. For more information about Chambana.net's history and current status, please read Josh King's recent post to the IMC list: https://lists.chambana.net/pipermail/imc/2016-May/004866.html Chris Ritzo -- UCIMC Tech / Chambana.net Tech Working Group From critzo at chambana.net Sat May 28 21:43:06 2016 From: critzo at chambana.net (=?utf-8?q?Chris_Ritzo?=) Date: Sat, 28 May 2016 17:43:06 -0400 Subject: [IMC] This UC-IMC listserv is scheduled to be archived on 6/3/2016 Message-ID: Hello imc subscribers! The UCIMC Board is moving its email and lists from Chambana.net's Mailman service to Google groups on 6/3/2016. Inactive lists will be archived and active lists will be migrated. imc is an inactive list and will be archived after 6/3/2016. This list will not be migrated to UCIMC's Google groups. The archive of messages prior to 6/3/2016 will continue to be available on chambana.net: https://lists.chambana.net/pipermail/imc/ If you have questions or concerns with this change, please contact an IMC staff or board member. Please note that the Chambana.net community hosting platform is not going away. All non-UCIMC listservs and other hosted services will continue to operate via Chambana.net. For more information about Chambana.net's history and current status, please read Josh King's recent post to the IMC list: https://lists.chambana.net/pipermail/imc/2016-May/004866.html Chris Ritzo -- UCIMC Tech / Chambana.net Tech Working Group