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Hi,
On the morning (UTC) of March 1 we will install some new hardware at the
Toolserver. Services will be affected as follows:
Service | Expected impact
----------------------------+--------------------------------
Databases: s3, s4, s6, s7 | User databases unavailable for
| < 10 minutes.
user-store filesystem | Unavailable for < 10 minutes.
Start time: Tuesday, 1st March, 1PM UTC (estimated)
http://time.tcx.org.uk/utc/2011/3/1/13/0
End time: Tuesday, 1st March, 4PM UTC (estimated)
http://time.tcx.org.uk/utc/2011/3/1/16/0
Details:
We will install new storage for databases and the user-store filesystem.
This requires installing HBAs in three servers: hemlock, cassia, and
hyacinth, which requires downtime. We will try to stagger the
installation of the two database servers so that those clusters
remaining accessible during the maintenance, but user databases will be
unavailable while hyacinth is down.
Before the maintenance on hemlock, we will forcibly unmount the
user-store filesystem. Any program accessing it at the time will
receive an I/O error.
- river.
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Hi,
During the next maintenance window (March 7th), we will make some
changes to how mail forwarding works. This will not affect most users,
but you should read this mail anyway, especially if you make use of
.forward files. A summary of the changes you might need to make are at
the end of this mail.
At present, all mail to user(a)toolserver.org is sent to your LDAP alias;
if you don't have an address set in LDAP, mail is sent to nightshade and
processed locally (which might include using .forward files). Locally
generated mail, e.g. cron, is handled by .forward; users with email
addresses set in LDAP have "username(a)toolserver.org" in $HOME/.forward
so it's forwarded properly.
After this change, mail to user(a)toolserver.org and mail to
user(a)ANYMACHINE.toolserver.org will be handled as follows:
* If $HOME/.forward exists, mail will be delivered to the address in
that file;
* If not, mail will be delivered to the user's LDAP email address, if
any if set;
* If none is set, mail will be delivered locally on either clematis or
hawthorn (*not* nightshade).
In addition, mail to user+foo(a)toolserver.org and
user+foo(a)ANYMACHINE.toolserver.org will be accepted, where "foo" can be
any string. This will be handled in the same way, except that
$HOME/.forward+foo will be checked instead of $HOME/.forward. This
allows you to process mail differently depending on the address (see
below for an example).
In summary, you should make these changes after the maintenance:
* If you do not do anything "special" with your mail, and you have an
LDAP mail address set, and your .forward file contains
"username(a)toolserver.org", then you do not need to do anything. We
will delete your .forward file during the maintenance, since it's no
longer necessary. This applies to the vast majority of users.
* If you have an LDAP email address set, and your .forward file contains
a different address, you should delete your .forward file after the
maintenance. We will not do this for you.
* If you do not have an LDAP email address set, and you have a .forward
file containing an email address, you do not have to do anything.
However, you *should* run 'setmail' to set an LDAP email address, then
delete your .forward file.
* If you do not have an LDAP email address set, and you do not have a
.forward file, then currently your mail will be delivered locally on
nightshade. After the maintenance, your mail will be delivered
locally on either hawthorn or clematis. We do not support this
configuration, and you should set an email address in LDAP so your mail
is forwarded. However, if you insist on having mail delivered locally,
you can continue to do so.
* If you currently rely on accepting mail to
user+foo(a)machine.toolserver.org and use .forward+foo to funnel this
mail to a program, then you do not have to do anything. However, you
*should* instead send mail to user+foo(a)toolserver.org, which does not
rely on a particular machine being up. Note that if you do this, the
incoming mail will be processed on either clematis or hawthorn.
The explanation of these changes is more complicated than the actual
changes. The result should be that mail processing is much simpler and
more obvious to users.
- river.
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Hi,
I'm about to do some maintenance on ortelius, one of the web servers.
This should not have any impact of users.
- river.
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Hi,
Python 3.2 is now available on the login servers. Anyone using Python
3.1 should switch to 3.2, since 3.1 is likely to be removed at some
point. People using 2.7 (the default) are not affected.
- river.
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Hi,
We're about to apply necessary schema changes for Wikimedia's MediaWiki
1.17 upgrade to the Toolserver databases. We will apply the changes to
one server for each cluster at once; while the primary server is being
updated, user databases will be unavailable, but replication won't be
interrupted.
The exception is s2/s5, which currently only has one server. Databases
on these clusters will not be replicated and might be partially
unavailable during the maintenance.
This was not announced in advance since we only learnt about the changes
about 10 minutes ago. Sorry.
- river.