perl.org outage again!

The facility we are in needs to turn off the power for 4-6 hours(!!!) starting around 3pm PST to repair the UPS and switch back to utility power. Yikes, really bad timing with the hackaton at OSCON and all. :-(

Our servers will shutdown around 10 minutes before that and hopefully come back when power comes back. One or two might need an extra kick which we'll get done tonight or tomorrow morning.

More when we know more.

(and of course our European search.cpan.org mirror is out too, so we can't even keep that running. Grrrh).

perl.org lists are back up

The perl.org mailing lists are back up. (Thanks to Robert who went to the datacenter to kick it!).

In related news it seems like we could use a new 1U box (with two disks, preferably SCSI) to run the mailing lists. Email ask@perl.org if you have something to spare.

When the power went out the UPS kicked in (and then the generators), but apparently the HVAC system failed and ~30 minutes later something overheated and shut down our power momentarily. Whee. :-(

perl.org outage

Our datacenter had a power-outage including the UPS systems (!). Some things didn't start up properly making other things not starting up properly etc etc.

We are working on it and everything should be back up shortly(-ish). Right now we're waiting for a ~400GB partition on an incredibly slow raid-5 system to run fsck ("/dev/vg1/lv0 has gone 309 days without being checked, check forced.").

Update ~19:40PST: We have almost everything running again. The mailing list server didn't seem to come back after the reboot so no mailing list mail yet. Robert is calling the data center to see if they can put a crash cart on it.

perl-qa subscribed to perl6-all ?!

Anton Berezin pointed out that the perl-qa postings mistakingly were being posted to the perl6-all meta list. Ooops (and fixed). Thanks Anton!

Volunteer (still) needed

We posted in May about needing a volunteer to hack up a simple script. Still do!

This time we have a few pointers ready though so hopefully we can get a volunteer started before he or she gets distracted and disappear on us.

As a slightly larger task then we could use some help from someone who'd be interested in hacking on pgeodns, our geographic load balancing name server written in perl.

Email ask@perl.org if you are interested and I'll get you access to our little Wiki.

perlbug upgraded

Finally, the moment you've all been waiting for is here!

perlbug (http://rt.perl.org/rt3/) has been upgraded to the latest and greatest version (RT 3.6).

Here are some changes you might notice:

- a new shiny look

- no more auth.perl.org, we now authenticate directly from bitcard.org

- a public interface that doesn't require you to log in to see tickets

- a much more powerful search interface

- things that were slow before, are not quite so slow anymore

- saved searches

Likely, you'll discover some things are broken, or don't work the way they used to. Here's a few we know about:

- Old bookmarked searches can't be used anymore. (Sorry!)

- Some bitcard accounts (with accented characters in their names) can't login.

- we have a mild performance issue related to CSS caching.

If you run into issues, big or small, please send an email to perlbug-admin at perl.org. Your message will be answered in the order recieved.

-R

(special thanks to Jesse Vincent, Kevin Riggle, Thomas Sibley, and all the rest of the gang at Best Practical, for their help, patience, and for the rt.cpan.org customizations, which made this much easier than it might have been)

svn.perl.org outage

svn.perl.org is momentarily down while we nudge some of the underlaying berkeley db databases.

update: it's back.

Robert talks about perl.org on the Perlcast

Josh McAdams interviewed Robert for the Perlcast about perl.org.

There's a little quip about volunteers near the end and speaking of that: we are still looking for someone to help update our fancy DNS server. We had three volunteers a month ago, but they all got busy. The first task we need is a simple tool to convert a text file from one format to another. I hear this perl tool is good for that. :-) I'm insisting on not just fixing the old code we have that does the job because I really want to get a few more people involved with what we do...

Volunteer needed for simple script

Hi everyone,

I need someone to hack up a simple script for me. It's critical to the perl.org and CPAN infrastructure, so it's a worthwhile task even if a bit tedious.

It's a 20-30 minute job at most, but I figure if I can spend 5 explaining it to you then I'l have 15-25 minutes to work on something I can't delegate so easily.

Email me at ask@perl.org if interested in helping.

Update: I got a few volunteers, thanks!

perl.org lists and nntp.perl.org down

We are having some hardware trouble with the mail/nntp server. We are working on it...

Update: Robert went to the datacenter to kick the box, check the failing disk etc. The server is up again and mail to the lists has started flowing. We need to do a little work on the nntp server before re-enabling it, so nntp.perl.org is still down.

Update 2 (~5.30pm PDT): Robert finished sorting out the NNTP setup so it shouldn't explode again. One of the drawbacks of using mostly old donated hardware is the retarded BIOSes even in "server hardware" from a few years ago. Anyway, it's all better now.

Dearest Spammer

Dearest Spammer,

Sending a message to all cpan.org addresses will not get you customers. Even if you are pushing a perl related product and not penis enhancement drugs. You are now blacklisted by us and hopefully listed in spamcop and other blacklists. Do not expect it to be removed unless you bribe us in a big way. I only wish I had caught your spam before you sent it to over 600 addresses.

Sincerely,

me.

Expanded Universe

The universe is expanding. A few new faces have been added to http://planet.perl.org/. Hope you enjoy them.

ViewSVN back

ViewVC (formerly ViewSVN / ViewCVS before) starting giving semi-random server errors after Robert upgraded our Subversion server.

Yesterday he upgraded to the latest ViewVC and since then it hasn't given any trouble, so you can browse the repositories again. It might start breaking again of course; so keep your fingers crossed. :-) (If something there isn't working, please let us know).

There were a few brief service interruptions for some services while I was in the datacenter earlier (moving some cables around and trying to get an old switch to talk to our console server). All should be well now.