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 [email protected] 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.

Not the Terminator

Ask is heading to the datacenter to go install our new Sun Fire T2000.

Subversion Upgrade Complete

To everyone playing along at home, our subversion server has been upgraded, moved, vaccumed, manicured, and gotten a hair cut. It should be faster and more shiny. (Some new features aren't available yet, but will be soon.) Also coming is a new front page, with answers to all those questions you never knew you had. Let svn at perl.org know if you find anything wrong or broken.

Subversion Upgrade Soon

At some point later this week, or maybe this weekend, I will be taking the perl.org Subversion server down to move it to different hardware. This most likely won't happen until after the imminent Parrot release.

From an end user perspective, nothing should change. (Although we are upgrading to a newer version of the server and associated programs.) The server will be there, and then it will be down for a fewhours... and then it'll be back, bright, shiny and happy. More details once it is complete.

Cover opened, please panic!

You may have noticed that you didn't get any perl.org or pm.org mailing list email from 9am until 12 noon (pacific) this morning. We had a slight failure that required manual intervention. (The machine OOMed, and ssh got hosed as a side effect.)

I drove into the data center, and after a bit of fiddling to get the display working, discovered that the machine was very patiently waiting for a keypress because the cover sensor had been disturbed. That "feature" has been disabled.

No mail has been lost. Everything should have been caught up by now.

Everything is green again

Just got back from the datacenter. Everything was running again about 60-90 minutes ago.

Since the last reboot the server in question had more disks installed. The disks are split across two 3ware raid controllers (one with the new disks and one with the old). The bios decided to try booting off the controller with the new disks – of course there's no boot record on those so it just stalled.

The serial console was working, but for some reason it'd not show me anything until it had skipped past the "press button to enter bios setup" window. Robert could get into the bios remotely, but he was too lazy to check the settings so downtown I went. Grrh.

file server reboot

We have one particular server that's hosting many of our databases, NFS for our internal software distributions etc etc. We reboot it a couple of times a year to get kernel updates and such. One of those times is in a minute (so a short outage of some services will occur). Crossed fingers it'll come up alright, we don't want to go to the datacenter right now. :-)

update: eek, it's not coming back. crap.

Overload!

You may have noticed some trouble accessing some perl.org services this morning. Our network link is being saturated, because one of the DNS services we host is getting hammered. We've shut down the server on our side, but the other side is still sending. Mad props to InterNAP for being helpful in diagnosing and putting workarounds in place to get us stable again.