[App_rpt-users] AllStarLink status

[Steve Zingman]

It's been about 1 month since Jim's passing. I want to update everyone 
as to the status of AllStarLink now and going forward.

Let me say first, AllStarLink will continue to thrive and move into the 
future. The steps we have taken, and will take, guarantee that. Never 
again will any one person have to scramble to pay a server bill, add to 
the DNS or renew the domain name.

Our first step was to identify the hosts and domains involved in the 
infrastructure of ASL. We have done that. I have implemented a 
monitoring system to notify us when we have a problem with a host. The 
monitoring as of today is a basic available / not available system. I am 
adding the monitoring of services specific to the host. That can be 
HTTP, IAX, SIP, CPU load, Disk in use etc. At a later date, I will make 
a page available to all that can be checked for overall health of the 
entire ASL infrastructure.

The servers need rebuilding. The services need redistribution. Standards 
need to be set. This will take time. Mission critical servers will have 
a hot backup. In case of failure a standby server will take over until 
repairs can be made. All servers will have a offsite cold backup. Data 
will be daily coped to a remote storage array.

We are moving all services off of ohnosec.org. Thanks to Steve R for 
keeping it going through the transition. The first step is move the 
maillist app_rpt-users. It has been migrated to lists.allstarlink.org. 
The archives are intact and old archives from lists.illiana.net from Dec 
2005 to Oct 2008 were added. For the time being, mail sent to 
app_rpt-users at ohnosec.org will go to the new list.

An existing user on on the ohnosec list is valid with his existing 
password and subscription on app_rpt-users at allstarlink.org.

A message posted to app_rpt-users at allstarlink.org will appear on the 
archive 
<http://lists.allstarlink.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/app_rpt-users>

A message posted to app_rpt-users at ohnosec.org will also appear on the 
archive 
<http://lists.allstarlink.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/app_rpt-users>

The archive on <http://ohnosec.org/pipermail/app_rpt-users/> will not be 
updated by any posts.

The main website allstarlink.org is being rewritten. It is a slow 
tedious project. Great attention is being paid to the look, feel and 
consistency. As with all thing ASL, the source will be archived and 
available.

The next thing to move will be the Drupal (Knowledge Base) We may move 
this to a wiki or some other form that lends itself better to being 
updated by the community.

I have copied the source code repository from SVN to github. This is the 
complete source code repository with history. Any changes to the 
official source code will happen on github. Moving from SVN to git will 
allow more people to contribute ideas and fixes in the future.
The github repository is at <https://github.com/AllStarLink> There are 
of course off site backups done daily.

A small group of professionals are starting to review the code. The 
first step will be to add comments and documentation. We need a better 
base of information to carry this forward. LOTS more on this to come.

A not for profit organization has been created. For the first year, we 
are keeping the directors to a minimum. I do not want a large unwieldy 
group trying to manage things. I do not want to have to try to "turn a 
battle ship" just to get something done. AllStarLink Inc. will hold the 
domain name, pay for server space and handle any other administrative 
tasks that are needed.

More to follow...

73, Steve N4IRS

-- 
"Real programmers use vi, that's why I use nano"