20 May 08 Sympa List Server Problem (Now Fixed)
There was a problem with Sympa yesterday between about 11:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m. Our consultant restarted the Sympa server to incorporate configuration parameters to reduce the bogus message processing, but Sympa did not restart correctly. It took until 4:00 p.m. to process all the messages waiting distribution.
We’ve asked the consultant to create a script to check the message queues every 5 minutes and send us an alert when there are more then 100 messages backed up. This script will be put in place on Wednesday.
Sorry for the inconvenience this may have caused.
Tags: email, Mailing Lists, sympa
05 Mar 08 Sympa upgrade – another try
We have resolved the routing problem that scuttled Sunday’s Sympa upgrade (thanks, Tom & Andy!). We will be trying the upgrade again Wednesday evening, March 5, beginning at 4:30 p.m. Since much of the heavy lifting was done in preparation for Sunday’s (non-)launch we believe we can accomplish the upgrade in just a few hours Wednesday evening.
So… Sympa will be stopped at 4:30 p.m. CST on Wednesday, March 5, 2008. Please notify your lists as you feel necessary. Incoming messages for all lists will be queued up and processed as soon as the upgrade is complete. Because a) the queue time will be much shorter than Sunday’s 10 hours and b) the new server will perform better than the one Sympa is currently on, we do not expect a large backlog of messages to process, and certainly nothing that will linger into Thursday’s work hours.
27 Feb 08 Sympa Mailing Lists Upgrade this Weekend
This coming Sunday, March 2nd, we will be completing the Sympa upgrade and migration (to its own server). Beginning around 9:00 a.m. and continuing throughout the day, Sympa will be unavailable. We don’t know exactly how long this will take, but ALA mailing lists will be down during this time. We’re estimating 4 to 6 hours, but we won’t know for sure until we’re in the thick of it. (We may have a better estimate by Friday.) No list mail will be lost. Mail will be queued and delivered after the upgrade. If all goes well, we anticipate that the queue will be cleared out by Sunday evening.
After the upgrade, you will see a significantly improved “landing page” for Sympa. As part of the migration process, we will be assigning all lists to various unit and subject categories, which users may then browse. There will still be the option of viewing all lists, and searching for a list name. Please remember, though, that if a list of yours is set to be “invisible” it will not appear in the new unit and subject categories, nor will it appear in the list of all (visible) lists, nor will it appear in search results.
Please know this is a work in progress, and we welcome your ideas for improvement. If you have any questions about the upgrade/migration, please let me know.
Rob
Tags: Mailing Lists, sympa
25 Apr 07 List Migration Complete!
As of April 25, 2007, we have completed the process of migrating Listproc lists to Sympa. We are grateful to Dale Ghent of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, for sharing the scripts he developed for migrating lists from Listproc to Sympa. Tom Craven, our consultant from Valcom, and Matt Ivaliotes, Internet Administrator, did an outstanding job of making this long-awaited day possible.
23 Mar 07 List Migration Updates – March 2007
We have received a script from a UNIX systems specialist at the University of Maryland Baltimore County that converts Listproc lists to Sympa. It has required some modifications to work in our situation, but we have tested it and expect to be able to begin converting all active lists sometime in the next week or so. In preparation, we have asked list owners to identify lists that are no longer active and can be eliminated before the conversion takes place. List owners will be notified well in advance when we are ready to proceed with conversions. We greatly appreciate the generosity of Dale Ghent at the University of Maryland Baltimore County!
27 Feb 07 List Migration Updates – February 2007
Our managed services provider, Valcom, is picking up work on the conversion scripts to move our discussion lists from ListProc to Sympa. We have placed greater priority on this project, as moving to Sympa will significantly improve our mail volume issues. Sympa handles error messages much more efficiently than ListProc does.
01 Dec 06 List Migration Updates – November 2006
Jack Briody’s departure in November has caused us to re-evaluate this project. We expect to be able to contract with Jack to complete this project on a contract basis before Midwinter.
31 Oct 06 List Migration Updates – October 2006
Jack Briody has developed a Cold Fusion application that will assist in the preliminary mailing to list owners. This message will ask list owners which lists they wish to keep and what they want done with list archives of lists they do not want to keep. This will kick off the migration process, which is expected to take 4 – 6 weeks, with frequent notifications of status to both list owners and subscribers.
28 Sep 06 List Migration Updates – September 2006
The list migration project is being kicked off at the end of September. We will begin by asking list owners which lists they would like to have deleted and what they want to happen to archives of lists they want to migrate to Sympa. The actual list migration should happen in late October.
05 Sep 06 List Migration Updates – February 2006
February 2006
Matt Ivaliotes has been converting ListProc lists to Sympa as time permits over the past year. He has recently proposed a “mass migration” that we intend to pursue. First we will poll staff to get a count of dead lists and the staff owners’ desires regarding any archives. Dead lists will not be migrated. Some programming (scripting) will need to be done to automate the conversion process. List users and owners will be notified of the pending conversion at regular intervals. Training materials on Sympa list use and management will be provided along with the notices. Both ListProc and Sympa will need to be taken down for approximately half a day to accomplish the conversion. We will do this on a weekend to minimize disruption.
