Re: New Digest Format / List Gnome
Re: New Digest Format / List Gnome
- Subject: Re: New Digest Format / List Gnome
- From: Chuq Von Rospach <email@hidden>
- Date: Tue, 31 Oct 2000 09:05:58 -0800
At 1:26 AM +0100 10/31/00, Alexander Schrieken wrote:
What I am missing in general is information on WHY the list had
to move to another server in the first place. Maybe if the
benefits of this change were communicated more there would be
more understanding -- I liked the list/digest fine the way it
was.
The old server was on aging, beginning to fail hardware that was (a)
no longer supported and (b) had some minor Y2K issues. Other than
that, it was perfect (for 1996). It also didn't meet our new data
center standards for supportability.
The existing list server software was great for 1996-1997, but in
case you hadn't noticed (grin), the e-mail world has changed
radically since then, and the existing server needed to be brought up
to either support those changes or at least deal with them
rationally, and in any number of cases, it didn't (the inability to
do something "useful" with MIME-based mail would be the one that
caused most subscribers the most grief. The old list manager
(majordomo) was no longer under active development, so it was a
technological dead end. It had no effective web interface for users,
which was okay in 1996, but not today. There were continuing issues
with bounce processing problems, which if you were nailed by that
bug, you're thrilled to know it's gone. Administrative interfaces
were very primitive, which meant in practice I got to do most of it
and couldn't hand it off to the actual list admins.
The new server deals with all of that, and adds support for emerging
standards like the List-ID and List-* mail headers, adds the ability
receive the list as MIME digests (another new e-mail standard), and
deals rationally with MIME-based email, and sets us up to fully
support allowing MIME email on the lists once I add in some filtering
for active content (for virus protection) -- right now, we strip
incoming email to the text part, but long-term, we're going to allow
full MIME minus dangerous pieces that could transmit garbage. The old
list directory system was on a separate server and was built on
obsolete and no-longer-supported technology and didn't have a lot of
flexibility; they were good things when I wrote them, but things have
changed.
The new server gave me a chance to do the web-based archives right
(finally), using Mhonarc, and rethink the whole archive process. The
archives are now being stored behind a password to protect them from
spam harvester bots, so there are security issues involved here (a
big issue for me), and it's allowed me to start redoing the woeful
and horribly out of date search engine for the archives, too.
Basically, you might have liked the way the system worked, but it had
a lot of problems -- but the key ones were that the hardware had to
be replaced, and the software it was all based on (majordomo) was
obsolete and having increasing problems dealing with modern e-mail
clients and didn't have basic functionality we needed for our lists
today.
Once you realize you have to replace the foundation of the house, you
have two choices: jack up the house and try to put a new foundation
under it, or tear the whole thing down and start over. Given the
other problems on the system, replacing majordomo as the list server
pretty much dictated this as a gut job, because it allowed us to deal
with all of the issues that have come up over the years and try to
make something that solves today's problems, not 1996's.
So, that's why we had to move to another server in the first
place.... the old one was dying, obsolete and not working right and
didn't do things we needed it to do, and was a real problem to
administer. Other than that, it was perfect...
chuq
--
Chuq Von Rospach, Apple Mail List Gnome
(
mailto:email@hidden) + (
mailto:email@hidden)