12.05.2006 - Mailman Upgrade
On Tuesday, December 5th, 2006, we will be upgrading Mailman at 3pm PST. This process will take approximately 3 hours, and most discussion lists will be inaccessible during this time. Discussion list E-mail will not be lost, and will resume shortly after. This will only affect discussion lists. No other services will be affected by the mailman upgrade.
More info:
This upgrade is to version 2.1.9, the most recent. It’s mostly bug fixes and maybe a few minor new features. There has been some development on Mailman 2.2 which should dramatically improve performance for systems like ours with a lot of hosted discussion lists. Mailman 3.0 is still a long ways out from what I have seen of the development process.
December 1st, 2006 at 1:29 pm
Which version of Mailman will be installed?
Could you tell us more about the new version?
December 1st, 2006 at 1:55 pm
Aww…Ok!
December 1st, 2006 at 2:24 pm
I like toast.
December 1st, 2006 at 6:20 pm
Hooray! Will this fix the problem with the list subscription reminder emails containing bad links?
December 2nd, 2006 at 8:27 am
Yeah, I would like to hear more about it if our mail services will be unaccessable for 3 hours.
December 2nd, 2006 at 8:43 am
I *SWEAR* that people don’t ^*%&^%$ read.
– This will only affect discussion lists. No other services will be affected by the mailman upgrade
Did I go to high school with you? Or were you that #$%^ in college that sat in the front and asked the stupid questions???
December 2nd, 2006 at 9:13 am
-E-mail will not be lost, and will resume shortly after.
Does this not mean that we will be able to access our email?
December 2nd, 2006 at 10:04 am
Will this correct the issue with new discussion lists not being created?
I’ve got a ticket open for 2 days with that issue. Would love to know if I have to wait until Tuesday for it to be corrected.
December 2nd, 2006 at 2:12 pm
FYI just heard that new list creation is a different issue and should be corrected within the hour.
December 3rd, 2006 at 4:17 am
Whatever all the fuss is about… No need to get a little *&(&^T*% ticked off around there…
I would just LOVE to have Dreamhost operate with little down time like it used to be… a couple years ago. Was probably still small and didn’t offer all the goodies however.
Well… I wish Dreamhost the best but I have to admit, trying to upload or check webmail from somewhere else in the world … when I depend on webmail… (I know, I know… this note is not even related to this thread…) Well anyways…
I JUST WISH DREAMHOST WAS RELIABLE AS IT USED TO BE.
Thank you… and best wishes to all..
Gabriel
December 3rd, 2006 at 7:56 am
> E-mail will not be lost, and will resume shortly after.
This refers, I am fairly confident, to e-mail sent to discussion lists. This will not affect regular hosted DH mail and webmail, just mail sent to discussion lists. That mail will be held in queue while the service is out and then sent on when the service is restored. Essentially we’ll all just notice a three hour pause in email delivery to our discussion lists.
The difference between DH and most other hosts I’ve encountered is that DH actually lets you know what’s going on… I think it’s wonderful that I’m getting 3 day advance notice of this pause.
And the list creation problem alluded to above does indeed seem to be fixed.
Erik
December 3rd, 2006 at 4:57 pm
I don’t use Mailman, but why is this being done in the middle of the afternoon during the week? Wouldn’t it make more sense to do it at a time when people would be less likely to use it?
December 3rd, 2006 at 5:27 pm
I agree that it’s good to get the notice. None of my lists will mind a 3 hour hiatus, and the announcment may save me some time if a user posts during that window and then contacts me to find out what happened.
But I’d still like to know what version of mailman they’re upgrading to. I’ve been using mailman for years, but it looks to me as if real development has stalled (when will we ever see version 3???) and odd things get dropped into the point releases.
December 3rd, 2006 at 8:50 pm
Gabriel -
The frustration is that on all of these comments the questions are quite often TOTALLY UNRELATED to the post. DH posts - Garbage can full and people ask “Is this why I can’t get my mail?” or “My site’s down.” or “Does this affect server coke?” and “How do I know what server I’m on?”
Sorry, and maybe it’s just that I’ve gotten tired answering the questions and RECOMMEND that people *READ* and visit the forums at http://discussion.dreamhost.com The answers to all of these OVER ASKED QUESTIONS are already there? Don’t waste your time asking them and waiting on someone to bother to respond when the answers are already out there!
(Note, this rant isn’t at you Gabriel, it’s at many people that think the comment system here is actually an official way to get support or an appropriate place to have a conversation about issues.
Kevin -
One advantage to doing the update at the time they have scheduled is that they have full support and alert employees to cover if something were to go wrong. When you do these kinds of things at “off hours” sometimes things just don’t go well at all. It’s important to note that this is “MAILING LISTS” only and not general email usage. That’s where much of the confusion would come in.
DH - if you read this -
Quit warning us - we’re not taking these upgrades very well because we all assume everything’s going to go to hell in a handbasket and we’re quite sure that no matter how hard/fast/right you do it, somehow a site hosted on GoDaddy is going to go down because of it. We just don’t get the relationships and you’re scaring the hell out of everyone. Just do the upgrade and then apologize for it afterwards so that people can know there’s a reason that things aren’t working.
Sometimes scheduling is the mistake.
December 4th, 2006 at 2:38 pm
I believe you are wrong when it comes to not notifying us about upcoming and current events. If they never posted, for instance, this post, then anyone trying to receive mail wouldn’t understand why they couldn’t access it, or get a confirmation email for a shipping order right away.
If they didn’t tell us half the stuff they do, then there would be an abundance of rumors. This site and its content is the light in the darkness for DH Customers. We WANT to know what is going on and what is to come, whether it affects us or not.
December 4th, 2006 at 4:22 pm
I gotta say, I still love Dreamhost. I know what all the moaners mean about downtime issues, I mean, I run a business too, and I have put many, many clients on Dreamhost, but honestly, get over yourselves! If, as you infer, your life depends on your webmail or your astoundingly well-designed sites being accessible by one or two losers a day, then you’ve got to reassess your lives. You, and even your businesses, will survive a little downtime. (Although they may not survive being run by such assholes). And be happy that Dreamhost is being so upfront - and often so entertaining - about scheduled downtime and the many other technical potholes they encounter. And, if by chance, you’re doctors running satellite-linked heart surgeries on webcams hosted by Dreamhost, then for *****’s sake, cough up a few extra bucks a month and go somewhere that guarantees uptime for such mission-critical scenarios and stop pretending you’re all such big shot businesses. You’re tiny little business, and you’re cheap individuals. We all are. Just some of us enjoy the ride, and some of us have to wail on DH tech support to feel important.
And Dreamhost: you’re never losing me. I’ll stick with you (until you get bought by MSN). Just don’t spend my $9 a month all in one go.
December 4th, 2006 at 6:57 pm
Ryan -
The problem we have is that we’ve scared a bunch of sheep instead of shooting the wolf.
“I’m gonna miss mail.” - You didn’t READ the message.
Antony -
Don’t get me wrong. I love dreamhost. My stuff here is important but not so important that an hour here or there a week/month is going to kill me (as long as it luckily doesn’t happen when I really need something).
I do think that the reporting is a good thing. BUT I also think that underreporting (which I believe is happening now) is the reason why there are so many people whining on these comments. There seems to be a lot of “down” for very little notification on this site. I don’t think half of the complaints are really server down problems. Maybe servers with problems, but not “Down”. The problem is from outside it’s hard to tell the difference.
I love dreamhost. I’m not going anywhere, I’m prepaid for a long time.
I really don’t want to encourage DH to try to be quiet about things but people aren’t READING the notifications and seeing that this particular outage has NOTHING to do with WEBMAIL or PERSONAL EMAIL - JUST MAILING LISTS HOSTED BY DH. Communication takes both an Author (DH) and Reader (us). And it’s up to US to actually READ the content instead of just bitching “my webmail will be down”.
Sorry for the yelling. It’s just frustrating. I like the communication, but we (all) need to be better consumers of that information.
December 4th, 2006 at 7:00 pm
Hey Ryan -
An earlier quote you made missed an important word:
“Discussion list E-mail will not be lost…”
You chopped it off at “E-mail will not be lost”
According to the message, this outage does not affect non list email services.
December 4th, 2006 at 8:24 pm
it’s ok!
December 5th, 2006 at 6:42 am
why -
I’m totally with you: I agree with everything you say, and you actually said it a whole lot better than I did. And, in fairness, a lot of people on this page did actually read the message, and some of them acknowledge that their lives won’t end if their announcement lists are down for a few hours (that’s you, nes). Good for them. The others will get theirs, too, one day when they neglect to read a STOP sign or a “Caution: High Voltage” warning. You can’t save everybody.
December 5th, 2006 at 8:25 am
Antony - Werd!
October 25th, 2007 at 10:38 pm
Thanks you dreamhost for the great work done. Dreamhost Rocks!
December 4th, 2007 at 3:07 pm
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