Project and new-channel announcements should be submitted to the editor by 18:00. They may be submitted in person on channel #openprojects, via memoserv using "/msg memoserv send Editor [content]", or sent to email address web at openprojects dot net. All times on the news pages are in UTC.

Friday saw minor problems with the network. Staff averted a small channel flood attack before it became serious and your editor temporarily removed a newbie spamming channels with ads for a chat network. Around 23:14, butler died again. At the time, the server was only hubbing a few leaf nodes. Dom reports a kernel panic due to some sort of hardware error; he's still investigating the problem. At press time, bear had connection problems. Bear and butler have both been removed from the DNS round robins and will probably be shut down temporarily around 5:15 this morning.

In server upgrade news, the fixes for channel forwarding work well and the feature is almost finished. Matthewg provided a patch for SILENCE propagation and we'll be testing that next. Meanwhile, several excellent hub servers have been offered by potential sponsors and your editor is wondering if we should consider patching the old code for server hiding rather than continuing to wait to upgrade. If you'd like to get involved in the project, this is an awfully good time. Please drop by #mistertoad.

Yesterday was also a slow day for operating fund contributions. Your editor pleads guilty to having started extremely late; we received only one contribution by the end of the day, though by press time the fund had received two more. Many thanks to MetaCosm and greenfairie of #kde-users for contributing to the fund yesterday and to Kingsqueak and Rednoise, long time #linpeople users, for their contributions today.

Here's hoping your weekend is going well.

--lilo

Yesterday seemed to be a day for big things. We had big problems with barnes early in the morning and, after replacing the hubbing completely (a big change) with pratchett and butler, butler lost its routes briefly and dumped everyone. The problem may have been a small SYN attack and Dom recompiled the kernel this morning with some additional security features. We'll try some limited hubbing again around 7:15 am (OPN time). Be on the lookout.

We barely squeaked by on contributors today; your editor has been trying to find two or three contributors per day. Thanks to an anonymous daemon for contributing $6.66; he had fun and we appreciate the help. Thanks also to a "big" contributor, William Carrel, for his generosity in supporting us with a contribution of $250 US.

Found an excellent site whose material should be included in the catalyst training materials. Take a look at the Propaganda Analysis Home Page, which contains material which can help the reader discover unfair tactics used in his or her arguments as well as those of others. The editor will be making changes in this site based on his readings and recommends it to all. Very good stuff, but see for yourself.

Yesterday's Gelhausen sample dropped by a couple of users to 3,059, not too bad for the end of the week. Have a good Friday and an excellent weekend!

--lilo

Wednesday was another quiet day. Your editor is beginning to assume that the problem with sagan is not a skript kiddie problem at all, but some borderline software bug with ircu. By the time you see this paragraph, you'll know whether it split again at the daily news notice. Wednesday saw occasional packet loss at the hubs and occasional splits. At 3,061, the Gelhausen sample seems to be trending upward slightly. At press time today, lackey was suffering splits due to unfriendliness on the part of former users.

In operating fund news, thanks to Ray Kelm, one of the anonymous PayPal referral contributors from 5 April, who wrote and gave permission for us to add his name to the ledger. Thanks also to searcher for his generous contribution, allowing us to break the $2,000 US mark. Much appreciation to all of the 40+ users who have helped us kick off the fund. If you'd like to help, please take a look at the contributions page. We'll be grateful for any assistance you can provide.

In server upgrade project news, yesterday tdengler provided fixes for channel forwarding. We'll be testing them and we hope we'll be able to lay a few TODO items to rest. The project goes on. If you'd like to participate, we could use your help. Please stop by

Have a great Thursday!

--lilo

Tuesday came and went quietly. Two sub7-compromised hosts appeared around 07:00 and were dispatched. Barnes showed occasional instabilities through the day, losing a server from time to time. It's possible some skript kiddie is expressing displeasure at the daily news announcement; for the last two days running, one random server has split at the moment of the announcement. On the other hand, Tuesday's Gelhausen sample climbed back to 3,047, within 64 users of the record.

The esteemed Network Solutions, Inc. appear to have resolved our secondary registration problems. Many thanks to Vicky and her supervisor Sania. All openprojects.??? secondary servers should be fully functional at this time, though we'll be swapping out one server within the next 48 hours. Then we'll go in and clean up the .nu domains, which promise to be a lot less trouble.

Thanks much to Jack Moffitt and Dan Bethe for their contributions to the operating fund yesterday. Your editor has been very preoccupied with his contract job this week, but will try to get out to the channels more. If you've been thinking about helping us out with a contribution, we are approaching the $2,000 mark and could certainly use your help. We hope you'll be hearing the results of our preliminary contacts with the corporation lawyer some time in the next week or so.

Finally, this is your official announcement that the server upgrade project has entered a feature freeze heading toward an interim production release of the IRC server. We may add TODO items, but we will not code on TODO items that represent new features for which work has not yet begun. We'll emphasize getting the server stabilized, then we'll begin looking at patching hybserv2 for compatability with the stabilized server code tree.

Have a great day, as we wander onwards to Friday. :)

--lilo

Monday was somewhat quiet. Some splits occurred, and staff discovered someone playing with a small legion of 37 floodbots, but otherwise few problems occurred. Yesterday's Gelhausen sample climbed back up to 2,963. Your editor, busy on his contract job, let people know he didn't have much time to do fund raising and asked people to to contribute once via WALLOPS. Response was zero. Conclusion: fundraising is something you do by wandering around talking to people, letting them know what's going on and why they ought to contribute. That seems fair. Thanks to timh and to Jack Moffitt for their contributions yesterday and today and to onki for his lead on a potential corporate sponsor.

Work on the server upgrade project continues as tdengler concentrates on resolving various problems with channel forwarding. We're about to go into feature freeze for the first production release of the server code and once it looks solid, we'll start looking at patches for hybserv2. Note: At press time, your editor wandered into the developer channel, #mistertoad, in time to listen to a very interesting discussion on distributing services to the server, among andy, draco and matthewg.

After receiving a few complaints recently about the daily global notice for the news, we ran a brief WALLOPS poll at about 21:10 yesterday on the subject. Results:

25   leave it
 7   get rid of it
 6   use the MOTD
 4   use WALLOPS
 1   what's the fuss about?
 1   show it less often
 1   the web site needs more porn

Your editor thanks everyone for their input and will continue to run the notices. Congratulations to everyone on our escape from the jaws of Monday. Have a great week! :)

--lilo

Sunday was a somewhat busy day. Two skript kiddies with more time on their hands than good sense played clone bot games in #debian around 16:00. Some difficulties ensued which were resolved by additions to the mask list for compromised hosts.

Long-time users will be aware that the state of Open Projects Net DNS has degraded within the past year. Your editor took steps today to secure new DNS secondaries, complete with better technical contact information. He spent the evening wrestling with the antiquated and difficult interfaces of our DNS registry. Final updates are presently held up by the workings of the bureaucracy. Once complete, US and European users should see considerably-improved DNS behavior. Thanks to andy, Matt, mariab, Snow-Man and tuxje for their assistance. We'll add an Australian secondary next.

Enjoy your morning! :)

--lilo

The beginning of the week has arrived. Many thanks to Mordechai Abzug for his generous contribution to the operating fund and to the wonderful folks on #bigblue, a channel which has been in existence for 7-8 years, on EFNet, ChatNet and now on OPN. As you can see from the ledger, Buzzard, michenry, Eduardo Fernandez, Hobb and the others on the channel have helped make weekend fundraising go a lot easier. If you'd like to contribute to the operating fund, please take a look here.

Meanwhile, on the server upgrade front, your editor wandered around today, speaking to nuke (a coder on bitchx) and cras (the author of irsii) about support for special cases of channel forwarding. We've added a TODO item, FORWARD_MSG, to produce a new numeric code message indicating each step in a channel forward. So far, mIRC and xchat pop up windows for the forwarding destination channel with no apparent problems and ircii seems to work fine.

In channel news, spender writes, "Hi, I've just opened a project channel for my website. I write security patches for the 2.4.x tree of Linux kernels (the only ones of their kind at this point) and I'd like some help and ideas from others." His site looks interesting, though your editor hasn't looked at the patches yet. Look for him on #getrewted (where do they get these names? :)

Have a great week!

--lilo

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Current network date and approximate time: Friday, 14-Jun-2002 23:44:56 GMT.
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