Minutes/2025-04-11

Present: RL, MM

Apologies: TM

• Administration
  • comp.lang.asm.x86
    • No response yet to RL's message to three volunteers asking for an update. RL pinged the volunteers again on 2025-02-21; awaiting a response.
    • RL to reply James Harris's post to the MVI thread on news.groups.proposals immediately after the meeting.
  • news.groups.proposals
    • The group's signing key uses the e-mail address ngp-approval-key@ngp.big-8.org. Agreed to leave this as-is for now, as this is just an identifier. We can later consider adding a new identity with a new address, and/or upgrading to a GPGv2 key.
  • comp.compression.research
    • TM has posted the RFD.
  • Moderated groups without moderators
    • soc.genealogy.surnames.britain : no further update from volunteer
    • rec.humor.funny : TM's conversation with Brad Templeton is ongoing.
    • TM to respond to Ivan Shmakov's post where he expressed interest in moderating several groups.
    • comp.binaries.cbm : The Board received an email from Six of DLoC offering to take over moderation of this group. RL contacted the current moderator, who was unaware that the submission address had stopped working but agreed that Six of DLoC should take over as moderator. RL to contact new moderator to ask if any help is required and if we should now contact the ISC to change the submission address.
  • soc.sexuality.general (non-functioning moderated group): Agreed to defer until mass deletion RFD is concluded.
  • news.admin.announce
    • TM has announced on social media that the Board is now moderating the group.
  • soc.culture.jewish.moderated
    • MM contacted the last known moderator, who confirmed that they now do not moderate the group or have access to the moderation mailbox. The ISC has updated the group aliases file to remove the non-working submission address. Agreed to defer any further action until the current mass deletion RFD is concluded.
• Infrastructure
  • IPv6 access to the web server now seems to work correctly, with no further interruptions of service detected.
  • Status of cron jobs for offsite backups: No further update from RL.
  • Various related server issues
    • Owing to the volume of automated notifications Mail in a Box is emitting about incompatible packages, MM argued for removing it and replacing it with standalone SMTP and IMAP servers.
    • MM noted that our OS could be updated.
    • Regarding the issue with mail.big-8.org, MM advocated decommissioning this domain rather than adding a mapping of mail.big-8.org to big-8.org addresses.
    • Agreed to defer consideration of these server issues until TM returns.
  • RL has enabled SpamAssassin on our Panix mail account, using Spamhaus and Spamcop blocklists to reject spam. Further options such as greylisting are available if spam continues to be a problem.
  • MM has uninstalled Docker on the Big-8.org server.
  • cron error messages relating to our unused Nextcloud instance are now getting through; RL has disabled these messages while MM investigates disabling or uninstalling the instance.
  • MM identified the issue with search domains and has removed the responsible wildcard.
  • TM noted that HTTP(S) requests to big-8.org redirect to www.big-8.org only when the URL contains no path. MM changed the Apache redirect rules so that all requests to big-8.org correctly redirect to www.big-8.org.
  • The Big-8 website was down for most of the day on 2025-04-04. The unattended-upgrades service upgraded PHP and removed some modules used by the old version. However, it did not update the Apache configuration to use the new version of PHP, so the website gave an HTTP 500 error because it could not find the removed modules. RL fixed the immediate issue by configuring Apache to use the new version of PHP. RL to investigate whether Apache can be configured to always use the most recent version of PHP.
• Software/funding
  • TM: No update yet on GPG signing best practices on Savannah
  • Thunderbird 128 contact deferred given Julien's comments on INN.
  • TM still to respond to Julien.
  • OTF IFF/NGI0/Sovereign Tech Fund: no further updates
  • TM is on the electoral roll for the Thunderbird Council, which is currently holding an election. TM asked the candidates if they would commit to ensuring news support in Thunderbird. A few candidates gave noncommittal responses, citing Usenet's declining popularity, but one did suggest that support could be provided by an externally funded developer.
  • New donor on Open Collective.
• Misc
  • Paul Schleck proposals: no further progress.
  • BDCAM25: RL and TM presented their talk to a small but appreciative audience on 2025-04-03.