Date: Tue, 5 Jul 2005 18:48:35 +0100 From: Compsoc sysadmin team To: All Compsoc network users Subject: [compsoc-users-announce] Retirement of the Compsoc network Message-ID: <20050705174835.GV32369@urchin.earth.li> Reply-To: support@ox.compsoc.net Hello all, The time has come for the Compsoc network, as it exists in its present form, to be decommissioned. This has largely been precipitated by our hosting in Trinity College coming to an end, but also because the society has had trouble finding current undergraduate members to admin those machines. We propose, therefore, to migrate core services to stanley, our externally hosted machine. The timeline for this is quite short as we want to have the Trinity network dismantled by the end of July, or thereabouts, so if you are interested in continuing to use our services please read on for required action. This plan is being carried out with the intention that a more comprehensive service can be revived at a later date if there is sufficient local expertise, interest and resources. We will host MX and web for Compsoc on the new machine, providing mail and web forwarding for all existing users. We expect this service to remain available for the long term; this is a reasonable degree of commitment to ensuring that people don't have to get rid of their Compsoc email addresses or URLs. If it will help your transition away from Compsoc (because, for example, you need to arrange alternative maildrop facilities), we can provide a temporary shell account on our new machine. It is most likely that we will not be able to provide long-term shell access, but this has yet to be finalized. It is unlikely to be a well-supported service so we recommend that you investigate alternatives in any case. Firstly, we would like you to ensure that home directories on the Oxford network are tidied up and removed where possible, so that we don't have the burden of archiving/deleting user data (obviously web content needn't be deleted yet). Secondly, please email us letting us know the following: - email for you@ox.compsoc.net - whether to retain the alias - if yes, the address it should be forwarded to. - web on http://www.ox.compsoc.net/~you/ - whether to forward requests to a new URL - if yes, what that URL should be. - alternatively, simply clear out your web space and set up the redirect with .htaccess - shell access - if you would like to retain temporary shell access on a Compsoc machine, or long-term access (if available) Please also let us know when you have moved all data you care about from your home directories on Compsoc. If no response is received by the time we have to move services, then your account will be frozen, and mail will be spooled to a temporary store on our external machine for a time to give you a chance to reply to us at a later date. If we receive a bounce message from sending this mail out, your account will be frozen and mail delivery will be disabled with a message to that effect. When we have a firm timeline for removing machines we will follow up with another email; we're sending this out now to provide as much notice as possible. If you are going to be looking for new facilities to provide web/mail/shell access facilities, we can recommend Black Cat Networks who have close links with Compsoc (they were cofounded by one of the sysadmin team and are about to employ another, have sponsored us several times over the past few years, and provide secondary DNS for us). If you have any questions, don't hesitate to get in touch. Regards, Compsoc sysadmin team