Loomio
Thu 22 Nov 2018 10:18PM

Mastodon Upgrade

NS Nick Sellen Public Seen by 229

Looking for someone to upgrade our mastodon instance (lots of support provided!)

NS

Nick Sellen Thu 22 Nov 2018 10:29PM

Oh, I should have written the full description in the "context" field, it looked so small, it's my first post here and I have a glass of wine, so please forgive me :)

I got involved a while ago to support @wulee to manage the tech side of things, and we made great progress!

I did our first mastodon upgrade, but now another one is due (and this is a recurring pattern of course), and both me and @wulee would like to share this responsibility out a bit. It also helps us to make sure we haven't made a system that only us two understand.

@wulee is also contributing a lot so we are looking for someone else who is up for it! I already asked on our matrix tech channel, but no takers so far, so I ask on here.

I'm interested in supporting a learning environment so am more than happy to spend 5-10x the amount of time it would take me to do it to help someone else learn what is involved. I am happy/willing/able to work on this stuff for free, but if someone needs some money I can imagine we might be able to make that work too. This upgrading stuff is important to do!

This would also be a nice opportunity to increase the diversity of the team, so if any non-white and/or non-male and/or non-lowland-scotland-based person wants to get involved that would be extra great.

In reality you probably need to have a bit of tech-fu already, so probably things like using a terminal sometimes, having an ssh key, being careful and curious about typing commands in :)

So, looking forwarding to welcoming some more people into the tech team!

ELP

Edward L Platt Sat 24 Nov 2018 7:28PM

I'm still around and sometimes available to help. Is there a way to notify the entire tech team by email when there is something crucial that needs attention?

I'm mostly comfortable with the basic mastodon docker setup but any of the customizations we've done are still a mystery to me.

LS

Leo Sammallahti Sat 24 Nov 2018 9:40PM

"Check" decision on the Tech Team might be one way to notify everyone.

ELP

Edward L Platt Sun 25 Nov 2018 7:02PM

I get loomio by digest, so I might not hear about a check for a couple days. It would be nice to have separate channels for discussion that doesn't need to involve everyone and critical information that needs to be seen quickly.

NS

Nick S Mon 26 Nov 2018 12:32PM

There's a [email protected] email, which everyone in the tech group is (I think) subscribed to. (@loppear being an exception, in that he is subscribed but his MTA bounces email because it is under the mistaken impression it's from a dodgy source, MARC/SPF-wise).

BTW, I've configured the @admin@social.coop account so that any mentions of it are notified to that tech group email alias. This Mastodon account is what we use for tech announcements too, and the log-in is in our pass repository if anyone needs to use it.

Thing is, "crucial" (emergency) stuff is one thing, and generally when that happens people notice because the site goes down and then they come looking on our matrix channel for someone to fix it. (Or they should!) We do need help with that, in that there's really not many people who can do this job, which needs some comprehensive knowledge of the whole server and its operation.

But what we are really missing help with is more at the toilet-cleaning level. We don't want to sound the bat-siren every time the metaphorical toilet needs scrubbing or dinner needs cooking. We need some people signed up on the roster to take on responsibility for these tasks consistently, so that they get done regularly.

IS

Ian Smith Sun 25 Nov 2018 11:16AM

I did the update yesterday with only a few issues. I'll document the troubleshooting steps on the upgrade page.