[Deskaheh-sysadmin] Deskaheh repair, and other issues

[Treesong]

Hello all,

For the time being, I've redirected Big Muddy IMC's domain name 
[bigmuddyimc.org] to a simple page on my own website explaining that we 
are experiencing technical difficulties. I've also included a link to 
http://bigmuddy.nysindy.org so that visitors can check on the status of 
the website and find their way to it if it pops back up before I can 
revise the domain settings.

In the meantime, I have some questions similar to those of John from 
Hamilton IMC. I haven't talked over all of the considerations with our 
collective yet for various reasons, but I would like to hear discussion 
of several questions:

(1) Is there anything that we who are hosted on Deskaheh can do from 
here to help get it and keep it running again? This could include 
anything from financial support to tech support.
(2) I know from previous posts that Deskaheh is physically located in 
Buffalo, NY now, and that any tasks involving physical access to the 
machine are therefore under the care of someone other than ski aka Brian 
Szymanski. That being the case, is there a Buffalo tech support contact? 
I've heard mention of a John C from Buffalo but don't have his contact 
information and haven't heard a report from him yet as to what the 
situation is. Would it be possible for us to insure that the primary 
contact person of every site hosted on Deskaheh has access to this 
contact information and the nature of Deskaheh's current situation?

Of course, I understand that running a free server for IMCs and other 
like-minded organizations requires a great deal of time and effort. I'd 
like to thank Brian, anyone in Buffalo, and the techies on this list for 
all of the tech work that you've done. Big Muddy IMC doesn't have the 
resources right now to run our own dedicated server, so your efforts 
have been much appreciated. Having said that, I look forward to any more 
information you may have about the current situation, how to resolve it, 
and how to prevent it in the future.

Love and Healing,

Treesong

P.S. Someone locally just offered to host our site on their own personal 
server. However, we'll have to look into the details of that and come to 
a group decision. In the meantime,it's a pleasure to share server space 
with other IMCs.


john milton wrote:

> Hi:
>
> Hamilton IMC is having its monthly meeting tonight (Tuesday) and I 
> would like to be able to report on what is going to happen re: getting 
> Deskaheh back on line.
>
> My sense from traffic on this list, which is all we have seen here in 
> Hamilton, is that a site visit will be necessary to do the work.
>
> Is there any assistance we can supply in terms of covering, or helping 
> to cover, travel or labor expenses associated with this, or any other 
> way in which we can help?
>
> On a related note: I have a concern, both as someone with a background 
> in computer systems design, and as one who supports the organizational 
> theories embodied in IMC process, about lack of transparency around 
> the  organization of the tech. side of Deskaheh. I do not mean to 
> suggest for a minute that this is intentional on anyones part, but at 
> least in Hamilton it does exsist.
>
> It is not clear from here who does what in terms of the day to day 
> oversight of the server (i.e. checking to make sure it is up, doing 
> backups, etc), who is to be contacted for routine, or emergent support 
> requirements (for example we have asked several times about having a 
> small change made to the look of the home page, the addition of a 
> graphic link and have never received a response), or if the operation 
> of  the server is costing any cash, if so who is paying that (Fairness 
> would seem to dictate that IMC Hamilton should be helping with that if 
> such is the case).
>
> Hope this will start a friendly and productive dialogue...