When is newuser coming back?

May 18 19:38 UTC 2005

Noticed that newuser is still down after more than a week.  Is this a 
quiet policy decision that has been made in light of the most recent 
sabatoge?  

Grex needs newuser up and soon, or this place will shrivel up and die!

response 2 of 51:

May 18 23:22 UTC 2005

I agree with that, basically.  A few more days.

response 4 of 51:

Jun 17 20:46 UTC 2005

"#2 of 3 by STeve Andre' (steve) on Wed May 18 19:22:29 2005: 

I agree with that, basically.  A few more days."


This was a month ago. Newuser is still gone.  Has staff made a policy 
decision re: newuser?  Shouldn't that have gone through the board and 
the membership?  Or does staff get to decide on its own that open 
newuser goes away and doesn't ever come back in its old form?

what gives?

response 8 of 51:

Jun 19 14:53 UTC 2005

They're rewriting it to figure out a way to prevent naftee and scholar from
creating new accounts.

response 10 of 51:

Jun 19 23:32 UTC 2005

That's not it at all.  Steve just never did it.  Nor did he tell anyone
else how to.

response 12 of 51:

Jun 20 04:08 UTC 2005

There has to be a balance.  The board shouldn't set a staff members life
priorities around grex, but nor should it ignore something as crucial as
newuser supposedly is.

response 14 of 51:

Jun 20 14:00 UTC 2005

> I don't think the board should have the authority to boss the staff around
> such as "You must fix newuser by such and such date."

I think they should, and they do. We have been without newuser for more than
a month (not sure the exact amount of time), with no clue about what is being
done to fix it, or when it should be fixed.

We all understand that staff are all volunteers, but that isn't an excuse for
procrastination. I just don't see the reason why we can't be honest about why
this has gone unaddressed. I also don't understand why the Board of Directors
doesn't think that the fact that newuser has gone broken this long somehow
doesn't affect their chances at reelection, or the overall health of the
organization.

Again, I simply don't understand why there is this lack of information. It
seems that this organization is bent on hording the truth about things such
as this. This is the precise conditions that foster speculation and deceit,
and lead to the break up of an organization.

response 16 of 51:

Jun 20 14:59 UTC 2005

nharmon - I'm sorry you are frustrated.  Here's the information, as I
understand it.

When Grex went down last time, a number of entries int he password file got
munged.  If newuser is allowed to run while they are still munged, bad
things could happen to the password file.  Plus, the people who own the
munged entries can't get into Grex.

STeve started to fix the problem, and promised to finish fixing it.  Then he
was called away and hasn't been back for at least a month.  STeve has always
been very responsive to crisis situations on Grex, and often (as in the case
of the last crash) is the first staff member to react when something goes
wrong.

But it's harder to motivate STeve to do things when there is not a perceived
crisis.  I presume he has moved on to other peoples' crises.  STeve has a
history of promising to do things very soon, then not getting to them until
months or years later, if at all.

The board (and Mary in particular) have been trying diligently to get STeve
to tell the rest of the staff where he was in the process of restoring the
password file, so that someone can pick up where he left off.  There has
been no response so far.  The best thing to do, I think, is for some staff
member to wade into the problem and try to figure out what state things are
in.

A separate problem is the question of why the password file got munged in
the first place.  It's possible there is something in newuser that doesn't
play well with OpenBSD.  Some staff member needs to step up and have a look
at that.

Mike McNally, at Mary's urging, has agreed to look at the current problem.

response 18 of 51:

Jun 20 15:24 UTC 2005

thank you, nharmon

response 20 of 51:

Jun 21 00:35 UTC 2005

I say we install xnew.

response 22 of 51:

Jun 21 13:57 UTC 2005

How many paying members have we lost since we lost newuser along with some
old accounts?

response 24 of 51:

Jun 21 17:22 UTC 2005

anonymous posting?  hah.  that seems like a bad idea.