Plan B?

[Ryan Schmidt]

On Oct 12, 2015, at 4:49 AM, Mojca Miklavec wrote:

> I hate to ask that question and I'm not trying to suggest moving away
> just yet, but what is our plan B in case of some critical server
> failures?
> 
> While it is a bit annoying, it is certainly not critical if one or two
> buildbots are broken and if there is nobody to set a new one for the
> new OS. And there are no serious consequences if trac.macports.org/log
> doesn't show any updates.
> 
> But what happens when trac goes down or becomes seriously damaged (to
> the point of no recovery)? When the main website goes down? When SVN
> stops working? Or the mailing lists shuts down or @macports.org
> aliases are no longer accessible?
> 
> Do we have a backup plan or plan B? Are we able to move the services
> elsewhere if the current hosting becomes seriously broken one day,
> possibly without any prior notice?
> 
> I don't want to start panicking, but it would be nice to have a
> backup/read-only mirror of trac and the main website somewhere. And
> possibly backups of other services. Sure, we have never experienced
> problems with any of these *really* critical components***, but what
> if we do? Do we have any answer to offer users other than "switch to
> the other package manager" when something serious happens? This is one
> of the issues that would make sense discussing during the meeting.

We have no plan B. Prior to May, we never felt like we needed one, since Apple's Mac OS Forge was reliable. I would like MacPorts to stay with Mac OS Forge, because it would be an extreme pain to try to move. We just need them to become responsive to our needs again. Our current Mac OS Forge administrator was appointed in May as a temporary part-time replacement until a permanent administrator could be found, but they have not found one yet. I will attempt to bring the issue up with Apple and try to explain the extent of the problems and the urgency of resolving the situation.