ibiblio services/changes announcement list

[cmpalmer AT metalab.unc.edu (Cristobal M. Palmer)]

Greetings,

CM. Palmer from metalab here. I come bearing system news. :)

Executive Summary
---------------------
mailman (software powering lists on lists.ibiblio.org) will be
restarted this MONDAY and WEDNESDAY to phase in several
changes. Please be patient if messages sent Monday or Wednesday
afternoons do not arrive to your list immediately.

Detailed Explanation
---------------------

This Monday (22nd January 2007) we will be making a configuration
change to mailman, the software that powers mailing lists on
lists.ibiblio.org.

This change will mean that archives will be in the UTF-8 character
set, which for most of you means nothing and will make not a bit of
difference, EXCEPT that making this change will require restarting
mailman. If you see a burp on Monday afternoon, that's what is
happening. Please wait and try your message again in the evening or
the next day if there's a problem.

For those of you who have archives that don't render properly (because
they use characters not in the us-ascii character set), this is good
news! Archives for your list generated after Monday should render
properly. We'll work on converting the existing archives that have
problems in the near future.

This Wednesday (24th January 2007) we'll be making additional changes
to mailman that will again require a restart of mailman. These changes
are more extensive and will mean a slightly longer downtime. Please be
aware of this scheduled downtime on Wednesday if you have important
mail going to a lists.ibiblio.org mailing list this week.

Contact, Problems
---------------------
As always, send mail to help AT ibiblio.org if you have questions or
concerns.

Thanks,
--
CM. Palmer
ibiblio.org system administrator