Textpattern forum maintenance - Friday, May 31 2019

gaekwad · 2019-05-28 09:29:54

The Textpattern user forum will be down for maintenance as we move servers. The anticipated downtime is 2 hours.

Expected start of maintenance period: Friday, May 31 2019 1300GMT
Expected end of maintenance period: Friday, May 31 2019 1500GMT

When the forum server is undergoing maintenance, posting and replying will not be possible.

All forum content will be migrated to the new server.

The new server will run the forum entirely from forum.textpattern.com, not from forum.textpattern.io as it does now. We will have redirects in place to ensure links continue to function correctly.

Forum email alerts (replies, direct messages etc) will originate from a textpattern.com address, not from xpattern.net as they do now..

If the maintenance window can be reduced without affecting security, the forum will be online sooner than the expected end time above.

Status updates and related information will be posted in the first reply to this post.

Please ask any questions in this thread.

Last edited by gaekwad (2019-05-28 12:44:20)

gaekwad · 2019-05-28 09:30:27

Reserved for status updates.

1550GMT: took longer than expected, but I think we’re live.
1700GMT: IPv6 is serving pages. SSL Labs showing an ‘A+’ rating on the new server. See here for the details.
1705GMT: started process to de-Cloudflare textpattern.io, DNS relocated.
1755GMT: resolved reported 502 errors (cookie size issues).

Last edited by gaekwad (2019-05-31 17:56:07)

phiw13 · 2019-05-28 11:51:52

good – nice time, 1300GMT is 22:00 local time. I’ll wake up in the morning with a new forum to look at !

がんばって [1].

¹ (good luck)

philwareham · 2019-05-31 15:43:48

Seems to be working. Just posting this message to test!

gaekwad · 2019-05-31 15:44:23

philwareham wrote #318317:

Seems to be working. Just posting this message to test!

And email alerts are also flowing. Hurrah!

jakob · 2019-05-31 16:26:29

Well done! And thanks!

gaekwad · 2019-05-31 16:27:49

jakob wrote #318321:

Well done! And thanks!

Thank you. That was a fun and interesting few hours!

uli · 2019-05-31 16:34:15

Even I and my oldish browser/OS can still view and post. Thanks!

gaekwad · 2019-05-31 16:45:25

uli wrote #318323:

Even I and my oldish browser/OS can still view and post. Thanks!

Absolutely! I recall the conversation we had about earlier versions of Firefox and I investigated a suitable TLS setup to accommodate that without compromising any security.

michaelkpate · 2019-05-31 17:39:44

I had to reset my password in order to get in. But everything is working now.

gaekwad · 2019-05-31 18:04:23

michaelkpate wrote #318325:

I had to reset my password in order to get in. But everything is working now.

Possibly due to the domain changing if you’re using a password manager.

michaelkpate · 2019-05-31 21:14:27

gaekwad wrote #318330:

Possibly due to the domain changing if you’re using a password manager.

I hadn’t considered that. Chrome probably had my .com password still saved.

phiw13 · 2019-05-31 22:46:03

Appart from the need for hunting for my password (domain change, Keychain did not automatically fill in the PW), everything went fine.

Question: is www-data [ at ]trident.textpattern.com the email address for all types of forum notifications?

gaekwad · 2019-05-31 23:10:06

phiw13 wrote #318336:

Question: is www-data [ at ]trident.textpattern.com the email address for all types of forum notifications?

The intention is to have contact [at] textpattern.com, which I thought we had. The email headers might tell another story, however – I haven’t checked that in detail yet as I’ve run out of day and need fresh eyes.

The trident part is the server name, and the network architecture is such that a server can be (re)built quickly with restored backups, so if and when we need to flatten a server and replace it with a new build, we can. www-data is the (unprivileged) user that runs the web stuff, and also the user PHP-FPM runs as, and fluxBB uses PHP to send email – hence the address. I’ve had a bit of a crash course in the quirks of fluxBB today, and although I thought the email envelope was set correctly throughout, there may be something we missed. We may be able to address (har har, etc) this with some tweaks, but I won’t promise anything.

I think you’re referring to the Return-Path or X-Mail-from header in the email, which is set to the address you stated. This helps email deliverability. One of the reasons the forum migration has taken so long is I’ve been reticent to have lots of email leave a ‘new’ IP without warming it up first. The old server was old enough to have gained a reputation as relatively safe. The new server, not so much. A PTR record is set for the new server, and an SPF entry in the DNS MX records confirm it’s a known sender, and those things alone help the deliverability of email these days.

The From address should be contact [at], if it’s not then please let me know.

phiw13 · 2019-06-01 03:06:47

gaekwad wrote #318337:

The intention is to have contact [at] textpattern.com, which I thought we had. The email headers might tell another story, however – I haven’t checked that in detail yet as I’ve run out of day and need fresh eyes.[…]

The From address should be contact [at], if it’s not then please let me know.

The From address is indeed set as you say, the trident.texpattern.com is indeed the Return-Path. What prompted the question is that mail.app treated the first message(s) (notification) as junk. I’ve now added contact [at] textpattern.com to my address book, that issue should be gone. The good part of course is that the message(s) arrived, and got past Apples filters on .me and .icloud domains.

Textpattern CMS

Textpattern CMS support forum

#1 2019-05-28 09:29:54