The seemingly endless ongoing Masonry project of changing to the lochac.sca.org domain for all "in game" websites, mailing lists and email addresses has progressed well and nearly everything has been changed.
NB: If you are responsible for maintaining web sites, please DEFEND "something@lochac.sca.org" email addresses on web pages from spam by instead using this form: "something@lochac.sca.org". This obfuscated variant works in your browsers just fine, and helps create a small but long-term advantage for us all by reducing harvesting by spambots.
It is also advisable to do the same for all email addresses appearing on SCA websites.
Outstanding issues are backups of the servers and repairs to the secondary AU server.
All contact with the Masonry team is via the email address masonry@lochac.sca.org.
Please do not email the Masonry Team on their private email addresses except when you have been contacted by them directly.
Please report problems to the Masonry Deputy, via masonry@lochac.sca.org.
Known projects in the works, with relevant champions are:
These options are listed here so they aren't lost in the traffic, but have no particular timeframe
The following servers and administrators are known to be supporting two or more sites or activities in the Kingdom of Lochac. Not all receive direct support from the Masonry budget. If there's a significant server not mentioned here, please get in touch.
Again on the 17th, there was another attack by malicious persons on the main server (bob) and malicious files were uploaded
At this point it was taken completely offline. It was also realised that this was an opportunity to update the Wordpress installs and make it one install for global server access. This was done as well as updating the operating system to the latest version.
During this process, it was discovered that one of the hard drives on the unit was faulty. As a result, all websites were migrated to the NZ server run by William. The AU Backup server was bought into service and replaced the main server (cat -> bob, bob on standby for data transfer). There were also other technical issues that needed to be resolved before bob could be bought back into full service (Still not done as at 1st August).
A Wordpress team came into being to take care of the Wordpress installations on cat and everything was copied over except for the then current Wordpress sites. A single install was made to Wordpress and the Wordpress team started work restoring sites.
At around 10:30pm on the 19th February, cat gave up the ghost and froze. Thanks to Roaul who jumped on a plane to Sydney, it was reset at around 6:30pm on the 20th. The apparent cause was that it ran out of memory and simply froze up. More down time. What else can go wrong ?
Cat was reset and continues to serve unto this day (1st Aug 2012) with nary a problem.
Bob is still being repaired and we are also looking at other options ie. virtual server, better recovery procedures etc.
But, all in all, the Masonry team hit the ground running and worked very long hours to restore services after a triple failure, and they did a magnificent job.
We`are now better prepared and more secure than we were. However it should always be remembered that nothing is fail-safe and contingency plans must always be ready.
For reference, the full proposal which led to the establishment of the Masonry office is available here.
Herewith some technical information for the key servers receiving support (or likely to) from this office:
People with administrator access to sca.org.au: Raoul, William de Cameron, Will of Rowany. People with administrator access to sca.org.nz: William de Cameron, William de Wyke. People with sca.org.au DNS access: William de Cameron, Raoul, Bartholomew. People with lochac.sca.org and sca.org.nz DNS access: William de Cameron, William de Wyke.