Change of Masonry Deputy

After two years as Lochac Masonry Deputy, THL Ælfred se leof will step down in August 2022. Baron Brían dorcha ua Conaill OL will assume the role for a new two-year term beginning in the same month. Masonry services should continue uninterrupted.

Mailman3 migration is now complete

All lochac.sca.org mailing lists have now been migrated to Mailman Version 3. Some lists no longer in use have been retired. The web interface for all mailing lists is now at https://mailman.lochac.sca.org.

The most common questions about the transition concern passwords for lists. In Mailman2, list members had a separate password for every list, and every list had a single administrator password shared by all administrators of the list. However, these passwords are no longer valid in Mailman3.

Mailman3 does not require any password to subscribe to a list, send and receive messages, or unsubscribe. List members can subscribe or unsubscribe using the list’s home page at https://mailman.lochac.sca.org, or by sending a message to listname-join@lochac.sca.org or listname-leave@lochac.sca.org where ‘listname’ is the name of the list.

List administrators, however, must sign up for a new account at https://mailman.lochac.sca.org to be able to do any list administration. Even if you had a list administrator password in Mailman2, you need to sign up for Mailman3 because the Mailman2 passwords are no longer valid.

1. Choose ‘Sign Up’ in the top-right corner.
2. For ‘E-mail’, enter the e-mail address of the list administrator.
3. Choose a username, remembering that this name must be unique across the whole Kingdom. If signing up on behalf of an office, consider using the name of the office, since the account will be passed on to future office-holders.
4. Choose a password.

The system should send a message to the e-mail address that you nominated, asking you to confirm the account. Once the account is confirmed, you should be able to login and perform list administration tasks.

Ordinary list subscribers can also create accounts, which may be necessary if you want to configure the way you receive messages or to view private list archives. Unlike Mailman2, the same username and password controls access to all of the lists to which you are subscribed.

 

 

Changes to mailing lists in Mailman3

The majority of lochac.sca.org mailing lists have now been migrated to Mailman Version 3, with the remainder expected to be done over the month of May. The migration introduces several minor changes to the behaviour of lists, documented below.

For all list members

• Masonry has configured Mailman3 to process messages once every ten minutes, so messages posted to the list may take up to ten minutes to be sent to list members.
• List archives are updated nightly (Australian time). Consequently, messages posted to a list may not appear in the archives until the following day.
• Mailman3 no longer sends out automatic password reminders at the beginning of each month. List members may instead update settings for all their lists through a single user account at https://mailman.lochac.sca.org, or otherwise e-mail to listname-request@lochac.sca.org. See Migration to Mailman3 for further details.

For webwrights

• The home page for the list listname is now https://mailman.lochac.sca.org/postorius/lists/listname.lochac.sca.org.
• Once Mailman Version 2 has been retired, Masonry will redirect former Mailman2 URLs to the equivalent Mailman3 URLs.

For list administrators

• Mailman3 allows for a somewhat shorter list description than Mailman2 did. Where list descriptions exceeded the length permitted by Mailman3, Masonry has shortened them and sent the original text to the list administrator.
• Importation of list archives from Mailman2 to Mailman3 is imperfect due to limitations in the file format used to store messages in Mailman2. A small number of archived messages may have been rejected or garbled. Should you require an accurate record of what was posted to the Mailman2 list, Masonry can provide the original archive in ‘MBOX’ format.
• By default, Mailman3 will silently discard messages sent from addresses that are not subscribed to the list. You can instead have them sent for moderation by changing the settings under Settings -> Message Acceptance.
• Footers imported from Mailman2 may contain garbage URLs due to changes in the web interface from Mailman2 to Mailman3. To change the list’s message footer, visit Templates, click “New Template”, then choose “The footer for a regular (non-digest) message” beside Name.
• Some mail clients, including Gmail and Roundcube, do not recognise non-English letters produced by Mailman’s “Convert HTML to plaintext” option. Messages converted to plaintext may appear garbled in such clients. This is not an issue for HTML messages and Masonry has switched off conversion to plaintext for most lists.

Migration to Mailman3

Mailing lists hosted on lochac.sca.org are managed by a piece of software known as Mailman. Lochac has been using Mailman2 successfully for many years but this version is no longer maintained by its developers. As a consequence, the Masonry Team will be migrating all mailing lists to Mailman3.

Due to the number of lists to be migrated and the complexity of the migration process, lists will be migrated one by one over the course of April and May 2022. Lists that are no longer in use may be retired rather than migrated. The points below set out what list members and administrators need to know about the change.

Migration

• Masonry will work with list administrators to set a time and date for migration of each list, and to communicate this to list members.
• The list will be unavailable for 30-60 minutes while its data is migrated from Mailman2 to Mailman3. Messages sent to the list during this period may be lost or bounced.
• The migration process will preserve the list membership and list archives, but the web interface will move to https://mailman.lochac.sca.org.
• Masonry will keep a backup of the Mailman2 list archives, which can be obtained by request.

For list members

• List members need not do anything to continue sending and receiving list e-mail.
• Instead of having a separate password for each list, list members can manage their settings for all lists by creating an account at https://mailman.lochac.sca.org.
• To access functions requiring a log-in, list members must create a new account even if already subscribed to one or more lists. The Mailman interface should automatically associate each new account with lists to which the e-mail address is subscribed.
• Mailman’s web interface allows list members to choose arbitrary usernames. Remember that these must be unique across the whole kingdom. Masonry may rename or revoke accounts with usernames that could be confused with an office, group, guild or order.
• List members can also manage their subscription by sending e-mail to listname-request@lochac.sca.org, e.g. lochac-announce-request@lochac.sca.org for the Lochac Announce list. Send a message with subject ‘help’ for instructions. This doesn’t require an account.

For list administrators

• List administrators may change list settings, tend to moderation requests, etc. through their accounts at https://mailman.lochac.sca.org. There is no longer a separate password for list administration.
• Where the list administrator is a lochac.sca.org address like officer@lochac.sca.org or seneschal@group.lochac.sca.org, we suggest creating an account with username ‘officer’ or ‘group’ corresponding to this address. This account can then be passed on to future office-holders.
• The Mailman3 site administrator is mailman3@lochac.sca.org. Please direct requests for new lists, enquiries about the list administrator interface, etc., to this address.

For webwrights

• After migration, links to Mailman2 pages like https://lochac.sca.org/mailman/listinfo/listname will no longer function. In Mailman3, the home page for a list is https://mailman.lochac.sca.org/postorius/lists/listname.lochac.sca.org, where listname is the name of the list.

Lochac server upgrade – success!

The Lochac server is now running Ubuntu 20.04. The webmail interface has been changed to Roundcube. The upgrade proceeded with only minor hiccups and I believe we have now ironed out all of the teething problems. As always, please Ask Masonry if anything is not working as it should.

Lochac server upgrade

The lochac.sca.org server currently runs Ubuntu Linux 16.04. Maintenance releases for this version will cease in April 2021. Masonry will therefore intends to upgrade the sever to Ubuntu 20.04 in two phases:

1. Ubuntu 16.04 to 18.04 on Monday 7 December 2020; then
2. Ubuntu 18.04 to 20.04 on Monday 14 December 2020.

The main effects of the upgrade will be to back-end software that is not visible to ordinary users, such as bug-fixes, security updates, performance improvements, and so on. The webmail system, however, will be changed from the current interface (Squirrelmail) to a more modern one (Roundcube), and mailing list administrators will have the option to move from the current Mailman2 installation to the more modern and featureful Mailman3.

All services should continue to operate as normal throughout the upgrade, except for a few re-starts on the dates above. Each re-start should take no more then fifteen minutes.

Masonry now does graphic art

Masonry is now able to provide graphic art for Kingdom Officers in need of logos, flowcharts, and other items for Kingdom documents and web sites. The Masonry Team welcomes Etain ingen Choilien, of the Barony of Ildhafn, as our first graphic artist.

Kingdom Officers looking for assistance with art may open a discussion about their requirements by by e-mail to masonry@lochac.sca.org or Ask Masonry.

New Masonry Deputy

The new Masonry Deputy is Lord Ælfred se leof, resident of the Shire of Adora. Ælfred joined the SCA in 1999 and since then has been dancing, brewing, researching, making just enough costumes to turn up to events in a decent state, and occasionally going to war. Outside the SCA, he is known as Nicholas Sheppard, an academic and software developer based in Wollongong, New South Wales.

New server

All Australian websites are now being served from the new server.

Lochac-AU hosting

Server hosting for the Lochac-AU server is done by Web24, and their service status page is here. This includes their scheduled outages, as well as updates on any unscheduled outages.

Lochac-NZ hosting

Server hosting for Lochac-NZ is generously provided by Master William de Cameron.