Hello Andrew, I suppose a system that requires by a large factor more resources for installation that it requires to run is not really a good way to do it. Renting an 8GB Server when you only need that 8GB for setup sounds a bit daft. I do not know if renting a server dedicated to managing a handful of messages per day is really a good use of resources. In my opinion the best way would be to have Lilypond use a small share of the resources of a company or communiy stable enough to grant that the system will be around some time. This is exactly what is currently done by GNU infastructure.
Renting a dedicated server would really only make sense if we had a handful of web services that really make use of these resources. Such a server might also be used for example to host something like Paolo’s Spontini editor. I mean, sure, it wouldn’t cost much individually if a few of us rented a Server together, but I think if we do something like this we should make full use of that server. Cheers, Valentin Am Sonntag, 5. März 2023, 06:04:40 CET schrieb Andrew Bernard: > I'm still keen on Discourse for our community and have been giving it > some attention. People have right;y said the full historical archive is > important. David Kastrup usefully pointed out all the mbox archives are > freely available, back to the beginning. Discourse can import mbox > archives and there is a special import instance with scripts to load them. > > So I downloaded the complete set of archives and attempted to load them > into Discourse. One problem that arose is that the documentation for the > import script explicitly mentions that you need a system with 8GB of RAM > (only for the import, not for normal running) and my linux servers are > only configured with 2GB. Consequently the import fails. I use Vultr and > Digitalocean and unfortunately upping the specification to 8GB plus is > too expensive for me in my situation. Servers with extra RAM get > expensive very quickly at these companies. So this is a problem. I am > working towards a solution to work around this, perhaps doing it on my > home server and uploading to a 2GB server later (but there are > complexities with this). > > But, the next current issue is this, and I have come across this before > when importing mbox archives into GNU Mailman 2 and 3. The mbox format > is rather loosely defined, and there are lots of small variations. But > worse, even when you look at our archive set the format seems to vary > slightly over the years. Some messages don't get unpacked properly due > to inconsistencies in headers and my import of a sizeable batch showed > quite a few messages with the initial message fine, but then follow up > replies just appended in raw mailbox format rather than separate > messages. I'll have to study this in more depth and write some scripts > to pre-process the mbox files. Tedious, but I've had to do this in the past. > > If I can load the whole history, then people can have a play with it to > see if they like it. I also think I can get the Discourse instance to be > a subscriber to the present list so ti would keep up to date. Of course, > if people replied on the Discourse interface the lists would diverge, > but this is just for proopf of concept. > > As to operational matters, there is cost involved by going outside the > GNU infrastructure. An adequate server costs around USD$20 per month to > run. The way I handle this in the communities that I support is to ask > for donations. Generally if a moderate number of people chip in it can > be the cost of a cup of coffee a month. It's not excessive. > > I think there have been some comments here indicating some > dissatisfaction with this aging and somewhat limited email > infrastructure, so I am encouraged to setup my proof of concept to > demonstrate a modern system. I am also compelled to say that in > practical terms the email list functionality of Discourse from the end > user point of view is identical to what we have now with GNU Mailman 2, > and you'd be hard pressed to find any operational/functional difference. > So for people who reject web interfaces, in effect very little would change. > > Finally, I'd just mention that Discourse of course supports plain text, > but also HTML, and has full support for Markdown, both from email > initiated files and web initiated topics. This means you can do nice > formatting if required, and in particular you can make clear tables. And > as with most forums now, you can mark code blocks so that they stand out > clearly. > > I'll post regular updates as I make progress towards a full proof of > concept for people. And of course, if this was Discourse these posts > would be in a distinct and separate category so as not to be noise in > the main flow of the stream. :-) > > Andrew
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