Oolite Bulletins

Nite Owl wrote: ↑Thu Jan 07, 2021 8:50 pm

"YIKES !!" he shouted while bowing and praying to the Lords of the Backup Copy.

<chortles> "Yikes" is certainly one way of putting it, yes!

Contacting Maik and/or Winston appears a good idea to me.

And maybe it's a good idea to think about adding a PayPal donation button to the website and making Oolite kind of donationware so that, in case of trouble, this cash can be used to cover the cost of necessary repairs and/or replacements in hardware and/or software. Would possibly need clarification on the website what the donations are used for so that people know what the destination of their money is.

I'm certainly willing to donate for Oolite because it's fantastic.

RGVV wrote: ↑Fri Jan 08, 2021 9:34 am

Contacting Maik and/or Winston appears a good idea to me.

And maybe it's a good idea to think about adding a PayPal donation button to the website and making Oolite kind of donationware so that, in case of trouble, this cash can be used to cover the cost of necessary repairs and/or replacements in hardware and/or software. Would possibly need clarification on the website what the donations are used for so that people know what the destination of their money is.

I'm certainly willing to donate for Oolite because it's fantastic.

I'm sure that Maik knows. Maik, I'm sure, knows how to contact Winston (last seen here in 2012, but who keeps this going - and his older Alioth site for Frontier going as well - which is also down). As far as I know, the server is in London, Winston is on the Isle of Man and Maik is in Ljiubliana (Slovenia)! One presumes that the joys of lockdown are having a certain affect.

I'm very new to this board, but I wonder if there would be some mileage in trying to get Winston involved again. At the very least, he has written quite a lot of Frontier/Elite literature. While a lot of his stuff is still accessible, some seems to have disappeared. It would be nice to have a look at the missing stories.

Cholmondely wrote: ↑Fri Jan 08, 2021 10:12 am

... the server is in London, Winston is on the Isle of Man and Maik is in Ljiubliana...

And the Lords of the Backup Copy are in Bacup!

the joys of lockdown

Could very well be a reason, yes, do realize now.

Apologies for the recent unresponsiveness, too much real life... I just emailed Winston. The database is not running anymore on the wiki server, and I do not have sufficient rights to bring it back up.

maik wrote: ↑Fri Jan 08, 2021 4:45 pm

... too much real life...

I reckon we've all had too much real life this past year! Allow me to distract y'all with a little anecdote: I mentioned Bacup, which is a small town in Lancashire. A couple of miles from Bacup, up on the moor and tucked away from any light pollution, is the Astronomy Centre. I was up there back in the mid-eighties, only a few years after it was established, hoping for a clear night. Alas, 'twas not to be! However, not only did they have telescopes, they had a BBC Micro with Elite on it. You can guess how I spent that long night, waiting for a break in the cloud.

Cody wrote: ↑Fri Jan 08, 2021 5:25 pm

They had a BBC Micro with Elite on it. You can guess how I spent that long night

Nice anecdote Did you know Elite before?

Oh yes! I was already Elite back home!

Cody wrote: ↑Fri Jan 08, 2021 5:32 pm

Oh yes! I was already Elite back home!

That must have been quite soon after Elite came out!

In the meantime, if someone fancies a 2012 version of our wiki: voilà

Nice! Even back then, we had an impressive list of OXPs.

In the meantime, if someone fancies a 2012 version of our wiki: voilà

Thank you maik.

fyi, the most recent backup of the wiki pages that I have (even though my backup server needs a re-setup) is from September 30th, 2020. Until I try to restore the backup I do not know that it works, but I'd rather give it a few more days and wait for Winston to restart the database since setting up the server to run properly again is quite some work.

Regarding files, I seem to have all uploaded files until the last day the wiki worked (the most recent one is Montana's Far Arm Ships from Jan 4th). An emergency surgery could be to point the extension manager to wiki.maikschulz.de. The path after the domain name to a file is the same. At least the extension manager would be fixed by that. And once the wiki.alioth.net is back up, we can point the extension manager back there.

I should have sufficient download volume with my server hoster, I just hope it holds up memory-wise. But hey, it is an emergency, I'm ok to try.

Anyone here who can change the extension manager config?

The expansion pack manager works by reading the collective manifests file for all published OXPs from oolite.org. That's what it downloads when you request an update of the OXP list. It then uses this manifest file to list oXPs and get them from their download locations. So it is not a simple case of reconfiguring the manager, we must edit the manifests file downloaded from oolite.org and replace all wiki.alioth.net locations with your domain.

I'll run a few quick tests and then come back with instructions, if I do get it to work. Thanks for keeping a backup of the files, you might have just saved the day.