Upcoming Starship changes

[Andrew M. Kuchling]

Some more changes will be happening on Starship this weekend; it'll be
moving to a new machine hosted by BeOpen.  The new machine is larger
and faster, and BeOpen's staff will worry about keeping the machine
running.

The plan is to make the transition over this coming weekend, June 3-4,
in several steps.  Starship will stay up and working while the new
machine is being configured.

1) Everyone's files will be copied from the current starship.

2) The login message will then be changed, to warn users that
subsequent changes to their files on the old Starship won't be carried
over.

3) The new machine will be configured with FTP and HTTP and e-mail.

4) The DNS records will changed so starship.python.net and
www.python.net point to the new machine.  DNS changes usually take a
day or two to propagate, so by the middle of next week everyone should
be accessing the new machine, assuming we don't run into any snags
along the way.

The old starship will still be accessible through its IP address:
209.50.192.113.

What this means to you:

* If you're not modifying files on Starship over the weekend, we hope
  you won't have to do anything.  Once the DNS changes have propagated,
  'ssh starship.python.net' will get you to the new machine, and
  everything will be much the same.

* If you're going to be modifying things over the weekend, pay close
  attention when you log in, so you know when we've copied the files.
  If you modify your files after we've copied them, it'll be your
  responsibility to copy the changes from the old machine to the new
  one.

* If you only access starship in order to download files, you don't
  care about all this.  The old starship will stay up, and at some
  point the IP address pointed to by starship.python.net will change,
  but that shouldn't be noticeable to you.

-- 
A.M. Kuchling			http://starship.python.net/crew/amk/
And then it crumbled in his hand. It was just dust, sand, a glittering
multicolored sand that fell away into the chilly wind at the end of the world.
  -- Dream uncreates the Land, in SANDMAN #36: "Over the Sea to Sky"