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iBlack | |
iMarch 10th, 2018 | |
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i | |
iIf you're reading this that means that my sdf gopher hole is dead. | |
i | |
iThat's dramatic! | |
i | |
iRecently there was a second round of shake-ups in the SDF gopher | |
ispace. Unlike sdf.org, which has been running gophernicus for | |
iquite a while, gopher.club suddenly forked away and started | |
irunning a different server. This was a surprise for most of us | |
isince gopher.club was just an alias for SDF, or so we thought. The | |
ichange blew up a few of the prettier gopher holes like jynx and | |
icat's. Mine was relatively unscathed, but it raised an issue in my | |
imind. SDF is not a safe space for things to live. | |
i | |
iSDF is a test-bed for lots of things. It does some fantastic work | |
iin aiding the stability of NetBSD. I know better than to host | |
ia critical web site there, but for some reason I thought of it as | |
ia place where gopher holes could persist relatively unscathed over | |
itime. It's been running for so long already, what could change | |
ithat, right? | |
i | |
iThen in the matter of months we witness some pretty big shifts in | |
ithe system. The worst part of it is the lack of communication. | |
iThere was no warning of changes coming, no announcement of why or | |
ito what end, nothing. The SDF users are pretty relaxed about it, | |
ibut it still put that nagging thought in the back of my mind. Is | |
ithis really safe? | |
i | |
iSo on a whim I bought a handful of gopher domains while at a diner | |
ifor lunch. One of these is gopher.black, my new home. It's running | |
ion a raspberry pi in my spare room, clinging to my wifi and | |
idangling on the edge of the desk without so much as a plastic | |
icase. Is this safe? Well, no. I'll get a case for it tomorrow and | |
ihard-wire it to the network. I've set up dynamic dns through | |
inamesilo.com using their API and a little python. I've still got | |
ito configure the pi to restart the gopher server upon reboot. | |
iThere's plenty of work to be done. | |
i | |
iIs it reliable, is it safe? Well, no and yet yes. I'm running | |
ithings myself and in the end that's where reliability is. Do it | |
iyourself, own it, and you can trust it. Anything else is false | |
ihope. | |
i | |
iBlack thoughts for gopher.black? I think it's hopeful. | |
i | |
iI wish the SDF gopher community the best. I'll still be active all | |
iover SDF, in IRC, com, even anonradio. I love it there, but I've | |
ilearned my lesson not to trust it with my stuff. |