Apr 28, 2025 Current Resources

Re: outages list badly broken, flooding messages

nanog mailing list archives

From: Tom Beecher via NANOG <nanog () lists nanog org>
Date: Sun, 27 Apr 2025 19:04:35 -0400

A very simple message would have sufficed.

"Hey all, looks like the outages list is on the fritz, seems to be spamming
the same message out over and over. I tried reaching out there, but does
anyone else have a contact by chance or could reach out?"

No need for all the extra pontificating. And if alert spam is annoying you,
squelch them on your device. You have the tools. Use them.

I apologize if it seems like I'm lashing out at you personally. I'm not
trying to.

On Sun, Apr 27, 2025 at 6:10 PM Glenn McGurrin via NANOG <
nanog () lists nanog org> wrote:

Not quite, I sent two emails initially as I use different addresses for
outages and nanog, and so needed to send with the appropriate from lines
to avoid it being rejected as a non member posting, the messages were
identical other than the to/from lines, but the other went to what I
could find easily as contact for Jared and the normal list admin address
plus outages and discussion, I hesitated on including the list because I
feared adding to the issue, but ultimately decided to include the list,
but I also didn't have any confidence it would go through on the list,
and with the specifics of the issue unknown and the address I had for
Jared, who I understood to be the sole admin of puck from limited things
I'd seen in the discussions of the issue, and his email being @puck (the
server with the list that was misbehaving), I wasn't sure any of the
email addresses I had for him would have gone through either, so hedged
bets, also to see a bit if this was at least in part some interaction
between his server and mine or a list wide issue, it sounds like it's
something in the middle, affecting more than me, but not everyone.

As for the turning off, as there's been some somewhat aggressive
messages about the issues with the list recently, I wanted to be very
clear that I understood the minimal expectations that were reasonable,
and that unlike some other discussions were taken to imply I wasn't
expecting large immediate efforts for free, and given the issue was
ongoing and even if I've never spoken to him I know Jared by reputation
I expected that there was a combination of a rather more difficult than
might have first been assumed issue in play and limited time and
resources available to fix it, but that I hoped that someone could find
the likely very small amount of time to turn off the mailman service and
either issue a hold or otherwise stop any mail queued in postfix or
similar, which I would guess to take around 5 minutes or less, including
logging in and such, which I had hope was something the admins of that
list would have time for and would not overly intrude into their
schedule, which it was clear actually fully fixing it would likely do.

Perhaps I should have indicated this was a cross post in my initial
email, I'd thought about it but at the time thought it unnecessary, I
was also trying to make sure I didn't write aggressively or give an
appearance of doing so while rather frustrated as my devices kept going
off indicating new email distracting me.




TLDR;
In short Tom, while I appreciate it may not have been obvious or known
to you given it was two different emails, I did in fact report the issue
where it was occurring, though had reason to question if that email
would get through, so in part because of that and in part for other
reasons cross posted the message here at nanog, and I was trying to ask
for a limited response while being clear that I understood I didn't have
any standing to go pushing for much and that I did NOT expect anyone to
go solve what was apparently quite a thorny issue immediately on a Sunday.

On 4/27/2025 4:49 PM, Jason Canady via NANOG wrote:

I am not getting the flood of emails from the outages list, but I am
assuming that the OP didn't want to add to the loop and that's why he
posted here instead.

On 4/27/25 4:44 PM, Tom Beecher via NANOG wrote:

  I do understand this is a volunteer run
list


FWIW up to 96 copies now as I write this, it's been going on for about

an hour and a half at this point, I held of sending anything initially
hoping it would be jumped on and at least the sending shut down even if
that meant taking any remaining online part of the list down for now
until there was time to fix it, as I get it, it's Sunday, people have
plans, etc, at this point all I'd ask to be expedited is shutting it
down until such time as people have time to fix it, not for people to
abandon plans on a Sunday to root cause this and fully fix it.




So let me get this straight.

1. You saw a problem with something.
2. You didn't report that problem where it was occuring.
3. You went somewhere else to complain about it.
4. You don't expect anyone to fix it on a Sunday, but you do expect
someone to turn it off on a Sunday.

Yeesh.




On Sun, Apr 27, 2025 at 12:28 PM Glenn McGurrin via NANOG <
nanog () lists nanog org> wrote:

I've already received 76 copies of
"Re: [Outages-discussion] Lists dead - after action report?"
and continue receiving them every few minutes, apologies, 77 copies

now,

this is clearly badly broken, I do understand this is a volunteer run
list, but normally I do want to receive notifications as it's generally
important if it's on this list, but currently I'm looking at having to
block the list as it's sending my notifications nuts.


Also as an aside, I'd hesitated offering this before, not feeling like

was known enough or had enough standing in the community for it to be
accepted and used, but if help is needed figuring out the issues, or if
it would help the community to have a backup list, running mailman or
potentially for added diversity running a different mailing list
software, it's been a bit but I've used sympa before as well as mailman
to run lists, I'm happy to host a secondary backup list(s) to offer

some

extra redundancy to the community (or if people really wanted to have
someone take over the main I'm willing to, but I'm not asking for that
or expecting anyone wants that), I know some mention has been made in a
thread somewhere about adding redundancy to the list but nothing about
the form of that redundancy.

FWIW up to 96 copies now as I write this, it's been going on for about
an hour and a half at this point, I held of sending anything initially
hoping it would be jumped on and at least the sending shut down even if
that meant taking any remaining online part of the list down for now
until there was time to fix it, as I get it, it's Sunday, people have
plans, etc, at this point all I'd ask to be expedited is shutting it
down until such time as people have time to fix it, not for people to
abandon plans on a Sunday to root cause this and fully fix it.
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Current thread:

Re: outages list badly broken, flooding messages, (continued)
- - Re: outages list badly broken, flooding messages Jay Hennigan via NANOG (Apr 27)
- Re: outages list badly broken, flooding messages virendra rode via NANOG (Apr 27)
  - Re: outages list badly broken, flooding messages Mike Hammett via NANOG (Apr 27)
    - Re: outages list badly broken, flooding messages virendra rode via NANOG (Apr 27)
    - Re: outages list badly broken, flooding messages Glenn McGurrin via NANOG (Apr 27)
  - Re: outages list badly broken, flooding messages Jared Mauch via NANOG (Apr 27)
  - Re: outages list badly broken, flooding messages Josh Luthman via NANOG (Apr 27)

Re: outages list badly broken, flooding messages Tom Beecher via NANOG (Apr 27)

Re: outages list badly broken, flooding messages Jason Canady via NANOG (Apr 27)
- Re: outages list badly broken, flooding messages Glenn McGurrin via NANOG (Apr 27)
- Re: outages list badly broken, flooding messages Tom Beecher via NANOG (Apr 27)