Good bye: untergrund.net will be shutting down on December 15th
category: general [glöplog]
After 25 years it is time to say good bye - on December 15th, so two months from now, untergrund.net will be shutting down.
We will be contacting all of the 500+ user accounts by mail to check who is still "alive".
For some of the biggest sites like the Breakpoint one, chiptune.com, ADA etc should admins still be available we will be able to help migrate or find a custom solution on a fresh server of ours.
If you need such a custom solution for your site, please contact us before the end of October.
We will be contacting all of the 500+ user accounts by mail to check who is still "alive".
For some of the biggest sites like the Breakpoint one, chiptune.com, ADA etc should admins still be available we will be able to help migrate or find a custom solution on a fresh server of ours.
If you need such a custom solution for your site, please contact us before the end of October.
Thank you and sorry! 😅
Thank you so much for everything, Scamp! The site was perfect for my archive.
Finding a proper alternative might be impossible :(
Finding a proper alternative might be impossible :(
What kind of website is it? Static or dynamic? PHP? Mysql? FTP?
Purely static sites and those who can survive huge PHP version jump (aka minimalistic PHP stuff not using extensions) can be preserved on request.
If you are moving to a different hoster, we can also provide you your existing domain.
As you probably know currently the FTP/binary storage space is mounted and chrooted inside every user's home dir. That feature relied on tons of hacks that no longer are possible in Linux kernels from this century.
We will also be able to transfer the existing storage archive to a new server, but it will no longer be linked to any user accounts and therefore will be read-only. This means that file links to https://ftp.untergrund.net/username/bla.zip will keep working.
Purely static sites and those who can survive huge PHP version jump (aka minimalistic PHP stuff not using extensions) can be preserved on request.
If you are moving to a different hoster, we can also provide you your existing domain.
As you probably know currently the FTP/binary storage space is mounted and chrooted inside every user's home dir. That feature relied on tons of hacks that no longer are possible in Linux kernels from this century.
We will also be able to transfer the existing storage archive to a new server, but it will no longer be linked to any user accounts and therefore will be read-only. This means that file links to https://ftp.untergrund.net/username/bla.zip will keep working.
"Why don't sceners use SceneCity?" Maybe it's because at any moment, if you get upset over a couple of people in a chat, you can just up and walk away.
But what about all the people who weren’t involved in the drama, yet still keep their releases and sites on untergrund.net?
Sure, it's your right to shut down your project. But how does that align with the whole idea of preserving demoscene infrastructure that you brought up?
This is just plain childish, seriously.
P.S. I'm just waiting for Elon Musk to get mad and shut down Xwitter for good.
But what about all the people who weren’t involved in the drama, yet still keep their releases and sites on untergrund.net?
Sure, it's your right to shut down your project. But how does that align with the whole idea of preserving demoscene infrastructure that you brought up?
This is just plain childish, seriously.
P.S. I'm just waiting for Elon Musk to get mad and shut down Xwitter for good.
@scamp thank you a lot for those 25 years of absolutely free hosting, since chiptune.com has ultra outdated code and a very small size it will be surely very easy to move it somewhere else, without me knowing yet that untergrunt was closed the site was already backed by our lovely Ziphoid, so I thing everybody will be fine :)
huge loss, and terrible to see things going down.
Oh. I installed downloading my site, it's sad. It was a good service, I liked how the site visit statistics were kept.
http://darkman007.untergrund.net/
http://darkman007.untergrund.net/
bitl:
Sorry, but "the moment"? Untergrund.net has been up for 25 years and 3 months now. SceneCity tried for three years to get traction before giving up. It's not exactly that I am flip-flopping. :)
I am not aware how many accounts are actively maintained. Because stuff kept running for 25 without much issues it also means I can not judge if this is providing any benefit to anyone, because I simply never hear from users (which is a good sign when it comes to support).
The old platform can simply not run for much longer. And it's totally unrealistic that there will be any devop in the scene willing to get 25 years old hacked together software to run on current operating systems and hardware.
It was a choice between making another major investment for the scene, or just finally marking an end to my services I have provided to the scene.
Sorry, but "the moment"? Untergrund.net has been up for 25 years and 3 months now. SceneCity tried for three years to get traction before giving up. It's not exactly that I am flip-flopping. :)
I am not aware how many accounts are actively maintained. Because stuff kept running for 25 without much issues it also means I can not judge if this is providing any benefit to anyone, because I simply never hear from users (which is a good sign when it comes to support).
The old platform can simply not run for much longer. And it's totally unrealistic that there will be any devop in the scene willing to get 25 years old hacked together software to run on current operating systems and hardware.
It was a choice between making another major investment for the scene, or just finally marking an end to my services I have provided to the scene.
I am actually honestly quite surprised that there are active untergrund.net users in this thread. And more contacting me via SceneCity.
https://www.untergrund.net/index.php?act=stats doesn't help much on this.
https://www.untergrund.net/index.php?act=stats doesn't help much on this.
sad...thanks for the service all the years!!
Quote:
The old platform can simply not run for much longer
The question is: does maintaining the Untergrund.net (in its current form) require any effort or expenses from you right now? If not, then shutting down feels like just slamming the door and making an impulsive decision.
But if keeping this project up really does take up your resources and time... well, in that case, I get it.
Untergrund has been home of Färjans from the start. Thank you for your services, captain.
thank you, scamp! your service, of which i was an active user, really made an impact. i remember the time before scener-run filehosting and what a pain in the ass it was to put something on the internet. i really hope that you might reconsider.
(i meant webhosting, not filehosting)
the demoscene is really loosing its heritage. it is sad.
But.... Why are you closing it ?? I read some message talking about "scene drama" is it so ?
Do you have any plans what to do with sites where you cannot find anyone "alive"?
Maybe get in touch with ArchiveTeam (archiveteam.org) they have expierience in packaging publicly accessible content as WARC files to upload to internet archive (when it is not down or read-only any more). Of course, when there are password protected areas or other login mechanisms, preserving content publicly may not be what the authors want.
So just releasing an archive of htdocs and mysqldump is most likely not an option.
Maybe get in touch with ArchiveTeam (archiveteam.org) they have expierience in packaging publicly accessible content as WARC files to upload to internet archive (when it is not down or read-only any more). Of course, when there are password protected areas or other login mechanisms, preserving content publicly may not be what the authors want.
So just releasing an archive of htdocs and mysqldump is most likely not an option.
sorry to hear it's shutting down. hope it gets backed-up somehow for people to dig through it in the future if interested.
looking at the stats, i find it curious that scenept.untergrund.net is the 11th most used website considering xernobyl stopped actively updating it over a decade ago and the css is all broken. 3gb traffic per month?!?! that's suspicious to say the least, probably generated from bot accounts replying with spam on the comments or possibly even a vulnerability. O_o
i think you can kill it with fire, not much loss there, other folks been setting up a https://scene.pt/ that will eventually do a similar purpose. i'll tell them to snip any worthwhile articles while they can.
looking at the stats, i find it curious that scenept.untergrund.net is the 11th most used website considering xernobyl stopped actively updating it over a decade ago and the css is all broken. 3gb traffic per month?!?! that's suspicious to say the least, probably generated from bot accounts replying with spam on the comments or possibly even a vulnerability. O_o
i think you can kill it with fire, not much loss there, other folks been setting up a https://scene.pt/ that will eventually do a similar purpose. i'll tell them to snip any worthwhile articles while they can.
now this is not so good news.. there are lotsa files stored on numerous accounts next to websites hosted.. ADA Amiga should not be gone into oblivion for sure!
Cant scene.org continue to host all there is now on untergrund or something? :/
Cant scene.org continue to host all there is now on untergrund or something? :/
Quote:
Maybe get in touch with ArchiveTeam (archiveteam.org) they have expierience in packaging publicly accessible content as WARC files to upload to internet archive (when it is not down or read-only any more). Of course, when there are password protected areas or other login mechanisms, preserving content publicly may not be what the authors want.
They've been informed. They'll do as you described (as for eveet site) - crawl it and upload the crawl to the Wayback Machine. No crawling is possible right now because the Internet Archive is broken. Most likely all sites.
bitl is probably right about SceneCity.
While understandable, that is unfortunate.
My first thought is of course archival. As an example and believe it or not, I occasionally check something on the Breakpoint website, and I think I probably did so less than a year ago. Once things are moved, a permanent redirect would be nice as well.
I'm also concerned about the websites that Untergrund hosts which belonged to deceased sceners. I imagine there must be a few now, and it would pain some of us to see those go away.
My first thought is of course archival. As an example and believe it or not, I occasionally check something on the Breakpoint website, and I think I probably did so less than a year ago. Once things are moved, a permanent redirect would be nice as well.
I'm also concerned about the websites that Untergrund hosts which belonged to deceased sceners. I imagine there must be a few now, and it would pain some of us to see those go away.
untergrund.net is running on a 25 years old Linux Kernel and userland, which back then was using some third party security features that we had extended which allowed all user webspace, all user PHP executions and all access to the ftp storage and ftp uploads to run on each others non-privileged system account.
Due to this even with all the outdated software, vulnerable wordpress installations, etc, the global system has not been hacked. The worst case was single user accounts to get spammed/trashed.
ps: That's one such likely example. Disused account that someone still is doing lots of traffic. Maybe external links are still pointing directly to downloads there. Or it's AI bots scraping. Or it's an exploit.
And exactly this question exists for 500+ accounts.
To keep untergrund.net running for another 25 years, all of this needs to be sorted and cleaned up. Which sites are still "active" in the sense that someone is maintaining them. Which are non-active, but still used from the Internet.
And then: Which of those actually are using the FTP space. Which are actually using the PHP/Mysql stuff. If they are using PHP/Mysql, would they still work or break if we would just archive them read-only?
Which sites could be rescured by converting them to static HTML with a script like this:
https://github.com/SpeedcubeDE/speedcube.de-forum-archive
Looking such a script probably will take weeks, and someone will need to improve the script until it really managed to convert the sites without for example getting into an endless loop.
So, in summary: If untergrund.net is to run for another 1-25+ years, this work needs to be done. It will need experienced Linux admin/devop guys that have the time and energy to work on this for weeks until it is done.
My expectation was that nobody will be willing to volunteer with that.
Why Dec 15th as a cut-off date? In December we will have to move all of our company- and scene equipment to a new data center. It's a huge untertaking. And during the move, we want to retire all old servers we no longer need, because this will speed-up the move.
So if untergrund.net doesn't have a long-term future anymore anyway, and I personally not am willing to invest the gigantic amount of work to make it future-proof myself simply due to work load AND the fact that 90% of people I dealt with in the scene are telling me "you are not welcome here anymore, scamp" - it would make sense to just trash the servers on that date.
So, if someone or a team is found doing the future-proofing mission, untergrund.net can continue. And if there is actual process but that team is not done by Dec 15th, I'd also be OK to transfer the old bunch of servers to the new data center to give them more time. I just don't want to carry and move and adapt heavy garbage that's about to be retired anyway.
So, this is not a rage-quit or any of this sort. It's a reasonable decision only partly footed on the fact that I am not welcome in the scene anymore and therefore have decide to move to a more welcoming nerd/artist community instead, where I *am* welcome.
Due to this even with all the outdated software, vulnerable wordpress installations, etc, the global system has not been hacked. The worst case was single user accounts to get spammed/trashed.
ps: That's one such likely example. Disused account that someone still is doing lots of traffic. Maybe external links are still pointing directly to downloads there. Or it's AI bots scraping. Or it's an exploit.
And exactly this question exists for 500+ accounts.
To keep untergrund.net running for another 25 years, all of this needs to be sorted and cleaned up. Which sites are still "active" in the sense that someone is maintaining them. Which are non-active, but still used from the Internet.
And then: Which of those actually are using the FTP space. Which are actually using the PHP/Mysql stuff. If they are using PHP/Mysql, would they still work or break if we would just archive them read-only?
Which sites could be rescured by converting them to static HTML with a script like this:
https://github.com/SpeedcubeDE/speedcube.de-forum-archive
Looking such a script probably will take weeks, and someone will need to improve the script until it really managed to convert the sites without for example getting into an endless loop.
So, in summary: If untergrund.net is to run for another 1-25+ years, this work needs to be done. It will need experienced Linux admin/devop guys that have the time and energy to work on this for weeks until it is done.
My expectation was that nobody will be willing to volunteer with that.
Why Dec 15th as a cut-off date? In December we will have to move all of our company- and scene equipment to a new data center. It's a huge untertaking. And during the move, we want to retire all old servers we no longer need, because this will speed-up the move.
So if untergrund.net doesn't have a long-term future anymore anyway, and I personally not am willing to invest the gigantic amount of work to make it future-proof myself simply due to work load AND the fact that 90% of people I dealt with in the scene are telling me "you are not welcome here anymore, scamp" - it would make sense to just trash the servers on that date.
So, if someone or a team is found doing the future-proofing mission, untergrund.net can continue. And if there is actual process but that team is not done by Dec 15th, I'd also be OK to transfer the old bunch of servers to the new data center to give them more time. I just don't want to carry and move and adapt heavy garbage that's about to be retired anyway.
So, this is not a rage-quit or any of this sort. It's a reasonable decision only partly footed on the fact that I am not welcome in the scene anymore and therefore have decide to move to a more welcoming nerd/artist community instead, where I *am* welcome.
Quote:
So, this is not a rage-quit or any of this sort. It's a reasonable decision only partly footed on the fact that I am not welcome in the scene anymore and therefore have decide to move to a more welcoming nerd/artist community instead, where I *am* welcome.
Aaah, now I get it: It's not a rage-quit, but a rage-quit!
Yeah, the total in rage buddhist :)
Look, you can come to conclusions that your home is no longer a good home, without any rage. It's a long term process. I have ended organizing demoparties, then ended going to demoparties, then ended being in touch with close scene friends that just turned too toxic, and now physically moving to Thailand, which is a process I am working on for well over a year now.
But it totally is a spontaneous rage quit.
The thread in regards of "does the scene still care about scene infrastructure to exist" for myself has been a test. The the last item on the list above has been "am I still willing to run infrastructure for a scene I have left because people care". The answer is: No and No. And that is *OK* for me. It's a relief. I don't need to feel guilty of letting people down.
Look, you can come to conclusions that your home is no longer a good home, without any rage. It's a long term process. I have ended organizing demoparties, then ended going to demoparties, then ended being in touch with close scene friends that just turned too toxic, and now physically moving to Thailand, which is a process I am working on for well over a year now.
But it totally is a spontaneous rage quit.
The thread in regards of "does the scene still care about scene infrastructure to exist" for myself has been a test. The the last item on the list above has been "am I still willing to run infrastructure for a scene I have left because people care". The answer is: No and No. And that is *OK* for me. It's a relief. I don't need to feel guilty of letting people down.