CAcert Code Development list.

[Wytze van der Raay <wytze AT cacert.org>]

Hi Frédéric,

Sorry to disappoint you, but Jan (with some help from me) did not
perform a miracle upgrade -- only the *infrastructure* server was
affected by this upgrade, not the *critical* CAcert webdb server,
aka www.cacert.org. The story of old/obsolete CAcert application
code blocking an upgrade to a more recent OS release continues to
hold for that system :-(
Technically it would be possible to upgrade the root of the CAcert
webdb server to Debian 9 (oldstable) or 10 (stable), but it would
leave the chroot enviroment in which the CAcert application runs
not only unmodified/obsolete, but also completely unmaintained --
at this moment it is still possible to update the chroot environment
from time to time with security updates issued for the obsoleted
Debian 8, but that would not be possible anymore in a split-OS-version
setup. On the other hand, those security updates for Debian 8 are likely
to become scarce now that Debian 10 has been released, so Debian 8 lost
its "oldstable" status.

Regards,
- wytze

On 7/21/19 9:57 PM, Frederic Dumas wrote:
> Hello Jan,
> Hello Wytze!
> 
> 
> Le 13/07/2019 à 19:04, Jan Dittberner a écrit :
> 
>> thanks to the help of Wytze van der Raay I could finish the upgrade of our
>> infrastructure host successfully. The system is now running
>> on the Debian Buster OS release that has been released by the Debian 
>> project
>> last weekend.
> 
> 
> 
> I remember a few emails exchanged this year on the development mailing list;
> my understanding of our "roadmap" to upgrade our servers and applications
> looked like that at that time:
> 
>  - first, we have to change our PHP code to make it compatible
>    with version 7.x of PHP
> 
>  - then we will upgrade the underlying OS, because PHP 7.x is coming
>    together with it.
> 
> I saw no mail on the development mailing list (it got quiet silent lately),
> which talked about work under progress on our PHP code; I believed then that
> such a work stalled.
> 
> Does the upgrade to Buster came along with a custom install of an older
> version of PHP, in order to maintain compatibility with our legacy code?
> 
> The main trigger of my present mail is that your work on the Debian 
> migration
> went at a moment when nobody talked about it. Nothing on support/dev/board
> mailing lists. Et voilà, suddenly the work has got done by you. Of course, I
> am not monitoring all mailing list, you may have decided together about it
> through other channels.
> 
> I cannot be anything else but very grateful that you guys pushed our servers
> to Buster, saving CAcert from the obsolescence threat, at least at the OS
> level. As a member watching at what happens under the hood from quite far
> away, I got the feeling that the OS migration was done as a "farewell" gift
> wanted by Wytze, in order to keep the platform as stable as possible after 
> he
> left. Of course, my course of interpretation might be over extrapolated.
> However, thank you for the work you did.
> 
> 
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Frédéric.
> 
> 
> -- 
> Frédéric Dumas
> f.dumas AT ellis.siteparc.fr

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