XMPP Service Operators - 2023-09-12

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hx-aN3K82Po&list=PLBnJv6rImVe89Psvjv3Bi5UqOcJ1CZW8V&index=7

matthias, you quoted me with regard to jabber.de. This isn’t the first time that jabber.de has had issues. They are becoming regular enough that I will most likely delete my account from jabber.de as soon as the opportunity arises. I’m still on the fence, as I believe server ownership changed hands or something to that effect.

I generally enjoyed my experiences there, but there are always major issues that pop up.

I am sure I will experience hardships similar to what jabber.de is facing once I muster the courage to host an xmpp server.

> matthias, you quoted me with regard to jabber.de. This isn’t the first time that jabber.de has had issues. They are becoming regular enough that I will most likely delete my account from jabber.de as soon as the opportunity arises. I’m still on the fence, as I believe server ownership changed hands or something to that effect. You are right, the ownership changed hands. I absolutely understand your frustration about all these downtimes.

But guess you can not read this theavidhorizon

Let's hope, jabber.de get their supposed MySQL problem fixed ASAP.

For me it looks like they dont give a *** about their users.

So lets hope that all jabber.de users find a new sweet home :)

well the original admin was going to just turn it off

Jabber.de: We've identified an issue with the MySQL backend and Prosody which causes the database to crash causing instability. We are still investing the cause but a reinstallation of MySQL seems to be working. The admins have some help from another jabber operator helping now.

admin (jabber.de): great to hear, keep up the good work! Admin of public services is an utterly thankless job :)

Thank you, this has been causing personal stress but we are getting more help now 😀️

If you need any other help feel free to reach out here, I and others are willing to help if we can

Thank you!

I can see no good work

matthias: original admin was going to turn it off, this volunteer hero stepped in to avoid that, then in the last few days had both hardware and software problems, and instead of giving up and turning it off is working tirelessly to fix it

I find you very unkind, matthias!

This is the "thankless work" I'm talking about, you can have 100% uptime over 3 years and never hear a kind word from anyone, but boy if it's down a day everyone comes out to point fingers

i'm sure the one complain can just run their own server 😊

And it's just more than 1 server, between STUN/TURN, webserver, XMPP, File Upload, etc there is much to go wrong.

Sorry, the new admins did a lot harm to the xmpp community. The best would have been to turn it off. I want to be honest and don't say someone did a good job when he did something like this.

When do you decide to turn it off, after the first hardware failure? After you find a new software bug? Next time something happens?

Things often happen like this, a terrible cascade of failures

All those users are pissed of. A lot will leave xmpp forever. It is not that the server is not working. It is how the server is crashing over and over again and you hear nothing from the admins.

Please, by all means, run a public server yourself and do a better job, I think you'll come to find it's not so easy

If it is to big, just don't do it

Are those users paying the admin to work on this full time?

They can certainly move to any other of the many servers if they are so angry, or run their own

Anyway I think this isn't helpful, no admin wants this to happen, or wants to provide a bad service, and is surely distressed about it, berating them doesn't help in any way

Offer kind words and/or assistance or keep quiet

> If it is to big, just don't do it Maybe better don't use big servers then, if you have problems with a server beeing to big.... ✏ ↺

> Offer kind words and/or assistance or keep quiet Please no. If something goes wrong, please be honest and stop your kind words.

> Sorry, the new admins did a lot harm to the xmpp community. The best would have been to turn it off. I want to be honest and don't say someone did a good job when he did something like this. Yeah, the community was very happy when blabber.im was switched off without proper announcement (people not hanging around in public MUCs had no idea)…

Nobody needs to run a public server. But if you do so, you are responsible for what you are doing

I agree that i dont think any further comments on the admin help currently.

But yeah it also does bring questions on how it was handled. And of big servers and responsibilities

Of course the team underestimated the support required to run a server of this size but we now have help.

Please ignore the negativity, you aren't a business with SLAs and are surely doing your best

I see that you gave some info in the jabber.de support channel as well as on the website. that is good 👍️

Maybe there would also be a little tiny msg in this MUC very helpful. 😉 *This is XMPP-Server-Operator-MUC* Any real Server-OP should have got a breakdown, a SQL-Error, a broken disc .... in his history Why not telling the others OPs about it ? Maybe someone could offer help or some admins could tell their users why the buddy from @broken.srv couldn't answer. There was a line in Sesamstrasse in germany "Who didn't query will be stay dump" maybe a variant of it "How didn't speak, can't get help" ? I will not scan all websites from all xmpp-server to tell *my* customers that server xyz will be down in 2 days. But I also can not see the "we will be down in 2 days" if the server is allready down. I can't tell them that xmpp is better than WA if nobody knows why it is hanging. They've got no problem with offtime if the server is under attack or got a (hardware-)failure. It's okay, the admin is a oneman-show, he is doing it in his free time, earn no money with it. It's okay, but just a little broadcast to all of his members (mod_announce in prosody) could give a lot of symathie to him and the community at all. jm2c

moparisthebest, I hope your comment wasn’t a dig at me.

Erm.

I am hoping that jabber.de can and will resume normal service.