OS2 World Community Forum

Public Discussions => General Discussion => Topic started by: Andy Willis on January 09, 2024, 03:11:09 am

Title: Hobbes Retirement
Post by: Andy Willis on January 09, 2024, 03:11:09 am
Just read this on hobbes:

Quote
ATTENTION

After many years of service, hobbes.nmsu.edu will be decommissioned and will no longer be available. You the user are responsible for downloading any of the files found in this archive if you want them. These files will no longer be available for access or download as of the decommission date.

As of April 15th, 2024 this site will no longer exist.

No one will be able to access this site or any information/files stored on this site as of April 15th, 2024.
Title: Re: hobbes retirement
Post by: Martin Iturbide on January 09, 2024, 04:24:55 am
Hello Andy. Thanks for the heads up.

Ok, this is very bad news . Maybe one idea will be to work on http://www.os2site.com/sw/ and try to find an upload mechanism for it.

Regards
Title: Re: Hobbes Retirement
Post by: Mentore on January 09, 2024, 08:05:49 am
Just read this on hobbes:

ATTENTION

After many years of service, hobbes.nmsu.edu will be decommissioned and will no longer be available. You the user are responsible for downloading any of the files found in this archive if you want them. These files will no longer be available for access or download as of the decommission date.

As of April 15th, 2024 this site will no longer exist.

No one will be able to access this site or any information/files stored on this site as of April 15th, 2024.

This is one of the worst news I expected to hear to date.
Of course we should have more than one way to preserve the amount of OS/2 software stored on it, but still... Visiting Hobbes has become something like a daily stroll.
A lot of work will be needed to change the links present, e.g. in eCSoft/2.

Mentore
Title: Re: Hobbes Retirement
Post by: Ian B Manners on January 09, 2024, 12:31:48 pm
Quote
Maybe one idea will be to work on http://www.os2site.com/sw/ and try to find an upload mechanism for it.

Thinking about it.

Old os2site.com website, old mirrors section, new os2site.com website based on what you have done at hobbes that you have access to.
I do have a stable location now, with a fixed IP and rev delegation.

I did continue updating my copy of os2site.com for a while but wasn't able to update os2site.com which is hosted by Roderick since I moved as my os2site.com is OS/2 server based and Rodericks is Nix based.

It is easy enough to enable file viewing under Apache with SFTP access to update the files, bit harder to add descriptions though Apache does allow file generic descriptions.

Anyways, I will update my offline hobbes mirror shortly, and going into the hobbes close down date. Just got to blow the dust off my server and plug it in again...
Might look at trying to put os2site.com on linux here as Roderick has done, then maybe Roderick could mirror the new os2site.com instead.
Title: Re: Hobbes Retirement
Post by: Roderick Klein on January 09, 2024, 01:13:00 pm
Quote
Maybe one idea will be to work on http://www.os2site.com/sw/ and try to find an upload mechanism for it.

Thinking about it.

Old os2site.com website, old mirrors section, new os2site.com website based on what you have done at hobbes that you have access to.
I do have a stable location now, with a fixed IP and rev delegation.

I did continue updating my copy of os2site.com for a while but wasn't able to update os2site.com which is hosted by Roderick since I moved as my os2site.com is OS/2 server based and Rodericks is Nix based.

It is easy enough to enable file viewing under Apache with SFTP access to update the files, big harder to add descriptions though Apache does allow file generic descriptions.

Anyways, I will update my offline hobbes mirror shortly, and going into the hobbes close down date. Just got to blow the dust off my server and plug it in again...
Might look at trying to put os2site.com on linux here as Roderick has done, then maybe Roderick could mirror the new os2site.com instead.

I send an email this morning before I went to work to hobbes asking if they can refer to the os2site.com or put up a notification message on hobbes.nmsu.edu to point to www.os2site.com.

I already send an email this morning to you as well Ian :-)
I send it to your gmail address.

Roderick
Title: Re: Hobbes Retirement
Post by: Roderick Klein on January 09, 2024, 01:43:16 pm
Just read this on hobbes:

ATTENTION

After many years of service, hobbes.nmsu.edu will be decommissioned and will no longer be available. You the user are responsible for downloading any of the files found in this archive if you want them. These files will no longer be available for access or download as of the decommission date.

As of April 15th, 2024 this site will no longer exist.

No one will be able to access this site or any information/files stored on this site as of April 15th, 2024.

This is one of the worst news I expected to hear to date.
Of course we should have more than one way to preserve the amount of OS/2 software stored on it, but still... Visiting Hobbes has become something like a daily stroll.
A lot of work will be needed to change the links present, e.g. in eCSoft/2.

Mentore

For Ian I run the copy of os2site.com. Contact me via roderickklein at xs4all.nl if you have any questions.

Roderick
Title: Re: Hobbes Retirement
Post by: Martin Iturbide on January 09, 2024, 04:13:20 pm
Hello Ian, Roderick

I was wondering if OS2Site can be organized in two main parts:
1) The "Active" repository as a copy of hobbes with the goal to only having the latest version of OS/2 software.
2) The "Archive" repository where we can have several older versions even of the same software and mirrors/backups of other sites.

This is just a suggestion. I was planning to have OS2site as the "Archive" repository and on the future maybe help to reorganize it, but things are changing now.

Regards.
Title: Re: Hobbes Retirement
Post by: Martin Iturbide on January 10, 2024, 02:01:10 am
Hello
A lot of work will be needed to change the links present, e.g. in eCSoft/2.

It is also an issue for the OS2World wiki, but in this case, I tried to create the hobbes links with a wiki "template".
So, I only need to change "https://hobbes.nmsu.edu/?search=" for a similar to a different site in one place and all the links will get updated. But I need a similar search script on the different site where I can just put the file name.

Regards
Title: Re: Hobbes Retirement
Post by: Ian B Manners on January 10, 2024, 02:33:25 pm
Hi Roderick,


Quote
I already send an email this morning to you as well Ian :-)
I send it to your gmail address.
Roderick

ok, checked my gmail account, mostly full of rubbish as I rarely look at it, you are better off emailing me at ian@ the os2site.com website :)
Have a lot to think about at present but limited time to do so.
Thinking it might be easier if I got paid hosting but that limits options as to software that I can use. I think I will have to maybe go the linux route locally for os2site.com and mirror that to an external host, either way Roderick, your version of os2site.com would then be able to be updated regularly though the preference is for your version to pull the updates from my version.

Martin, yes, I would keep the last version of hobbes that I have mirrored before I moved, the last version of hobbes as it would be the day before it is closed down, and a version that you would be free to update, modify etc.

I would simply add a date to the older versions of hobbes at https://www.os2site.com/mirrors/ (https://www.os2site.com/mirrors/) so there would be a hobbes_2021 and hobbes_2024. Gives you an option to have the new location called Martin if you like :) Webservers have this wonderful thing called 'rewrite rules'.
Title: Re: Hobbes Retirement
Post by: Lars on January 10, 2024, 03:48:31 pm
As a user, how do I upload files to OS2SITE ? As far as I understand I currently cannot.
If I knew, I could already start to upload my files to OS2SITE instead of still uploading them to Hobbes.
Title: Re: Hobbes Retirement
Post by: Roderick Klein on January 10, 2024, 05:11:45 pm
There is no upload as of yet. I never got around to get this working as Ian would synch with hobbes.nmsu.edu.
That is currently up in the air how to fix this.

Roderick Klein
Title: Re: Hobbes Retirement
Post by: Dave Yeo on January 11, 2024, 02:14:21 am
Lewis noticed this on the Register, https://www.theregister.com/2024/01/10/hobbes_os2_archive_shut_down/ (https://www.theregister.com/2024/01/10/hobbes_os2_archive_shut_down/)
Title: Re: Hobbes Retirement
Post by: Martin Iturbide on January 11, 2024, 02:47:16 am
Hello

Just to try to focus. The 1st priority is to have a site where the community can still upload OS/2 files.
If it will be OS2Site, the #1 thing is to create the "upload" page (or ftp upload)

PD: Can someone confirm if upload to hobbes had been blocked? I can not upload anymore. (550 Permission denied.)

Regards
Title: Re: Hobbes Retirement
Post by: Dave Yeo on January 11, 2024, 06:16:31 am
Thread on alt.computer.folklare.computers too. Includes mention of someone who is going to try to get copies of the backend data, scripts etc.
Title: Re: Hobbes Retirement
Post by: Roderick Klein on January 11, 2024, 10:57:17 am
Hello

Just to try to focus. The 1st priority is to have a site where the community can still upload OS/2 files.
If it will be OS2Site, the #1 thing is to create the "upload" page (or ftp upload)

PD: Can someone confirm if upload to hobbes had been blocked? I can not upload anymore. (550 Permission denied.)

Regards

This is already being worked on...

Roderick
Title: Re: Hobbes Retirement
Post by: Roderick Klein on January 11, 2024, 11:07:32 am
Hi Roderick,


Quote
I already send an email this morning to you as well Ian :-)
I send it to your gmail address.
Roderick

ok, checked my gmail account, mostly full of rubbish as I rarely look at it, you are better off emailing me at ian@ the os2site.com website :)

I send you an email Ian.

Roderick
Title: Re: Hobbes Retirement
Post by: Ian B Manners on January 11, 2024, 01:06:53 pm
replied  :)
Title: Re: Hobbes Retirement
Post by: Martin Iturbide on January 11, 2024, 11:24:46 pm
Hello

There was an update on the Hobbes Retirement Announcement.
A link was included where people can download a 18GB file with all the hobbes files.
https://hobbes.nmsu.edu/archives/

Quote
This folder contains archives of the contents of hobbes.

- hobbes_ftp_11Jan2024.tar
  - This file contains all of the FTP content minus this 'archives' folder.


Archives of the website/database code is being evaluated and may be included here in the future.

Regards
Title: Re: Hobbes Retirement
Post by: Tom on January 11, 2024, 11:43:58 pm
It seems another group is also working on a way to save the content of Hobbes: the Classic Computing cctalk Mailing List.
Web interface: https://classiccmp.org/mailman3/hyperkitty/list/cctalk@classiccmp.org/thread/YIGLWOEQHX2UUWASNE2QFRUOATRCTBUX/

I already informed Roderick about this.
Title: Re: Hobbes Retirement
Post by: Martin Iturbide on January 12, 2024, 03:23:12 am
It seems another group is also working on a way to save the content of Hobbes: the Classic Computing cctalk Mailing List.
Web interface: https://classiccmp.org/mailman3/hyperkitty/list/cctalk@classiccmp.org/thread/YIGLWOEQHX2UUWASNE2QFRUOATRCTBUX/

I already informed Roderick about this.

Thanks Tom for the info. Jason Scott is a famous archivist, it is good that he is going to backup hobbes too, but he only preserve files. We currently need to have an active site were developers/users can still upload OS/2 software.

My hopes are with Ian and Roderick with OS2Site now.

Regards
Title: Re: Hobbes Retirement
Post by: Doug Clark on January 12, 2024, 04:18:28 pm
Martin, IAN, Roderick, etc.

Do you think NMSU be willing to permanently redirect the URL hobbes.nmsu.edu to a URL of our choosing?  Or could we buy the URL? 

The hobbes website is pretty simple and straightforward.  I am guessing the archive directory structure matches the directory structure laid out on the web site.   Seems like it would be relatively simple to recreate hobbes website and point the old (current) url to the new server.




Title: Re: Hobbes Retirement
Post by: Roderick Klein on January 12, 2024, 06:11:42 pm
Martin, IAN, Roderick, etc.

Do you think NMSU be willing to permanently redirect the URL hobbes.nmsu.edu to a URL of our choosing?  Or could we buy the URL? 

The hobbes website is pretty simple and straightforward.  I am guessing the archive directory structure matches the directory structure laid out on the web site.   Seems like it would be relatively simple to recreate hobbes website and point the old (current) url to the new server.

I opened a ticket for this 2 days ago at NMSU. I just called them and a manager is looking into the request.

You see I see more people with ideas to mirror but I see an overall lacking plan
1) We want the impact of the domainname go away to be as small as possible. The fact that hobbes.nmsu.edu shuts down is not a good moral boost.
Since a lot of OS/2 users live in caves (as in habbits do not change) its good to have a pointer from hobbes.nmsu.edu that points the official copy of the (os2site.com).

2) Which repo should be leading ? I assume we want to have 1 official repo that people upload files to.  And from there on it can be synched to other hobbes mirrors.

3) Anybody made a list of current servers that run a mirror of hobbes ? Send me the list if you want to help out and then we can see if they can be pointed to the new official mirror
so the old mirrors updated. You see I am now aware of 5 people mirroring the old hobbes. But what about the points above ?

Roderick Klein
Prsident OS/2 VOICE
Title: Re: Hobbes Retirement
Post by: Roderick Klein on January 12, 2024, 06:15:50 pm
As a first thing.
www.os2site.com will get readonly FTP download and a write only FTP incoming in the next couple of hours.
Stay tuned as we work on stuff in the engine room.

Please do not upload complete directory trees and dozens of files. Next step is to get somehow os2site.com synched with the current content of hobbes.

Roderick Klein
President OS/3 VOICE

Title: Re: Hobbes Retirement
Post by: Doug Clark on January 12, 2024, 07:07:19 pm
Roderick,

So is your plan to have two sites? Merge what is now os2site with what is now hobbes? Something else maybe?

I ask because it seems like os2site has stuff that is not on hobbes.  I kinda like the idea of the 2 sites being different.  But that is easy for me to say since I am not maintaining either site.
Title: Re: Hobbes Retirement
Post by: Valery Sedletski on January 12, 2024, 08:09:29 pm
Hi all. As an option, I could host the Hobbes archive too. I already have the mirror of it, which is synced with hobbes.nmsu.edu each week.
The mirror is in [ftp|http|https]://[ftp|hobbes].osfree.org/upload/mirrors/hobbes.nmsu.edu/.
It also has shortcuts for quick access as:

http://osfree.org/download/
http://hobbes.osfree.org/
ftp://osfree.org/download/

The missing part is still the web part for search etc.
Waiting for it when Hobbes admins publish it.
Title: Re: Hobbes Retirement
Post by: Roderick Klein on January 12, 2024, 10:04:51 pm
Roderick,

So is your plan to have two sites? Merge what is now os2site with what is now hobbes? Something else maybe?

I ask because it seems like os2site has stuff that is not on hobbes.  I kinda like the idea of the 2 sites being different.  But that is easy for me to say since I am not maintaining either site.

os2site.com is a copy of hobbes its just outdated since Ian could not synched the data properly to os2site.ciom.

Roderick
Title: Re: Hobbes Retirement
Post by: Roderick Klein on January 12, 2024, 10:19:39 pm
Hi all. As an option, I could host the Hobbes archive too. I already have the mirror of it, which is synced with hobbes.nmsu.edu each week.
The mirror is in [ftp|http|https]://[ftp|hobbes].osfree.org/upload/mirrors/hobbes.nmsu.edu/.
It also has shortcuts for quick access as:

http://osfree.org/download/
http://hobbes.osfree.org/
ftp://osfree.org/download/

The missing part is still the web part for search etc.
Waiting for it when Hobbes admins publish it.

The problem is not the mirror of the site itself from my perspective. There are plenty of mirrors floating around and everybody is running around wanting to create more mirrors.
What is being forgotten is what should be the replacement for hobbes.nmsu.edu which we would consider the main archive. Where are new files going to be uploaded ?
Or should we have 5 mirrors where you can all upload files. So if a developer uploads something to mirror, how do the other mirrors get updated ?

That is why I suggested os2site.com. As I typed I already have a ticket out to NMSU and an email to somebody working at NMSU asking if hobbes.nmsu.edu can somehow be redirected to os2site.com. That way we have one central from which we can mirror and people can keep finding the old content via hobbes.nmsu.edu.

Roderick

Roderick
Title: Re: Hobbes Retirement
Post by: Valery Sedletski on January 13, 2024, 01:48:09 am
Yes, we need a central point to upload files. Other mirrors could be synced with it automatically. I have a cron task which run once a week, which starts
wget syncing files with hobbes. The problem with os2site.com is that Ian does not allow anybody mirroring it. Don't know a reason, maybe, he has a limited ISP
tariff at home, so it's a problem for him. I have a server at a datacenter with an unlimited connection. So, it's not a problem for me. So, other mirrors could be
synced automatically without a problem.
Title: Re: Hobbes Retirement
Post by: Ian B Manners on January 13, 2024, 07:06:00 am
Hi Valery,

I stopped the mirroring, (unless someone asked me for FTP access with username access) as an entity was mirroring the website constantly, as in machine gun constant with a large number of IP's from different ranges - yes, it killed my link all the time. I would ban the IP's and they would pop up with a new collection of IP's from several ranges. This coupled with all the new search engines back then ignoring robots.txt etc, I decided I had better things to do with my time so I added limiting and blacklisting rules.

That being said, Roderick/Voice have hosted os2site.com for the last couple of years now so it is no longer on an Australian HFC link :)
Title: Re: Hobbes Retirement
Post by: Valery Sedletski on January 13, 2024, 08:05:15 am
Ah, so it's now hosted in another place, with no limits. Then of course, no problems with limited traffic. That's good.
Title: Re: Hobbes Retirement
Post by: Rich Walsh on January 13, 2024, 08:14:27 am
I don't understand why this has to be tied to any existing mirroring site. Why not 'hobbes.os2voice.org' ?
Title: Re: Hobbes Retirement
Post by: Roderick Klein on January 14, 2024, 12:41:45 am
Ah, so it's now hosted in another place, with no limits. Then of course, no problems with limited traffic. That's good.

Its a server in a datacenter in Netherlands hooked onto a fast fibre optic line.

Roderick
Title: Re: Hobbes Retirement
Post by: Roderick Klein on January 14, 2024, 10:08:12 pm
Oke Since Iam wants to keep his domain name for private use a new domain was setup.
hobbes,os2voice.

I might get lucky and NMSU might want to reidrect to this domain name.

My goal is run the master repo as a part of the VOICE foundation. That way is something happens to me the main repo should be safe.

ftp hobbes.os2voice.org is already up for upload.

Stay tuned for more information.

Roderick
Title: Re: Hobbes Retirement
Post by: Martin Iturbide on January 14, 2024, 10:57:48 pm
ftp hobbes.os2voice.org is already up for upload.

Thanks Roderick. I just uploaded some old software that Hobbes was missing to give it a try. For me moment my only observation is that you can not see what file were uploaded. "/incoming" always look empty but the files seems to be uploaded without problems.

Regards
Title: Re: Hobbes Retirement
Post by: Roderick Klein on January 14, 2024, 11:49:24 pm
ftp hobbes.os2voice.org is already up for upload.

Thanks Roderick. I just uploaded some old software that Hobbes was missing to give it a try. For me moment my only observation is that you can not see what file were uploaded. "/incoming" always look empty but the files seems to be uploaded without problems.

Regards

Please read the FTP banner that is shown when you login in the server with an ftp.exe on the OS/2 command line.

Roderick
Title: Re: Hobbes Retirement
Post by: Martin Iturbide on January 15, 2024, 05:12:50 pm
Hello Roderick.

First of all, I apologize. I'm experimenting some kind of "abstinence syndrome" because every night, after work, my routine was to search some OS/2 sources (Forums, webpages and old CD images) for programs and files, and if something was missing on hobbes I was uploading it. Now I don't have that activity. (upload is blocked)

The goal (inside my mind) was to reorganize hobbes, add release dates, versions numbers, description of the software and change the file name to something of significance. We set some rules on a different thread. I was expecting to have Hobbes as the "Active"  repository (16GB) with only the latest versions of software, where people can keep uploading software, as usual.

Later I was planning to work on OS2Site/sw as the "Archive" were I was going to organize all OS/2 software with older versions of software.

I know Roderick you are still working on the "upload stuff" and how the file repository is going to work. But I just want to let you know I still want to help reorganizing "os2site/sw".

Ian, Roderick, now that we have this issue with Hobbes, I don' know exactly your plans, but my suggest idea will be:

1) Create the "Active" repository, just like hobbes, with the same structure and all it's files. Work out the "upload" feature and we can do some posts letting know the community to upload the files there.

2) Create the "Archive" repository, that will have the same directory structure as Hobbes
-- Under this archive put also all the "os2site/sw" current content.
-- I will work to reorganize this archive little by little when I get proper access. (of course, let's backup everything first)

FYI: I have in my HDD all the .txt files for the hobbes uploads I made if you think are useful in some way.

Regards

Title: Re: Hobbes Retirement
Post by: Martin Iturbide on January 27, 2024, 04:26:30 pm
Hello again.

I started to prepare EDM/2 for the hobbes retirement.

What I'm doing for the moment is changing the direct hobbes link for a EDM/2 wiki template (http://www.edm2.com/index.php/Template:FileLink) and (http://www.edm2.com/index.php/Template:FileSite).
With that, once Hobbes get discontinued, I just change the template in one place (or two) and the files get pointed to the new Hobbes replacement site. (if everything works as planned).

I had been doing this for a while (since 2020) on the OS2World wiki, but I still need to change some link that I may missed.

Regards
Title: Re: Hobbes Retirement
Post by: ivan on January 27, 2024, 05:27:41 pm
Martin have you considered that your reorganising Hobbes files might be the cause of it being shut down because they had to have someone monitoring all the time rather than it just running with computer monitoring?
Title: Re: Hobbes Retirement
Post by: Dave Yeo on January 27, 2024, 05:36:05 pm
Martin have you considered that your reorganising Hobbes files might be the cause of it being shut down because they had to have someone monitoring all the time rather than it just running with computer monitoring?

Seems the Professor who's class ran Hobbes is retiring.
Title: Re: Hobbes Retirement
Post by: Martin Iturbide on January 27, 2024, 06:39:54 pm
Martin have you considered that your reorganising Hobbes files might be the cause of it being shut down because they had to have someone monitoring all the time rather than it just running with computer monitoring?
Thanks Ivan for making me feel so bad in public.  I hope your question is well intended since I thought about it myself.

I actually contacted the person in charge of hobbes and he told me he retired a year ago, so I think he worked the hardest part of the reorganization with me. He thanked me for all the help cleaning up and helping organize and standardize it. I guess that if he would noticed some problems with the reorganization he would stopped me the first day, instead of thanking me today. He does not know the reason behind the retirement of Hobbes. I don't have more information.

Anyways, I think that Hobbes is (was) of too much important for us, for just having it running on a University that does not know about it's existence, and laying low was our only change for us to keep it running. I can only say I'm glad that I was able to reorganize it before they pull the plug.

Regards
Title: Re: Hobbes Retirement
Post by: Eugene Tucker on January 27, 2024, 07:17:36 pm
Martin, I thank you for all your efforts for Arca OS and OS/2. The reorganizing of Hobbes was a huge task and yo did well with it.
Title: Re: Hobbes Retirement
Post by: ivan on January 27, 2024, 11:05:44 pm
Hi Martin,

I didn't mean it as a  slur on you but as a reflection of what we see over here in Europe about the stupidity going on in US universities and their likely reaction to an outsider showing them up with you careful reorganising of one of their facilities.  In fact it was voiced by a friend of mine when I mentioned that the site was shutting down.

I would offer to host the site but my l;ink speed is rather slow and congestion is a killer as I found out when I  downloaded a new copy of Linux Mint.
Title: Re: Hobbes Retirement
Post by: Martin Iturbide on January 28, 2024, 02:03:36 pm
Hi Ivan,
I didn't mean it as a  slur on you but as a reflection of what we see over here in Europe about the stupidity going on in US universities and their likely reaction to an outsider showing them up with you careful reorganising of one of their facilities.  In fact it was voiced by a friend of mine when I mentioned that the site was shutting down.

No problem then. I don't think is "stupidity of US universities", I'm guessing that the person that replaced the hobbes archiver didn't understand, don't want to teach classes with Hobbes, or he didn't want to do the little extra "chores" that hobbes demand for his role. So he went to management and ask to remove this server from his responsibilities. (This is just a guess).

I would offer to host the site but my l;ink speed is rather slow and congestion is a killer as I found out when I  downloaded a new copy of Linux Mint.

Let's see if the different ideas to replace hobbes workout on these days and how they work once get formally released.

Regards
Title: Re: Hobbes Retirement
Post by: Roderick Klein on January 28, 2024, 02:21:20 pm
ftp hobbes.os2voice.org is already up for upload.

Thanks Roderick. I just uploaded some old software that Hobbes was missing to give it a try. For me moment my only observation is that you can not see what file were uploaded. "/incoming" always look empty but the files seems to be uploaded without problems.

Regards

I have decided to cancel work on that mirror as Nathan went ahead. As I have stated my concern before. We need one master hobbes archive not two upload FTP.
As we do not know how to synch files.

My personal opinion is that just like with NMSU it would have better for the long run if it would have been ran by OS/2 VOICE or OS/2 world foundation so it does not depend on single person.
I do not think a master archive should be on PC in his son bedroom, sorry. And if something happens to his home (what we do not hope) well we loose it again.
Doing this via an organization provides slightly more redundancy in different ways.

So I see it as a waste of time to work on a mirror as well.

Roderick
Title: Re: Hobbes Retirement
Post by: Ian B Manners on January 28, 2024, 02:36:55 pm
Shame, my vote was with hobbes.os2voice.org for the reasons you give.

I also agree having two upload sites is asking for problems, better to have one mirror the others incoming but you also run the risk of missing files when incoming is cleared. There are ways around this.
Title: Re: Hobbes Retirement
Post by: Martin Iturbide on January 28, 2024, 02:47:50 pm
Hello Roderick

Nathan is doing a good progress with the replacement development, he has the filesearch links, search inside the "long description" text and other fixes that didn't have the original hobbes. He even coded a web form for file uploads.
Even that I share your same concerns, I say let's see how it works out and see if we can evolve from there.

The important thing to start is being able to backup "Nathan's Hobbes" files (He agreed to that), and keep uploading the backup on different places like OS2Site.com/sw.
After some days of the release we will see if this works or not, and if not, we can ask Nathan if something can be worked out.

But Roderick, I prefer if you keep going and improve OS2Site. I'm also willing to collaborate to have OS2Site as the "Main 'OLD and NEW' Repository". (Like saying HobbesArchive has the new stuff, but OS2Site/sw has everything)
I still dream of reorganizing the OS2Site.com/sw (After a full public backup in archive.org or course). I have on my hard drive (and backup) the same hobbes reorganized structure, but with the difference that I try to collect all older versions of the software. That is 56GB for the moment compared against the 18GB that Hobbes are right now. Yes, it is not "that interesting" to collect older versions of the software for some, but it is worth to be preserved and 56GB is not a lot of storage these days.

Regards
Title: Re: Hobbes Retirement
Post by: Rich Walsh on January 28, 2024, 05:31:32 pm
I have decided to cancel work on that mirror as Nathan went ahead.

Who is "Nathan"?  And why would you (or any of us) care what "Nathan" is doing?
Title: Re: Hobbes Retirement
Post by: mike on January 28, 2024, 05:41:57 pm
Hobbes was running fine for decades so it was a surprise that there was still a contact in recent times to the NMSU and that Martin could start the reorganization.
Like others already pointed out the cause for the shutdown is most likely because of a retirement in the staff. It would be nice when they could share the scripts and config of the server to have the same user experience in the future just on a different URL with includes the hobbes name.
The current os2site is not a hobbes mirror and has different file set and structure.


Title: Re: Hobbes Retirement
Post by: Dave Yeo on January 28, 2024, 07:17:17 pm
I have decided to cancel work on that mirror as Nathan went ahead.

Who is "Nathan"?  And why would you (or any of us) care what "Nathan" is doing?

Nathan Woodruff, hobbesarchive.com. Long discussion on warp.groups.io
Title: Re: Hobbes Retirement
Post by: David Graser on January 28, 2024, 07:25:59 pm
I have decided to cancel work on that mirror as Nathan went ahead.

Who is "Nathan"?  And why would you (or any of us) care what "Nathan" is doing?

Nathan Woodruff, hobbesarchive.com. Long discussion on warp.groups.io

Nathan has been around for a long time like the rest of us.  Unfortunately, he does not appear to utilize the forums of this site.  I remember he wrote a database program to go along with what I believe was IBMs.

 I followed the email from the newletters being sent from that newsgroup.  He managed to rewrite the Hobbes database program from scratch in 3 days.  It looks and feels like the Hobbes, but he has enhanced the search engine.
Title: Re: Hobbes Retirement
Post by: Roderick Klein on January 30, 2024, 12:52:17 am
Hello Roderick

Nathan is doing a good progress with the replacement development, he has the filesearch links, search inside the "long description" text and other fixes that didn't have the original hobbes. He even coded a web form for file uploads.
Even that I share your same concerns, I say let's see how it works out and see if we can evolve from there.

The important thing to start is being able to backup "Nathan's Hobbes" files (He agreed to that), and keep uploading the backup on different places like OS2Site.com/sw.
After some days of the release we will see if this works or not, and if not, we can ask Nathan if something can be worked out.

But Roderick, I prefer if you keep going and improve OS2Site. I'm also willing to collaborate to have OS2Site as the "Main 'OLD and NEW' Repository". (Like saying HobbesArchive has the new stuff, but OS2Site/sw has everything)
I still dream of reorganizing the OS2Site.com/sw (After a full public backup in archive.org or course). I have on my hard drive (and backup) the same hobbes reorganized structure, but with the difference that I try to collect all older versions of the software. That is 56GB for the moment compared against the 18GB that Hobbes are right now. Yes, it is not "that interesting" to collect older versions of the software for some, but it is worth to be preserved and 56GB is not a lot of storage these days.

Regards

Sorry Martin there is only so many balls I keep in the air at the time (day has 24 hours) . I am willing to work on it but the priority for me has gone down as I simply find the current setup not workable. I also wanted to assemble a team of volunteers to process incoming on os2site.com. I just do not think its useful to have two servers with an upload DIR.

Roderick
Title: Re: Hobbes Retirement
Post by: Ian B Manners on January 30, 2024, 09:25:34 am
After 32 Years, One of the Net's Oldest Software Archives Is Shutting Down
https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/01/29/2310242/after-32-years-one-of-the-nets-oldest-software-archives-is-shutting-down (https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/01/29/2310242/after-32-years-one-of-the-nets-oldest-software-archives-is-shutting-down)
Title: Re: Hobbes Retirement
Post by: Ian B Manners on January 30, 2024, 12:47:12 pm
After 32 years, one of the ’Net’s oldest software archives is shutting down
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/01/after-32-years-one-of-the-nets-oldest-software-archives-is-shutting-down/ (https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/01/after-32-years-one-of-the-nets-oldest-software-archives-is-shutting-down/)
Title: Re: Hobbes Retirement
Post by: Martin Iturbide on January 30, 2024, 01:33:27 pm
There was an update the "The Register" article that I just read.

Quote
Updated to add on January 16:

A representative from the New Mexico State University told The Reg: “We have made the difficult decision to no longer host these files on hobbes.nmsu.edu. Although I am unable to go into specifics, we had to evaluate our priorities and had to make the difficult decision to discontinue the service. “We tried to pick a date far enough out to provide the community time to gather the files and find a new home. It has been fascinating to see the stories people have shared about this server. “The NMSU team that is currently supporting [the] server is trying their best to meet the needs of the community. We have provided additional resources for Hobbes as there was a clear spike in traffic after the announcement. If we have additional information, we will update Hobbes.nmsu.edu.”

Regards