• InfoTech
• Agenda

Agenda, KGNU InfoTech meeting, 2008-07-14, 18:00 at KGNU

• KGNU's web presence during the upcoming DNC - Joel

  • set up archive and index of DNC-related coverage

  • team blog - use our Drupal installation?

  • use twitter?

  • where will it be hosted for maximum reliability?

• Monitoring of KGNU internet stream - kgnuadmins and eventually DJ should know if it is down

  • investigate recent reports of regular stream dropouts

    • I am receiving more complaints of stream dropouts, and that the AM stream switches over to the FM stream (I don't know how or why, but that's what people say) -- Evan

  • Options for improving reliability

  • Notification system when stream goes down

  • Why no alert for 2006-10-24 outage? (m3u was empty)

  • Training staff in basic diagnostics and resetting when stream goes offline

• Upgrade to Ubuntu Hardy Heron - now, or wait for 8.04.1 release in July?

• Digitized Gnu Bin planning (John Schaefer)

  • Update on current status

  • Check out http://www.rivendellaudio.org and http://www.campware.org/en/camp/campcaster_news/

  • Commercial products that do something similiar are audiovault, wavestation.

  • Rip to FLAC lossless format to allow easy future conversion to any lossy codec

  • Could either play from flac, or convert to e.g. mp3 and play that

  • What player to use? Want flac support, good tagging and metadata support, easy interface, some sort of integration with our playlist database

  • backup choices:

    • get cheap disks for both Denver and Boulder, and rsync all the data

    • or do reliability at kgnu via big, more expensive, expandable raid5 setup, maybe with storage management, and encode as mp3 and just rsync that to Denver

  • during initial ripping, will need to drive disks back and forth rather than do huge rsyncs

  • perhaps an average of 40 new CDs a week? == 25 GB as wav, 2.5 GB as mp3, or 10 GB as FLAC(?). 10 GB @ 640 kb/s takes perhaps 34 hours a week of download time. Hmmm.

  • Andy's recommendation (assignment: network-attached hardware player)

    • Full version: http://dbw3.com/kgnu_digitized_gnubin.html

    • Short version: Don't use a network-attached hardware player. Use WinAmp with a dedicated sound card.

• KGNU online presence

  • Put up Drupal on a trial basis for blogs, message boards, content management, etc.

• DenverStudios: we have tapped in to Denver Open Media's pipe (thanks to Joe), and set up a VPN between the two studios, as well as Internet access for the three computers in the studio, and wireless (wireless has no access to the VPN) - thanks to Peter.

  • There has been concern expressed over the speed of transfer between Denver and Boulder

• Review KGNU Annual meeting report: accomplishments and goals

  • report submitted at the Board of Directors at their Annual Meeting on 13 November 2007: InfoTechReport.rtf

• Evan has joined TechSoup Stock, an organization for making technology donations to nonprofits. This sounds like it could be an extremely useful resource; please look over what's available. There are some restrictions, of course, but not many.

• Evaluate KenzoDB CMS and playlist features

• kgnu.net web server status: http://mercury.kgnu.net/w/MercuryProject

  • package status; use of aptitude

  • documentation of services; regression tests?

  • install django?

• Backups: status of automating them

  • Evan is "training" staff to store all their docs etc. in their My Documents folders

• new employees (Alex, Bill) and John would like to access email using clients instead of Squirrelmail

  • Peter will try enabling SSL for smtp

• KGNU calendars (Concert, Events, Arts, What's Gnu) in iCal format

  • use hcalendar (http://microformats.org/wiki/hcalendar)?

• Moving big audio files around, transferring features from DAWs to web server; etc.

  • Discuss

  • How: CMS? WebDAV? An FTP site? Revamping HCCRC? sftp or scp via python/paramiko?

  • KGNU CMS possibilities: django (python), drupal, joomla, plone

  • How to manage accounts....

• Bandwidth usage of stream.kgnu.net

• Bandwidth usage

  • Status of bandwidth shaping rules, e.g. for wireless

  • Redirecting buster listeners to stream.kgnu.net

  • Email bandwidth - limiting outgoing tcp connections in postfix? (related to May Audio stream drop offs)

• Improving anti-spam efforts

  • including Mailman email lists

• Different Internet streams reflecting AM vs FM content, or other streams

  • Joel Davis has requested that the volume level of the AM stream be boosted. His email to me, dated 4/24/07: "Hey Evan--

Is it possible to boost the volume level on the AM webstream? A few TSonic listeners have mentioned that it's very low.

There's still a hum of some sorts on that line too. I suspect that may be why the level's so low and I understand that cranking up the gain will worsen the hum. Thus, if there's a way to address that hum problem first, then it seems that it would be easier to turn up the volume."

• Computer Security update: locks? cameras?

• InfoTech/StrategicPlan input for KGNU's Draft Strategic Plan

  • InfoTech goals, actions, responsibilities and target dates: Evan and Basit

• Cbeyond or Indra's for phone service?

  • no problem with terms of contract with Qwest

  • which phone lines to include?

  • set up a meeting with reps from Qwest and CBeyond, and Evan, Peter, Joe Barger, MIke Massa, and anyone else interested

• Other Voice Over IP: Google talk "Open federation", Wengophone, Gizmo, Skype,

• Reports that Mac users have difficulty getting wireless access

• KGNU future re: podcasting et al.

• Insurance claim paid in full now?

• PublicRadioFan.com - up to date with KGNU schedule?

• Databases: Memsys and major donors. ebase

• UPS status: graceful shutdowns?

• https and CACert

IP Address Changes?

• Network status - T1 connections

  • Indra's Net wants to change our public IP addresses, as of Oct 2006. This would affect server configs, security settings, etc. First we should change what we can to use DNS instead.

More on email bandwidth problems: tcp music vs tcp data

The basic issue is that we sometimes use more bandwidth than we have, and when we have so much competition that the audio streams get less bandwidth than they need, they drop.

In the case of the drop yesterday, at 17:20, the competition came because of a single unusually large email message sent to the large kgnu volunteer list. It sent over a megabyte to each of over 140 email hosts out there, all within less than 10 minutes, in about two big parallel sessions. My netflow (flow-tools) data was very handy for tracking this down. The other instance, last Friday, isn't as easy to track down, but I suspect the principles are similar.

It would have worked fine to send the messages out one by one, since the way tcp congestion control works, each one wouldn't present much competition to the audio streams. But doing them so massively in parallel, when they are big enough to last for minutes at a time, seems to cause the sort of drops we saw.

Solutions: I think we should configure the postfix mailer to only send a few mails at a time (somehow - I assume it can be done - advice requested.....)