Did you know that the NGNM Tech Team manages 10 servers hosting over 30 websites? For over 15 years, we have been funding the hosting and web development of various communities, newsletters, music-sharing platforms, and news media. This is one of the main financial commitments of the No Gods No Masters Cooperative with recurrent donations every month to keep the websites running. In recent years the growth of the network has accelerated with several new servers and new hosted sites. It’s sometimes difficult to keep track so the tech team has launched a new site dedicated to the NGNM Network and its hosted site. There you can find all the information about the servers and the current server status. Visit the site: NGNM Network No Gods No Masters Network – Providing web servers and programming help to the activist community since 2001 The collective is born from a collaboration between a dozen of anarchist websites that required specific web hosting needs. It started in 2001 under the name of Resistance Network which later teamed up with Anarkhia Collective to build our own self-managed servers. Our programmers create custom-made apps and tools for the communities we host, providing activists with tools that are usually reserved for professionals. All of our servers and web development costs are funded by No Gods No Masters Cooperative What we provide – 10 Dedicated Servers – 3 Mail Servers – Domain Names – Content Delivery Network (CDN) – Firewalls – Anti-DDoS mitigation – Caching systems – Daily system backups – Cold storage archive – Hardware redundancy – Custom-made plugins – Exclusive newsletter system – Plesk Panels – Traffic Analytics – 1 Gbps network – SSL Encryption and HSTS – Unlimited bandwidth What we do – Frontend Web Development (HTML, CSS, JS) – Backend Programming (PHP, MySQL) – Linux System Administration – Pro-active server management – Database maintenance and optimization – Cyber-security – Postmaster admin and delivery optimization – Bounces handling and IP Reputation – Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP) – Page Speed Insights (PSI) Optimization – Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – Web design and infographics – Platform maintenance (WP, XF, etc) – Legal defense against censorship – Logs analysis – Tech support for hosted sites Links Servers description, list of hosted sites, and information about the technical team: https://www.nogodsnomasters.org Servers monitoring: Servers Monitoring – No Gods No Masters Network You can also check the status of each site individually: Sites Monitoring – No Gods No Masters Network Technical issues for hosted sites can be reported to the team here: Contact – No Gods No Masters Network A blog for news announcements, technical issue reports, and an archive of past announcements: News – No Gods No Masters Network
A new server for the forums, again! NGNM network has just purchased a new server for the 3 forums and Infolibertaire, a migration is therefore planned in the coming days. The reasons have nothing to do with technical performance - Server 3 fully meets the needs of the hosted sites as can be seen on the monitoring tools. The reasons: - Aging hardware: Server 3 was purchased 7 years ago and has already been recycled twice, its life cycle is over. You can get better for less today. Note: the server was replaced by the data center insurance following the fire of March 2021, but with the same equipment as the old server used for 7 years, and at the same price as when the service contract was signed with the data center. - Lower expenses: Server 3 is the one that costs the most in monthly fees, it doesn't make sense because the hardware is of inferior quality than other servers which costs us more. This is explained by the fact that the service contract with the data center was signed almost 7 years ago and today we can get much better for less. By replacing the hardware with more modern ones, costs are lowered without penalizing Server 3, which maintains the same performance. - Migrate to Alma Linux: Our 3 main servers are still running on Linux CentOS which is at the end of its life, which forces us to migrate to another Linux distribution. A migration to Alma Linux has been planned for a long time, this will be the opportunity to do it. - AnarchistFederation.net, the big winner of this migration: Lowering the expenses of Server 3 allows NDNM to increase the expenses of Server 2 which hosts the 10 sites of the AnarchistFederation Network and 4 other sites. Unlike the server hosting the forums, Server 2 is over capacity and needs a processor upgrade. This restructuring will therefore allow the resources of the network to be redirected where they are really needed and will give the Anarchist Federation Network the possibility of launching new sites. Once the migration is complete, the old Server 3 will be retired (because it has already been recycled twice in the network) so the final count of the network servers will remain the same (10) This will be a work spread over several weeks, and temporary closure of each forum will be necessary before each migration (about 24h-48h) in order to avoid data loss. A notice will be published in advance.
Important Notice: Temporary shutdown of sites starting on Wednesday February 19, 2023 In order to proceed with the migration to the new server, the tech team will temporarily shutdown all sites hosted on Server 3 from February 19. In theory, everything should be finished in 24h to 48h, but impossible to estimate the exact duration because the DNS propagation time varies from one internet provider to another. Why a shutdown? On February 19, the sites will be transferred to our new Server 3. A shutdown is necessary to avoid data loss. Transferring all sites will take about 24 hours, if during this time a member posts a message on the forum, the message will be published on the old server and will be lost on the new server. Sites concerned by the shutdown: Libertaire.net Pirate-Punk.net Anarcho-Punk.net InfoLibertaire.net Temporary shutdown of the Anarchist Federation Newsletter: Everything must be reinstalled on the new server, and since the Anarchist Federation newsletter is sent weekly, that doesn't leave the team much time to complete the migration. So it is possible that the newsletter will have to take a break during the last week of February.
The migration to the new server has been completed. Thanks to my colleagues from the Tech Team who assisted with this task! If you come across any bugs on the new server please let us know here
https://www.nogodsnomasters.org/an-additional-server-for-anarchistfederation-net/ As announced last month, the NGNM coop has purchased a new server to replace the aging Server 3 which hosts the forums. This restructuring of the network allows for increasing the financing of the server of AnarchistFederation.net which badly needs an upgrade. After long internal discussions with the technical team and an analysis of our options for the purchase of a new server, the choice was finally made. It is not a single server but TWO servers that will replace Server 2 which hosts AnarchistFederation.net. This means the upgrade of the actual Server 2 plus an addition of a new one referred to as Server 5 The network therefore adds a new permanent server in its infrastructure which goes from 10 servers to 11 servers including 5 main servers The team would have preferred to stick to a single server to reduce their workload, but technically that doesn’t make sense. The main reason that forced this choice is the growth of the network – AnarchistFederation.net uses 300GB of disk space but the site has been around for about 2 years. This means that the technical team must provide 150GB of disk space for each additional year that the site operates. Based on these projections, it is impossible for a single server to meet the needs of this platform, because the current 800GB disk is almost full. The 2 new servers are spread over different geographical locations in order to cover the entire planet. One is placed in the European data center and the other in North America. In the end, the capacity of AnarchistFederation.net will be doubled, so twice as much memory, disk space, bandwidth, and processors. InfoLibertaire, meanwhile, remains hosted on Server 3 so is not affected by these changes Websites hosted on Server 2 (NA data center) AnarchistFederation.net FederacionAnarquista.net FederacaoAnarquista.com.br AnarsistHaberler.net Anarchist Forum Websites hosted on Server 5 (EU data center) Anarquia.cat RivoluzioneAnarchica.it AnarchistischeFoderation.de Anarxiki-Omospondia.gr Vegan-News.net Servers load BEFORE the migration The monitoring graphs clearly show that Server 2 which hosts AnarchistFederation.net is much more overloaded than all the others. Server 2 CPU load level often reaches over 80% while other servers are usually below 40% Servers Monitoring – No Gods No Masters Network Servers Monitoring – No Gods No Masters Network Servers load AFTER the migration Now that 4 websites were moved from Server 2 to Server 5, we can see that the CPU use of Server 2 is down to a more reasonable level with its load now being split among 2 servers instead of 1 Servers Monitoring – No Gods No Masters Network Servers Monitoring – No Gods No Masters Network
PHP 8.2 update – No Gods No Masters Network During the last month, the team has been busy updating the websites hosted on our servers to make them compatible with the latest version of PHP 8.2. Until now, most of the sites were running on PHP 7.2 so it is a crucial version change. As with most major updates, PHP 8.2 introduces a lot of improvements, new functions, and optimizations, but also a lot of deprecated functions, new errors, and risks of breaking stuff. All of the websites we host have been highly customized by the team, so an update is not as easy as clicking a button and then setting and forgetting. Websites must be put in development mode and then we remove or update all of the deprecated functions one by one, searching through tens of thousands of lines of code. The shops have not been upgraded to PHP 8.2 yet but this is on our roadmap for the end of the year. Unfortunately, the forums will continue to run on an older PHP version because upgrading the XenForo core and re-writing all of the custom plugins would be way too complicated and time-consuming, so it is not planned for anytime soon. This upgrade is at a high risk of introducing new bugs to the sites and breaking stuff, so please report any issues to the team. Some problems showed up in the last days with the newsletter and the Anarchist Federation websites, but the bugs were quickly fixed by the team so hopefully you have not noticed anything strange!
