As you may be aware, nm.debian.org was hosted on satie.debian.org which was recently destroyed in a fire at Twente University. This is a status report of how nm.debian.org was affected, what has been done since then and what still remains to be done in order to restore nm.debian.org fully. First of all, let me emphasize that nm.d.o is only a nice front-end to keep record of what going on. The information used by the Debian Account Manager (DAM) to make a decision is the final report submitted by the Application Manager (AM). These reports are actually archived on master.debian.org (and also in private mail boxes by the DAM and by the Front Desk). Therefore, if you are waiting for DAM approval, nothing has changed. Your AM report is still on record. Also, the DAM is aware of who is waiting for DAM approval. Those currently being processed by an AM are still being processed by the same AM. You know who your AM is and your AM knows whom they are responsible for (furthermore, the Front Desk knows which AM was assigned to an applicant). Your AM will also know which steps you have not completed yet. Just work with them and complete the final steps. Those currently waiting for an AM are still at that stage. We know who you are. Please have some patience as our Application Managers will currently have some more load and it might take a while for an AM to get a free slot. Once an AM is free, the queue will be processed as usually. Those who have no advocate yet are still in the queue. Please tell your advocate to go to http://nm.debian.org/nmlist.php then look for your name, click on it and follow the instructions. The automatic system which validates the GPG signature of your advocate is currently out of order, but until it is restored I will check the signatures by hand. So, what has actually been lost? If you visit http://nm.debian.org/ you will see that the most important information should be restored by now. Unfortunately, the backup of our database was quite dated (May 1). However, we had various sources of information which we used in order to reconstruct the state of the database. First of all, all the advocate mails I stored locally. Secondly, web caches by Google, Matt Hope and Andreas Metzler. http://nm.debian.org/ should now show exactly where you were in the process before the fire. If this is not the case, please talk to your Application Manager. If you look at your application closely, you will see that all the checks you have done should be marked as done. However, the date may not be correct. But this is not very important. Your AM can either correct the date or it can be left as it is. For statistical and historical purposes it would be nice if all AMs would put in accurate information. The application date and the date when your advocate submitted their email should be accurate. For the other dates, the advocate date has been used (the correct date information was unfortunately not in the web cache). The PHP scripts behind http://nm.debian.org/ are all in CVS on gluck. However, some scripts have been lost. While I have been able to restore the weekly report from a local backup, the script used to verify the mail from the advocate has been lost. I will implement this again and put it in CVS. Preparations for making regular backups of the Postgres database are being made. All the scripts are in CVS now (which is mirrored and kept locally by various people). I want to thank the following people for their help: James Troup, Joerg Jaspert, Colin Watson, Matt Hope and Andreas Metzler. I'd also like to use this opportunity to thank the Application Managers who make this possible; and of course the people interested in helping Debian! -- Martin Michlmayr tbm@cyrius.com
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