Re: ftwca paste.debian.net
Am Tue, Jan 13, 2026 at 11:42:17AM -0600 schrieb Gunnar Wolf:
> Alexander Wirt dijo [Tue, Jan 13, 2026 at 08:41:23AM +0100]:
> > > I certainly was using paste.debian.net to distribute some text files "forever".
> > > This will break various links in old mails I've sent, in forum posts or other
> > > places where I wanted to link to snippets which I intended to be distributed
> > > for a longer time.
> >
> > paste.d.n is a pastebin and not a file distribution service. I never made any
> > promises about availability of the files. I agree that such a service is needed
> > and I wanted to keep them all. However, during the review, I looked into the
> > depths of the human soul and found things there that were almost impossible to
> > surpass in terms of repugnance. For this reason, the service is now severely
> > limited and monitored.
> >
> > > Is there a problem with disk space? It would be a bit sad if all these old
> > > links would be broken and the content behind them lost forever.
> > They will not come back. We are talking about several thousand entries where malware and other
> > illegal content is included. I dumped them all.
>
> Thank you very much, Alexander. I am sorry you had to go through all that
> harmful content (and trust you gave up on it before too long).
>
> Of course, I sympathize with Johaness, but I am aware of the problematic
> paste.d.n posed; I had thought about the issue of most content appearing to
> be spam, but never took action to write about it - and apologize for just
> pushing the thought aside.
>
> Anyway, on to my point: The paste.d.n as it worked for several years didn't
> set the right expectations. I agree with Alexander, I never expected
> paste.d.n to be there "forever", specially given the open way in which it
> operated.
>
> Now, given the resource is controlled and we should not expect a large
> amount of spam / malware... Alexander, I understand you not wanting to
> commit to a "forever" storage, but I would also appreciate if you added a
> way to add different expiry periods (including a reasonably-long-length),
> or a way to manage your old postings to "refresh" them.
Yeah you got me. I implemented the following: every authenticated user, that is in the Debian
group on salsa, can now again create pastes without expiration date. Use -1 as expiration date
if you want to use the API (don't forget the token).
Alex
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