problem with Debian mirror submission mechanism (fixed now)

[Josip Rodin <joy@entuzijast.net>]

Hello all,

I'm afraid I have determined that all data submitted via
http://www.debian.org/mirror/submit in the period between mid-November 2005
and today (January 29, 2007) had been lost. :(

The problem was in the CGI script that processed the submissions - to the
people who submitted it, it seemed like everything was all right, but in the
background it would die horribly due to new taintness restrictions in the
upgraded version of Perl, and all that data went to the bit bucket. I was
unavailable during much of this time, and nobody else noticed this, or at
least didn't notice sufficiently well to alarm anyone.

So, anyway, If you submitted your mirror during this time (a year and two
months(!)), please re-submit it again, the URL should now work properly.
Also if you know someone else who did the same, please tell them to
re-submit.

Note that the submission web page now also has a marker for 'updated site'
or 'new site'. It also has two fields for e-mails; one is public, one is
private. Previously we also didn't disclose mails publicly, but we kept them
in a publicly-available CVS repository. Now the mail address marked as
public will be posted to the (publicly-available) bug tracking system,
while the mail address marked as private will not be recorded anywhere
other than the mirrors@d.o mailbox (which is available only to Debian
developers).

Note also that submissions are registered but not added automatically; a
human then parses them to weed out any eventual garbage, verify the contents
(connect to it to check that the mirror is there and that it has a modicum
of functionality). It will take at least some time for new submissions to be
parsed by people, but at least the data will be there waiting (rather than
lost).

I am also working through the backlog of e-mail queries made to
mirrors@debian.org; I intend to reply to all outstanding issues, but it will
take me some time. If any other masochists exist out there who would like to
join me in this tedious little job, please feel free to let me know.

-- 
     2. That which causes joy or happiness.