[AC-Admins] ANTHROCHAT.NET: Outdated SSL-Certificate

[Simba]

On 1/29/19 9:42 PM, Pippin Bear wrote:
> Looks like the cert on bear is from 2008, when the Catsden CA last 
> issued a certificate for it.

      Seems legit.  :)

> Hmm.  I thought I vaguely remembered that you (Simba) were planning 
> to get Let's Encrypt certs for all the servers.  Because they would 
> need irc.anthrochat.net et al included it'd need the DNS verification
> method so you would have to get them centrally and have your ACME
> client fiddle with the DNS zone.  Does this vague memory correspond
> to reality at all?

      Your vague memory does correspond to reality.  In October 2016, I
went through all of the motions to get a LetsEncrypt cert issued in
addition to automated renewals.  That cert included SANs for all of the
various hostnames (because LE didn't support wildcard certs at the time).

      I sent a message on October 20, 2016, letting everyone know that I
had completed the process and the only thing left to do was to find a
good way to distribute them to each of the servers.  I didn't get any
responses to that message and the effort just kinda fizzled.

> On the other hand I haven't used IRC since about 2015,

      To be honest, I haven't used it much since about the time Telegram
came out, but I do check in on it fairly regularly, just to make sure
things are still running OK, and that there aren't any ongoing flood /
spam bot campaigns.  There was one few couple months ago that wound up
taking up many, many hours of my time, though.

> don't have much actual interest in keeping the ircds running any 
> more

      Awww.  Well, can't say that I blame you.

> (I haven't touched the binaries or configs since 2010, apparently - 
> wow I've had these servers for a long time...),

      Yeah, it's pretty impressive.

> and user numbers are down far enough (~250) that a single server 
> would likely be plenty,

      True.

> so I have been expecting for a good while now to shut down bear and 
> husky at some point.  I haven't got round to it yet and am not sure 
> when I will, but I don't seem to be in much of a rush!  I'll give 
> fair warning before I do of course.

      I have and do appreciate your efforts throughout the years, even if
I don't say it out loud very often/much/at all  :p

> Wikifur says Anthrochat started in March 2004.  Back then I hosted 
> bear on (I think) a little K6-2 server which sat amongst other 
> mini-tower boxes on a set of metal shelves in the office of the ISP I
> worked at in north London.  Small office, about 8 people total I 
> think.  We had a 2Mbps leased line serving the whole lot - all of our
> desktop machines plus probably a couple of dozen web/email/DNS 
> servers, a few Lotus Notes servers, my box, probably others I don't 
> remember, and even a second leased line hanging off it going to a 
> client site.

      Plenty of history, for sure.  :)

> Who could survive with only 2Mbps even for a single user nowadays? 
> :p

      I could "survive", but it would probably get frustrating for
certain operations.

> Maybe March 2019 would be a suitable time for me to bow out, making 
> it a nice round 15 years.

      15 years is impressive longevity for a single service.

-- 
Simba