titipi - User contributions [en]

TITiPI's local server

2025-03-19T13:31:43Z

Angeliki: /* Stream sounds and not microphone */

== TITiPI Local Server manual ==

This local server takes set-up fragments and inspiration from [https://networksofonesown.constantvzw.org/etherbox/manual.html Networks Of Ones Own] and [https://hub.vvvvvvaria.org/rosa/ Rosa]. In this version the server includes the collaborative note keeping tool ''etherpad'', the periodic publishing tool of etherpads to static files ''etherdump'' and the file manager ''tiny file manager''.

Take into consideration that this manual may not be accurate or some things may not work as wished. Have all your eyes open and ask the help of your peers and the Internet for more eyes. Sometimes you may have to run the following commands with sudo user.

[[File:Titipi-local-server-main-page.png|thumb]]

=== Server requirements ===

==== hardware ====

* Transcend 16GB microSD High-Endurance (storage space can be more)
* Raspberry Pi 5 - 4GB ram (for Etherpad use more than 2GB ram and it works with older versions of Raspberry Pi)

==== software ====

* RPi OS 64-bit (download and install with Raspberry Pi Imager [https://www.raspberrypi.com/software/ here]

Connect the Raspberry Pi to a screen, keyboard, mouse. Plug it in and connect to the wifi.

Change hostname and password for the RPi through the steps of the Raspberry Pi Imager or the RPi terminal after the installation of the RPi OS: 
<code>$ sudo nano /etc/hosts</code> A file opens that only contains the default hostname: “raspberrypi”. Remove the word and replace it with the one you want. Exit and save the file with ctrl+x. 
Reboot: <code>$ sudo reboot</code>

OR 
In the main menu, go to Preferences > Raspberry Pi Configuration. In the configuration tool, click on “Change Hostname” and update the field. Same with the password. Click “OK” to save the changes. And as with the other solutions, a reboot is needed to apply changes. Click on “Yes” to immediately reboot.

Activate remote access through SSH:

* Boot into the graphical desktop on your Raspberry Pi.
* Click the Raspberry Pi icon in the system tray of your desktop.
* Select Preferences > Raspberry Pi Configuration from the menu.
* Navigate to the Interfaces tab.
* Click the radio button next to SSH into the active position.

=== Apache2 installation and configuration ===

Install the web server Apache2 in order to have access to the web based tools (etherpad, etherdump, tiny file manager) through the local network of your wifi. Open the terminal and run the following commands:

<code>$ sudo apt-get update</code>

<code>$ sudo apt-get upgrade</code>

<code>$ sudo apt-get install apache2</code>

<code>$ hostname -I</code> output of this is the IP address of your RPi.

You can continue either through the RPi terminal or through SSH access from your computer. For the second run this command in your computer:

<code>$ ssh username@ipaddress</code> Replace the username and ipaddress according to your RPi's details. After filling the RPi's password you are in the local server.

=== IP static address ===

Follow this guide https://networksofonesown.constantvzw.org/etherbox/manual.html#setup-hotspot based on https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/configuration/wireless/access-point.md#internet-sharing

==== Configuring a static IP ====

<code>$ sudo apt-get install dnsmasq hostapd</code>

Since the configuration files are not ready yet, turn the new software off as follows:

<code>$ sudo systemctl stop dnsmasq</code> 
<code>$ sudo systemctl stop hostapd</code>

We are configuring a standalone network to act as a server, so the Raspberry Pi needs to have a static IP address assigned to the wireless port. This documentation assumes that we are using the standard 192.168.x.x IP addresses for our wireless network, so we will assign the server the IP address 192.168.4.1. It is also assumed that the wireless device being used is wlan0.

To configure the static IP address, edit the dhcpcd configuration file with:

<code>$ sudo nano /etc/dhcpcd.conf</code>

Go to the end of the file and edit it so that it looks like the following:

<pre>interface wlan0

static ip_address=10.9.8.1/24
nohook wpa_supplicant</pre>
Now restart the dhcpcd daemon and set up the new wlan0 configuration:

<code>$ sudo service dhcpcd restart</code> or <code>$ sudo systemctl restart dnsmasq</code>

==== Configuring the DHCP server (dnsmasq) ====

The DHCP service is provided by dnsmasq. By default, the configuration file contains a lot of information that is not needed, and it is easier to start from scratch. Rename this configuration file, and edit a new one:

<code>$ sudo mv /etc/dnsmasq.conf /etc/dnsmasq.conf.orig</code> 
<code>$ sudo nano /etc/dnsmasq.conf</code>

Type or copy the following information into the dnsmasq configuration file and save it:

<pre>interface=wlan0

dhcp-range=10.9.8.50,10.9.8.254,255.255.255.0,24h
</pre>
So for wlan0, we are going to provide IP addresses between 10.9.8.50 and 10.9.8.254 with a lease time of 24 hours. If you are providing DHCP services for other network devices (e.g. eth0), you could add more sections with the appropriate interface header, with the range of addresses you intend to provide to that interface.

There are many more options for dnsmasq; see the [http://www.thekelleys.org.uk/dnsmasq/doc.html dnsmasq documentation] for more details.

==== Configuring the access point host software (hostapd) ====

You need to edit the hostapd configuration file, located at /etc/hostapd/hostapd.conf, to add the various parameters for your wireless network. After initial install, this will be a new/empty file.

<code>$ sudo nano /etc/hostapd/hostapd.conf</code>

Add the information below to the configuration file. This configuration assumes we are using channel 7, with a network name of NameOfNetwork, and a password AardvarkBadgerHedgehog. Note that the name and password should not have quotes around them. The passphrase should be between 8 and 64 characters in length.

<pre>interface=wlan0
driver=nl80211
ssid=etherbox
hw_mode=g
channel=7
wmm_enabled=0
macaddr_acl=0
auth_algs=1
ignore_broadcast_ssid=0
</pre>
To password protect the hotspot:

<pre>wpa=2
wpa_passphrase=AardvarkBadgerHedgehog
wpa_key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
wpa_pairwise=TKIP
rsn_pairwise=CCMP</pre>
We now need to tell the system where to find this configuration file.

<code>$ sudo nano /etc/default/hostapd</code>

Find the line with #DAEMON_CONF, and replace it with this:

<pre>DAEMON_CONF="/etc/hostapd/hostapd.conf"</pre>

==== Start it up ====

Now start up the remaining services:

<code>$ sudo systemctl start hostapd</code> 
<code>$ sudo systemctl start dnsmasq</code>

==== Add routing and masquerade ====

Edit /etc/sysctl.conf and uncomment this line:

<pre>net.ipv4.ip_forward=1</pre>
<code>$ sudo apt-get install iptables</code>

Add a masquerade for outbound traffic on eth0:

<code>$ sudo iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -o eth0 -j MASQUERADE</code>

Edit /etc/rc.local and add this just above "exit 0" to install these rules on boot.

<code>$ iptables-restore < /etc/iptables.ipv4.nat</code>

Save the iptables rule.

<code>$ sudo sh -c "iptables-save > /etc/iptables.ipv4.nat"</code>

Reboot

If necessary throughout this manual:

<code>$ sudo apt-get update</code> <code>$ sudo apt-get upgrade</code>

=== Etherpad-lite installation ===

[[File:Titipi-local-server-etherpad.png|thumb]]

==== installation ====

Follow that guide: https://github.com/ether/etherpad-lite combined with that https://networksofonesown.constantvzw.org/etherbox/manual.html#install-etherpad

<code>$ nvm install 20</code> Install Node.js version 20

<code>$ node -v</code> Check version of node installed

<code>$ sudo apt-get install npm git</code>

Install pnpm: <code>$ npm install -g pnpm</code> (Administrator privileges may be required).

<code>$ cd /opt</code>

Clone the repository: <code>$ sudo git clone -b master https://github.com/ether/etherpad-lite.git</code>

<code>$ sudo mv etherpad-lite etherpad</code>

<code>$ sudo adduser --system --no-create-home --home=/opt/etherpad --group etherpad</code>

<code>$ sudo chown -R etherpad:etherpad etherpad</code>

<code>$ cd etherpad/</code>

<code>$ Run pnpm i</code>

Run <code>$ pnpm run build:etherpad</code>

Run <code>$ pnpm run prod</code>

<code>$ sudo --user etherpad cp settings.json.template settings.json</code> Create your setting file.

<code>$ sudo --user etherpad nano settings.json</code>

Find and change this part :

<pre> //The Type of the database. You can choose between dirty, postgres, sqlite and mysql
//You shouldn't use "dirty" for for anything else than testing or development
/* "dbType" : "dirty",
//the database specific settings
"dbSettings" : {
"filename" : "var/dirty.db"
},
*/
//An Example of MySQL Configuration
"dbType" : "mysql",
"dbSettings" : {
"user" : "etherpaduser",
"host" : "localhost",
"password": "etherpadpass",
"database": "etherpad",
"charset" : "utf8mb4"
},</pre>
Change the authentication method in order to create an API key when Etherpad starts so we can use it for the follow-up tool, etherdump. In the settings find that line:

<pre> "authenticationMethod": "${AUTHENTICATION_METHOD:sso}",</pre>
and replace with

<pre> "authenticationMethod": "${AUTHENTICATION_METHOD:apikey}",</pre>
Visit http://ipadressofrpi:9001 in your browser (replace ipadressofrpi with the IP address of the RPi). or http://hostname.local:9001 (replace hostname with the hostname of the RPi)

In case the port 9001 is occupied in your network (for example a printer maybe is using it) then stop etherpad with cntrl+c and run:

<code>$ sudo nano settings.json</code> Find where the port is configured and change the number from 9001 to something else like 8001. You change it in this line

<pre>"port": 9001,</pre>
and

<pre> "sso": {
"issuer": "${SSO_ISSUER:http://localhost:9001}",
"clients": [
{
"client_id": "${ADMIN_CLIENT:admin_client}",
"client_secret": "${ADMIN_SECRET:admin}",
"grant_types": ["authorization_code"],
"response_types": ["code"],
"redirect_uris": ["${ADMIN_REDIRECT:http://localhost:9001/admin/}"]
},
{
"client_id": "${USER_CLIENT:user_client}",
"client_secret": "${USER_SECRET:user}",
"grant_types": ["authorization_code"],
"response_types": ["code"],
"redirect_uris": ["${USER_REDIRECT:http://localhost:9001/}"]
}
]
}</pre>
Run again: <code>$ pnpm run prod</code> and access the etherpad in the right port.

Style the main page of Etherpad here:

<code>$ nano /opt/etherpad/src/static/skins/colibris/index.css</code>

==== Set up Mysql ====

First thing to do is to install MySQL :

<code>$ sudo apt-get install mysql-server</code>

Then create the database, for this we need to login with the Root user (super-user): 
<code>$ sudo su</code>

Run mysql : 
<code>$ mysql</code>

Then create the database and the user 'etherpaduser' with the password 'etherpadpass' :

<pre>create database etherpad;
grant all on etherpad.* to 'etherpaduser'@'localhost' identified by 'etherpadpass';</pre>
Use Ctrl-D to quit mysql. And exit to quit su.

Just to test if it works :

<code>$ mysql -u etherpaduser -p etherpad</code>

==== Run etherpad for the first time as the etherpad user... ====

<code>$ cd /opt/etherpad</code> 
<code>$ sudo --user etherpad bin/run.sh</code>

The first time you run the etherpad software it takes a '''long''' time as it downloads related packages. It may also give quite some warnings, but hopefully no errors.

Setup etherpad to start as a service

<code>$ sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/etherpad.service</code>

<pre>[Unit]
Description=Etherpad-lite, the collaborative editor.
After=syslog.target network.target

[Service]
Type=simple
User=etherpad
Group=etherpad
WorkingDirectory=/opt/etherpad
ExecStart=/usr/bin/nodejs /opt/etherpad/node_modules/ep_etherpad-lite/node/server.js
Restart=always

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target</pre>
After this, to start once...

<code>$ sudo systemctl start etherpad</code>

Check if it's working with:

<code>$ sudo systemctl status etherpad</code>

And finally automatically start on boot:

<code>$ sudo systemctl enable etherpad</code>

If this way doesn't work then activate it every time you reboot manually with tmux:

<code>$ sudo apt-get install tmux</code> 
<code>$ tmux new -s etherpad</code> 
<code>$ sudo --user etherpad /opt/etherpad/bin/run.sh</code>

Press ctrl+B and D to exit

Come back to this tmux session with: <code>$ tmux attach -t etherpad</code>

==== '''__NOPUBLISH__''' pads ====

If you want to keep the pad out of the archive, add the '''__NOPUBLISH__''' tag into the body text

=== Etherdump installation ===

[[File:Titipi-local-server-etherdump.png|thumb]]

Etherdump is a script that dumps all pads to different format text files. It's run periodically by a cron job to create a running archive of the etherpads. Follow this guide https://gitlab.constantvzw.org/aa/etherdump in combination with https://networksofonesown.constantvzw.org/etherbox/manual.html#etherdump

==== Installation ====

Install dependencies:

<code>$ sudo apt install python3-pip</code> <code>$ sudo pip3 install python-dateutil jinja2 html5lib</code>

Install from repo:

<code>$ cd</code> <code>$ mkdir Software</code> <code>$ cd Software</code> <code>$ git clone http://murtaugh@gitlab.constantvzw.org/aa/etherdump.git</code> <code>$ cd etherdump</code> <code>$ sudo python3 setup.py install</code>

==== Init the folder ====

You need the etherpad API key (which is generated the first time you ran the software, see above). Copy it from:

<code>$ cat /opt/etherpad/APIKEY.txt'</code>

Then...

<code>$ cd /home/username</code> <code>$ mkdir etherdump</code> <code>$ cd etherdump</code> <code>$ etherdump init</code>

For the URL use: http://ipadressofpi:9001/ (which is the URL of the etherpad)

And paste the API key.

<code>$ sudo mkdir /var/www/html/etherdump</code>

==== Use pandoc to convert pads to HTML ====

Pandoc is used to convert markdown files to HTML.

<code>$ sudo apt-get install pandoc</code>

Create an image gallery with imagemagick

Imagemagick to make thumbnails.

<code>$ sudo apt-get install imagemagick</code>

==== cron.sh ====

<code>$ mkdir /home/username/include</code>

<code>$ cp /home/username/Software/etherdump/etherdump/data/templates/index.html /home/username/include/etherdump.template.html</code> This is the template for how the etherdump index page looks like.

<code>$ nano /home/username/cron.sh</code>

<pre># Dump the etherpad to files
cd etherdump
sudo -u titipi etherdump pull --meta --text --dhtml --pub . --no-raw-ext
sudo -u titipi etherdump index \
*.meta.json \
--templatepath /home/username/include \
--template etherdump.template.html \
--title "TITiPI etherdump" > index2.html
sudo -u root cp index2.html /var/www/html/etherdump/index.html
sudo -u root cp * /var/www/html/etherdump/</pre>
Make it executable:

<code>$ chmod +x /home/username/cron.sh</code>

Enable the cron job

<code>$ crontab -e</code>

The following runs the cron.sh every minute.

<pre>PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin$

# For more information see the manual pages of crontab(5) and cro$
#
# m h dom mon dow command
* * * * * /home/username/cron.sh 2> /home/username/cron.log</pre>
You may need to do this if it doesn't work:

<code>$ sudo chown -R username:www-data files/</code>

You can access etherdump here: http://hostname.local/etherdump/index.html

=== Install tiny file manager ===

[[File:Titipi-local-server-file-manager.png|thumb]]

==== installation ====

Follow guide https://github.com/prasathmani/tinyfilemanager

<code>$ sudo apt-get install php</code> 
<code>$ sudo apt-get install wget</code> 
<code>$ wget -c https://github.com/prasathmani/tinyfilemanager/archive/refs/heads/master.zip</code> 
<code>$ sudo apt install unzip</code> 
<code>$ unzip master.zip</code> 
<code>$ rm master.zip</code> 
<code>$ cd tinyfilemanager-master/</code> 
<code>$ cp tinyfilemanager.php /var/www/html/files/files.php</code>

Access the file manager here: http://titipi.local/files/files.php

=== Create an index page ===

<code>$ nano /var /www/html/index.html</code>

Replace paths accordingly and names:

<pre><!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<link rel="stylesheet" href="styles.css">
<body>
<a href="http://hostname.local:9001"><button> Create a pad</button></a>

<a href="http://hostname/etherdump/index.html"><button>Pads list</button></a>

<a href="http://hostname/files/files.php?p=files">
<button>Drop files</button></a>
 
 
 
<hr>
<ul>
<li>Resistant Infra <a href="https://circulations.constantvzw.org/octomode/infra-resistance/pdf/">pdf</a>, <a href="https://circulations.constantvzw.org/octomode/infra-resistance/pad/">pad</a></li>
<li>Genocidal Tech Map <a href="https://circulations.constantvzw.org/octomode/genocidal_tech/pdf/">pdf</a></li>
<li>Inspiration from<a href="https://hub.vvvvvvaria.org/rosa/"> Rosa server</a> and <a href="https://networksofonesown.constantvzw.org">Networks Of One's Own</a></li>
</ul>


</body>
</html></pre>
styles.css:

<pre>
@font-face {
font-family: 'workavec';
src: url(workavec-semibold-webfont.woff);
}

button {
color: #0c9f9d;
padding: 0.3em 1.5em 0.5em;
border: groove;
border-radius: 15px;
font-weight: bold;
background-color: #f0f0f0;
margin-left: -0.1em;
font-size:1em;}

body {
font-size: 1em;
font-family: 'workavec';
background: url(etherdump/worms.png) center center no-repeat fixed #fff;
}

hr {
border-top: 1px dashed #0c9f9d;
}
</pre>

=== Install burrow ===

Instead of etherdump, install burrow: https://gitlab.constantvzw.org/titipi/burrow

Needs editing...

=== Change server's language ===

Play with the server's languages following this example from Rosa: https://hub.vvvvvvaria.org/rosa/pad/p/languages-within-languages

Needs editing...

=== Install Icecast ===

====Install Apache server on a RPi ====
(if you haven't installed it yet):

Install Apache (https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/remote-access/web-server/apache.md):

Run these commands in the Terminal:

First, update the available packages by typing the following command into the Terminal:
$ sudo apt update

Then, install the apache2 package with this command:
$ sudo apt install apache2 -y

Test the web server:

Find the Pi’s IP address:
$ hostname -I

By default, Apache puts a test HTML file in the web folder. This default web page is served when you browse to http://localhost/ on the Pi itself, or http://192.168.1.10 (whatever the Pi’s IP address is) from another computer on the network. Browse to the default web page either on the Pi or from another computer on the network and you should see the default page of Apache

====Install icecast server on a RPi====

Install Icecast (https://maker.pro/raspberry-pi/projects/how-to-build-an-internet-radio-station-with-raspberry-pi-darkice-and-icecast , https://icecast.org/ )

$ sudo apt install icecast2

After entering this command, a window will pop up asking if you want to configure Icecast2. Select Yes.

Next, select OK to use the default hostname "localhost". On the screens that follow, hit OK to agree to the settings that are shown.

Open the configuration file to set up name of the server and passwords:
$ sudo nano /etc/icecast2/icecast.xml

Final steps:
$ systemctl status icecast2 (status of service)
$ systemctl restart icecast2 (restart service updates the use of the .xml file)

More on mount settings: https://icecast.org/docs/icecast-2.4.1/config-file.html#mountsettings

====Install the client Butt in your computer or a RPi====

https://danielnoethen.de/butt/

For Mac OS users:

1. Download butt from here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/butt/files/butt/butt-0.1.22/butt-0.1.22.dmg/download

2. Double click the icon to open it. If it gives an error, try Right Click > Open

For Windows users:

1. Download butt from here: https://sourceforge.net/projects/butt/files/butt/butt-0.1.22/butt-0.1.22-setup.exe/download

2. Double click the .exe file and follow the instructions to install butt

For Linux users:

1. Download butt from here: https://sourceforge.net/projects/butt/files/butt/butt-0.1.22/butt-0.1.22.tar.gz/download and go to the directory that you downloaded it through the terminal:
$ cd Downloads/

2. The following libraries have to be installed on your system before installing butt:
$ sudo apt-get install libfltk1.3-dev portaudio19-dev libopus-dev libmp3lame-dev libvorbis-dev libogg-dev libflac-dev libfdk-aac-dev libdbus-1-dev libsamplerate0-dev libssl-dev

3. After installing the above libraries you can install butt from source:

$ tar -xzf butt-0.1.22.tar.gz
$ cd butt-0.1.22
$ ./configure
$ make
$ sudo make install

4. Open butt:

$ butt

Client other than butt
https://mixxx.org/download/

====Icecast client in smartphone====

For Android: Cool Mic https://f-droid.org/en/packages/cc.echonet.coolmicapp/

For iPhone: Icefall https://apps.apple.com/us/app/icefall-icecast-stream-client/id1512089290

====Stream sounds and not microphone====

For Mac OS users:

For Mac OS, things are a bit trickier.

1. Install Soundflower from here: https://github.com/mattingalls/Soundflower/releases/download/2.0b2/Soundflower-2.0b2.dmg

2. Open up the application Audio MIDI Setup by searching for it in spotlight

3. Audio devices will be opened, showing your current devices you can use like a built-in microphone and built-in output. Click the + button and select Create Multi-Output Device. The master device should be set to Built-in Output, sample rate should be 441000.0 Hz, and select Built-in Output and Soundflower (2ch) for your audio devices. https://radioco-ff6b8838737f.intercom-attachments-1.com/i/o/179167435/1d3b7f108ad6767111b759ed/audio-devices.png

4. Now open up your sound settings in System Preferences -> Sound. In Output select the new output device you created; the default name is Multi-Output Device. https://radioco-ff6b8838737f.intercom-attachments-1.com/i/o/179167437/0d6a6dcfb827dfcb9ce6f2f4/sound-output-multi-channel.png

5. It should work now! If you go back to butt, you should be able to change the Audio settings to Soundflower (2ch) https://radioco-ff6b8838737f.intercom-attachments-1.com/i/o/179167448/2f65977fbb4be4f0849a8197/butt-selecting-audio-device.png

6. Whenever you want to go back to the microphone, change the setting to Built-in Microphone

for rpi:

Find out the device name of the "monitor" using the pactl command

$ pactl list | grep .monitor

Now you have a device called pulse_monitor that you can use with arecord

Then add this:

<pre>
pcm.pulse_monitor {
type pulse
device alsa_output.platform-bcm2835_audio.analog-stereo.monitor
}
</pre>

<pre>
ctl.pulse_monitor {
type pulse
device alsa_output.platform-bcm2835_audio.analog-stereo.monitor
}
</pre>

to the file / create this file:

$ nano /etc/asound.conf

TITiPI's local server

2025-03-19T13:30:54Z

Angeliki: /* Stream sounds and not microphone */

== TITiPI Local Server manual ==

This local server takes set-up fragments and inspiration from [https://networksofonesown.constantvzw.org/etherbox/manual.html Networks Of Ones Own] and [https://hub.vvvvvvaria.org/rosa/ Rosa]. In this version the server includes the collaborative note keeping tool ''etherpad'', the periodic publishing tool of etherpads to static files ''etherdump'' and the file manager ''tiny file manager''.

Take into consideration that this manual may not be accurate or some things may not work as wished. Have all your eyes open and ask the help of your peers and the Internet for more eyes. Sometimes you may have to run the following commands with sudo user.

[[File:Titipi-local-server-main-page.png|thumb]]

=== Server requirements ===

==== hardware ====

* Transcend 16GB microSD High-Endurance (storage space can be more)
* Raspberry Pi 5 - 4GB ram (for Etherpad use more than 2GB ram and it works with older versions of Raspberry Pi)

==== software ====

* RPi OS 64-bit (download and install with Raspberry Pi Imager [https://www.raspberrypi.com/software/ here]

Connect the Raspberry Pi to a screen, keyboard, mouse. Plug it in and connect to the wifi.

Change hostname and password for the RPi through the steps of the Raspberry Pi Imager or the RPi terminal after the installation of the RPi OS: 
<code>$ sudo nano /etc/hosts</code> A file opens that only contains the default hostname: “raspberrypi”. Remove the word and replace it with the one you want. Exit and save the file with ctrl+x. 
Reboot: <code>$ sudo reboot</code>

OR 
In the main menu, go to Preferences > Raspberry Pi Configuration. In the configuration tool, click on “Change Hostname” and update the field. Same with the password. Click “OK” to save the changes. And as with the other solutions, a reboot is needed to apply changes. Click on “Yes” to immediately reboot.

Activate remote access through SSH:

* Boot into the graphical desktop on your Raspberry Pi.
* Click the Raspberry Pi icon in the system tray of your desktop.
* Select Preferences > Raspberry Pi Configuration from the menu.
* Navigate to the Interfaces tab.
* Click the radio button next to SSH into the active position.

=== Apache2 installation and configuration ===

Install the web server Apache2 in order to have access to the web based tools (etherpad, etherdump, tiny file manager) through the local network of your wifi. Open the terminal and run the following commands:

<code>$ sudo apt-get update</code>

<code>$ sudo apt-get upgrade</code>

<code>$ sudo apt-get install apache2</code>

<code>$ hostname -I</code> output of this is the IP address of your RPi.

You can continue either through the RPi terminal or through SSH access from your computer. For the second run this command in your computer:

<code>$ ssh username@ipaddress</code> Replace the username and ipaddress according to your RPi's details. After filling the RPi's password you are in the local server.

=== IP static address ===

Follow this guide https://networksofonesown.constantvzw.org/etherbox/manual.html#setup-hotspot based on https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/configuration/wireless/access-point.md#internet-sharing

==== Configuring a static IP ====

<code>$ sudo apt-get install dnsmasq hostapd</code>

Since the configuration files are not ready yet, turn the new software off as follows:

<code>$ sudo systemctl stop dnsmasq</code> 
<code>$ sudo systemctl stop hostapd</code>

We are configuring a standalone network to act as a server, so the Raspberry Pi needs to have a static IP address assigned to the wireless port. This documentation assumes that we are using the standard 192.168.x.x IP addresses for our wireless network, so we will assign the server the IP address 192.168.4.1. It is also assumed that the wireless device being used is wlan0.

To configure the static IP address, edit the dhcpcd configuration file with:

<code>$ sudo nano /etc/dhcpcd.conf</code>

Go to the end of the file and edit it so that it looks like the following:

<pre>interface wlan0

static ip_address=10.9.8.1/24
nohook wpa_supplicant</pre>
Now restart the dhcpcd daemon and set up the new wlan0 configuration:

<code>$ sudo service dhcpcd restart</code> or <code>$ sudo systemctl restart dnsmasq</code>

==== Configuring the DHCP server (dnsmasq) ====

The DHCP service is provided by dnsmasq. By default, the configuration file contains a lot of information that is not needed, and it is easier to start from scratch. Rename this configuration file, and edit a new one:

<code>$ sudo mv /etc/dnsmasq.conf /etc/dnsmasq.conf.orig</code> 
<code>$ sudo nano /etc/dnsmasq.conf</code>

Type or copy the following information into the dnsmasq configuration file and save it:

<pre>interface=wlan0

dhcp-range=10.9.8.50,10.9.8.254,255.255.255.0,24h
</pre>
So for wlan0, we are going to provide IP addresses between 10.9.8.50 and 10.9.8.254 with a lease time of 24 hours. If you are providing DHCP services for other network devices (e.g. eth0), you could add more sections with the appropriate interface header, with the range of addresses you intend to provide to that interface.

There are many more options for dnsmasq; see the [http://www.thekelleys.org.uk/dnsmasq/doc.html dnsmasq documentation] for more details.

==== Configuring the access point host software (hostapd) ====

You need to edit the hostapd configuration file, located at /etc/hostapd/hostapd.conf, to add the various parameters for your wireless network. After initial install, this will be a new/empty file.

<code>$ sudo nano /etc/hostapd/hostapd.conf</code>

Add the information below to the configuration file. This configuration assumes we are using channel 7, with a network name of NameOfNetwork, and a password AardvarkBadgerHedgehog. Note that the name and password should not have quotes around them. The passphrase should be between 8 and 64 characters in length.

<pre>interface=wlan0
driver=nl80211
ssid=etherbox
hw_mode=g
channel=7
wmm_enabled=0
macaddr_acl=0
auth_algs=1
ignore_broadcast_ssid=0
</pre>
To password protect the hotspot:

<pre>wpa=2
wpa_passphrase=AardvarkBadgerHedgehog
wpa_key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
wpa_pairwise=TKIP
rsn_pairwise=CCMP</pre>
We now need to tell the system where to find this configuration file.

<code>$ sudo nano /etc/default/hostapd</code>

Find the line with #DAEMON_CONF, and replace it with this:

<pre>DAEMON_CONF="/etc/hostapd/hostapd.conf"</pre>

==== Start it up ====

Now start up the remaining services:

<code>$ sudo systemctl start hostapd</code> 
<code>$ sudo systemctl start dnsmasq</code>

==== Add routing and masquerade ====

Edit /etc/sysctl.conf and uncomment this line:

<pre>net.ipv4.ip_forward=1</pre>
<code>$ sudo apt-get install iptables</code>

Add a masquerade for outbound traffic on eth0:

<code>$ sudo iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -o eth0 -j MASQUERADE</code>

Edit /etc/rc.local and add this just above "exit 0" to install these rules on boot.

<code>$ iptables-restore < /etc/iptables.ipv4.nat</code>

Save the iptables rule.

<code>$ sudo sh -c "iptables-save > /etc/iptables.ipv4.nat"</code>

Reboot

If necessary throughout this manual:

<code>$ sudo apt-get update</code> <code>$ sudo apt-get upgrade</code>

=== Etherpad-lite installation ===

[[File:Titipi-local-server-etherpad.png|thumb]]

==== installation ====

Follow that guide: https://github.com/ether/etherpad-lite combined with that https://networksofonesown.constantvzw.org/etherbox/manual.html#install-etherpad

<code>$ nvm install 20</code> Install Node.js version 20

<code>$ node -v</code> Check version of node installed

<code>$ sudo apt-get install npm git</code>

Install pnpm: <code>$ npm install -g pnpm</code> (Administrator privileges may be required).

<code>$ cd /opt</code>

Clone the repository: <code>$ sudo git clone -b master https://github.com/ether/etherpad-lite.git</code>

<code>$ sudo mv etherpad-lite etherpad</code>

<code>$ sudo adduser --system --no-create-home --home=/opt/etherpad --group etherpad</code>

<code>$ sudo chown -R etherpad:etherpad etherpad</code>

<code>$ cd etherpad/</code>

<code>$ Run pnpm i</code>

Run <code>$ pnpm run build:etherpad</code>

Run <code>$ pnpm run prod</code>

<code>$ sudo --user etherpad cp settings.json.template settings.json</code> Create your setting file.

<code>$ sudo --user etherpad nano settings.json</code>

Find and change this part :

<pre> //The Type of the database. You can choose between dirty, postgres, sqlite and mysql
//You shouldn't use "dirty" for for anything else than testing or development
/* "dbType" : "dirty",
//the database specific settings
"dbSettings" : {
"filename" : "var/dirty.db"
},
*/
//An Example of MySQL Configuration
"dbType" : "mysql",
"dbSettings" : {
"user" : "etherpaduser",
"host" : "localhost",
"password": "etherpadpass",
"database": "etherpad",
"charset" : "utf8mb4"
},</pre>
Change the authentication method in order to create an API key when Etherpad starts so we can use it for the follow-up tool, etherdump. In the settings find that line:

<pre> "authenticationMethod": "${AUTHENTICATION_METHOD:sso}",</pre>
and replace with

<pre> "authenticationMethod": "${AUTHENTICATION_METHOD:apikey}",</pre>
Visit http://ipadressofrpi:9001 in your browser (replace ipadressofrpi with the IP address of the RPi). or http://hostname.local:9001 (replace hostname with the hostname of the RPi)

In case the port 9001 is occupied in your network (for example a printer maybe is using it) then stop etherpad with cntrl+c and run:

<code>$ sudo nano settings.json</code> Find where the port is configured and change the number from 9001 to something else like 8001. You change it in this line

<pre>"port": 9001,</pre>
and

<pre> "sso": {
"issuer": "${SSO_ISSUER:http://localhost:9001}",
"clients": [
{
"client_id": "${ADMIN_CLIENT:admin_client}",
"client_secret": "${ADMIN_SECRET:admin}",
"grant_types": ["authorization_code"],
"response_types": ["code"],
"redirect_uris": ["${ADMIN_REDIRECT:http://localhost:9001/admin/}"]
},
{
"client_id": "${USER_CLIENT:user_client}",
"client_secret": "${USER_SECRET:user}",
"grant_types": ["authorization_code"],
"response_types": ["code"],
"redirect_uris": ["${USER_REDIRECT:http://localhost:9001/}"]
}
]
}</pre>
Run again: <code>$ pnpm run prod</code> and access the etherpad in the right port.

Style the main page of Etherpad here:

<code>$ nano /opt/etherpad/src/static/skins/colibris/index.css</code>

==== Set up Mysql ====

First thing to do is to install MySQL :

<code>$ sudo apt-get install mysql-server</code>

Then create the database, for this we need to login with the Root user (super-user): 
<code>$ sudo su</code>

Run mysql : 
<code>$ mysql</code>

Then create the database and the user 'etherpaduser' with the password 'etherpadpass' :

<pre>create database etherpad;
grant all on etherpad.* to 'etherpaduser'@'localhost' identified by 'etherpadpass';</pre>
Use Ctrl-D to quit mysql. And exit to quit su.

Just to test if it works :

<code>$ mysql -u etherpaduser -p etherpad</code>

==== Run etherpad for the first time as the etherpad user... ====

<code>$ cd /opt/etherpad</code> 
<code>$ sudo --user etherpad bin/run.sh</code>

The first time you run the etherpad software it takes a '''long''' time as it downloads related packages. It may also give quite some warnings, but hopefully no errors.

Setup etherpad to start as a service

<code>$ sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/etherpad.service</code>

<pre>[Unit]
Description=Etherpad-lite, the collaborative editor.
After=syslog.target network.target

[Service]
Type=simple
User=etherpad
Group=etherpad
WorkingDirectory=/opt/etherpad
ExecStart=/usr/bin/nodejs /opt/etherpad/node_modules/ep_etherpad-lite/node/server.js
Restart=always

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target</pre>
After this, to start once...

<code>$ sudo systemctl start etherpad</code>

Check if it's working with:

<code>$ sudo systemctl status etherpad</code>

And finally automatically start on boot:

<code>$ sudo systemctl enable etherpad</code>

If this way doesn't work then activate it every time you reboot manually with tmux:

<code>$ sudo apt-get install tmux</code> 
<code>$ tmux new -s etherpad</code> 
<code>$ sudo --user etherpad /opt/etherpad/bin/run.sh</code>

Press ctrl+B and D to exit

Come back to this tmux session with: <code>$ tmux attach -t etherpad</code>

==== '''__NOPUBLISH__''' pads ====

If you want to keep the pad out of the archive, add the '''__NOPUBLISH__''' tag into the body text

=== Etherdump installation ===

[[File:Titipi-local-server-etherdump.png|thumb]]

Etherdump is a script that dumps all pads to different format text files. It's run periodically by a cron job to create a running archive of the etherpads. Follow this guide https://gitlab.constantvzw.org/aa/etherdump in combination with https://networksofonesown.constantvzw.org/etherbox/manual.html#etherdump

==== Installation ====

Install dependencies:

<code>$ sudo apt install python3-pip</code> <code>$ sudo pip3 install python-dateutil jinja2 html5lib</code>

Install from repo:

<code>$ cd</code> <code>$ mkdir Software</code> <code>$ cd Software</code> <code>$ git clone http://murtaugh@gitlab.constantvzw.org/aa/etherdump.git</code> <code>$ cd etherdump</code> <code>$ sudo python3 setup.py install</code>

==== Init the folder ====

You need the etherpad API key (which is generated the first time you ran the software, see above). Copy it from:

<code>$ cat /opt/etherpad/APIKEY.txt'</code>

Then...

<code>$ cd /home/username</code> <code>$ mkdir etherdump</code> <code>$ cd etherdump</code> <code>$ etherdump init</code>

For the URL use: http://ipadressofpi:9001/ (which is the URL of the etherpad)

And paste the API key.

<code>$ sudo mkdir /var/www/html/etherdump</code>

==== Use pandoc to convert pads to HTML ====

Pandoc is used to convert markdown files to HTML.

<code>$ sudo apt-get install pandoc</code>

Create an image gallery with imagemagick

Imagemagick to make thumbnails.

<code>$ sudo apt-get install imagemagick</code>

==== cron.sh ====

<code>$ mkdir /home/username/include</code>

<code>$ cp /home/username/Software/etherdump/etherdump/data/templates/index.html /home/username/include/etherdump.template.html</code> This is the template for how the etherdump index page looks like.

<code>$ nano /home/username/cron.sh</code>

<pre># Dump the etherpad to files
cd etherdump
sudo -u titipi etherdump pull --meta --text --dhtml --pub . --no-raw-ext
sudo -u titipi etherdump index \
*.meta.json \
--templatepath /home/username/include \
--template etherdump.template.html \
--title "TITiPI etherdump" > index2.html
sudo -u root cp index2.html /var/www/html/etherdump/index.html
sudo -u root cp * /var/www/html/etherdump/</pre>
Make it executable:

<code>$ chmod +x /home/username/cron.sh</code>

Enable the cron job

<code>$ crontab -e</code>

The following runs the cron.sh every minute.

<pre>PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin$

# For more information see the manual pages of crontab(5) and cro$
#
# m h dom mon dow command
* * * * * /home/username/cron.sh 2> /home/username/cron.log</pre>
You may need to do this if it doesn't work:

<code>$ sudo chown -R username:www-data files/</code>

You can access etherdump here: http://hostname.local/etherdump/index.html

=== Install tiny file manager ===

[[File:Titipi-local-server-file-manager.png|thumb]]

==== installation ====

Follow guide https://github.com/prasathmani/tinyfilemanager

<code>$ sudo apt-get install php</code> 
<code>$ sudo apt-get install wget</code> 
<code>$ wget -c https://github.com/prasathmani/tinyfilemanager/archive/refs/heads/master.zip</code> 
<code>$ sudo apt install unzip</code> 
<code>$ unzip master.zip</code> 
<code>$ rm master.zip</code> 
<code>$ cd tinyfilemanager-master/</code> 
<code>$ cp tinyfilemanager.php /var/www/html/files/files.php</code>

Access the file manager here: http://titipi.local/files/files.php

=== Create an index page ===

<code>$ nano /var /www/html/index.html</code>

Replace paths accordingly and names:

<pre><!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<link rel="stylesheet" href="styles.css">
<body>
<a href="http://hostname.local:9001"><button> Create a pad</button></a>

<a href="http://hostname/etherdump/index.html"><button>Pads list</button></a>

<a href="http://hostname/files/files.php?p=files">
<button>Drop files</button></a>
 
 
 
<hr>
<ul>
<li>Resistant Infra <a href="https://circulations.constantvzw.org/octomode/infra-resistance/pdf/">pdf</a>, <a href="https://circulations.constantvzw.org/octomode/infra-resistance/pad/">pad</a></li>
<li>Genocidal Tech Map <a href="https://circulations.constantvzw.org/octomode/genocidal_tech/pdf/">pdf</a></li>
<li>Inspiration from<a href="https://hub.vvvvvvaria.org/rosa/"> Rosa server</a> and <a href="https://networksofonesown.constantvzw.org">Networks Of One's Own</a></li>
</ul>


</body>
</html></pre>
styles.css:

<pre>
@font-face {
font-family: 'workavec';
src: url(workavec-semibold-webfont.woff);
}

button {
color: #0c9f9d;
padding: 0.3em 1.5em 0.5em;
border: groove;
border-radius: 15px;
font-weight: bold;
background-color: #f0f0f0;
margin-left: -0.1em;
font-size:1em;}

body {
font-size: 1em;
font-family: 'workavec';
background: url(etherdump/worms.png) center center no-repeat fixed #fff;
}

hr {
border-top: 1px dashed #0c9f9d;
}
</pre>

=== Install burrow ===

Instead of etherdump, install burrow: https://gitlab.constantvzw.org/titipi/burrow

Needs editing...

=== Change server's language ===

Play with the server's languages following this example from Rosa: https://hub.vvvvvvaria.org/rosa/pad/p/languages-within-languages

Needs editing...

=== Install Icecast ===

====Install Apache server on a RPi ====
(if you haven't installed it yet):

Install Apache (https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/remote-access/web-server/apache.md):

Run these commands in the Terminal:

First, update the available packages by typing the following command into the Terminal:
$ sudo apt update

Then, install the apache2 package with this command:
$ sudo apt install apache2 -y

Test the web server:

Find the Pi’s IP address:
$ hostname -I

By default, Apache puts a test HTML file in the web folder. This default web page is served when you browse to http://localhost/ on the Pi itself, or http://192.168.1.10 (whatever the Pi’s IP address is) from another computer on the network. Browse to the default web page either on the Pi or from another computer on the network and you should see the default page of Apache

====Install icecast server on a RPi====

Install Icecast (https://maker.pro/raspberry-pi/projects/how-to-build-an-internet-radio-station-with-raspberry-pi-darkice-and-icecast , https://icecast.org/ )

$ sudo apt install icecast2

After entering this command, a window will pop up asking if you want to configure Icecast2. Select Yes.

Next, select OK to use the default hostname "localhost". On the screens that follow, hit OK to agree to the settings that are shown.

Open the configuration file to set up name of the server and passwords:
$ sudo nano /etc/icecast2/icecast.xml

Final steps:
$ systemctl status icecast2 (status of service)
$ systemctl restart icecast2 (restart service updates the use of the .xml file)

More on mount settings: https://icecast.org/docs/icecast-2.4.1/config-file.html#mountsettings

====Install the client Butt in your computer or a RPi====

https://danielnoethen.de/butt/

For Mac OS users:

1. Download butt from here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/butt/files/butt/butt-0.1.22/butt-0.1.22.dmg/download

2. Double click the icon to open it. If it gives an error, try Right Click > Open

For Windows users:

1. Download butt from here: https://sourceforge.net/projects/butt/files/butt/butt-0.1.22/butt-0.1.22-setup.exe/download

2. Double click the .exe file and follow the instructions to install butt

For Linux users:

1. Download butt from here: https://sourceforge.net/projects/butt/files/butt/butt-0.1.22/butt-0.1.22.tar.gz/download and go to the directory that you downloaded it through the terminal:
$ cd Downloads/

2. The following libraries have to be installed on your system before installing butt:
$ sudo apt-get install libfltk1.3-dev portaudio19-dev libopus-dev libmp3lame-dev libvorbis-dev libogg-dev libflac-dev libfdk-aac-dev libdbus-1-dev libsamplerate0-dev libssl-dev

3. After installing the above libraries you can install butt from source:

$ tar -xzf butt-0.1.22.tar.gz
$ cd butt-0.1.22
$ ./configure
$ make
$ sudo make install

4. Open butt:

$ butt

Client other than butt
https://mixxx.org/download/

====Icecast client in smartphone====

For Android: Cool Mic https://f-droid.org/en/packages/cc.echonet.coolmicapp/

For iPhone: Icefall https://apps.apple.com/us/app/icefall-icecast-stream-client/id1512089290

====Stream sounds and not microphone====

For Mac OS users:

For Mac OS, things are a bit trickier.

1. Install Soundflower from here: https://github.com/mattingalls/Soundflower/releases/download/2.0b2/Soundflower-2.0b2.dmg

2. Open up the application Audio MIDI Setup by searching for it in spotlight

3. Audio devices will be opened, showing your current devices you can use like a built-in microphone and built-in output. Click the + button and select Create Multi-Output Device. The master device should be set to Built-in Output, sample rate should be 441000.0 Hz, and select Built-in Output and Soundflower (2ch) for your audio devices. https://radioco-ff6b8838737f.intercom-attachments-1.com/i/o/179167435/1d3b7f108ad6767111b759ed/audio-devices.png

4. Now open up your sound settings in System Preferences -> Sound. In Output select the new output device you created; the default name is Multi-Output Device. https://radioco-ff6b8838737f.intercom-attachments-1.com/i/o/179167437/0d6a6dcfb827dfcb9ce6f2f4/sound-output-multi-channel.png

5. It should work now! If you go back to butt, you should be able to change the Audio settings to Soundflower (2ch) https://radioco-ff6b8838737f.intercom-attachments-1.com/i/o/179167448/2f65977fbb4be4f0849a8197/butt-selecting-audio-device.png

6. Whenever you want to go back to the microphone, change the setting to Built-in Microphone

for rpi:

Find out the device name of the "monitor" using the pactl command

$ pactl list | grep .monitor

Now you have a device called pulse_monitor that you can use with arecord

Then add this:

<code>
pcm.pulse_monitor {
type pulse
device alsa_output.platform-bcm2835_audio.analog-stereo.monitor
}
</code>

<code>
ctl.pulse_monitor {
type pulse
device alsa_output.platform-bcm2835_audio.analog-stereo.monitor
}
</code>

to the file / create this file:

$ nano /etc/asound.conf

TITiPI's local server

2025-03-19T13:28:33Z

Angeliki: /* Install Icecast */

== TITiPI Local Server manual ==

This local server takes set-up fragments and inspiration from [https://networksofonesown.constantvzw.org/etherbox/manual.html Networks Of Ones Own] and [https://hub.vvvvvvaria.org/rosa/ Rosa]. In this version the server includes the collaborative note keeping tool ''etherpad'', the periodic publishing tool of etherpads to static files ''etherdump'' and the file manager ''tiny file manager''.

Take into consideration that this manual may not be accurate or some things may not work as wished. Have all your eyes open and ask the help of your peers and the Internet for more eyes. Sometimes you may have to run the following commands with sudo user.

[[File:Titipi-local-server-main-page.png|thumb]]

=== Server requirements ===

==== hardware ====

* Transcend 16GB microSD High-Endurance (storage space can be more)
* Raspberry Pi 5 - 4GB ram (for Etherpad use more than 2GB ram and it works with older versions of Raspberry Pi)

==== software ====

* RPi OS 64-bit (download and install with Raspberry Pi Imager [https://www.raspberrypi.com/software/ here]

Connect the Raspberry Pi to a screen, keyboard, mouse. Plug it in and connect to the wifi.

Change hostname and password for the RPi through the steps of the Raspberry Pi Imager or the RPi terminal after the installation of the RPi OS: 
<code>$ sudo nano /etc/hosts</code> A file opens that only contains the default hostname: “raspberrypi”. Remove the word and replace it with the one you want. Exit and save the file with ctrl+x. 
Reboot: <code>$ sudo reboot</code>

OR 
In the main menu, go to Preferences > Raspberry Pi Configuration. In the configuration tool, click on “Change Hostname” and update the field. Same with the password. Click “OK” to save the changes. And as with the other solutions, a reboot is needed to apply changes. Click on “Yes” to immediately reboot.

Activate remote access through SSH:

* Boot into the graphical desktop on your Raspberry Pi.
* Click the Raspberry Pi icon in the system tray of your desktop.
* Select Preferences > Raspberry Pi Configuration from the menu.
* Navigate to the Interfaces tab.
* Click the radio button next to SSH into the active position.

=== Apache2 installation and configuration ===

Install the web server Apache2 in order to have access to the web based tools (etherpad, etherdump, tiny file manager) through the local network of your wifi. Open the terminal and run the following commands:

<code>$ sudo apt-get update</code>

<code>$ sudo apt-get upgrade</code>

<code>$ sudo apt-get install apache2</code>

<code>$ hostname -I</code> output of this is the IP address of your RPi.

You can continue either through the RPi terminal or through SSH access from your computer. For the second run this command in your computer:

<code>$ ssh username@ipaddress</code> Replace the username and ipaddress according to your RPi's details. After filling the RPi's password you are in the local server.

=== IP static address ===

Follow this guide https://networksofonesown.constantvzw.org/etherbox/manual.html#setup-hotspot based on https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/configuration/wireless/access-point.md#internet-sharing

==== Configuring a static IP ====

<code>$ sudo apt-get install dnsmasq hostapd</code>

Since the configuration files are not ready yet, turn the new software off as follows:

<code>$ sudo systemctl stop dnsmasq</code> 
<code>$ sudo systemctl stop hostapd</code>

We are configuring a standalone network to act as a server, so the Raspberry Pi needs to have a static IP address assigned to the wireless port. This documentation assumes that we are using the standard 192.168.x.x IP addresses for our wireless network, so we will assign the server the IP address 192.168.4.1. It is also assumed that the wireless device being used is wlan0.

To configure the static IP address, edit the dhcpcd configuration file with:

<code>$ sudo nano /etc/dhcpcd.conf</code>

Go to the end of the file and edit it so that it looks like the following:

<pre>interface wlan0

static ip_address=10.9.8.1/24
nohook wpa_supplicant</pre>
Now restart the dhcpcd daemon and set up the new wlan0 configuration:

<code>$ sudo service dhcpcd restart</code> or <code>$ sudo systemctl restart dnsmasq</code>

==== Configuring the DHCP server (dnsmasq) ====

The DHCP service is provided by dnsmasq. By default, the configuration file contains a lot of information that is not needed, and it is easier to start from scratch. Rename this configuration file, and edit a new one:

<code>$ sudo mv /etc/dnsmasq.conf /etc/dnsmasq.conf.orig</code> 
<code>$ sudo nano /etc/dnsmasq.conf</code>

Type or copy the following information into the dnsmasq configuration file and save it:

<pre>interface=wlan0

dhcp-range=10.9.8.50,10.9.8.254,255.255.255.0,24h
</pre>
So for wlan0, we are going to provide IP addresses between 10.9.8.50 and 10.9.8.254 with a lease time of 24 hours. If you are providing DHCP services for other network devices (e.g. eth0), you could add more sections with the appropriate interface header, with the range of addresses you intend to provide to that interface.

There are many more options for dnsmasq; see the [http://www.thekelleys.org.uk/dnsmasq/doc.html dnsmasq documentation] for more details.

==== Configuring the access point host software (hostapd) ====

You need to edit the hostapd configuration file, located at /etc/hostapd/hostapd.conf, to add the various parameters for your wireless network. After initial install, this will be a new/empty file.

<code>$ sudo nano /etc/hostapd/hostapd.conf</code>

Add the information below to the configuration file. This configuration assumes we are using channel 7, with a network name of NameOfNetwork, and a password AardvarkBadgerHedgehog. Note that the name and password should not have quotes around them. The passphrase should be between 8 and 64 characters in length.

<pre>interface=wlan0
driver=nl80211
ssid=etherbox
hw_mode=g
channel=7
wmm_enabled=0
macaddr_acl=0
auth_algs=1
ignore_broadcast_ssid=0
</pre>
To password protect the hotspot:

<pre>wpa=2
wpa_passphrase=AardvarkBadgerHedgehog
wpa_key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
wpa_pairwise=TKIP
rsn_pairwise=CCMP</pre>
We now need to tell the system where to find this configuration file.

<code>$ sudo nano /etc/default/hostapd</code>

Find the line with #DAEMON_CONF, and replace it with this:

<pre>DAEMON_CONF="/etc/hostapd/hostapd.conf"</pre>

==== Start it up ====

Now start up the remaining services:

<code>$ sudo systemctl start hostapd</code> 
<code>$ sudo systemctl start dnsmasq</code>

==== Add routing and masquerade ====

Edit /etc/sysctl.conf and uncomment this line:

<pre>net.ipv4.ip_forward=1</pre>
<code>$ sudo apt-get install iptables</code>

Add a masquerade for outbound traffic on eth0:

<code>$ sudo iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -o eth0 -j MASQUERADE</code>

Edit /etc/rc.local and add this just above "exit 0" to install these rules on boot.

<code>$ iptables-restore < /etc/iptables.ipv4.nat</code>

Save the iptables rule.

<code>$ sudo sh -c "iptables-save > /etc/iptables.ipv4.nat"</code>

Reboot

If necessary throughout this manual:

<code>$ sudo apt-get update</code> <code>$ sudo apt-get upgrade</code>

=== Etherpad-lite installation ===

[[File:Titipi-local-server-etherpad.png|thumb]]

==== installation ====

Follow that guide: https://github.com/ether/etherpad-lite combined with that https://networksofonesown.constantvzw.org/etherbox/manual.html#install-etherpad

<code>$ nvm install 20</code> Install Node.js version 20

<code>$ node -v</code> Check version of node installed

<code>$ sudo apt-get install npm git</code>

Install pnpm: <code>$ npm install -g pnpm</code> (Administrator privileges may be required).

<code>$ cd /opt</code>

Clone the repository: <code>$ sudo git clone -b master https://github.com/ether/etherpad-lite.git</code>

<code>$ sudo mv etherpad-lite etherpad</code>

<code>$ sudo adduser --system --no-create-home --home=/opt/etherpad --group etherpad</code>

<code>$ sudo chown -R etherpad:etherpad etherpad</code>

<code>$ cd etherpad/</code>

<code>$ Run pnpm i</code>

Run <code>$ pnpm run build:etherpad</code>

Run <code>$ pnpm run prod</code>

<code>$ sudo --user etherpad cp settings.json.template settings.json</code> Create your setting file.

<code>$ sudo --user etherpad nano settings.json</code>

Find and change this part :

<pre> //The Type of the database. You can choose between dirty, postgres, sqlite and mysql
//You shouldn't use "dirty" for for anything else than testing or development
/* "dbType" : "dirty",
//the database specific settings
"dbSettings" : {
"filename" : "var/dirty.db"
},
*/
//An Example of MySQL Configuration
"dbType" : "mysql",
"dbSettings" : {
"user" : "etherpaduser",
"host" : "localhost",
"password": "etherpadpass",
"database": "etherpad",
"charset" : "utf8mb4"
},</pre>
Change the authentication method in order to create an API key when Etherpad starts so we can use it for the follow-up tool, etherdump. In the settings find that line:

<pre> "authenticationMethod": "${AUTHENTICATION_METHOD:sso}",</pre>
and replace with

<pre> "authenticationMethod": "${AUTHENTICATION_METHOD:apikey}",</pre>
Visit http://ipadressofrpi:9001 in your browser (replace ipadressofrpi with the IP address of the RPi). or http://hostname.local:9001 (replace hostname with the hostname of the RPi)

In case the port 9001 is occupied in your network (for example a printer maybe is using it) then stop etherpad with cntrl+c and run:

<code>$ sudo nano settings.json</code> Find where the port is configured and change the number from 9001 to something else like 8001. You change it in this line

<pre>"port": 9001,</pre>
and

<pre> "sso": {
"issuer": "${SSO_ISSUER:http://localhost:9001}",
"clients": [
{
"client_id": "${ADMIN_CLIENT:admin_client}",
"client_secret": "${ADMIN_SECRET:admin}",
"grant_types": ["authorization_code"],
"response_types": ["code"],
"redirect_uris": ["${ADMIN_REDIRECT:http://localhost:9001/admin/}"]
},
{
"client_id": "${USER_CLIENT:user_client}",
"client_secret": "${USER_SECRET:user}",
"grant_types": ["authorization_code"],
"response_types": ["code"],
"redirect_uris": ["${USER_REDIRECT:http://localhost:9001/}"]
}
]
}</pre>
Run again: <code>$ pnpm run prod</code> and access the etherpad in the right port.

Style the main page of Etherpad here:

<code>$ nano /opt/etherpad/src/static/skins/colibris/index.css</code>

==== Set up Mysql ====

First thing to do is to install MySQL :

<code>$ sudo apt-get install mysql-server</code>

Then create the database, for this we need to login with the Root user (super-user): 
<code>$ sudo su</code>

Run mysql : 
<code>$ mysql</code>

Then create the database and the user 'etherpaduser' with the password 'etherpadpass' :

<pre>create database etherpad;
grant all on etherpad.* to 'etherpaduser'@'localhost' identified by 'etherpadpass';</pre>
Use Ctrl-D to quit mysql. And exit to quit su.

Just to test if it works :

<code>$ mysql -u etherpaduser -p etherpad</code>

==== Run etherpad for the first time as the etherpad user... ====

<code>$ cd /opt/etherpad</code> 
<code>$ sudo --user etherpad bin/run.sh</code>

The first time you run the etherpad software it takes a '''long''' time as it downloads related packages. It may also give quite some warnings, but hopefully no errors.

Setup etherpad to start as a service

<code>$ sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/etherpad.service</code>

<pre>[Unit]
Description=Etherpad-lite, the collaborative editor.
After=syslog.target network.target

[Service]
Type=simple
User=etherpad
Group=etherpad
WorkingDirectory=/opt/etherpad
ExecStart=/usr/bin/nodejs /opt/etherpad/node_modules/ep_etherpad-lite/node/server.js
Restart=always

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target</pre>
After this, to start once...

<code>$ sudo systemctl start etherpad</code>

Check if it's working with:

<code>$ sudo systemctl status etherpad</code>

And finally automatically start on boot:

<code>$ sudo systemctl enable etherpad</code>

If this way doesn't work then activate it every time you reboot manually with tmux:

<code>$ sudo apt-get install tmux</code> 
<code>$ tmux new -s etherpad</code> 
<code>$ sudo --user etherpad /opt/etherpad/bin/run.sh</code>

Press ctrl+B and D to exit

Come back to this tmux session with: <code>$ tmux attach -t etherpad</code>

==== '''__NOPUBLISH__''' pads ====

If you want to keep the pad out of the archive, add the '''__NOPUBLISH__''' tag into the body text

=== Etherdump installation ===

[[File:Titipi-local-server-etherdump.png|thumb]]

Etherdump is a script that dumps all pads to different format text files. It's run periodically by a cron job to create a running archive of the etherpads. Follow this guide https://gitlab.constantvzw.org/aa/etherdump in combination with https://networksofonesown.constantvzw.org/etherbox/manual.html#etherdump

==== Installation ====

Install dependencies:

<code>$ sudo apt install python3-pip</code> <code>$ sudo pip3 install python-dateutil jinja2 html5lib</code>

Install from repo:

<code>$ cd</code> <code>$ mkdir Software</code> <code>$ cd Software</code> <code>$ git clone http://murtaugh@gitlab.constantvzw.org/aa/etherdump.git</code> <code>$ cd etherdump</code> <code>$ sudo python3 setup.py install</code>

==== Init the folder ====

You need the etherpad API key (which is generated the first time you ran the software, see above). Copy it from:

<code>$ cat /opt/etherpad/APIKEY.txt'</code>

Then...

<code>$ cd /home/username</code> <code>$ mkdir etherdump</code> <code>$ cd etherdump</code> <code>$ etherdump init</code>

For the URL use: http://ipadressofpi:9001/ (which is the URL of the etherpad)

And paste the API key.

<code>$ sudo mkdir /var/www/html/etherdump</code>

==== Use pandoc to convert pads to HTML ====

Pandoc is used to convert markdown files to HTML.

<code>$ sudo apt-get install pandoc</code>

Create an image gallery with imagemagick

Imagemagick to make thumbnails.

<code>$ sudo apt-get install imagemagick</code>

==== cron.sh ====

<code>$ mkdir /home/username/include</code>

<code>$ cp /home/username/Software/etherdump/etherdump/data/templates/index.html /home/username/include/etherdump.template.html</code> This is the template for how the etherdump index page looks like.

<code>$ nano /home/username/cron.sh</code>

<pre># Dump the etherpad to files
cd etherdump
sudo -u titipi etherdump pull --meta --text --dhtml --pub . --no-raw-ext
sudo -u titipi etherdump index \
*.meta.json \
--templatepath /home/username/include \
--template etherdump.template.html \
--title "TITiPI etherdump" > index2.html
sudo -u root cp index2.html /var/www/html/etherdump/index.html
sudo -u root cp * /var/www/html/etherdump/</pre>
Make it executable:

<code>$ chmod +x /home/username/cron.sh</code>

Enable the cron job

<code>$ crontab -e</code>

The following runs the cron.sh every minute.

<pre>PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin$

# For more information see the manual pages of crontab(5) and cro$
#
# m h dom mon dow command
* * * * * /home/username/cron.sh 2> /home/username/cron.log</pre>
You may need to do this if it doesn't work:

<code>$ sudo chown -R username:www-data files/</code>

You can access etherdump here: http://hostname.local/etherdump/index.html

=== Install tiny file manager ===

[[File:Titipi-local-server-file-manager.png|thumb]]

==== installation ====

Follow guide https://github.com/prasathmani/tinyfilemanager

<code>$ sudo apt-get install php</code> 
<code>$ sudo apt-get install wget</code> 
<code>$ wget -c https://github.com/prasathmani/tinyfilemanager/archive/refs/heads/master.zip</code> 
<code>$ sudo apt install unzip</code> 
<code>$ unzip master.zip</code> 
<code>$ rm master.zip</code> 
<code>$ cd tinyfilemanager-master/</code> 
<code>$ cp tinyfilemanager.php /var/www/html/files/files.php</code>

Access the file manager here: http://titipi.local/files/files.php

=== Create an index page ===

<code>$ nano /var /www/html/index.html</code>

Replace paths accordingly and names:

<pre><!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<link rel="stylesheet" href="styles.css">
<body>
<a href="http://hostname.local:9001"><button> Create a pad</button></a>

<a href="http://hostname/etherdump/index.html"><button>Pads list</button></a>

<a href="http://hostname/files/files.php?p=files">
<button>Drop files</button></a>
 
 
 
<hr>
<ul>
<li>Resistant Infra <a href="https://circulations.constantvzw.org/octomode/infra-resistance/pdf/">pdf</a>, <a href="https://circulations.constantvzw.org/octomode/infra-resistance/pad/">pad</a></li>
<li>Genocidal Tech Map <a href="https://circulations.constantvzw.org/octomode/genocidal_tech/pdf/">pdf</a></li>
<li>Inspiration from<a href="https://hub.vvvvvvaria.org/rosa/"> Rosa server</a> and <a href="https://networksofonesown.constantvzw.org">Networks Of One's Own</a></li>
</ul>


</body>
</html></pre>
styles.css:

<pre>
@font-face {
font-family: 'workavec';
src: url(workavec-semibold-webfont.woff);
}

button {
color: #0c9f9d;
padding: 0.3em 1.5em 0.5em;
border: groove;
border-radius: 15px;
font-weight: bold;
background-color: #f0f0f0;
margin-left: -0.1em;
font-size:1em;}

body {
font-size: 1em;
font-family: 'workavec';
background: url(etherdump/worms.png) center center no-repeat fixed #fff;
}

hr {
border-top: 1px dashed #0c9f9d;
}
</pre>

=== Install burrow ===

Instead of etherdump, install burrow: https://gitlab.constantvzw.org/titipi/burrow

Needs editing...

=== Change server's language ===

Play with the server's languages following this example from Rosa: https://hub.vvvvvvaria.org/rosa/pad/p/languages-within-languages

Needs editing...

=== Install Icecast ===

====Install Apache server on a RPi ====
(if you haven't installed it yet):

Install Apache (https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/remote-access/web-server/apache.md):

Run these commands in the Terminal:

First, update the available packages by typing the following command into the Terminal:
$ sudo apt update

Then, install the apache2 package with this command:
$ sudo apt install apache2 -y

Test the web server:

Find the Pi’s IP address:
$ hostname -I

By default, Apache puts a test HTML file in the web folder. This default web page is served when you browse to http://localhost/ on the Pi itself, or http://192.168.1.10 (whatever the Pi’s IP address is) from another computer on the network. Browse to the default web page either on the Pi or from another computer on the network and you should see the default page of Apache

====Install icecast server on a RPi====

Install Icecast (https://maker.pro/raspberry-pi/projects/how-to-build-an-internet-radio-station-with-raspberry-pi-darkice-and-icecast , https://icecast.org/ )

$ sudo apt install icecast2

After entering this command, a window will pop up asking if you want to configure Icecast2. Select Yes.

Next, select OK to use the default hostname "localhost". On the screens that follow, hit OK to agree to the settings that are shown.

Open the configuration file to set up name of the server and passwords:
$ sudo nano /etc/icecast2/icecast.xml

Final steps:
$ systemctl status icecast2 (status of service)
$ systemctl restart icecast2 (restart service updates the use of the .xml file)

More on mount settings: https://icecast.org/docs/icecast-2.4.1/config-file.html#mountsettings

====Install the client Butt in your computer or a RPi====

https://danielnoethen.de/butt/

For Mac OS users:

1. Download butt from here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/butt/files/butt/butt-0.1.22/butt-0.1.22.dmg/download

2. Double click the icon to open it. If it gives an error, try Right Click > Open

For Windows users:

1. Download butt from here: https://sourceforge.net/projects/butt/files/butt/butt-0.1.22/butt-0.1.22-setup.exe/download

2. Double click the .exe file and follow the instructions to install butt

For Linux users:

1. Download butt from here: https://sourceforge.net/projects/butt/files/butt/butt-0.1.22/butt-0.1.22.tar.gz/download and go to the directory that you downloaded it through the terminal:
$ cd Downloads/

2. The following libraries have to be installed on your system before installing butt:
$ sudo apt-get install libfltk1.3-dev portaudio19-dev libopus-dev libmp3lame-dev libvorbis-dev libogg-dev libflac-dev libfdk-aac-dev libdbus-1-dev libsamplerate0-dev libssl-dev

3. After installing the above libraries you can install butt from source:

$ tar -xzf butt-0.1.22.tar.gz
$ cd butt-0.1.22
$ ./configure
$ make
$ sudo make install

4. Open butt:

$ butt

Client other than butt
https://mixxx.org/download/

====Icecast client in smartphone====

For Android: Cool Mic https://f-droid.org/en/packages/cc.echonet.coolmicapp/

For iPhone: Icefall https://apps.apple.com/us/app/icefall-icecast-stream-client/id1512089290

====Stream sounds and not microphone====

For Mac OS users:

For Mac OS, things are a bit trickier.

1. Install Soundflower from here: https://github.com/mattingalls/Soundflower/releases/download/2.0b2/Soundflower-2.0b2.dmg

2. Open up the application Audio MIDI Setup by searching for it in spotlight

3. Audio devices will be opened, showing your current devices you can use like a built-in microphone and built-in output. Click the + button and select Create Multi-Output Device. The master device should be set to Built-in Output, sample rate should be 441000.0 Hz, and select Built-in Output and Soundflower (2ch) for your audio devices. https://radioco-ff6b8838737f.intercom-attachments-1.com/i/o/179167435/1d3b7f108ad6767111b759ed/audio-devices.png

4. Now open up your sound settings in System Preferences -> Sound. In Output select the new output device you created; the default name is Multi-Output Device. https://radioco-ff6b8838737f.intercom-attachments-1.com/i/o/179167437/0d6a6dcfb827dfcb9ce6f2f4/sound-output-multi-channel.png

5. It should work now! If you go back to butt, you should be able to change the Audio settings to Soundflower (2ch) https://radioco-ff6b8838737f.intercom-attachments-1.com/i/o/179167448/2f65977fbb4be4f0849a8197/butt-selecting-audio-device.png

6. Whenever you want to go back to the microphone, change the setting to Built-in Microphone

for rpi:

Find out the device name of the "monitor" using the pactl command

$ pactl list | grep .monitor

Now you have a device called pulse_monitor that you can use with arecord

Then add this:

pcm.pulse_monitor {

type pulse

device alsa_output.platform-bcm2835_audio.analog-stereo.monitor

}

ctl.pulse_monitor {

type pulse

device alsa_output.platform-bcm2835_audio.analog-stereo.monitor

}

to the file / create this file:

$ nano /etc/asound.conf

TITiPI's local server

2025-03-19T13:26:50Z

Angeliki: /* Install Icecast */

== TITiPI Local Server manual ==

This local server takes set-up fragments and inspiration from [https://networksofonesown.constantvzw.org/etherbox/manual.html Networks Of Ones Own] and [https://hub.vvvvvvaria.org/rosa/ Rosa]. In this version the server includes the collaborative note keeping tool ''etherpad'', the periodic publishing tool of etherpads to static files ''etherdump'' and the file manager ''tiny file manager''.

Take into consideration that this manual may not be accurate or some things may not work as wished. Have all your eyes open and ask the help of your peers and the Internet for more eyes. Sometimes you may have to run the following commands with sudo user.

[[File:Titipi-local-server-main-page.png|thumb]]

=== Server requirements ===

==== hardware ====

* Transcend 16GB microSD High-Endurance (storage space can be more)
* Raspberry Pi 5 - 4GB ram (for Etherpad use more than 2GB ram and it works with older versions of Raspberry Pi)

==== software ====

* RPi OS 64-bit (download and install with Raspberry Pi Imager [https://www.raspberrypi.com/software/ here]

Connect the Raspberry Pi to a screen, keyboard, mouse. Plug it in and connect to the wifi.

Change hostname and password for the RPi through the steps of the Raspberry Pi Imager or the RPi terminal after the installation of the RPi OS: 
<code>$ sudo nano /etc/hosts</code> A file opens that only contains the default hostname: “raspberrypi”. Remove the word and replace it with the one you want. Exit and save the file with ctrl+x. 
Reboot: <code>$ sudo reboot</code>

OR 
In the main menu, go to Preferences > Raspberry Pi Configuration. In the configuration tool, click on “Change Hostname” and update the field. Same with the password. Click “OK” to save the changes. And as with the other solutions, a reboot is needed to apply changes. Click on “Yes” to immediately reboot.

Activate remote access through SSH:

* Boot into the graphical desktop on your Raspberry Pi.
* Click the Raspberry Pi icon in the system tray of your desktop.
* Select Preferences > Raspberry Pi Configuration from the menu.
* Navigate to the Interfaces tab.
* Click the radio button next to SSH into the active position.

=== Apache2 installation and configuration ===

Install the web server Apache2 in order to have access to the web based tools (etherpad, etherdump, tiny file manager) through the local network of your wifi. Open the terminal and run the following commands:

<code>$ sudo apt-get update</code>

<code>$ sudo apt-get upgrade</code>

<code>$ sudo apt-get install apache2</code>

<code>$ hostname -I</code> output of this is the IP address of your RPi.

You can continue either through the RPi terminal or through SSH access from your computer. For the second run this command in your computer:

<code>$ ssh username@ipaddress</code> Replace the username and ipaddress according to your RPi's details. After filling the RPi's password you are in the local server.

=== IP static address ===

Follow this guide https://networksofonesown.constantvzw.org/etherbox/manual.html#setup-hotspot based on https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/configuration/wireless/access-point.md#internet-sharing

==== Configuring a static IP ====

<code>$ sudo apt-get install dnsmasq hostapd</code>

Since the configuration files are not ready yet, turn the new software off as follows:

<code>$ sudo systemctl stop dnsmasq</code> 
<code>$ sudo systemctl stop hostapd</code>

We are configuring a standalone network to act as a server, so the Raspberry Pi needs to have a static IP address assigned to the wireless port. This documentation assumes that we are using the standard 192.168.x.x IP addresses for our wireless network, so we will assign the server the IP address 192.168.4.1. It is also assumed that the wireless device being used is wlan0.

To configure the static IP address, edit the dhcpcd configuration file with:

<code>$ sudo nano /etc/dhcpcd.conf</code>

Go to the end of the file and edit it so that it looks like the following:

<pre>interface wlan0

static ip_address=10.9.8.1/24
nohook wpa_supplicant</pre>
Now restart the dhcpcd daemon and set up the new wlan0 configuration:

<code>$ sudo service dhcpcd restart</code> or <code>$ sudo systemctl restart dnsmasq</code>

==== Configuring the DHCP server (dnsmasq) ====

The DHCP service is provided by dnsmasq. By default, the configuration file contains a lot of information that is not needed, and it is easier to start from scratch. Rename this configuration file, and edit a new one:

<code>$ sudo mv /etc/dnsmasq.conf /etc/dnsmasq.conf.orig</code> 
<code>$ sudo nano /etc/dnsmasq.conf</code>

Type or copy the following information into the dnsmasq configuration file and save it:

<pre>interface=wlan0

dhcp-range=10.9.8.50,10.9.8.254,255.255.255.0,24h
</pre>
So for wlan0, we are going to provide IP addresses between 10.9.8.50 and 10.9.8.254 with a lease time of 24 hours. If you are providing DHCP services for other network devices (e.g. eth0), you could add more sections with the appropriate interface header, with the range of addresses you intend to provide to that interface.

There are many more options for dnsmasq; see the [http://www.thekelleys.org.uk/dnsmasq/doc.html dnsmasq documentation] for more details.

==== Configuring the access point host software (hostapd) ====

You need to edit the hostapd configuration file, located at /etc/hostapd/hostapd.conf, to add the various parameters for your wireless network. After initial install, this will be a new/empty file.

<code>$ sudo nano /etc/hostapd/hostapd.conf</code>

Add the information below to the configuration file. This configuration assumes we are using channel 7, with a network name of NameOfNetwork, and a password AardvarkBadgerHedgehog. Note that the name and password should not have quotes around them. The passphrase should be between 8 and 64 characters in length.

<pre>interface=wlan0
driver=nl80211
ssid=etherbox
hw_mode=g
channel=7
wmm_enabled=0
macaddr_acl=0
auth_algs=1
ignore_broadcast_ssid=0
</pre>
To password protect the hotspot:

<pre>wpa=2
wpa_passphrase=AardvarkBadgerHedgehog
wpa_key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
wpa_pairwise=TKIP
rsn_pairwise=CCMP</pre>
We now need to tell the system where to find this configuration file.

<code>$ sudo nano /etc/default/hostapd</code>

Find the line with #DAEMON_CONF, and replace it with this:

<pre>DAEMON_CONF="/etc/hostapd/hostapd.conf"</pre>

==== Start it up ====

Now start up the remaining services:

<code>$ sudo systemctl start hostapd</code> 
<code>$ sudo systemctl start dnsmasq</code>

==== Add routing and masquerade ====

Edit /etc/sysctl.conf and uncomment this line:

<pre>net.ipv4.ip_forward=1</pre>
<code>$ sudo apt-get install iptables</code>

Add a masquerade for outbound traffic on eth0:

<code>$ sudo iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -o eth0 -j MASQUERADE</code>

Edit /etc/rc.local and add this just above "exit 0" to install these rules on boot.

<code>$ iptables-restore < /etc/iptables.ipv4.nat</code>

Save the iptables rule.

<code>$ sudo sh -c "iptables-save > /etc/iptables.ipv4.nat"</code>

Reboot

If necessary throughout this manual:

<code>$ sudo apt-get update</code> <code>$ sudo apt-get upgrade</code>

=== Etherpad-lite installation ===

[[File:Titipi-local-server-etherpad.png|thumb]]

==== installation ====

Follow that guide: https://github.com/ether/etherpad-lite combined with that https://networksofonesown.constantvzw.org/etherbox/manual.html#install-etherpad

<code>$ nvm install 20</code> Install Node.js version 20

<code>$ node -v</code> Check version of node installed

<code>$ sudo apt-get install npm git</code>

Install pnpm: <code>$ npm install -g pnpm</code> (Administrator privileges may be required).

<code>$ cd /opt</code>

Clone the repository: <code>$ sudo git clone -b master https://github.com/ether/etherpad-lite.git</code>

<code>$ sudo mv etherpad-lite etherpad</code>

<code>$ sudo adduser --system --no-create-home --home=/opt/etherpad --group etherpad</code>

<code>$ sudo chown -R etherpad:etherpad etherpad</code>

<code>$ cd etherpad/</code>

<code>$ Run pnpm i</code>

Run <code>$ pnpm run build:etherpad</code>

Run <code>$ pnpm run prod</code>

<code>$ sudo --user etherpad cp settings.json.template settings.json</code> Create your setting file.

<code>$ sudo --user etherpad nano settings.json</code>

Find and change this part :

<pre> //The Type of the database. You can choose between dirty, postgres, sqlite and mysql
//You shouldn't use "dirty" for for anything else than testing or development
/* "dbType" : "dirty",
//the database specific settings
"dbSettings" : {
"filename" : "var/dirty.db"
},
*/
//An Example of MySQL Configuration
"dbType" : "mysql",
"dbSettings" : {
"user" : "etherpaduser",
"host" : "localhost",
"password": "etherpadpass",
"database": "etherpad",
"charset" : "utf8mb4"
},</pre>
Change the authentication method in order to create an API key when Etherpad starts so we can use it for the follow-up tool, etherdump. In the settings find that line:

<pre> "authenticationMethod": "${AUTHENTICATION_METHOD:sso}",</pre>
and replace with

<pre> "authenticationMethod": "${AUTHENTICATION_METHOD:apikey}",</pre>
Visit http://ipadressofrpi:9001 in your browser (replace ipadressofrpi with the IP address of the RPi). or http://hostname.local:9001 (replace hostname with the hostname of the RPi)

In case the port 9001 is occupied in your network (for example a printer maybe is using it) then stop etherpad with cntrl+c and run:

<code>$ sudo nano settings.json</code> Find where the port is configured and change the number from 9001 to something else like 8001. You change it in this line

<pre>"port": 9001,</pre>
and

<pre> "sso": {
"issuer": "${SSO_ISSUER:http://localhost:9001}",
"clients": [
{
"client_id": "${ADMIN_CLIENT:admin_client}",
"client_secret": "${ADMIN_SECRET:admin}",
"grant_types": ["authorization_code"],
"response_types": ["code"],
"redirect_uris": ["${ADMIN_REDIRECT:http://localhost:9001/admin/}"]
},
{
"client_id": "${USER_CLIENT:user_client}",
"client_secret": "${USER_SECRET:user}",
"grant_types": ["authorization_code"],
"response_types": ["code"],
"redirect_uris": ["${USER_REDIRECT:http://localhost:9001/}"]
}
]
}</pre>
Run again: <code>$ pnpm run prod</code> and access the etherpad in the right port.

Style the main page of Etherpad here:

<code>$ nano /opt/etherpad/src/static/skins/colibris/index.css</code>

==== Set up Mysql ====

First thing to do is to install MySQL :

<code>$ sudo apt-get install mysql-server</code>

Then create the database, for this we need to login with the Root user (super-user): 
<code>$ sudo su</code>

Run mysql : 
<code>$ mysql</code>

Then create the database and the user 'etherpaduser' with the password 'etherpadpass' :

<pre>create database etherpad;
grant all on etherpad.* to 'etherpaduser'@'localhost' identified by 'etherpadpass';</pre>
Use Ctrl-D to quit mysql. And exit to quit su.

Just to test if it works :

<code>$ mysql -u etherpaduser -p etherpad</code>

==== Run etherpad for the first time as the etherpad user... ====

<code>$ cd /opt/etherpad</code> 
<code>$ sudo --user etherpad bin/run.sh</code>

The first time you run the etherpad software it takes a '''long''' time as it downloads related packages. It may also give quite some warnings, but hopefully no errors.

Setup etherpad to start as a service

<code>$ sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/etherpad.service</code>

<pre>[Unit]
Description=Etherpad-lite, the collaborative editor.
After=syslog.target network.target

[Service]
Type=simple
User=etherpad
Group=etherpad
WorkingDirectory=/opt/etherpad
ExecStart=/usr/bin/nodejs /opt/etherpad/node_modules/ep_etherpad-lite/node/server.js
Restart=always

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target</pre>
After this, to start once...

<code>$ sudo systemctl start etherpad</code>

Check if it's working with:

<code>$ sudo systemctl status etherpad</code>

And finally automatically start on boot:

<code>$ sudo systemctl enable etherpad</code>

If this way doesn't work then activate it every time you reboot manually with tmux:

<code>$ sudo apt-get install tmux</code> 
<code>$ tmux new -s etherpad</code> 
<code>$ sudo --user etherpad /opt/etherpad/bin/run.sh</code>

Press ctrl+B and D to exit

Come back to this tmux session with: <code>$ tmux attach -t etherpad</code>

==== '''__NOPUBLISH__''' pads ====

If you want to keep the pad out of the archive, add the '''__NOPUBLISH__''' tag into the body text

=== Etherdump installation ===

[[File:Titipi-local-server-etherdump.png|thumb]]

Etherdump is a script that dumps all pads to different format text files. It's run periodically by a cron job to create a running archive of the etherpads. Follow this guide https://gitlab.constantvzw.org/aa/etherdump in combination with https://networksofonesown.constantvzw.org/etherbox/manual.html#etherdump

==== Installation ====

Install dependencies:

<code>$ sudo apt install python3-pip</code> <code>$ sudo pip3 install python-dateutil jinja2 html5lib</code>

Install from repo:

<code>$ cd</code> <code>$ mkdir Software</code> <code>$ cd Software</code> <code>$ git clone http://murtaugh@gitlab.constantvzw.org/aa/etherdump.git</code> <code>$ cd etherdump</code> <code>$ sudo python3 setup.py install</code>

==== Init the folder ====

You need the etherpad API key (which is generated the first time you ran the software, see above). Copy it from:

<code>$ cat /opt/etherpad/APIKEY.txt'</code>

Then...

<code>$ cd /home/username</code> <code>$ mkdir etherdump</code> <code>$ cd etherdump</code> <code>$ etherdump init</code>

For the URL use: http://ipadressofpi:9001/ (which is the URL of the etherpad)

And paste the API key.

<code>$ sudo mkdir /var/www/html/etherdump</code>

==== Use pandoc to convert pads to HTML ====

Pandoc is used to convert markdown files to HTML.

<code>$ sudo apt-get install pandoc</code>

Create an image gallery with imagemagick

Imagemagick to make thumbnails.

<code>$ sudo apt-get install imagemagick</code>

==== cron.sh ====

<code>$ mkdir /home/username/include</code>

<code>$ cp /home/username/Software/etherdump/etherdump/data/templates/index.html /home/username/include/etherdump.template.html</code> This is the template for how the etherdump index page looks like.

<code>$ nano /home/username/cron.sh</code>

<pre># Dump the etherpad to files
cd etherdump
sudo -u titipi etherdump pull --meta --text --dhtml --pub . --no-raw-ext
sudo -u titipi etherdump index \
*.meta.json \
--templatepath /home/username/include \
--template etherdump.template.html \
--title "TITiPI etherdump" > index2.html
sudo -u root cp index2.html /var/www/html/etherdump/index.html
sudo -u root cp * /var/www/html/etherdump/</pre>
Make it executable:

<code>$ chmod +x /home/username/cron.sh</code>

Enable the cron job

<code>$ crontab -e</code>

The following runs the cron.sh every minute.

<pre>PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin$

# For more information see the manual pages of crontab(5) and cro$
#
# m h dom mon dow command
* * * * * /home/username/cron.sh 2> /home/username/cron.log</pre>
You may need to do this if it doesn't work:

<code>$ sudo chown -R username:www-data files/</code>

You can access etherdump here: http://hostname.local/etherdump/index.html

=== Install tiny file manager ===

[[File:Titipi-local-server-file-manager.png|thumb]]

==== installation ====

Follow guide https://github.com/prasathmani/tinyfilemanager

<code>$ sudo apt-get install php</code> 
<code>$ sudo apt-get install wget</code> 
<code>$ wget -c https://github.com/prasathmani/tinyfilemanager/archive/refs/heads/master.zip</code> 
<code>$ sudo apt install unzip</code> 
<code>$ unzip master.zip</code> 
<code>$ rm master.zip</code> 
<code>$ cd tinyfilemanager-master/</code> 
<code>$ cp tinyfilemanager.php /var/www/html/files/files.php</code>

Access the file manager here: http://titipi.local/files/files.php

=== Create an index page ===

<code>$ nano /var /www/html/index.html</code>

Replace paths accordingly and names:

<pre><!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<link rel="stylesheet" href="styles.css">
<body>
<a href="http://hostname.local:9001"><button> Create a pad</button></a>

<a href="http://hostname/etherdump/index.html"><button>Pads list</button></a>

<a href="http://hostname/files/files.php?p=files">
<button>Drop files</button></a>
 
 
 
<hr>
<ul>
<li>Resistant Infra <a href="https://circulations.constantvzw.org/octomode/infra-resistance/pdf/">pdf</a>, <a href="https://circulations.constantvzw.org/octomode/infra-resistance/pad/">pad</a></li>
<li>Genocidal Tech Map <a href="https://circulations.constantvzw.org/octomode/genocidal_tech/pdf/">pdf</a></li>
<li>Inspiration from<a href="https://hub.vvvvvvaria.org/rosa/"> Rosa server</a> and <a href="https://networksofonesown.constantvzw.org">Networks Of One's Own</a></li>
</ul>


</body>
</html></pre>
styles.css:

<pre>
@font-face {
font-family: 'workavec';
src: url(workavec-semibold-webfont.woff);
}

button {
color: #0c9f9d;
padding: 0.3em 1.5em 0.5em;
border: groove;
border-radius: 15px;
font-weight: bold;
background-color: #f0f0f0;
margin-left: -0.1em;
font-size:1em;}

body {
font-size: 1em;
font-family: 'workavec';
background: url(etherdump/worms.png) center center no-repeat fixed #fff;
}

hr {
border-top: 1px dashed #0c9f9d;
}
</pre>

=== Install burrow ===

Instead of etherdump, install burrow: https://gitlab.constantvzw.org/titipi/burrow

Needs editing...

=== Change server's language ===

Play with the server's languages following this example from Rosa: https://hub.vvvvvvaria.org/rosa/pad/p/languages-within-languages

Needs editing...

=== Install Icecast ===

====Install Apache server on a RPi ====
(if you haven't installed it yet):

- Install Apache (https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/remote-access/web-server/apache.md):

Run these commands in the Terminal:

First, update the available packages by typing the following command into the Terminal:
$ sudo apt update

Then, install the apache2 package with this command:
$ sudo apt install apache2 -y

Test the web server:

Find the Pi’s IP address:
$ hostname -I

By default, Apache puts a test HTML file in the web folder. This default web page is served when you browse to http://localhost/ on the Pi itself, or http://192.168.1.10 (whatever the Pi’s IP address is) from another computer on the network. Browse to the default web page either on the Pi or from another computer on the network and you should see the default page of Apache

====Install icecast server on a RPi====

Install Icecast (https://maker.pro/raspberry-pi/projects/how-to-build-an-internet-radio-station-with-raspberry-pi-darkice-and-icecast , https://icecast.org/ )
$ sudo apt install icecast2

After entering this command, a window will pop up asking if you want to configure Icecast2. Select Yes.

Next, select OK to use the default hostname "localhost". On the screens that follow, hit OK to agree to the settings that are shown.

Open the configuration file to set up name of the server and passwords:
$ sudo nano /etc/icecast2/icecast.xml

Final steps:
$ systemctl status icecast2 (status of service)
$ systemctl restart icecast2 (restart service updates the use of the .xml file)

More on mount settings: https://icecast.org/docs/icecast-2.4.1/config-file.html#mountsettings

====Install the client Butt in your computer or a RPi====

https://danielnoethen.de/butt/

For Mac OS users:

1. Download butt from here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/butt/files/butt/butt-0.1.22/butt-0.1.22.dmg/download
2. Double click the icon to open it. If it gives an error, try Right Click > Open

For Windows users:

1. Download butt from here: https://sourceforge.net/projects/butt/files/butt/butt-0.1.22/butt-0.1.22-setup.exe/download
2. Double click the .exe file and follow the instructions to install butt

For Linux users:

1. Download butt from here: https://sourceforge.net/projects/butt/files/butt/butt-0.1.22/butt-0.1.22.tar.gz/download and go to the directory that you downloaded it through the terminal:
$ cd Downloads/

2. The following libraries have to be installed on your system before installing butt:
$ sudo apt-get install libfltk1.3-dev portaudio19-dev libopus-dev libmp3lame-dev libvorbis-dev libogg-dev libflac-dev libfdk-aac-dev libdbus-1-dev libsamplerate0-dev libssl-dev

3. After installing the above libraries you can install butt from source:

$ tar -xzf butt-0.1.22.tar.gz
$ cd butt-0.1.22
$ ./configure
$ make
$ sudo make install

4. Open butt:

$ butt

Client other than butt
https://mixxx.org/download/

====Icecast client in smartphone====

For Android: Cool Mic https://f-droid.org/en/packages/cc.echonet.coolmicapp/

For iPhone: Icefall https://apps.apple.com/us/app/icefall-icecast-stream-client/id1512089290

====Stream sounds and not microphone====

For Mac OS users:

For Mac OS, things are a bit trickier.

1. Install Soundflower from here: https://github.com/mattingalls/Soundflower/releases/download/2.0b2/Soundflower-2.0b2.dmg
2. Open up the application Audio MIDI Setup by searching for it in spotlight
3. Audio devices will be opened, showing your current devices you can use like a built-in microphone and built-in output. Click the + button and select Create Multi-Output Device. The master device should be set to Built-in Output, sample rate should be 441000.0 Hz, and select Built-in Output and Soundflower (2ch) for your audio devices. https://radioco-ff6b8838737f.intercom-attachments-1.com/i/o/179167435/1d3b7f108ad6767111b759ed/audio-devices.png

4. Now open up your sound settings in System Preferences -> Sound. In Output select the new output device you created; the default name is Multi-Output Device. https://radioco-ff6b8838737f.intercom-attachments-1.com/i/o/179167437/0d6a6dcfb827dfcb9ce6f2f4/sound-output-multi-channel.png
5. It should work now! If you go back to butt, you should be able to change the Audio settings to Soundflower (2ch) https://radioco-ff6b8838737f.intercom-attachments-1.com/i/o/179167448/2f65977fbb4be4f0849a8197/butt-selecting-audio-device.png
6. Whenever you want to go back to the microphone, change the setting to Built-in Microphone

for rpi:

Find out the device name of the "monitor" using the pactl command

$ pactl list | grep .monitor

Now you have a device called pulse_monitor that you can use with arecord

Then add this:

pcm.pulse_monitor {

type pulse

device alsa_output.platform-bcm2835_audio.analog-stereo.monitor

}

ctl.pulse_monitor {

type pulse

device alsa_output.platform-bcm2835_audio.analog-stereo.monitor

}

to the file / create this file:

$ nano /etc/asound.conf

From cloud to crowd: a report on a server transfer

2024-10-17T12:39:47Z

Angeliki:

= From cloud to crowd<ref>The term comes from ... </ref>: A report on a server transfer =

This text is a report on a server migration that took place within the institutional framework of [https://titipi.org/ The Institute for Technology in the Public Interest (TITiPI)], a trans-practice gathering of activists, artists, engineers and theorists. The report is an infrastructural ethnography<ref>As infrastructural ethnography we mean a social research on digital infrastructures of communities and organisations with a focus on the case of TITiPI's server migration and community servers.</ref> and aims to rethink, through a technical process, what ''hosting'' a server means for a community, institution, cultural organisation dealing with technological discomforts and complex digital infrastructures.

Starting from a broad definition a ''server'' is a computer, a combination of software and hardware or an operating system and a physical machine that provides computing services, such as web hosting and cloud storage, via a network (Internet). A ''server migration'' is the process of moving data and transferring software from one server to another with the use of specified tools. Performing such process accommodates a practical and technical solution to fix the problem of an outdated server that is slow or has limited storage.

This report problematizes the materiality of a server, its location, scale, community, architecture and substantial elements, and how and what is migrated when we decide to change servers. The urgency of this issue derives from the question of how does an organisation's digital infrastructure affect its values, structure and infrastructural imaginations? TITiPI treats web hosting with attention, rather than as an outsourced tech service, by including it in the thinking and reflection of its organisational structure. In times of server providers’ scaling up ( ‘''cloud hosting''’ ) and digitizing governmental bureaucracies what does it mean to host your own digital space for supporting your communities and work? Is it necessary to have a sovereign and independent infrastructure? What (non-)dependencies are chosen or taken for granted by institutions when using hosting services?

As a researcher at TITiPI I have been caring for the task to investigate this server migration, that includes web hosting and email, and execute it together with TITiPI’s member Femke Snelting. We meet weekly to keep track and make decisions. We share a ''markdown'' file hosted in the [https://gitlab.constantvzw.org/titipi/ online code repository of the cultural association Constant] that includes a diary of the server migration and reflections. Every now and then we meet online with our colleague Helen Pritchard, to discuss and share the process. This report includes extracts from the server diary and stories from the process.

== Migration or …? ==

In the cold Autumn of 2023 in the newly installed office of TITiPI located in the Koekelberg district of Brussels, I open the browser Chromium in my computer, in order to quickly translate − with the installed Google Translate plugin − the web pages of the different cooperatives, associations, companies that provide hosting services. While doing that I cannot ignore a persistent thought regarding the word ‘migration’ under this context. What does it mean to flatten the experience of migration into a technical term to describe the movement from one server to the other? In what contexts such choices of language are made and who decides about the terminology?

My computer runs the open source operating system Ubuntu. The term ‘Ubuntu’ is also a word extracted from its original context. It is coming from the African Ubuntu philosophy. According to the creators of the software:

<blockquote>ubuntu |oǒ’boǒntoō| Ubuntu is an ancient African word meaning ‘humanity to others’. It is often described as reminding us that ‘I am what I am because of who we all are’. We bring the spirit of Ubuntu to the world of computers and software. The Ubuntu distribution represents the best of what the world’s software community has shared with the world. <ref>‘About the Ubuntu Project’, Ubuntu, accessed 16 July 2024, https://ubuntu.com/about</ref>
</blockquote>

Paraphrasing [https://thefunambulist.net/magazine/redefining-our-terms/ubuntu-a-black-radical-demand-for-reparations Panashe Chigumadzi] words: in contrast to the western conception of the human as individual, the African conception of the person is a social being who is always becoming, defined by and being responsible for the personhood of the others. "(T)he African philosophy best understood through the proverb found in Bantu languages across the continent, 'umuntu ngumuntu ngabanye bantu' (a person is a person through other people." <ref>Panashe Chigumadzi, ‘Can White South Africa Live up to Ubuntu, the African Philosophy Tutu Globalised?’, The Guardian, 31 December 2021, sec. Opinion, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec/31/white-south-africa-ubuntu-african-tutu</ref>

<blockquote>(D)espite the flourishing of Ubuntu in post-apartheid discourse, lending its name to software, businesses, books and philanthropic organisations, South Africa is a country in which we have, as Dladla argues, Ubuntu without Abantu. Just as Black people have been dispossessed of their land, Ubuntu has been dispossessed of its deeply radical demands for ethical historical and social relations among people. (...) (P)ost apartheid Ubuntu mistranslation 'I am because we are', individualized and interpersonalised Ubuntu, Christianised Ubuntu, mistranslated in order to justify crimes and violence. In Ubuntu violence can be punished even after generations, the misinterpretation of the term allowed individual forgiveness. <ref>‘Ubuntu: A Black Radical Demand for Reparations’, THE FUNAMBULIST MAGAZINE, 25 October 2023, https://thefunambulist.net/magazine/redefining-our-terms/ubuntu-a-black-radical-demand-for-reparations</ref>
</blockquote>I skip these thoughts and I continue browsing the list of servers. While doing so I encounter an [https://www.oziosi.org/ autonomous server] with the DeepL translated title: ":: a shelter for digital exiles ::" accommodated by the image of a woman, a child and a man leaving their home and an introduction: "Exiled from the global village of social networks, we claim an internet that is a simple means of communication: immaterial, anonymous, imaginary, public when it makes sense and secret when we feel the need." [https://techpolicy.press/how-to-open-an-outpost-in-social-media-exile/ ‘Social media exiles’] and ‘Twitter migration’ are terms used often after Twitter became X and users have moved to the Fediverse or other alternatives.

Using metaphors like that for a technical process de-contextualizes a word from its origins and may reveal the privileged place these extractions come from, often dominated by white male computer engineers who get inspiration from struggles happening elsewhere. Could this terminology be shifted towards other words? Could words like transfer, share, move, copy, re-install, shift replace the word ‘migration’? From this point on in the report I decide to pick and use the term ‘transfer’.

[[File:Screenshot 2023-10-07 at 11-31-21 esiliati.org.png|thumb|Screenshot of the webpage of the self-organised server oziosi.org mentioning the term 'digital exiles' (accessed 07/10/2023) ]]

== TITiPI’s case of server transfer ==
On the 27th of September, sitting at the long desks side to side, Femke and I have an online call with Helen, while looking at the depths of our Virtual Private Server (VPS), provided by Linode, that runs Ubuntu on our laptop screens. Linode is an American hosting provider focusing on ''Linux''-based virtual machines originally. The server is physically located in the UK. TITiPI currently uses the Linode server that Helen set up for hosting her own projects. They have been paying for Linode’s monthly fees so far.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-10-11 14-47-06.png|thumb|Screenshot of a Linode Ubuntu server overview (accessed 11/10/2023) and the terminal that shows a moment of figuring out what takes space in the server through SSH access]]

At the time it seemed a good choice, because Linode is based in UK, is ''Linux'' friendly and an alternative to Amazon Web Services (AWS), even though the company was already identifying as ‘cloud hosting’. But in February 2023 it has been acquired by the American company Akamai that aims to scale up for [https://www.linode.com/global-infrastructure/ "computing power, optimizing performance and agility."] Akamai is actively changing its server policies into an increasingly intense cloud logic. This pushed forward the desire to move to a new place.

[[File:Screenshot 2023-10-11 at 14-50-47 Cloud Computing & Linux Servers Alternative to AWS Linode.png|thumb|Screenshot of the Linode [https://www.linode.com/ website] referring to scalability (accessed 11/10/2023)]]

At the moment in Linode we run pico, a flat CMS for the website https://titipi.org. There is a Mediawiki (you are reading a Mediawiki page right now) for notes and collective writing. On the wiki, we also publish our statutes, guidelines and other instituting documents. The wiki has a custom extension, called wiki-to-pdf. Each of these services will need a different way to be transferred. One approach is to build the new server space from scratch, copy the data with rsync and transfer only the Mediawiki, which includes installing a new version and copy the database and the media files.

While preparing to transfer the tools we are defining what are the practical needs and desirable priorities. What fantasies of servers we have; a local physical server hosted in a small computer Raspberry Pi in the office; a software defined server located in a virtual location of a physical machine somewhere in the Alps? We ended up on these server requirements:
* SSH access and VPS
* affordable price (around €20/month)
* Free Software operating system, preferably Debian
* community work is included − desire to slow down, resist to scaling and growth or ‘decloudification’ (small network of partners, less virtualization approach, location of servers nearby etc)
* 25-40GB storage space, 1-2 cores, 2-4GB RAM
* environmental angle
* service support in a language that we all understand (English mostly)

This server transfer happens with an intersectional and feminist approach and the desire to keep questioning. While moving away from Linode we include both the technical and the conceptual thinking in the process. There are a few things that we are looking at:
* Where to be transferred to or what services to transfer to?
* How to be transferred and what to transfer?
* What terminology, language we use?
* What (other) narratives of server hosting can we construct?
TITiPI seeks to exist with an infrastructure that supports inter-dependent practices and solidarity across struggles. It develops [https://titipi.org/wiki-to-pdf/unfold/Counter_Cloud_Action_Plan Counter Cloud Actions] as a way to scale down, de-cloudify, articulate, contest and re-imagine the implications of computational infrastructures (‘the cloud’). We are looking for servers that aspire some of these values:

<blockquote>TITiPI develop tools from feminisms, queer theory, Free, Libre and Open Source software, intersectionality, anti-coloniality, disability studies, historical materialism and artistic practice to generate currently inexistent vocabularies, imaginaries and methodologies. TITiPI functions as an infrastructure to establish new ways in which socio-technical practices and technologies might support the public interest. <ref>TITiPI, ‘Infrables’, Tangible Cloud Archives, https://docs.tangible-cloud.be/publications-pdf/02_snelting.pdf.</ref></blockquote>

=== A narrative of relational infrastructure and infra-mutuality ===
[[File:Elastic solidarities.png|thumb|Graphic image made by TITiPI]]
In June 2023 TITiPI received an email from Gandi to renew the domain titipi.org in 6 days, not realising that at the same time we would need to start paying for our titipi.org email hosting. We had missed reading to the end of another email sent in the middle of June, entitled: 'Pricing update'. Thus we decide to transfer the email besides the web hosting.

We consider to work with Kate Rich to move our mailboxes to the [http://irational.org/ Irational server], soon to be installed on a Raspberry Pi, hosted at Servus. We plan to do this transition slowly and until then renew the emails for 1-2 months through Gandi. Irational server resists virtualization, and as an art community project it makes it an interesting choice.

But why to go through all this effort and not just use one cloud server with mailboxes, file storage and web server together? TITiPI’s response to the question of building institutional digital infrastructure embodies an archipelagic and non-sovereign approach to dependencies. Rather than building a centralised server based on ‘cloud’ from which connections with other institutions and collectives can happen, it conceptualizes inter-infrastructural practices; from the creation of a [https://gitlab.constantvzw.org/titipi/burrow backup script] for saving locally etherpad pads from other servers, hosting emails in an art server (https://irational.org), creating an [https://books.lumbung.space/shelf/26 online bookshelf] on lumbung.space, using the ''XMPP'' chat from Varia to recording conversations with the ''sysadmin'' that maintain the other servers. The institution re-imagines technological dependencies in dialogue with cultural institutions and art collectives. [[File:Titipi-infra-diagram-JAN-24.png|thumb|none|alt=A diagram of TITiPI’s infrastructure. The diagram categorizes the elements according to tools/software (box), structure/organisational form (circle) and place (dashed line). For example Jitsi is the software, Greenhost is the organisation, meet.greenhost.net is the place.|A diagram of TITiPI’s infrastructure. The diagram categorizes the elements according to tools/software (box), structure/organisational form (circle) and place (dashed line). For example Jitsi is the software, Greenhost is the organisation, meet.greenhost.net is the place.]]

How to give life to the common space of TITiPI’s hosting infrastructures? What about building up social dependencies between the ones that host and the ones who are hosted as opposed to a solely technical independence? Infrastructural imaginations are often built by the ''Big Tech'' industry and governmental institutions. Instead, TITiPI practices a fluid inter-institutional approach supported by [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Infra_colophon a variety of hosts].

=== Selection of server providers ===
On the 7th of November through a shared screen at the [https://meet.greenhost.net/ video conferencing software Jitsi of Greenhost] we all three check a list of server providers I collected on a spreadsheet hosted in Constant’s cloud storage (built with the open source Nextcloud software) where TITiPI has an account. I looked at associations, companies, cooperatives, communities coming from commercial context to social struggles, activist, feminist and other. Through a [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/List_server_networks list of networks] I found various servers mainly from Latin America and Europe.

The concept of autonomy, sovereignty, independence or self-managing characterizes most of the servers in the list. Some of them, like [https://www.autistici.org/ Autistici] promote this concept as a way to support anti-capitalist infrastructure and protect the privacy of the users as opposed to the Big Tech software practices.

<blockquote>The vision is that we - the members of the cooperative - own our own data. This implies and has as a consequence that we will have to own our own infrastructure and have insight and control over the software we use to communicate on the web.<ref>‘Community Servers - Monoskop’, accessed 16 July 2024, https://monoskop.org/Community_servers</ref></blockquote>

Femke had a hunch: "‘technological sovereignty’ and ‘data-sovereignty’ continue to be orientation devices to organise around. ‘Sovereignty’, together with ‘freedom’, ‘independence’ and ‘autonomy’, form an ideological cluster that implicitly and sometimes explicitly foregrounds separation rather than relation."

Servers can act as independent spaces but are also cultural devices and vibrant places. They can manifest different aspects of a full life and reach out to a multiplicity of entities.

Servus and Greenhost, seem to be two of our best choices as they cover a lot of the priorities and values of TITiPI. As one can read from their descriptions they both strive for owning their own data servers and data nodes (they have their own ''IP addresses'') and be independent from third parties. Their big difference is the scale of the infrastructure and their community and network.

<blockquote>Greenhost fully owns and controls its hardware, infrastructure and uplinks. This ensures independence from third parties and proper access control. On this hardware we run our fully virtualised platform. We stand for an Open Internet, and have always embraced open source software.<ref>‘Greenhost.Net | the Sustainable Web’, accessed 16 July 2024, https://greenhost.net/.</ref></blockquote>

<blockquote>We (Servus) do not pass on any data to third parties. You will not receive commercial advertising from us or third parties. We are easily accessible and answer your questions personally. We and our servers are located at Kirchengasse 4 in Linz, Austria.<ref>‘Book Of Servus’, Book Of Servus, accessed 16 July 2024, https://book.servus.at/en/home/.</ref></blockquote>

Even though Greenhost wants to reduce ecological damage, it does that mainly through hardware reductions and does not address scale. They have plans to expand and are part of a network of partners that want to transform Rotterdam into a big hub of data nodes for the upcoming digital transition. But Greenhost is not that big as Linode that goes for [https://www.akamai.com/newsroom/press-release/akamai-takes-cloud-computing-to-the-edge| "(p)lanetary scale."] Servus on the other hand has one room of data servers, is closer to the scale of their community and maintain personal relations with them.

=== Community server, feminist server, trans*feminist server, radical server, autonomous server, commercial server, art server, free server, ethical server, solidarity-based server, cooperative server, associative server, independent server, alternative server, non-commercial server, … ===
The spreadsheet starts to grow because of an endless burrow of small and big providers.

Some are outdated. 
Some are messy. 
Some have broken links. 
Some are [https://www.julienth37.fr/vps hard to understand]. 
Some require [https://www.actiu.info/index.en.html a lot of engagement]. 
Some use a language that imitates the narratives of ''Big Tech'' and ''agile'' computing. 
Some promote seamless "promissory logic" and "high hopes for a brighter future" 
Some are big or are scaling up (in matter of space, data centers, partners, users etc). 
Some support NGO’s or sport clubs.

[[File:Screenshot 2023-10-11 at 15-06-35 co-operative web-crop.png|thumb|Screenshot from the [https://web.coop/ website] of Co-op Web (accessed 11/10/2023)]]

We also looked at their financial model. Many radical servers stay small, are volunteer based, like [https://www.autistici.org/ Autistici]. and go for horizontal organisational structures. Feminist and activist servers provide space in the internet for the ones who don’t have the means to organise otherwise. The resources and ways of organising for these servers are different from the cooperatives or associations whose structure is inherited from the model they are registered with.

[[File:ATNOFS-Varia-insert-ooooo.jpg|thumb|Diagram for the Varia's organisational structure made by ooooo for the [https://www.ooooo.be/atraversalnetworkoffeministservers/ publication] A Traversal Network of Feminist Servers (ATNOFS)]]

TITiPI acknowledges and is connected to the history of community, art and feminist servers and wants to support this network. The art servers started as a way to make autonomous self-managed servers that support artists values and practices. They are often financed by cultural or private funds.

<blockquote>Irational.org began in the 1990s, I joined in 2010. At that time Irational was more active as an art collective who were operating a shared server. Then in 2016, coinciding with a server upgrade, we disbanded and re-formed specifically as a Linux server collective, which is a better description of what Irational is now. A small group of artists who are interested in running a Linux server together. (...) Part of Irational's interest has always been in running a physical server, not a virtual machine as is nearly ubiquitous now. When I started out as Irational sysadmin, we were using rescued servers from commercial server farms – fully working computers that were being thrown out as part of the perpetual cycle of upgrades. We would install Linux on a discarded machine, and get low-cost hosting at a server farm in London. Then when our previous server was reaching the end of its life, this was in 2016, we also felt a tectonic shift. There was a large-scale move to virtualisation, people weren't running individual physical servers in the same way as before, and the supply of deprecated rack mount servers seemed to have dried up. So for the first time we bought a replacement server brand new, and drove it to Cheltenham in west England where we installed it in a server farm run by gamers – one of the few places we could find that was still prepared to host a single machine. 

— quote from [[None of this experiment is evident|interview of Kate Rich by Femke Snelting]] </blockquote>

The screen seems to become brighter as my eyes get tired. What if we skip the online hosting and create a local physical server at TITiPI’s office next to the desks, in a corner, on a Raspberry Pi? All our data would stay on this machine and we would connect with SSH from home, but then we will also have to maintain it ourselves. There is something there about the romanticism of a physical toolbox as a sovereign object. If we choose to do that we will need to think of a backup plan as our data will stay offline and the server will rely on the building's network bandwidth and fire protection system. A second option is to have our own server in a rack at Servus, where we would have connection to high speed reliable internet but electricity costs would be higher and we would rely to somebody else if we need to turn the server off and on. We think to do that with the email hosting that we would share with Irational, where we have root access inside someone else's physical server hosted in Servus. The third option is VPS which is a cloud technology but we have access to our own virtual machine that we can start and stop from distance.

Our list has been reduced because of our priorities. We need SSH and we would like to have a VPS. Who has resources for providing VPS? Resources of labour, time, finances, technical knowledge. This made self-defined feminist servers fall out of the selection. How to be financially sustainable, while keeping up with your own values? How to keep up with infrastructural ''maintenance'' if the scale of the users, community, members and data is big?

<blockquote>The services we offer have no defined price, but as you may easily imagine, keeping the whole system working (i.e. hardware and hosting) is very expensive (at the moment it ranges around 13,000 euro every year).<ref>‘Autistici.Org - Services’, accessed 16 July 2024, https://www.autistici.org/services/</ref></blockquote>

Servus and Maadix provide a series of ''free/libre'' tools that can be installed separately through their interface but they also provide a VPS with SSH access. With Greenhost, Hetzner and Linode there is more flexibility: you can create your own VPS and customize it for your own needs through their interface or the ''terminal'' and install whatever tools you want from scratch without a visual interface.

Technical information and knowledge of digital infrastructure circulate between groups that are tech-oriented with a difficulty to cross with other groups, including feminist servers. The ''sysadmin'' tasks are mostly taken by cis men but feminist servers are radical about that. They find important to have sysadmins that are not cis men. For example Systerserver and Anarchaserver are learning collectively by themselves how to do this task.

Many of the servers in the list provide only tools, as a radical way to support small groups, collectives, activists that need privacy and shifting away from Google drive when they want to organise politically and socially. It seems that being limited to tool packages instead of having full access to a server can make things comprehensible and compact for these small groups that have limited sysadmin knowledge or can’t hire a technician.

[[File:Screenshot 2023-10-07 at 12-23-26 FuturEtic - Services en lignes libres & éthiques-2.png|Screenshot of main page with services by [https://futuretic.fr/ FuturEtic] (accessed 07/10/2023)|thumb]]

[[File:Scrnli 12 10 2023 13-14-32.png|thumb|Screenshot of the website of [https://codigosur.org/ CódigoSur] with provided tools (accessed 12/10/2023)]]

== Final decision and server transfers (email and webhosting) ==

We are about to make our decision! Our list ended up to be very small.

On 7th of November in an online call between Helen in Basel, Femke in Brussels and Aggeliki in Rotterdam we limited our list to four options: Constant, Greenhost, Servus, Zaclys. The selection consists of a diversity of scales and positioning that we found interesting to think of. First, we move on with the decision to transfer our mailboxes to Irational hosted at Servus. The rest of the functionalities will be hosted somewhere else.

From our conversations with Femke: "The choice for irational.org opens the possibility for discussions around dependencies, trust and frictions within shared collective servers. Irational.org is an ally art server who uses and maintains its own server for many years. Hosting such a private service at a friend’s environment doesn’t come only with convenience. The closeness to the material of the server makes the dependency more tangible."

[[File:White-magenta-painful.jpg|thumb|Image from the silk screen printed towel designed by [https://psaroskalazines.gr/ Psaroskala Zines]]]

Femke and I are planning different moments for the server transfer to happen in the office of TITiPI. What it is about to take place comes down into three moments; the backup and save of data from the old server, the installation of the necessary software in the new server and the transfer of the old data in the new server.

Specifically we are following these steps:

* Email transfer from Gandi to irational
* Create a Virtual Private Server (VPS) in the new server
* Install Apache2 and configure domains
* Install and migrate MediaWiki
** Back up the wiki on the Linode VPS
** Upgrade MediaWiki in Linode
** Install MediaWiki and plugins in the Greenhost VPS
** Transfer database and media files from Linode to Greenhost
* Install Wiki-to-pdf
* Install Pico
* Install and configure Certbot

We find ourselves between two virtual spaces and one office, among other indirectly connected spaces like the rooms of our distant collaborators and the office locations of the servers.

=== Trust relationships ===
By now, 14th of November 2023, the office is warm and cozy. Throughout the time I am writing this report I have been noticing a lot of slow and small efforts to renovate the building and set up the heating, by the artists and organisations who share the space with TITiPI. Another infrastructure that needs care.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 15-06-42.png|thumb|Screenshot from the moment Femke and Aggeliki entering Irational’s server space together with Kate]]

On a shared screen together with Femke we get introduced to the mail server of Irational by Kate. We use an audio splitter to share the laptop for the call. Kate described her experience as an amateur sysadmin that had to spend a lot of time to learn and set up the mail server. After that we start the process that has been documented [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Server_transfer_documentation#Mail_transfer here].

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 14-56-26.png|thumb|Screenshot from the TITiPI’s mail transfer with Kate, Femke and Aggeliki during a three hours online call]]

Irational uses the Alpine email client. Kate takes us its depths. That is where we start to set up our new email accounts before we configure them in Thunderbird. Femke gets excited on the fact that she can send emails to other Irational accounts through the terminal.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 15-15-07.png|thumb|Screenshot from the terminal using the email client [https://alpineapp.email/ Alpine]]]

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 17-04-20.png|thumb|Screenhost from the moment of looking for the syntax of the TXT records. Finding the right syntax for this value was the biggest challenge. This is part of the ''trust relationships'' between the different providers]]

After some more DNS configurations we test if it is possible to exchange emails with ‘outside’ accounts and especially with Gmail that has many security filters for mail servers other than the commercial ones.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-15 13-59-52.png|thumb|Screenshot from exchanging test emails with a Gmail account]]

After three hours of tryouts we manage to make it work! Very proudly and with enjoyment for sharing a technical task together we say goodbye to each other and arrange a next meeting for a final check up.

=== A choice that comes with discomforts ===
Just one day before the start of TITiPI’s server transfer away from Linode on the 28th of November, Helen found the Swiss server ungleich.ch and it seemed like an interesting choice because of the small scale (in terms of community and servers), their experimental attitude and their choice to reduce energy consumption; they avoid using systems for cooling their servers by spreading the servers at the Swiss mountains in old, abandoned buildings.

Ungleich.ch is one of the good options but it is more expensive than other providers. They offer a cheaper choice by choosing to have only ‘ipv6’. But we had to dig in to understand the difference of ipv4 and ipv6. From wikipedia: "IPv6 is the most recent version of the Internet Protocol, developed to deal with the long-anticipated problem of IPv4 address exhaustion." We found a [https://stats.labs.apnic.net/ipv6 map] that shows which countries have implemented IPv6 and it seems that if we only use this address then many places won’t have access to the website of TITiPI. We choose to have both addresses.

We also notice that this provider is using Stripe for their payment system. In a [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Frontier parallel universe] TITiPI gives attention to and critique Stripe because of its connections with the Carbon Removal industry.

[[File:Firefox Screenshot 2023-11-28T12-32-24.775Z.png|thumb|Screenshot from the purchase web page of [https://ungleich.ch/u/projects/data-center-light/ Ungleich.ch] payment system with Stripe (accessed 28/11/2023)]]Another urgency appears while we are looking at different choices; together with many other organisations, we have been thinking about ways to host and maintain infrastructures in solidarity with communities and networks we are part of. This would mean, for example, hosting digitally a Palestinian video film archive, or research by sex workers. Solidarity is only partially a question of caring for privacy and security because it matters where and how we host our digital infrastructures and whether these spaces do or do not support the flourishing of different lives and struggles. This need make us think again if the server we choose would be suitable for something like that.

Constant and Servus are two accomplice servers that already provide to TITiPI some of their services. Zaclys is a member of Chatons that support open source values and it is located in France. We contacted them to see if they could be an option but we didn't get an answer back.

Part of the desires of an infrastructure that cares we wanted to work with a company that provides ‘green’ infrastructure. Greenhost seems to be a good choice for that and also because it has a positioning as an alternative to AWS, it provides a familiar interface to us, good support and backup option. So far great, but what about its ‘green’ hosting vision? Is it a solarpunk vision, a green cloud utopia? Is their infrastructure resource ‘hungry’? And what are the privacy limits when the material hosted in the servers is political or sensitive?

We choose Greenhost with all the discomforts that this choice entails and with the desire to keep the critique and dialogue alive.

Only by December 2023 we manage to arrange a call with one of Greenhost’s former Managing Directors to get a feeling and more information about their approach and sensitivity. According to him, Greenhost exists in the intersection of activism and technology. It provides consultancy, sustainability solutions in tech projects and structured maintenance; they go for best quality with lowest environmental impact; they maintain the same hardware as much as possible and balance that with higher efficiency; they keep backups at an already existing data center in the university of Amsterdam.
=== Installing, transferring, saving, copying, … ===
On the 28th of November sitting on the sunny corner of the couch next to the radiator, and with warm coffee cups waiting for us on a low table, Femke and I cover our legs with a blanket and open our laptops.

I ask Femke to 'jump' in a ''tmux'' session for sharing ''terminal'' with this command: <code>''sudo'' tmux attach -t webserver</code>. We start by cleaning the old server and make backups of the files.

We take a lunch break. Femke finds out that if we eat three recurrent meals every week in the office we can have a nice variety of food; lentiles soup, orecchiette pasta with brocoli, rizzoto with mushrooms and lots of fruits. Sometime ago we decided to make multiple short breaks throughout the day because of computer fatigue. The next day we set up the new server and install all the necessary software including a new version of the MediaWiki. We arrange a meeting with Martino Morandi, member of Constant, who created the wiki-to-pdf to help us installing this software and transfer the MediaWiki in the new server. On the 1st of December we successfully install the wiki-to-pdf and because of limited time we decided to meet one more time at the end of the month for the rest.

[[File:Virtual-env-debian.png|thumb|Screenshot from the wiki-to-pdf installation to the new server with Martino, Femke, Aggeliki. Debian supports a different way to create virtual environments for installing python packages and libraries. We try it but it failed.]]

On the 28th we meet with Martino online to complete the transfer, which includes copying the old database of MediaWiki, activate the old plugins and fix any issues on the way. We are all located in different countries (Italy, Greece, Belgium) and so we share a tmux session. We follow the guides but on the way we had to do some research and configure a lot of things to make the MediaWiki work. Martino was hunting a php module. It seemed that php has shifted to free software culture in an attempt to find another business model. It is not surprising it happens in the context of Ubuntu. The issue is recorded [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Server_transfer_documentation#MediaWiki_upgrade_issues here].

[[File:Firefox Screenshot 2024-01-10T13-59-40.398Z.png|thumb|"Is Titipi.org down?" Helen asks after the transfer. It seems that her browser cache was preventing her from seeing the website. Screenshot from the website [https://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/ downforeveryoneorjustme.com/] (accessed 10/01/2024)|301x301px]]

The process is documented in our diary and then transferred to a [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Server_transfer_documentation wiki page]. By January 2024 the server transfer and the deletion of our Linode account has been completed.

== Glossaries ==

Italicized terms in the report are included in these glossaries:

* [https://varia.zone/ATNOFS/ATNOFS-screen.pdf#page=11 Glossary of A Traversal Network of Feminist Servers (ATNOFS) publication]
* [[Glossary|TITiPI's glossary]]

== References ==

* Panashe Chigumadzi, ‘Can White South Africa Live up to Ubuntu, the African Philosophy Tutu Globalised?’, The Guardian, 31 December 2021, sec. Opinion, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec/31/white-south-africa-ubuntu-african-tutu
* ‘Community Servers - Monoskop’, accessed 16 July 2024, https://monoskop.org/Community_servers
* David Carroll, ‘How To Open An Outpost In Social Media Exile | TechPolicy.Press’, Tech Policy Press, 26 November 2022, <nowiki>https://techpolicy.press/how-to-open-an-outpost-in-social-media-exile</nowiki>.
* Femke Snelting, ‘Infrastructure Solidarity’, Ardeth. A Magazine on the Power of the Project, no. 8 (1 November 2021): 45–47
* ‘Master-Slave Terminology Alternatives You Can Use Right Now | TheServerSide’, TheServerSide.com, accessed 16 July 2024, https://www.theserverside.com/opinion/Master-slave-terminology-alternatives-you-can-use-right-now
* ‘Ubuntu: A Black Radical Demand for Reparations’, THE FUNAMBULIST MAGAZINE, 25 October 2023, https://thefunambulist.net/magazine/redefining-our-terms/ubuntu-a-black-radical-demand-for-reparations.

== Colophon ==

The text had been drafted in <nowiki>https://pad.xpub.nl</nowiki> in Markdown and then transferred in this wiki.

== Footnotes ==

From cloud to crowd: a report on a server transfer

2024-10-17T12:34:35Z

Angeliki:

= From cloud to crowd<ref>The term comes from ... (not sure if it is included in the title)</ref>: A report on a server transfer =

This text is a report on a server migration that took place within the institutional framework of [https://titipi.org/ The Institute for Technology in the Public Interest (TITiPI)], a trans-practice gathering of activists, artists, engineers and theorists. The report is an infrastructural ethnography<ref>[explain--footnote]</ref> and aims to rethink, through a technical process, what ''hosting'' a server means for a community, institution, cultural organisation dealing with technological discomforts and complex digital infrastructures.

Starting from a broad definition a ''server'' is a computer, a combination of software and hardware or an operating system and a physical machine that provides computing services, such as web hosting and cloud storage, via a network (Internet). A ''server migration'' is the process of moving data and transferring software from one server to another with the use of specified tools. Performing such process accommodates a practical and technical solution to fix the problem of an outdated server that is slow or has limited storage.

This report problematizes the materiality of a server, its location, scale, community, architecture and substantial elements, and how and what is migrated when we decide to change servers. The urgency of this issue derives from the question of how does an organisation's digital infrastructure affect its values, structure and infrastructural imaginations? TITiPI treats web hosting with attention, rather than as an outsourced tech service, by including it in the thinking and reflection of its organisational structure. In times of server providers’ scaling up ( ‘''cloud hosting''’ ) and digitizing governmental bureaucracies what does it mean to host your own digital space for supporting your communities and work? Is it necessary to have a sovereign and independent infrastructure? What (non-)dependencies are chosen or taken for granted by institutions when using hosting services?

As a researcher at TITiPI I have been caring for the task to investigate this server migration, that includes web hosting and email, and execute it together with TITiPI’s member Femke Snelting. We meet weekly to keep track and make decisions. We share a ''markdown'' file hosted in the [https://gitlab.constantvzw.org/titipi/ online code repository of the cultural association Constant] that includes a diary of the server migration and reflections. Every now and then we meet online with our colleague Helen Pritchard, to discuss and share the process. This report includes extracts from the server diary and stories from the process.

== Migration or …? ==

In the cold Autumn of 2023 in the newly installed office of TITiPI located in the Koekelberg district of Brussels, I open the browser Chromium in my computer, in order to quickly translate − with the installed Google Translate plugin − the web pages of the different cooperatives, associations, companies that provide hosting services. While doing that I cannot ignore a persistent thought regarding the word ‘migration’ under this context. What does it mean to flatten the experience of migration into a technical term to describe the movement from one server to the other? In what contexts such choices of language are made and who decides about the terminology?

My computer runs the open source operating system Ubuntu. The term ‘Ubuntu’ is also a word extracted from its original context. It is coming from the African Ubuntu philosophy. According to the creators of the software:

<blockquote>ubuntu |oǒ’boǒntoō| Ubuntu is an ancient African word meaning ‘humanity to others’. It is often described as reminding us that ‘I am what I am because of who we all are’. We bring the spirit of Ubuntu to the world of computers and software. The Ubuntu distribution represents the best of what the world’s software community has shared with the world. <ref>‘About the Ubuntu Project’, Ubuntu, accessed 16 July 2024, https://ubuntu.com/about</ref>
</blockquote>

Paraphrasing [https://thefunambulist.net/magazine/redefining-our-terms/ubuntu-a-black-radical-demand-for-reparations Panashe Chigumadzi] words: in contrast to the western conception of the human as individual, the African conception of the person is a social being who is always becoming, defined by and being responsible for the personhood of the others. "(T)he African philosophy best understood through the proverb found in Bantu languages across the continent, 'umuntu ngumuntu ngabanye bantu' (a person is a person through other people." <ref>Panashe Chigumadzi, ‘Can White South Africa Live up to Ubuntu, the African Philosophy Tutu Globalised?’, The Guardian, 31 December 2021, sec. Opinion, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec/31/white-south-africa-ubuntu-african-tutu</ref>

<blockquote>(D)espite the flourishing of Ubuntu in post-apartheid discourse, lending its name to software, businesses, books and philanthropic organisations, South Africa is a country in which we have, as Dladla argues, Ubuntu without Abantu. Just as Black people have been dispossessed of their land, Ubuntu has been dispossessed of its deeply radical demands for ethical historical and social relations among people. (...) (P)ost apartheid Ubuntu mistranslation 'I am because we are', individualized and interpersonalised Ubuntu, Christianised Ubuntu, mistranslated in order to justify crimes and violence. In Ubuntu violence can be punished even after generations, the misinterpretation of the term allowed individual forgiveness. <ref>‘Ubuntu: A Black Radical Demand for Reparations’, THE FUNAMBULIST MAGAZINE, 25 October 2023, https://thefunambulist.net/magazine/redefining-our-terms/ubuntu-a-black-radical-demand-for-reparations</ref>
</blockquote>I skip these thoughts and I continue browsing the list of servers. While doing so I encounter an [https://www.oziosi.org/ autonomous server] with the DeepL translated title: ":: a shelter for digital exiles ::" accommodated by the image of a woman, a child and a man leaving their home and an introduction: "Exiled from the global village of social networks, we claim an internet that is a simple means of communication: immaterial, anonymous, imaginary, public when it makes sense and secret when we feel the need." [https://techpolicy.press/how-to-open-an-outpost-in-social-media-exile/ ‘Social media exiles’] and ‘Twitter migration’ are terms used often after Twitter became X and users have moved to the Fediverse or other alternatives.

Using metaphors like that for a technical process de-contextualizes a word from its origins and may reveal the privileged place these extractions come from, often dominated by white male computer engineers who get inspiration from struggles happening elsewhere. Could this terminology be shifted towards other words? Could words like transfer, share, move, copy, re-install, shift replace the word ‘migration’? From this point on in the report I decide to pick and use the term ‘transfer’.

[[File:Screenshot 2023-10-07 at 11-31-21 esiliati.org.png|thumb|Screenshot of the webpage of the self-organised server oziosi.org mentioning the term 'digital exiles' (accessed 07/10/2023) ]]

== TITiPI’s case of server transfer ==
On the 27th of September, sitting at the long desks side to side, Femke and I have an online call with Helen, while looking at the depths of our Virtual Private Server (VPS), provided by Linode, that runs Ubuntu on our laptop screens. Linode is an American hosting provider focusing on ''Linux''-based virtual machines originally. The server is physically located in the UK. TITiPI currently uses the Linode server that Helen set up for hosting her own projects. They have been paying for Linode’s monthly fees so far.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-10-11 14-47-06.png|thumb|Screenshot of a Linode Ubuntu server overview (accessed 11/10/2023) and the terminal that shows a moment of figuring out what takes space in the server through SSH access]]

At the time it seemed a good choice, because Linode is based in UK, is ''Linux'' friendly and an alternative to Amazon Web Services (AWS), even though the company was already identifying as ‘cloud hosting’. But in February 2023 it has been acquired by the American company Akamai that aims to scale up for [https://www.linode.com/global-infrastructure/ "computing power, optimizing performance and agility."] Akamai is actively changing its server policies into an increasingly intense cloud logic. This pushed forward the desire to move to a new place.

[[File:Screenshot 2023-10-11 at 14-50-47 Cloud Computing & Linux Servers Alternative to AWS Linode.png|thumb|Screenshot of the Linode [https://www.linode.com/ website] referring to scalability (accessed 11/10/2023)]]

At the moment in Linode we run pico, a flat CMS for the website https://titipi.org. There is a Mediawiki (you are reading a Mediawiki page right now) for notes and collective writing. On the wiki, we also publish our statutes, guidelines and other instituting documents. The wiki has a custom extension, called wiki-to-pdf. Each of these services will need a different way to be transferred. One approach is to build the new server space from scratch, copy the data with rsync and transfer only the Mediawiki, which includes installing a new version and copy the database and the media files.

While preparing to transfer the tools we are defining what are the practical needs and desirable priorities. What fantasies of servers we have; a local physical server hosted in a small computer Raspberry Pi in the office; a software defined server located in a virtual location of a physical machine somewhere in the Alps? We ended up on these server requirements:
* SSH access and VPS
* affordable price (around €20/month)
* Free Software operating system, preferably Debian
* community work is included − desire to slow down, resist to scaling and growth or ‘decloudification’ (small network of partners, less virtualization approach, location of servers nearby etc)
* 25-40GB storage space, 1-2 cores, 2-4GB RAM
* environmental angle
* service support in a language that we all understand (English mostly)

This server transfer happens with an intersectional and feminist approach and the desire to keep questioning. While moving away from Linode we include both the technical and the conceptual thinking in the process. There are a few things that we are looking at:
* Where to be transferred to or what services to transfer to?
* How to be transferred and what to transfer?
* What terminology, language we use?
* What (other) narratives of server hosting can we construct?
TITiPI seeks to exist with an infrastructure that supports inter-dependent practices and solidarity across struggles. It develops [https://titipi.org/wiki-to-pdf/unfold/Counter_Cloud_Action_Plan Counter Cloud Actions] as a way to scale down, de-cloudify, articulate, contest and re-imagine the implications of computational infrastructures (‘the cloud’). We are looking for servers that aspire some of these values:

<blockquote>TITiPI develop tools from feminisms, queer theory, Free, Libre and Open Source software, intersectionality, anti-coloniality, disability studies, historical materialism and artistic practice to generate currently inexistent vocabularies, imaginaries and methodologies. TITiPI functions as an infrastructure to establish new ways in which socio-technical practices and technologies might support the public interest. <ref>TITiPI, ‘Infrables’, Tangible Cloud Archives, https://docs.tangible-cloud.be/publications-pdf/02_snelting.pdf.</ref></blockquote>

=== A narrative of relational infrastructure and infra-mutuality ===
[[File:Elastic solidarities.png|thumb|Graphic image made by TITiPI]]
In June 2023 TITiPI received an email from Gandi to renew the domain titipi.org in 6 days, not realising that at the same time we would need to start paying for our titipi.org email hosting. We had missed reading to the end of another email sent in the middle of June, entitled: 'Pricing update'. Thus we decide to transfer the email besides the web hosting.

We consider to work with Kate Rich to move our mailboxes to the [http://irational.org/ Irational server], soon to be installed on a Raspberry Pi, hosted at Servus. We plan to do this transition slowly and until then renew the emails for 1-2 months through Gandi. Irational server resists virtualization, and as an art community project it makes it an interesting choice.

But why to go through all this effort and not just use one cloud server with mailboxes, file storage and web server together? TITiPI’s response to the question of building institutional digital infrastructure embodies an archipelagic and non-sovereign approach to dependencies. Rather than building a centralised server based on ‘cloud’ from which connections with other institutions and collectives can happen, it conceptualizes inter-infrastructural practices; from the creation of a [https://gitlab.constantvzw.org/titipi/burrow backup script] for saving locally etherpad pads from other servers, hosting emails in an art server (https://irational.org), creating an [https://books.lumbung.space/shelf/26 online bookshelf] on lumbung.space, using the ''XMPP'' chat from Varia to recording conversations with the ''sysadmin'' that maintain the other servers. The institution re-imagines technological dependencies in dialogue with cultural institutions and art collectives. [[File:Titipi-infra-diagram-JAN-24.png|thumb|none|alt=A diagram of TITiPI’s infrastructure. The diagram categorizes the elements according to tools/software (box), structure/organisational form (circle) and place (dashed line). For example Jitsi is the software, Greenhost is the organisation, meet.greenhost.net is the place.|A diagram of TITiPI’s infrastructure. The diagram categorizes the elements according to tools/software (box), structure/organisational form (circle) and place (dashed line). For example Jitsi is the software, Greenhost is the organisation, meet.greenhost.net is the place.]]

How to give life to the common space of TITiPI’s hosting infrastructures? What about building up social dependencies between the ones that host and the ones who are hosted as opposed to a solely technical independence? Infrastructural imaginations are often built by the ''Big Tech'' industry and governmental institutions. Instead, TITiPI practices a fluid inter-institutional approach supported by [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Infra_colophon a variety of hosts].

=== Selection of server providers ===
On the 7th of November through a shared screen at the [https://meet.greenhost.net/ video conferencing software Jitsi of Greenhost] we all three check a list of server providers I collected on a spreadsheet hosted in Constant’s cloud storage (built with the open source Nextcloud software) where TITiPI has an account. I looked at associations, companies, cooperatives, communities coming from commercial context to social struggles, activist, feminist and other. Through a [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/List_server_networks list of networks] I found various servers mainly from Latin America and Europe.

The concept of autonomy, sovereignty, independence or self-managing characterizes most of the servers in the list. Some of them, like [https://www.autistici.org/ Autistici] promote this concept as a way to support anti-capitalist infrastructure and protect the privacy of the users as opposed to the Big Tech software practices.

<blockquote>The vision is that we - the members of the cooperative - own our own data. This implies and has as a consequence that we will have to own our own infrastructure and have insight and control over the software we use to communicate on the web.<ref>‘Community Servers - Monoskop’, accessed 16 July 2024, https://monoskop.org/Community_servers</ref></blockquote>

Femke had a hunch: "‘technological sovereignty’ and ‘data-sovereignty’ continue to be orientation devices to organise around. ‘Sovereignty’, together with ‘freedom’, ‘independence’ and ‘autonomy’, form an ideological cluster that implicitly and sometimes explicitly foregrounds separation rather than relation."

Servers can act as independent spaces but are also cultural devices and vibrant places. They can manifest different aspects of a full life and reach out to a multiplicity of entities.

Servus and Greenhost, seem to be two of our best choices as they cover a lot of the priorities and values of TITiPI. As one can read from their descriptions they both strive for owning their own data servers and data nodes (they have their own ''IP addresses'') and be independent from third parties. Their big difference is the scale of the infrastructure and their community and network.

<blockquote>Greenhost fully owns and controls its hardware, infrastructure and uplinks. This ensures independence from third parties and proper access control. On this hardware we run our fully virtualised platform. We stand for an Open Internet, and have always embraced open source software.<ref>‘Greenhost.Net | the Sustainable Web’, accessed 16 July 2024, https://greenhost.net/.</ref></blockquote>

<blockquote>We (Servus) do not pass on any data to third parties. You will not receive commercial advertising from us or third parties. We are easily accessible and answer your questions personally. We and our servers are located at Kirchengasse 4 in Linz, Austria.<ref>‘Book Of Servus’, Book Of Servus, accessed 16 July 2024, https://book.servus.at/en/home/.</ref></blockquote>

Even though Greenhost wants to reduce ecological damage, it does that mainly through hardware reductions and does not address scale. They have plans to expand and are part of a network of partners that want to transform Rotterdam into a big hub of data nodes for the upcoming digital transition. But Greenhost is not that big as Linode that goes for [https://www.akamai.com/newsroom/press-release/akamai-takes-cloud-computing-to-the-edge| "(p)lanetary scale."] Servus on the other hand has one room of data servers, is closer to the scale of their community and maintain personal relations with them.

=== Community server, feminist server, trans*feminist server, radical server, autonomous server, commercial server, art server, free server, ethical server, solidarity-based server, cooperative server, associative server, independent server, alternative server, non-commercial server, … ===
The spreadsheet starts to grow because of an endless burrow of small and big providers.

Some are outdated. 
Some are messy. 
Some have broken links. 
Some are [https://www.julienth37.fr/vps hard to understand]. 
Some require [https://www.actiu.info/index.en.html a lot of engagement]. 
Some use a language that imitates the narratives of ''Big Tech'' and ''agile'' computing. 
Some promote seamless "promissory logic" and "high hopes for a brighter future" 
Some are big or are scaling up (in matter of space, data centers, partners, users etc). 
Some support NGO’s or sport clubs.

[[File:Screenshot 2023-10-11 at 15-06-35 co-operative web-crop.png|thumb|Screenshot from the [https://web.coop/ website] of Co-op Web (accessed 11/10/2023)]]

We also looked at their financial model. Many radical servers stay small, are volunteer based, like [https://www.autistici.org/ Autistici]. and go for horizontal organisational structures. Feminist and activist servers provide space in the internet for the ones who don’t have the means to organise otherwise. The resources and ways of organising for these servers are different from the cooperatives or associations whose structure is inherited from the model they are registered with.

[[File:ATNOFS-Varia-insert-ooooo.jpg|thumb|Diagram for the Varia's organisational structure made by ooooo for the [https://www.ooooo.be/atraversalnetworkoffeministservers/ publication] A Traversal Network of Feminist Servers (ATNOFS)]]

TITiPI acknowledges and is connected to the history of community, art and feminist servers and wants to support this network. The art servers started as a way to make autonomous self-managed servers that support artists values and practices. They are often financed by cultural or private funds.

<blockquote>Irational.org began in the 1990s, I joined in 2010. At that time Irational was more active as an art collective who were operating a shared server. Then in 2016, coinciding with a server upgrade, we disbanded and re-formed specifically as a Linux server collective, which is a better description of what Irational is now. A small group of artists who are interested in running a Linux server together. (...) Part of Irational's interest has always been in running a physical server, not a virtual machine as is nearly ubiquitous now. When I started out as Irational sysadmin, we were using rescued servers from commercial server farms – fully working computers that were being thrown out as part of the perpetual cycle of upgrades. We would install Linux on a discarded machine, and get low-cost hosting at a server farm in London. Then when our previous server was reaching the end of its life, this was in 2016, we also felt a tectonic shift. There was a large-scale move to virtualisation, people weren't running individual physical servers in the same way as before, and the supply of deprecated rack mount servers seemed to have dried up. So for the first time we bought a replacement server brand new, and drove it to Cheltenham in west England where we installed it in a server farm run by gamers – one of the few places we could find that was still prepared to host a single machine. 

— quote from [[None of this experiment is evident|interview of Kate Rich by Femke Snelting]] </blockquote>

The screen seems to become brighter as my eyes get tired. What if we skip the online hosting and create a local physical server at TITiPI’s office next to the desks, in a corner, on a Raspberry Pi? All our data would stay on this machine and we would connect with SSH from home, but then we will also have to maintain it ourselves. There is something there about the romanticism of a physical toolbox as a sovereign object. If we choose to do that we will need to think of a backup plan as our data will stay offline and the server will rely on the building's network bandwidth and fire protection system. A second option is to have our own server in a rack at Servus, where we would have connection to high speed reliable internet but electricity costs would be higher and we would rely to somebody else if we need to turn the server off and on. We think to do that with the email hosting that we would share with Irational, where we have root access inside someone else's physical server hosted in Servus. The third option is VPS which is a cloud technology but we have access to our own virtual machine that we can start and stop from distance.

Our list has been reduced because of our priorities. We need SSH and we would like to have a VPS. Who has resources for providing VPS? Resources of labour, time, finances, technical knowledge. This made self-defined feminist servers fall out of the selection. How to be financially sustainable, while keeping up with your own values? How to keep up with infrastructural ''maintenance'' if the scale of the users, community, members and data is big?

<blockquote>The services we offer have no defined price, but as you may easily imagine, keeping the whole system working (i.e. hardware and hosting) is very expensive (at the moment it ranges around 13,000 euro every year).<ref>‘Autistici.Org - Services’, accessed 16 July 2024, https://www.autistici.org/services/</ref></blockquote>

Servus and Maadix provide a series of ''free/libre'' tools that can be installed separately through their interface but they also provide a VPS with SSH access. With Greenhost, Hetzner and Linode there is more flexibility: you can create your own VPS and customize it for your own needs through their interface or the ''terminal'' and install whatever tools you want from scratch without a visual interface.

Technical information and knowledge of digital infrastructure circulate between groups that are tech-oriented with a difficulty to cross with other groups, including feminist servers. The ''sysadmin'' tasks are mostly taken by cis men but feminist servers are radical about that. They find important to have sysadmins that are not cis men. For example Systerserver and Anarchaserver are learning collectively by themselves how to do this task.

Many of the servers in the list provide only tools, as a radical way to support small groups, collectives, activists that need privacy and shifting away from Google drive when they want to organise politically and socially. It seems that being limited to tool packages instead of having full access to a server can make things comprehensible and compact for these small groups that have limited sysadmin knowledge or can’t hire a technician.

[[File:Screenshot 2023-10-07 at 12-23-26 FuturEtic - Services en lignes libres & éthiques-2.png|Screenshot of main page with services by [https://futuretic.fr/ FuturEtic] (accessed 07/10/2023)|thumb]]

[[File:Scrnli 12 10 2023 13-14-32.png|thumb|Screenshot of the website of [https://codigosur.org/ CódigoSur] with provided tools (accessed 12/10/2023)]]

== Final decision and server transfers (email and webhosting) ==

We are about to make our decision! Our list ended up to be very small.

On 7th of November in an online call between Helen in Basel, Femke in Brussels and Aggeliki in Rotterdam we limited our list to four options: Constant, Greenhost, Servus, Zaclys. The selection consists of a diversity of scales and positioning that we found interesting to think of. First, we move on with the decision to transfer our mailboxes to Irational hosted at Servus. The rest of the functionalities will be hosted somewhere else.

From our conversations with Femke: "The choice for irational.org opens the possibility for discussions around dependencies, trust and frictions within shared collective servers. Irational.org is an ally art server who uses and maintains its own server for many years. Hosting such a private service at a friend’s environment doesn’t come only with convenience. The closeness to the material of the server makes the dependency more tangible."

[[File:White-magenta-painful.jpg|thumb|Image from the silk screen printed towel designed by [https://psaroskalazines.gr/ Psaroskala Zines]]]

Femke and I are planning different moments for the server transfer to happen in the office of TITiPI. What it is about to take place comes down into three moments; the backup and save of data from the old server, the installation of the necessary software in the new server and the transfer of the old data in the new server.

Specifically we are following these steps:

* Email transfer from Gandi to irational
* Create a Virtual Private Server (VPS) in the new server
* Install Apache2 and configure domains
* Install and migrate MediaWiki
** Back up the wiki on the Linode VPS
** Upgrade MediaWiki in Linode
** Install MediaWiki and plugins in the Greenhost VPS
** Transfer database and media files from Linode to Greenhost
* Install Wiki-to-pdf
* Install Pico
* Install and configure Certbot

We find ourselves between two virtual spaces and one office, among other indirectly connected spaces like the rooms of our distant collaborators and the office locations of the servers.

=== Trust relationships ===
By now, 14th of November 2023, the office is warm and cozy. Throughout the time I am writing this report I have been noticing a lot of slow and small efforts to renovate the building and set up the heating, by the artists and organisations who share the space with TITiPI. Another infrastructure that needs care.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 15-06-42.png|thumb|Screenshot from the moment Femke and Aggeliki entering Irational’s server space together with Kate]]

On a shared screen together with Femke we get introduced to the mail server of Irational by Kate. We use an audio splitter to share the laptop for the call. Kate described her experience as an amateur sysadmin that had to spend a lot of time to learn and set up the mail server. After that we start the process that has been documented [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Server_transfer_documentation#Mail_transfer here].

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 14-56-26.png|thumb|Screenshot from the TITiPI’s mail transfer with Kate, Femke and Aggeliki during a three hours online call]]

Irational uses the Alpine email client. Kate takes us its depths. That is where we start to set up our new email accounts before we configure them in Thunderbird. Femke gets excited on the fact that she can send emails to other Irational accounts through the terminal.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 15-15-07.png|thumb|Screenshot from the terminal using the email client [https://alpineapp.email/ Alpine]]]

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 17-04-20.png|thumb|Screenhost from the moment of looking for the syntax of the TXT records. Finding the right syntax for this value was the biggest challenge. This is part of the ''trust relationships'' between the different providers]]

After some more DNS configurations we test if it is possible to exchange emails with ‘outside’ accounts and especially with Gmail that has many security filters for mail servers other than the commercial ones.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-15 13-59-52.png|thumb|Screenshot from exchanging test emails with a Gmail account]]

After three hours of tryouts we manage to make it work! Very proudly and with enjoyment for sharing a technical task together we say goodbye to each other and arrange a next meeting for a final check up.

=== A choice that comes with discomforts ===
Just one day before the start of TITiPI’s server transfer away from Linode on the 28th of November, Helen found the Swiss server ungleich.ch and it seemed like an interesting choice because of the small scale (in terms of community and servers), their experimental attitude and their choice to reduce energy consumption; they avoid using systems for cooling their servers by spreading the servers at the Swiss mountains in old, abandoned buildings.

Ungleich.ch is one of the good options but it is more expensive than other providers. They offer a cheaper choice by choosing to have only ‘ipv6’. But we had to dig in to understand the difference of ipv4 and ipv6. From wikipedia: "IPv6 is the most recent version of the Internet Protocol, developed to deal with the long-anticipated problem of IPv4 address exhaustion." We found a [https://stats.labs.apnic.net/ipv6 map] that shows which countries have implemented IPv6 and it seems that if we only use this address then many places won’t have access to the website of TITiPI. We choose to have both addresses.

We also notice that this provider is using Stripe for their payment system. In a [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Frontier parallel universe] TITiPI gives attention to and critique Stripe because of its connections with the Carbon Removal industry.

[[File:Firefox Screenshot 2023-11-28T12-32-24.775Z.png|thumb|Screenshot from the purchase web page of [https://ungleich.ch/u/projects/data-center-light/ Ungleich.ch] payment system with Stripe (accessed 28/11/2023)]]Another urgency appears while we are looking at different choices; together with many other organisations, we have been thinking about ways to host and maintain infrastructures in solidarity with communities and networks we are part of. This would mean, for example, hosting digitally a Palestinian video film archive, or research by sex workers. Solidarity is only partially a question of caring for privacy and security because it matters where and how we host our digital infrastructures and whether these spaces do or do not support the flourishing of different lives and struggles. This need make us think again if the server we choose would be suitable for something like that.

Constant and Servus are two accomplice servers that already provide to TITiPI some of their services. Zaclys is a member of Chatons that support open source values and it is located in France. We contacted them to see if they could be an option but we didn't get an answer back.

Part of the desires of an infrastructure that cares we wanted to work with a company that provides ‘green’ infrastructure. Greenhost seems to be a good choice for that and also because it has a positioning as an alternative to AWS, it provides a familiar interface to us, good support and backup option. So far great, but what about its ‘green’ hosting vision? Is it a solarpunk vision, a green cloud utopia? Is their infrastructure resource ‘hungry’? And what are the privacy limits when the material hosted in the servers is political or sensitive?

We choose Greenhost with all the discomforts that this choice entails and with the desire to keep the critique and dialogue alive.

Only by December 2023 we manage to arrange a call with one of Greenhost’s former Managing Directors to get a feeling and more information about their approach and sensitivity. According to him, Greenhost exists in the intersection of activism and technology. It provides consultancy, sustainability solutions in tech projects and structured maintenance; they go for best quality with lowest environmental impact; they maintain the same hardware as much as possible and balance that with higher efficiency; they keep backups at an already existing data center in the university of Amsterdam.
=== Installing, transferring, saving, copying, … ===
On the 28th of November sitting on the sunny corner of the couch next to the radiator, and with warm coffee cups waiting for us on a low table, Femke and I cover our legs with a blanket and open our laptops.

I ask Femke to 'jump' in a ''tmux'' session for sharing ''terminal'' with this command: <code>''sudo'' tmux attach -t webserver</code>. We start by cleaning the old server and make backups of the files.

We take a lunch break. Femke finds out that if we eat three recurrent meals every week in the office we can have a nice variety of food; lentiles soup, orecchiette pasta with brocoli, rizzoto with mushrooms and lots of fruits. Sometime ago we decided to make multiple short breaks throughout the day because of computer fatigue. The next day we set up the new server and install all the necessary software including a new version of the MediaWiki. We arrange a meeting with Martino Morandi, member of Constant, who created the wiki-to-pdf to help us installing this software and transfer the MediaWiki in the new server. On the 1st of December we successfully install the wiki-to-pdf and because of limited time we decided to meet one more time at the end of the month for the rest.

[[File:Virtual-env-debian.png|thumb|Screenshot from the wiki-to-pdf installation to the new server with Martino, Femke, Aggeliki. Debian supports a different way to create virtual environments for installing python packages and libraries. We try it but it failed.]]

On the 28th we meet with Martino online to complete the transfer, which includes copying the old database of MediaWiki, activate the old plugins and fix any issues on the way. We are all located in different countries (Italy, Greece, Belgium) and so we share a tmux session. We follow the guides but on the way we had to do some research and configure a lot of things to make the MediaWiki work. Martino was hunting a php module. It seemed that php has shifted to free software culture in an attempt to find another business model. It is not surprising it happens in the context of Ubuntu. The issue is recorded [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Server_transfer_documentation#MediaWiki_upgrade_issues here].

[[File:Firefox Screenshot 2024-01-10T13-59-40.398Z.png|thumb|"Is Titipi.org down?" Helen asks after the transfer. It seems that her browser cache was preventing her from seeing the website. Screenshot from the website [https://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/ downforeveryoneorjustme.com/] (accessed 10/01/2024)|301x301px]]

The process is documented in our diary and then transferred to a [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Server_transfer_documentation wiki page]. By January 2024 the server transfer and the deletion of our Linode account has been completed.

== Glossaries ==

Italicized terms in the report are included in these glossaries:

* [https://varia.zone/ATNOFS/ATNOFS-screen.pdf#page=11 Glossary of A Traversal Network of Feminist Servers (ATNOFS) publication]
* [[Glossary|TITiPI's glossary]]

== References ==

* Panashe Chigumadzi, ‘Can White South Africa Live up to Ubuntu, the African Philosophy Tutu Globalised?’, The Guardian, 31 December 2021, sec. Opinion, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec/31/white-south-africa-ubuntu-african-tutu
* ‘Community Servers - Monoskop’, accessed 16 July 2024, https://monoskop.org/Community_servers
* David Carroll, ‘How To Open An Outpost In Social Media Exile | TechPolicy.Press’, Tech Policy Press, 26 November 2022, <nowiki>https://techpolicy.press/how-to-open-an-outpost-in-social-media-exile</nowiki>.
* Femke Snelting, ‘Infrastructure Solidarity’, Ardeth. A Magazine on the Power of the Project, no. 8 (1 November 2021): 45–47
* ‘Master-Slave Terminology Alternatives You Can Use Right Now | TheServerSide’, TheServerSide.com, accessed 16 July 2024, https://www.theserverside.com/opinion/Master-slave-terminology-alternatives-you-can-use-right-now
* ‘Ubuntu: A Black Radical Demand for Reparations’, THE FUNAMBULIST MAGAZINE, 25 October 2023, https://thefunambulist.net/magazine/redefining-our-terms/ubuntu-a-black-radical-demand-for-reparations.

== Colophon ==

The text had been drafted in <nowiki>https://pad.xpub.nl</nowiki> in Markdown and then transferred in this wiki.

== Footnotes ==

From cloud to crowd: a report on a server transfer

2024-10-17T12:25:08Z

Angeliki:

= From cloud to crowd<ref>The term comes from ... (not sure if it is included in the title)</ref>: A report on a server transfer =

This text is a report on a server migration that took place within the institutional framework of [https://titipi.org/ The Institute for Technology in the Public Interest (TITiPI)], a trans-practice gathering of activists, artists, engineers and theorists. The report is an infrastructural ethnography<ref>[explain--footnote]</ref> and aims to rethink, through a technical process, what ''hosting'' a server means for a community, institution, cultural organisation dealing with technological discomforts and complex digital infrastructures.

Starting from a broad definition a ''server'' is a computer, a combination of software and hardware or an operating system and a physical machine that provides computing services, such as web hosting and cloud storage, via a network (Internet). A ''server migration'' is the process of moving data and transferring software from one server to another with the use of specified tools. Performing such process accommodates a practical and technical solution to fix the problem of an outdated server that is slow or has limited storage.

This report problematizes the materiality of a server, its location, scale, community, architecture and substantial elements, and how and what is migrated when we decide to change servers. The urgency of this issue derives from the question of how does an organisation's digital infrastructure affect its values, structure and infrastructural imaginations? TITiPI treats web hosting with attention, rather than as an outsourced tech service, by including it in the thinking and reflection of its organisational structure. In times of server providers’ scaling up ( ‘''cloud hosting''’ ) and digitizing governmental bureaucracies what does it mean to host your own digital space for supporting your communities and work? Is it necessary to have a sovereign and independent infrastructure? What (non-)dependencies are chosen or taken for granted by institutions when using hosting services?

As a researcher at TITiPI I have been caring for the task to investigate this server migration, that includes web hosting and email, and execute it together with TITiPI’s member Femke Snelting. We meet weekly to keep track and make decisions. We share a ''markdown'' file hosted in the [https://gitlab.constantvzw.org/titipi/ online code repository of the cultural association Constant] that includes a diary of the server migration and reflections. Every now and then we meet online with our colleague Helen Pritchard, to discuss and share the process. This report includes extracts from the server diary and stories from the process.

== Migration or …? ==

In the cold Autumn of 2023 in the newly installed office of TITiPI located in the Koekelberg district of Brussels, I open the browser Chromium in my computer, in order to quickly translate − with the installed Google Translate plugin − the web pages of the different cooperatives, associations, companies that provide hosting services. While doing that I cannot ignore a persistent thought regarding the word ‘migration’ under this context. What does it mean to flatten the experience of migration into a technical term to describe the movement from one server to the other? In what contexts such choices of language are made and who decides about the terminology?

My computer runs the ''open source'' operating system Ubuntu. The term ‘Ubuntu’ is also a word extracted from its original context. It is coming from the African Ubuntu philosophy. According to the creators of the software:

<blockquote>ubuntu |oǒ’boǒntoō| Ubuntu is an ancient African word meaning ‘humanity to others’. It is often described as reminding us that ‘I am what I am because of who we all are’. We bring the spirit of Ubuntu to the world of computers and software. The Ubuntu distribution represents the best of what the world’s software community has shared with the world. <ref>‘About the Ubuntu Project’, Ubuntu, accessed 16 July 2024, https://ubuntu.com/about</ref>
</blockquote>

Paraphrasing [https://thefunambulist.net/magazine/redefining-our-terms/ubuntu-a-black-radical-demand-for-reparations Panashe Chigumadzi] words: in contrast to the western conception of the human as individual, the African conception of the person is a social being who is always becoming, defined by and being responsible for the personhood of the others. "(T)he African philosophy best understood through the proverb found in Bantu languages across the continent, 'umuntu ngumuntu ngabanye bantu' (a person is a person through other people". <ref>Panashe Chigumadzi, ‘Can White South Africa Live up to Ubuntu, the African Philosophy Tutu Globalised?’, The Guardian, 31 December 2021, sec. Opinion, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec/31/white-south-africa-ubuntu-african-tutu</ref>

<blockquote>(D)espite the flourishing of Ubuntu in post-apartheid discourse, lending its name to software, businesses, books and philanthropic organisations, South Africa is a country in which we have, as Dladla argues, Ubuntu without Abantu. Just as Black people have been dispossessed of their land, Ubuntu has been dispossessed of its deeply radical demands for ethical historical and social relations among people. (...) (P)ost apartheid Ubuntu mistranslation 'I am because we are', individualized and interpersonalised Ubuntu, Christianised Ubuntu, mistranslated in order to justify crimes and violence. In Ubuntu violence can be punished even after generations, the misinterpretation of the term allowed individual forgiveness. <ref>‘Ubuntu: A Black Radical Demand for Reparations’, THE FUNAMBULIST MAGAZINE, 25 October 2023, https://thefunambulist.net/magazine/redefining-our-terms/ubuntu-a-black-radical-demand-for-reparations</ref>
</blockquote>I skip these thoughts and I continue browsing the list of servers. While doing so I encounter an [https://www.oziosi.org/ autonomous server] with the DeepL translated title: “:: a shelter for digital exiles ::” accommodated by the image of a woman, a child and a man leaving their home and an introduction: “Exiled from the global village of social networks, we claim an internet that is a simple means of communication: immaterial, anonymous, imaginary, public when it makes sense and secret when we feel the need.”. [https://techpolicy.press/how-to-open-an-outpost-in-social-media-exile/ ‘Social media exiles’] and ‘Twitter migration’ are terms used often after Twitter became X and users have moved to the Fediverse or other alternatives.

Using metaphors like that for a technical process de-contextualizes a word from its origins and may reveal the privileged place these extractions come from, often dominated by white male computer engineers who get inspiration from struggles happening elsewhere. Could this terminology be shifted towards other words? Could words like transfer, share, move, copy, re-install, shift replace the word ‘migration’? From this point on in the report I decide to pick and use the term ‘transfer’.

[[File:Screenshot 2023-10-07 at 11-31-21 esiliati.org.png|thumb|Screenshot of the webpage of the self-organised server oziosi.org mentioning the term 'digital exiles' (accessed 07/10/2023) ]]

== TITiPI’s case of server transfer ==
On the 27th of September, sitting at the long desks side to side, Femke and I have an online call with Helen, while looking at the depths of our Virtual Private Server (VPS), provided by Linode, that runs Ubuntu on our laptop screens. Linode is an American hosting provider focusing on ''Linux''-based virtual machines originally. The server is physically located in the UK. TITiPI currently uses the Linode server that Helen set up for hosting her own projects. They have been paying for Linode’s monthly fees so far.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-10-11 14-47-06.png|thumb|Screenshot of a Linode Ubuntu server overview (accessed 11/10/2023) and the terminal that shows a moment of figuring out what takes space in the server through SSH access]]

At the time it seemed a good choice, because Linode is based in UK, is ''Linux'' friendly and an alternative to Amazon Web Services (AWS), even though the company was already identifying as ‘''cloud hosting''’. But in February 2023 it has been acquired by the American company Akamai that aims to scale up for [https://www.linode.com/global-infrastructure/ “computing power, optimizing performance and agility.”]. Akamai is actively changing its server policies into an increasingly intense cloud logic. This pushed forward the desire to move to a new place.

[[File:Screenshot 2023-10-11 at 14-50-47 Cloud Computing & Linux Servers Alternative to AWS Linode.png|thumb|Screenshot of the Linode [https://www.linode.com/ website] referring to scalability (accessed 11/10/2023)]]

At the moment in Linode we run pico, a flat CMS for the website https://titipi.org. There is a Mediawiki (you are reading a Mediawiki page right now) for notes and collective writing. On the wiki, we also publish our statutes, guidelines and other instituting documents. The wiki has a custom extension, called wiki-to-pdf. Each of these services will need a different way to be transferred. One approach is to build the new server space from scratch, copy the data with rsync and transfer only the Mediawiki, which includes installing a new version and copy the database and the media files.

While preparing to transfer the tools we are defining what are the practical needs and desirable priorities. What fantasies of servers we have; a local physical server hosted in a small computer Raspberry Pi in the office; a software defined server located in a virtual location of a physical machine somewhere in the Alps? We ended up on these server requirements:
* SSH access and VPS
* affordable price (around €20/month)
* Free Software operating system, preferably Debian
* community work is included − desire to slow down, resist to scaling and growth or ‘decloudification’ (small network of partners, less virtualization approach, location of servers nearby etc)
* 25-40GB storage space, 1-2 cores, 2-4GB RAM
* environmental angle
* service support in a language that we all understand (English mostly)

This server transfer happens with an intersectional and feminist approach and the desire to keep questioning. While moving away from Linode we include both the technical and the conceptual thinking in the process. There are a few things that we are looking at:
* Where to be transferred to or what services to transfer to?
* How to be transferred and what to transfer?
* What terminology, language we use?
* What (other) narratives of server hosting can we construct?
TITiPI seeks to exist with an infrastructure that supports inter-dependent practices and solidarity across struggles. It develops [https://titipi.org/wiki-to-pdf/unfold/Counter_Cloud_Action_Plan Counter Cloud Actions] as a way to scale down, de-cloudify, articulate, contest and re-imagine the implications of computational infrastructures (‘the cloud’). We are looking for servers that aspire some of these values:

<blockquote>TITiPI develop tools from feminisms, queer theory, ''Free, Libre and Open Source'' software, intersectionality, anti-coloniality, disability studies, historical materialism and artistic practice to generate currently inexistent vocabularies, imaginaries and methodologies. TITiPI functions as an infrastructure to establish new ways in which socio-technical practices and technologies might support the public interest. <ref>TITiPI, ‘Infrables’, Tangible Cloud Archives, https://docs.tangible-cloud.be/publications-pdf/02_snelting.pdf.</ref></blockquote>

=== A narrative of relational infrastructure and infra-mutuality ===
[[File:Elastic solidarities.png|thumb|Graphic image made by TITiPI]]
In June 2023 TITiPI received an email from Gandi to renew the domain titipi.org in 6 days, not realising that at the same time we would need to start paying for our titipi.org email hosting. We had missed reading to the end of another email sent in the middle of June, entitled: 'Pricing update'. Thus we decide to transfer the email besides the web hosting.

We consider to work with Kate Rich to move our mailboxes to the [http://irational.org/ Irational server], soon to be installed on a Raspberry Pi, hosted at Servus. We plan to do this transition slowly and until then renew the emails for 1-2 months through Gandi. Irational server resists virtualization, and as an art community project it makes it an interesting choice.

But why to go through all this effort and not just use one cloud server with mailboxes, file storage and web server together? TITiPI’s response to the question of building institutional digital infrastructure embodies an archipelagic and non-sovereign approach to dependencies. Rather than building a centralised server based on ‘cloud’ from which connections with other institutions and collectives can happen, it conceptualizes inter-infrastructural practices; from the creation of a [https://gitlab.constantvzw.org/titipi/burrow backup script] for saving locally etherpad pads from other servers, hosting emails in an art server (https://irational.org), creating an [https://books.lumbung.space/shelf/26 online bookshelf] on lumbung.space, using the ''XMPP'' chat from Varia to recording conversations with the ''sysadmin'' that maintain the other servers. The institution re-imagines technological dependencies in dialogue with cultural institutions and art collectives. [[File:Titipi-infra-diagram-JAN-24.png|thumb|none|alt=A diagram of TITiPI’s infrastructure. The diagram categorizes the elements according to tools/software (box), structure/organisational form (circle) and place (dashed line). For example Jitsi is the software, Greenhost is the organisation, meet.greenhost.net is the place.|A diagram of TITiPI’s infrastructure. The diagram categorizes the elements according to tools/software (box), structure/organisational form (circle) and place (dashed line). For example Jitsi is the software, Greenhost is the organisation, meet.greenhost.net is the place.]]

How to give life to the common space of TITiPI’s hosting infrastructures? What about building up social dependencies between the ones that host and the ones who are hosted as opposed to a solely technical independence? Infrastructural imaginations are often built by the ''Big Tech'' industry and governmental institutions. Instead, TITiPI practices a fluid inter-institutional approach supported by [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Infra_colophon a variety of hosts].

=== Selection of server providers ===
On the 7th of November through a shared screen at the [https://meet.greenhost.net/ video conferencing software Jitsi of Greenhost] we all three check a list of server providers I collected on a spreadsheet hosted in Constant’s cloud storage (built with the open source Nextcloud software) where TITiPI has an account. I looked at associations, companies, cooperatives, communities coming from commercial context to social struggles, activist, feminist and other. Through a [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/List_server_networks list of networks] I found various servers mainly from Latin America and Europe.

The concept of autonomy, sovereignty, independence or self-managing characterizes most of the servers in the list. Some of them, like [https://www.autistici.org/ Autistici] promote this concept as a way to support anti-capitalist infrastructure and protect the privacy of the users as opposed to the ''Big Tech'' software practices.

<blockquote>The vision is that we - the members of the cooperative - own our own data. This implies and has as a consequence that we will have to own our own infrastructure and have insight and control over the software we use to communicate on the web.<ref>‘Community Servers - Monoskop’, accessed 16 July 2024, https://monoskop.org/Community_servers</ref></blockquote>

Femke had a hunch: "‘technological sovereignty’ and ‘data-sovereignty’ continue to be orientation devices to organise around. ‘Sovereignty’, together with ‘freedom’, ‘independence’ and ‘autonomy’, form an ideological cluster that implicitly and sometimes explicitly foregrounds separation rather than relation."

Servers can act as independent spaces but are also cultural devices and vibrant places. They can manifest different aspects of a full life and reach out to a multiplicity of entities.

Servus and Greenhost, seem to be two of our best choices as they cover a lot of the priorities and values of TITiPI. As one can read from their descriptions they both strive for owning their own data servers and data nodes (they have their own ''IP addresses'') and be independent from third parties. Their big difference is the scale of the infrastructure and their community and network.

<blockquote>Greenhost fully owns and controls its hardware, infrastructure and uplinks. This ensures independence from third parties and proper access control. On this hardware we run our fully virtualised platform. We stand for an Open Internet, and have always embraced open source software.<ref>‘Greenhost.Net | the Sustainable Web’, accessed 16 July 2024, https://greenhost.net/.</ref></blockquote>

<blockquote>We (Servus) do not pass on any data to third parties. You will not receive commercial advertising from us or third parties. We are easily accessible and answer your questions personally. We and our servers are located at Kirchengasse 4 in Linz, Austria.<ref>‘Book Of Servus’, Book Of Servus, accessed 16 July 2024, https://book.servus.at/en/home/.</ref></blockquote>

Even though Greenhost wants to reduce ecological damage, it does that mainly through hardware reductions and does not address scale. They have plans to expand and are part of a network of partners that want to transform Rotterdam into a big hub of data nodes for the upcoming digital transition. But Greenhost is not that big as Linode that goes for [https://www.akamai.com/newsroom/press-release/akamai-takes-cloud-computing-to-the-edge| "(p)lanetary scale"]. Servus on the other hand has one room of data servers, is closer to the scale of their community and maintain personal relations with them.

=== Community server, feminist server, trans*feminist server, radical server, autonomous server, commercial server, art server, free server, ethical server, solidarity-based server, cooperative server, associative server, independent server, alternative server, non-commercial server, … ===
The spreadsheet starts to grow because of an endless burrow of small and big providers.

Some are outdated. 
Some are messy. 
Some have broken links. 
Some are [https://www.julienth37.fr/vps hard to understand]. 
Some require [https://www.actiu.info/index.en.html a lot of engagement]. 
Some use a language that imitates the narratives of ''Big Tech'' and ''agile'' computing. 
Some promote seamless “promissory logic” and “high hopes for a brighter future” [ref] 
Some are big or are scaling up (in matter of space, data centers, partners, users etc). 
Some support NGO’s or sport clubs.

[[File:Screenshot 2023-10-11 at 15-06-35 co-operative web-crop.png|thumb|Screenshot from the [https://web.coop/ website] of Co-op Web (accessed 11/10/2023)]]

We also looked at their financial model. Many radical servers stay small, are volunteer based, like [https://www.autistici.org/ Autistici]. and go for horizontal organisational structures. Feminist and activist servers provide space in the internet for the ones who don’t have the means to organise otherwise. The resources and ways of organising for these servers are different from the cooperatives or associations whose structure is inherited from the model they are registered with.

[[File:ATNOFS-Varia-insert-ooooo.jpg|thumb|Diagram for the Varia's organisational structure made by ooooo for the [https://www.ooooo.be/atraversalnetworkoffeministservers/ publication] A Traversal Network of Feminist Servers (ATNOFS)]]

TITiPI acknowledges and is connected to the history of community, art and feminist servers and wants to support this network. The art servers started as a way to make autonomous self-managed servers that support artists values and practices. They are often financed by cultural or private funds.

<blockquote>Irational.org began in the 1990s, I joined in 2010. At that time Irational was more active as an art collective who were operating a shared server. Then in 2016, coinciding with a server upgrade, we disbanded and re-formed specifically as a Linux server collective, which is a better description of what Irational is now. A small group of artists who are interested in running a Linux server together. (...) Part of Irational's interest has always been in running a physical server, not a virtual machine as is nearly ubiquitous now. When I started out as Irational sysadmin, we were using rescued servers from commercial server farms – fully working computers that were being thrown out as part of the perpetual cycle of upgrades. We would install Linux on a discarded machine, and get low-cost hosting at a server farm in London. Then when our previous server was reaching the end of its life, this was in 2016, we also felt a tectonic shift. There was a large-scale move to virtualisation, people weren't running individual physical servers in the same way as before, and the supply of deprecated rack mount servers seemed to have dried up. So for the first time we bought a replacement server brand new, and drove it to Cheltenham in west England where we installed it in a server farm run by gamers – one of the few places we could find that was still prepared to host a single machine. 

— quote from [[None of this experiment is evident|interview of Kate Rich by Femke Snelting]] </blockquote>

The screen seems to become brighter as my eyes get tired. What if we skip the online hosting and create a local physical server at TITiPI’s office next to the desks, in a corner, on a Raspberry Pi? All our data would stay on this machine and we would connect with SSH from home, but then we will also have to maintain it ourselves. There is something there about the romanticism of a physical toolbox as a sovereign object. If we choose to do that we will need to think of a backup plan as our data will stay offline and the server will rely on the building's network bandwidth and fire protection system. A second option is to have our own server in a rack at Servus, where we would have connection to high speed reliable internet but electricity costs would be higher and we would rely to somebody else if we need to turn the server off and on. We think to do that with the email hosting that we would share with Irational, where we have root access inside someone else's physical server hosted in Servus. The third option is VPS which is a cloud technology but we have access to our own virtual machine that we can start and stop from distance.

Our list has been reduced because of our priorities. We need SSH and we would like to have a VPS. Who has resources for providing VPS? Resources of labour, time, finances, technical knowledge. This made self-defined feminist servers fall out of the selection. How to be financially sustainable, while keeping up with your own values? How to keep up with infrastructural ''maintenance'' if the scale of the users, community, members and data is big?

<blockquote>The services we offer have no defined price, but as you may easily imagine, keeping the whole system working (i.e. hardware and hosting) is very expensive (at the moment it ranges around 13,000 euro every year).<ref>‘Autistici.Org - Services’, accessed 16 July 2024, https://www.autistici.org/services/</ref></blockquote>

Servus and Maadix provide a series of ''free/libre'' tools that can be installed separately through their interface but they also provide a VPS with SSH access. With Greenhost, Hetzner and Linode there is more flexibility: you can create your own VPS and customize it for your own needs through their interface or the ''terminal'' and install whatever tools you want from scratch without a visual interface.

Technical information and knowledge of digital infrastructure circulate between groups that are tech-oriented with a difficulty to cross with other groups, including feminist servers. The ''sysadmin'' tasks are mostly taken by cis men but feminist servers are radical about that. They find important to have sysadmins that are not cis men. For example Systerserver and Anarchaserver are learning collectively by themselves how to do this task.

Many of the servers in the list provide only tools, as a radical way to support small groups, collectives, activists that need privacy and shifting away from Google drive when they want to organise politically and socially. It seems that being limited to tool packages instead of having full access to a server can make things comprehensible and compact for these small groups that have limited sysadmin knowledge or can’t hire a technician.

[[File:Screenshot 2023-10-07 at 12-23-26 FuturEtic - Services en lignes libres & éthiques-2.png|Screenshot of main page with services by [https://futuretic.fr/ FuturEtic] (accessed 07/10/2023)|thumb]]

[[File:Scrnli 12 10 2023 13-14-32.png|thumb|Screenshot of the website of [https://codigosur.org/ CódigoSur] with provided tools (accessed 12/10/2023)]]

== Final decision and server transfers (email and webhosting) ==

We are about to make our decision! Our list ended up to be very small.

On 7th of November in an online call between Helen in Basel, Femke in Brussels and Aggeliki in Rotterdam we limited our list to four options: Constant, Greenhost, Servus, Zaclys. The selection consists of a diversity of scales and positioning that we found interesting to think of. First, we move on with the decision to transfer our mailboxes to Irational hosted at Servus. The rest of the functionalities will be hosted somewhere else.

From our conversations with Femke: “The choice for irational.org opens the possibility for discussions around dependencies, trust and frictions within shared collective servers. Irational.org is an ally art server who uses and maintains its own server for many years. Hosting such a private service at a friend’s environment doesn’t come only with convenience. The closeness to the material of the server makes the dependency more tangible.”

[[File:White-magenta-painful.jpg|thumb|Image from the silk screen printed towel designed by [https://psaroskalazines.gr/ Psaroskala Zines]]]

Femke and I are planning different moments for the server transfer to happen in the office of TITiPI. What it is about to take place comes down into three moments; the backup and save of data from the old server, the installation of the necessary software in the new server and the transfer of the old data in the new server.

Specifically we are following these steps:

* Email transfer from Gandi to irational
* Create a Virtual Private Server (VPS) in the new server
* Install Apache2 and configure domains
* Install and migrate MediaWiki
** Back up the wiki on the Linode VPS
** Upgrade MediaWiki in Linode
** Install MediaWiki and plugins in the Greenhost VPS
** Transfer database and media files from Linode to Greenhost
* Install Wiki-to-pdf
* Install Pico
* Install and configure Certbot

We find ourselves between two virtual spaces and one office, among other indirectly connected spaces like the rooms of our distant collaborators and the office locations of the servers.

=== Trust relationships ===
By now, 14th of November 2023, the office is warm and cozy. Throughout the time I am writing this report I have been noticing a lot of slow and small efforts to renovate the building and set up the heating, by the artists and organisations who share the space with TITiPI. Another infrastructure that needs care.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 15-06-42.png|thumb|Screenshot from the moment Femke and Aggeliki entering Irational’s server space together with Kate]]

On a shared screen together with Femke we get introduced to the mail server of Irational by Kate. We use an audio splitter to share the laptop for the call. Kate described her experience as an amateur sysadmin that had to spend a lot of time to learn and set up the mail server. After that we start the process that has been documented [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Server_transfer_documentation#Mail_transfer here].

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 14-56-26.png|thumb|Screenshot from the TITiPI’s mail transfer with Kate, Femke and Aggeliki during a three hours online call]]

Irational uses the Alpine email client. Kate takes us its depths. That is where we start to set up our new email accounts before we configure them in Thunderbird. Femke gets excited on the fact that she can send emails to other Irational accounts through the terminal.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 15-15-07.png|thumb|Screenshot from the terminal using the email client [https://alpineapp.email/ Alpine]]]

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 17-04-20.png|thumb|Screenhost from the moment of looking for the syntax of the TXT records. Finding the right syntax for this value was the biggest challenge. This is part of the ''trust relationships'' between the different providers]]

After some more DNS configurations we test if it is possible to exchange emails with ‘outside’ accounts and especially with Gmail that has many security filters for mail servers other than the commercial ones.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-15 13-59-52.png|thumb|Screenshot from exchanging test emails with a Gmail account]]

After three hours of tryouts we manage to make it work! Very proudly and with enjoyment for sharing a technical task together we say goodbye to each other and arrange a next meeting for a final check up.

=== A choice that comes with discomforts ===
Just one day before the start of TITiPI’s server transfer away from Linode on the 28th of November, Helen found the Swiss server ungleich.ch and it seemed like an interesting choice because of the small scale (in terms of community and servers), their experimental attitude and their choice to reduce energy consumption; they avoid using systems for cooling their servers by spreading the servers at the Swiss mountains in old, abandoned buildings.

Ungleich.ch is one of the good options but it is more expensive than other providers. They offer a cheaper choice by choosing to have only ‘ipv6’. But we had to dig in to understand the difference of ipv4 and ipv6. From wikipedia: “IPv6 is the most recent version of the Internet Protocol, developed to deal with the long-anticipated problem of IPv4 address exhaustion” We found a [https://stats.labs.apnic.net/ipv6 map] that shows which countries have implemented IPv6 and it seems that if we only use this address then many places won’t have access to the website of TITiPI. We choose to have both addresses.

We also notice that this provider is using Stripe for their payment system. In a [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Frontier parallel universe] TITiPI gives attention to and critique Stripe because of its connections with the Carbon Removal industry.

[[File:Firefox Screenshot 2023-11-28T12-32-24.775Z.png|thumb|Screenshot from the purchase web page of [https://ungleich.ch/u/projects/data-center-light/ Ungleich.ch] payment system with Stripe (accessed 28/11/2023)]]Another urgency appears while we are looking at different choices; together with many other organisations, we have been thinking about ways to host and maintain infrastructures in solidarity with communities and networks we are part of. This would mean, for example, hosting digitally a Palestinian video film archive, or research by sex workers. Solidarity is only partially a question of caring for privacy and security because it matters where and how we host our digital infrastructures and whether these spaces do or do not support the flourishing of different lives and struggles. This need make us think again if the server we choose would be suitable for something like that.

Constant and Servus are two accomplice servers that already provide to TITiPI some of their services. Zaclys is a member of Chatons that support open source values and it is located in France. We contacted them to see if they could be an option but we didn't get an answer back.

Part of the desires of an infrastructure that cares we wanted to work with a company that provides ‘green’ infrastructure. Greenhost seems to be a good choice for that and also because it has a positioning as an alternative to AWS, it provides a familiar interface to us, good support and backup option. So far great, but what about its ‘green’ hosting vision? Is it a solarpunk vision, a green cloud utopia? Is their infrastructure resource ‘hungry’? And what are the privacy limits when the material hosted in the servers is political or sensitive?

We choose Greenhost with all the discomforts that this choice entails and with the desire to keep the critique and dialogue alive.

Only by December 2023 we manage to arrange a call with one of Greenhost’s former Managing Directors to get a feeling and more information about their approach and sensitivity. According to him, Greenhost exists in the intersection of activism and technology. It provides consultancy, sustainability solutions in tech projects and structured ''maintenance''; they go for best quality with lowest environmental impact; they maintain the same hardware as much as possible and balance that with higher efficiency; they keep backups at an already existing data center in the university of Amsterdam.
=== Installing, transferring, saving, copying, … ===
On the 28th of November sitting on the sunny corner of the couch next to the radiator, and with warm coffee cups waiting for us on a low table, Femke and I cover our legs with a blanket and open our laptops.

I ask Femke to 'jump' in a ''tmux'' session for sharing ''terminal'' with this command: <code>''sudo'' ''tmux'' attach -t webserver</code>. We start by cleaning the old server and make backups of the files.

We take a lunch break. Femke finds out that if we eat three recurrent meals every week in the office we can have a nice variety of food; lentiles soup, orecchiette pasta with brocoli, rizzoto with mushrooms and lots of fruits. Sometime ago we decided to make multiple short breaks throughout the day because of computer fatigue. The next day we set up the new server and install all the necessary software including a new version of the MediaWiki. We arrange a meeting with Martino Morandi, member of Constant, who created the wiki-to-pdf to help us installing this software and transfer the MediaWiki in the new server. On the 1st of December we successfully install the wiki-to-pdf and because of limited time we decided to meet one more time at the end of the month for the rest.

[[File:Virtual-env-debian.png|thumb|Screenshot from the wiki-to-pdf installation to the new server with Martino, Femke, Aggeliki. Debian supports a different way to create virtual environments for installing python packages and libraries. We try it but it failed.]]

On the 28th we meet with Martino online to complete the transfer, which includes copying the old database of MediaWiki, activate the old plugins and fix any issues on the way. We are all located in different countries (Italy, Greece, Belgium) and so we share a ''tmux'' session. We follow the guides but on the way we had to do some research and configure a lot of things to make the MediaWiki work. Martino was hunting a php module. It seemed that php has shifted to free software culture in an attempt to find another business model. It is not surprising it happens in the context of Ubuntu. The issue is recorded [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Server_transfer_documentation#MediaWiki_upgrade_issues here].

[[File:Firefox Screenshot 2024-01-10T13-59-40.398Z.png|thumb|"Is Titipi.org down?" Helen asks after the transfer. It seems that her browser cache was preventing her from seeing the website. Screenshot from the website [https://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/ downforeveryoneorjustme.com/]|301x301px]]

The process is documented in our diary and then transferred to a [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Server_transfer_documentation wiki page]. By January 2024 the server transfer and the deletion of our Linode account has been completed.

== Glossaries ==

Italicized terms in the report are included in these glossaries:

* [https://varia.zone/ATNOFS/ATNOFS-screen.pdf#page=11 Glossary of A Traversal Network of Feminist Servers (ATNOFS) publication]
* [[Glossary|TITiPI's glossary]]

== References ==

* Panashe Chigumadzi, ‘Can White South Africa Live up to Ubuntu, the African Philosophy Tutu Globalised?’, The Guardian, 31 December 2021, sec. Opinion, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec/31/white-south-africa-ubuntu-african-tutu
* ‘Community Servers - Monoskop’, accessed 16 July 2024, https://monoskop.org/Community_servers
* David Carroll, ‘How To Open An Outpost In Social Media Exile | TechPolicy.Press’, Tech Policy Press, 26 November 2022, <nowiki>https://techpolicy.press/how-to-open-an-outpost-in-social-media-exile</nowiki>.
* Femke Snelting, ‘Infrastructure Solidarity’, Ardeth. A Magazine on the Power of the Project, no. 8 (1 November 2021): 45–47
* ‘Master-Slave Terminology Alternatives You Can Use Right Now | TheServerSide’, TheServerSide.com, accessed 16 July 2024, https://www.theserverside.com/opinion/Master-slave-terminology-alternatives-you-can-use-right-now
* ‘Ubuntu: A Black Radical Demand for Reparations’, THE FUNAMBULIST MAGAZINE, 25 October 2023, https://thefunambulist.net/magazine/redefining-our-terms/ubuntu-a-black-radical-demand-for-reparations.

== Colophon ==

The text had been drafted in <nowiki>https://pad.xpub.nl</nowiki> in Markdown and then transferred in this wiki.

== Footnotes ==

From cloud to crowd: a report on a server transfer

2024-10-17T11:53:37Z

Angeliki:

= From cloud to crowd<ref>The term comes from ... (not sure if it is included in the title)</ref>: A report on a server transfer =

This text is a report on a server migration that took place within the institutional framework of [https://titipi.org/ The Institute for Technology in the Public Interest (TITiPI)], a trans-practice gathering of activists, artists, engineers and theorists. The report is an infrastructural ethnography<ref>[explain--footnote]</ref> and aims to rethink, through a technical process, what ''hosting'' a server means for a community, institution, cultural organisation dealing with technological discomforts and complex digital infrastructures.

Starting from a broad definition a ''server'' is a computer, a combination of software and hardware or an operating system and a physical machine that provides computing services, such as web hosting and cloud storage, via a network (Internet). A ''server migration'' is the process of moving data and transferring software from one server to another with the use of specified tools. Performing such process accommodates a practical and technical solution to fix the problem of an outdated server that is slow or has limited storage.

This report problematizes the materiality of a server, its location, scale, community, architecture and substantial elements, and how and what is migrated when we decide to change servers. The urgency of this issue derives from the question of how does an organisation's digital infrastructure affect its values, structure and infrastructural imaginations? TITiPI treats web hosting with attention, rather than as an outsourced tech service, by including it in the thinking and reflection of its organisational structure. In times of server providers’ scaling up ( ‘''cloud hosting''’ ) and digitizing governmental bureaucracies what does it mean to host your own digital space for supporting your communities and work? Is it necessary to have a sovereign and independent infrastructure? What (non-)dependencies are chosen or taken for granted by institutions when using hosting services?

As a researcher at TITiPI I have been caring for the task to investigate this server migration, that includes web hosting and email, and execute it together with TITiPI’s member Femke Snelting. We meet weekly to keep track and make decisions. We share a ''markdown'' file hosted in the [https://gitlab.constantvzw.org/titipi/ online code repository of the cultural association Constant] that includes a diary of the server migration and reflections. Every now and then we meet online with our colleague Helen Pritchard, to discuss and share the process. This report includes extracts from the server diary and stories from the process.

== Migration or …? ==

In the cold Autumn of 2023 in the newly installed office of TITiPI located in the Koekelberg district of Brussels, I open the browser Chromium in my computer, in order to quickly translate − with the installed Google Translate plugin − the web pages of the different cooperatives, associations, companies that provide hosting services. While doing that I cannot ignore a persistent thought regarding the word ‘migration’ under this context. What does it mean to flatten the experience of migration into a technical term to describe the movement from one server to the other? In what contexts such choices of language are made and who decides about the terminology?

My computer runs the ''open source'' operating system Ubuntu. The term ‘Ubuntu’ is also a word extracted from its original context. It is coming from the African Ubuntu philosophy. According to the creators of the software:

<blockquote>ubuntu |oǒ’boǒntoō| Ubuntu is an ancient African word meaning ‘humanity to others’. It is often described as reminding us that ‘I am what I am because of who we all are’. We bring the spirit of Ubuntu to the world of computers and software. The Ubuntu distribution represents the best of what the world’s software community has shared with the world. <ref>‘About the Ubuntu Project’, Ubuntu, accessed 16 July 2024, https://ubuntu.com/about</ref>
</blockquote>

Paraphrasing [https://thefunambulist.net/magazine/redefining-our-terms/ubuntu-a-black-radical-demand-for-reparations Panashe Chigumadzi] words: in contrast to the western conception of the human as individual, the African conception of the person is a social being who is always becoming, defined by and being responsible for the personhood of the others. "(T)he African philosophy best understood through the proverb found in Bantu languages across the continent, 'umuntu ngumuntu ngabanye bantu' (a person is a person through other people". <ref>Panashe Chigumadzi, ‘Can White South Africa Live up to Ubuntu, the African Philosophy Tutu Globalised?’, The Guardian, 31 December 2021, sec. Opinion, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec/31/white-south-africa-ubuntu-african-tutu</ref>

<blockquote>(D)espite the flourishing of Ubuntu in post-apartheid discourse, lending its name to software, businesses, books and philanthropic organisations, South Africa is a country in which we have, as Dladla argues, Ubuntu without Abantu. Just as Black people have been dispossessed of their land, Ubuntu has been dispossessed of its deeply radical demands for ethical historical and social relations among people. (...) (P)ost apartheid Ubuntu mistranslation 'I am because we are', individualized and interpersonalised Ubuntu, Christianised Ubuntu, mistranslated in order to justify crimes and violence. In Ubuntu violence can be punished even after generations, the misinterpretation of the term allowed individual forgiveness. <ref>‘Ubuntu: A Black Radical Demand for Reparations’, THE FUNAMBULIST MAGAZINE, 25 October 2023, https://thefunambulist.net/magazine/redefining-our-terms/ubuntu-a-black-radical-demand-for-reparations</ref>
</blockquote>I skip these thoughts and I continue browsing the list of servers. While doing so I encounter an [https://www.oziosi.org/ autonomous server] with the DeepL translated title: “:: a shelter for digital exiles ::” accommodated by the image of a woman, a child and a man leaving their home and an introduction: “Exiled from the global village of social networks, we claim an internet that is a simple means of communication: immaterial, anonymous, imaginary, public when it makes sense and secret when we feel the need.”. [https://techpolicy.press/how-to-open-an-outpost-in-social-media-exile/ ‘Social media exiles’] and ‘Twitter migration’ are terms used often after Twitter became X and users have moved to the Fediverse or other alternatives.

Using metaphors like that for a technical process de-contextualizes a word from its origins and may reveal the privileged place these extractions come from, often dominated by white male computer engineers who get inspiration from struggles happening elsewhere. Could this terminology be shifted towards other words? Could words like transfer, share, move, copy, re-install, shift replace the word ‘migration’? From this point on in the report I decide to pick and use the term ‘transfer’.

[[File:Screenshot 2023-10-07 at 11-31-21 esiliati.org.png|thumb|Screenshot of webpage of self-organised server mentioning the term 'digital exiles' ]]

== TITiPI’s case of server transfer ==
On the 27th of September, sitting at the long desks side to side, Femke and I have an online call with Helen, while looking at the depths of our Virtual Private Server (VPS), provided by Linode, that runs Ubuntu on our laptop screens. Linode is an American hosting provider focusing on ''Linux''-based virtual machines originally. The server is physically located in the UK. TITiPI currently uses the Linode server that Helen set up for hosting her own projects. They have been paying for Linode’s monthly fees so far.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-10-11 14-47-06.png|thumb|Screenshot of Linode Ubuntu server overview and ''terminal'' that shows a moment of figuring out what takes space in the server through ''SSH'' access]]

At the time it seemed a good choice, because Linode is based in UK, is ''Linux'' friendly and an alternative to Amazon Web Services (AWS), even though the company was already identifying as ‘''cloud hosting''’. But in February 2023 it has been acquired by the American company Akamai that aims to scale up for [https://www.linode.com/global-infrastructure/ “computing power, optimizing performance and agility.”]. Akamai is actively changing its server policies into an increasingly intense cloud logic. This pushed forward the desire to move to a new place.

[[File:Screenshot 2023-10-11 at 14-50-47 Cloud Computing & Linux Servers Alternative to AWS Linode.png|thumb|Screenshot of Linode website referring to scalability]]

At the moment in Linode we run pico, a flat CMS for the website https://titipi.org. There is a Mediawiki (you are reading a Mediawiki page right now) for notes and collective writing. On the wiki, we also publish our statutes, guidelines and other instituting documents. The wiki has a custom extension, called wiki-to-pdf. Each of these services will need a different way to be transferred. One approach is to build the new server space from scratch, copy the data with rsync and transfer only the Mediawiki, which includes installing a new version and copy the database and the media files.

While preparing to transfer the tools we are defining what are the practical needs and desirable priorities. What fantasies of servers we have; a local physical server hosted in a small computer Raspberry Pi in the office; a software defined server located in a virtual location of a physical machine somewhere in the Alps? We ended up on these server requirements:
* SSH access and VPS
* affordable price (around €20/month)
* Free Software operating system, preferably Debian
* community work is included − desire to slow down, resist to scaling and growth or ‘decloudification’ (small network of partners, less virtualization approach, location of servers nearby etc)
* 25-40GB storage space, 1-2 cores, 2-4GB RAM
* environmental angle
* service support in a language that we all understand (English mostly)

This server transfer happens with an intersectional and feminist approach and the desire to keep questioning. While moving away from Linode we include both the technical and the conceptual thinking in the process. There are a few things that we are looking at:
* Where to be transferred to or what services to transfer to?
* How to be transferred and what to transfer?
* What terminology, language we use?
* What (other) narratives of server hosting can we construct?
TITiPI seeks to exist with an infrastructure that supports inter-dependent practices and solidarity across struggles. It develops [https://titipi.org/wiki-to-pdf/unfold/Counter_Cloud_Action_Plan Counter Cloud Actions] as a way to scale down, de-cloudify, articulate, contest and re-imagine the implications of computational infrastructures (‘the cloud’). We are looking for servers that aspire some of these values:

<blockquote>TITiPI develop tools from feminisms, queer theory, ''Free, Libre and Open Source'' software, intersectionality, anti-coloniality, disability studies, historical materialism and artistic practice to generate currently inexistent vocabularies, imaginaries and methodologies. TITiPI functions as an infrastructure to establish new ways in which socio-technical practices and technologies might support the public interest. <ref>TITiPI, ‘Infrables’, Tangible Cloud Archives, https://docs.tangible-cloud.be/publications-pdf/02_snelting.pdf.</ref></blockquote>

=== A narrative of relational infrastructure and infra-mutuality ===
[[File:Elastic solidarities.png|thumb]]
In June 2023 TITiPI received an email from Gandi to renew the domain titipi.org in 6 days, not realising that at the same time we would need to start paying for our titipi.org email hosting. We had missed reading to the end of another email sent in the middle of June, entitled: 'Pricing update'. Thus we decide to transfer the email besides the web hosting.

We consider to work with Kate Rich to move our mailboxes to the [http://irational.org/ Irational server], soon to be installed on a Raspberry Pi, hosted at Servus. We plan to do this transition slowly and until then renew the emails for 1-2 months through Gandi. Irational server resists virtualization, and as an art community project it makes it an interesting choice.

But why to go through all this effort and not just use one cloud server with mailboxes, file storage and web server together? TITiPI’s response to the question of building institutional digital infrastructure embodies an archipelagic and non-sovereign approach to dependencies. Rather than building a centralised server based on ‘cloud’ from which connections with other institutions and collectives can happen, it conceptualizes inter-infrastructural practices; from the creation of a [https://gitlab.constantvzw.org/titipi/burrow backup script] for saving locally etherpad pads from other servers, hosting emails in an art server (https://irational.org), creating an [https://books.lumbung.space/shelf/26 online bookshelf] on lumbung.space, using the ''XMPP'' chat from Varia to recording conversations with the ''sysadmin'' that maintain the other servers. The institution re-imagines technological dependencies in dialogue with cultural institutions and art collectives. [[File:Titipi-infra-diagram-JAN-24.png|thumb|none|alt=A diagram of TITiPI’s infrastructure. The diagram categorizes the elements according to tools/software (box), structure/organisational form (circle) and place (dashed line). For example Jitsi is the software, Greenhost is the organisation, meet.greenhost.net is the place.|A diagram of TITiPI’s infrastructure. The diagram categorizes the elements according to tools/software (box), structure/organisational form (circle) and place (dashed line). For example Jitsi is the software, Greenhost is the organisation, meet.greenhost.net is the place.]]

How to give life to the common space of TITiPI’s hosting infrastructures? What about building up social dependencies between the ones that host and the ones who are hosted as opposed to a solely technical independence? Infrastructural imaginations are often built by the ''Big Tech'' industry and governmental institutions. Instead, TITiPI practices a fluid inter-institutional approach supported by [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Infra_colophon a variety of hosts].

=== Selection of server providers ===
On the 7th of November through a shared screen at the [https://meet.greenhost.net/ video conferencing software Jitsi of Greenhost] we all three check a list of server providers I collected on a spreadsheet hosted in Constant’s cloud storage (built with the open source Nextcloud software) where TITiPI has an account. I looked at associations, companies, cooperatives, communities coming from commercial context to social struggles, activist, feminist and other. Through a [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/List_server_networks list of networks] I found various servers mainly from Latin America and Europe.

The concept of autonomy, sovereignty, independence or self-managing characterizes most of the servers in the list. Some of them, like [https://www.autistici.org/ Autistici] promote this concept as a way to support anti-capitalist infrastructure and protect the privacy of the users as opposed to the ''Big Tech'' software practices.

<blockquote>The vision is that we - the members of the cooperative - own our own data. This implies and has as a consequence that we will have to own our own infrastructure and have insight and control over the software we use to communicate on the web.<ref>‘Community Servers - Monoskop’, accessed 16 July 2024, https://monoskop.org/Community_servers</ref></blockquote>

Femke had a hunch: "‘technological sovereignty’ and ‘data-sovereignty’ continue to be orientation devices to organise around. ‘Sovereignty’, together with ‘freedom’, ‘independence’ and ‘autonomy’, form an ideological cluster that implicitly and sometimes explicitly foregrounds separation rather than relation."

Servers can act as independent spaces but are also cultural devices and vibrant places. They can manifest different aspects of a full life and reach out to a multiplicity of entities.

Servus and Greenhost, seem to be two of our best choices as they cover a lot of the priorities and values of TITiPI. As one can read from their descriptions they both strive for owning their own data servers and data nodes (they have their own ''IP addresses'') and be independent from third parties. Their big difference is the scale of the infrastructure and their community and network.

<blockquote>Greenhost fully owns and controls its hardware, infrastructure and uplinks. This ensures independence from third parties and proper access control. On this hardware we run our fully virtualised platform. We stand for an Open Internet, and have always embraced open source software.<ref>‘Greenhost.Net | the Sustainable Web’, accessed 16 July 2024, https://greenhost.net/.</ref></blockquote>

<blockquote>We (Servus) do not pass on any data to third parties. You will not receive commercial advertising from us or third parties. We are easily accessible and answer your questions personally. We and our servers are located at Kirchengasse 4 in Linz, Austria.<ref>‘Book Of Servus’, Book Of Servus, accessed 16 July 2024, https://book.servus.at/en/home/.</ref></blockquote>

Even though Greenhost wants to reduce ecological damage, it does that mainly through hardware reductions and does not address scale. They have plans to expand and are part of a network of partners that want to transform Rotterdam into a big hub of data nodes for the upcoming digital transition. But Greenhost is not that big as Linode that goes for [https://www.akamai.com/newsroom/press-release/akamai-takes-cloud-computing-to-the-edge| "(p)lanetary scale"]. Servus on the other hand has one room of data servers, is closer to the scale of their community and maintain personal relations with them.

=== Community server, feminist server, trans*feminist server, radical server, autonomous server, commercial server, art server, free server, ethical server, solidarity-based server, cooperative server, associative server, independent server, alternative server, non-commercial server, … ===
The spreadsheet starts to grow because of an endless burrow of small and big providers.

Some are outdated. 
Some are messy. 
Some have broken links. 
Some are [https://www.julienth37.fr/vps hard to understand]. 
Some require [https://www.actiu.info/index.en.html a lot of engagement]. 
Some use a language that imitates the narratives of ''Big Tech'' and ''agile'' computing. 
Some promote seamless “promissory logic” and “high hopes for a brighter future” [ref] 
Some are big or are scaling up (in matter of space, data centers, partners, users etc). 
Some support NGO’s or sport clubs.

[[File:Screenshot 2023-10-11 at 15-06-35 co-operative web-crop.png|thumb|Screenshot from main page of Co-op Web]]

We also looked at their financial model. Many radical servers stay small, are volunteer based, like [https://www.autistici.org/ Autistici]. and go for horizontal organisational structures. Feminist and activist servers provide space in the internet for the ones who don’t have the means to organise otherwise. The resources and ways of organising for these servers are different from the cooperatives or associations whose structure is inherited from the model they are registered with.

[[File:ATNOFS-Varia-insert-ooooo.jpg|thumb|ooooo atnofs insert diagrams from varia, systerserver, servus]]

TITiPI acknowledges and is connected to the history of community, art and feminist servers and wants to support this network. The art servers started as a way to make autonomous self-managed servers that support artists values and practices. They are often financed by cultural or private funds.

<blockquote>Irational.org began in the 1990s, I joined in 2010. At that time Irational was more active as an art collective who were operating a shared server. Then in 2016, coinciding with a server upgrade, we disbanded and re-formed specifically as a Linux server collective, which is a better description of what Irational is now. A small group of artists who are interested in running a Linux server together. (...) Part of Irational's interest has always been in running a physical server, not a virtual machine as is nearly ubiquitous now. When I started out as Irational sysadmin, we were using rescued servers from commercial server farms – fully working computers that were being thrown out as part of the perpetual cycle of upgrades. We would install Linux on a discarded machine, and get low-cost hosting at a server farm in London. Then when our previous server was reaching the end of its life, this was in 2016, we also felt a tectonic shift. There was a large-scale move to virtualisation, people weren't running individual physical servers in the same way as before, and the supply of deprecated rack mount servers seemed to have dried up. So for the first time we bought a replacement server brand new, and drove it to Cheltenham in west England where we installed it in a server farm run by gamers – one of the few places we could find that was still prepared to host a single machine. 

— quote from [[None of this experiment is evident|interview of Kate Rich by Femke Snelting]] </blockquote>

The screen seems to become brighter as my eyes get tired. What if we skip the online hosting and create a local physical server at TITiPI’s office next to the desks, in a corner, on a Raspberry Pi? All our data would stay on this machine and we would connect with SSH from home, but then we will also have to maintain it ourselves. There is something there about the romanticism of a physical toolbox as a sovereign object. If we choose to do that we will need to think of a backup plan as our data will stay offline and the server will rely on the building's network bandwidth and fire protection system. A second option is to have our own server in a rack at Servus, where we would have connection to high speed reliable internet but electricity costs would be higher and we would rely to somebody else if we need to turn the server off and on. We think to do that with the email hosting that we would share with Irational, where we have root access inside someone else's physical server hosted in Servus. The third option is VPS which is a cloud technology but we have access to our own virtual machine that we can start and stop from distance.

Our list has been reduced because of our priorities. We need SSH and we would like to have a VPS. Who has resources for providing VPS? Resources of labour, time, finances, technical knowledge. This made self-defined feminist servers fall out of the selection. How to be financially sustainable, while keeping up with your own values? How to keep up with infrastructural ''maintenance'' if the scale of the users, community, members and data is big?

<blockquote>The services we offer have no defined price, but as you may easily imagine, keeping the whole system working (i.e. hardware and hosting) is very expensive (at the moment it ranges around 13,000 euro every year).<ref>‘Autistici.Org - Services’, accessed 16 July 2024, https://www.autistici.org/services/</ref></blockquote>

Servus and Maadix provide a series of ''free/libre'' tools that can be installed separately through their interface but they also provide a VPS with SSH access. With Greenhost, Hetzner and Linode there is more flexibility: you can create your own VPS and customize it for your own needs through their interface or the ''terminal'' and install whatever tools you want from scratch without a visual interface.

Technical information and knowledge of digital infrastructure circulate between groups that are tech-oriented with a difficulty to cross with other groups, including feminist servers. The ''sysadmin'' tasks are mostly taken by cis men but feminist servers are radical about that. They find important to have sysadmins that are not cis men. For example Systerserver and Anarchaserver are learning collectively by themselves how to do this task.

Many of the servers in the list provide only tools, as a radical way to support small groups, collectives, activists that need privacy and shifting away from Google drive when they want to organise politically and socially. It seems that being limited to tool packages instead of having full access to a server can make things comprehensible and compact for these small groups that have limited sysadmin knowledge or can’t hire a technician.

[[File:Screenshot 2023-10-07 at 12-23-26 FuturEtic - Services en lignes libres & éthiques-2.png|Screenshot of main page with services by [https://futuretic.fr/ FuturEtic]|thumb]]

[[File:Scrnli 12 10 2023 13-14-32.png|thumb|Screenshot of tools from codigosur]]

== Final decision and server transfers (email and webhosting) ==

We are about to make our decision! Our list ended up to be very small.

On 7th of November in an online call between Helen in Basel, Femke in Brussels and Aggeliki in Rotterdam we limited our list to four options: Constant, Greenhost, Servus, Zaclys. The selection consists of a diversity of scales and positioning that we found interesting to think of. First, we move on with the decision to transfer our mailboxes to Irational hosted at Servus. The rest of the functionalities will be hosted somewhere else.

From our conversations with Femke: “The choice for irational.org opens the possibility for discussions around dependencies, trust and frictions within shared collective servers. Irational.org is an ally art server who uses and maintains its own server for many years. Hosting such a private service at a friend’s environment doesn’t come only with convenience. The closeness to the material of the server makes the dependency more tangible.”

[[File:White-magenta-painful.jpg|thumb|Towel design by psaroskalazines. Image from their website]]

Femke and I are planning different moments for the server transfer to happen in the office of TITiPI. What it is about to take place comes down into three moments; the backup and save of data from the old server, the installation of the necessary software in the new server and the transfer of the old data in the new server.

Specifically we are following these steps:

* Mail transfer from Gandi to irational
* Create a Virtual Private Server (VPS) in the new server
* Install Apache2 and configure domains
* Install and migrate MediaWiki
** Back up the wiki on the Linode VPS
** Upgrade MediaWiki in Linode
** Install MediaWiki and plugins in the Greenhost VPS
** Transfer database and media files from Linode to Greenhost
* Install Wiki-to-pdf
* Install Pico
* Install and configure Certbot

We find ourselves between two virtual spaces and one office, among other indirectly connected spaces like the rooms of our distant collaborators and the office locations of the servers.

=== Trust relationships ===
By now, 14th of November 2023, the office is warm and cozy. Throughout the time I am writing this report I have been noticing a lot of slow and small efforts to renovate the building and set up the heating, by the artists and organisations who share the space with TITiPI. Another infrastructure that needs care.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 15-06-42.png|thumb|Femke and Aggeliki entering Irational’s server space with Kate]]

On a shared screen together with Femke we get introduced to the mail server of Irational by Kate. We use an audio splitter to share the laptop for the call. Kate described her experience as an amateur sysadmin that had to spend a lot of time to learn and set up the mail server. After that we start the process that has been documented [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Server_transfer_documentation#Mail_transfer here].

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 14-56-26.png|thumb|Screenshot from the TITiPI’s mail transfer with Kate, Femke and Aggeliki during an online 3 hours call]]

Irational uses the Alpine email client. Kate takes us its depths. That is where we start to set up our new email accounts before we configure them in Thunderbird. Femke gets excited on the fact that she can send emails to other Irational accounts through the terminal.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 15-15-07.png|thumb|Using the email client Alpine]]

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 17-04-20.png|thumb|Screenhost from the moment of looking for the syntax of the TXT records. Finding the right syntax for this value was the biggest challenge. This is part of the ''trust relationships'' between the different providers]]

After some more DNS configurations we test if it is possible to exchange emails with ‘outside’ accounts and especially with Gmail that has many security filters for mail servers other than the commercial ones.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-15 13-59-52.png|thumb|Exchange test emails with a Gmail account]]

After three hours of tryouts we manage to make it work! Very proudly and with enjoyment for sharing a technical task together we say goodbye to each other and arrange a next meeting for a final check up.

=== A choice that comes with discomforts ===
Just one day before the start of TITiPI’s server transfer away from Linode on the 28th of November, Helen found the Swiss server ungleich.ch and it seemed like an interesting choice because of the small scale (in terms of community and servers), their experimental attitude and their choice to reduce energy consumption; they avoid using systems for cooling their servers by spreading the servers at the Swiss mountains in old, abandoned buildings.

Ungleich.ch is one of the good options but it is more expensive than other providers. They offer a cheaper choice by choosing to have only ‘ipv6’. But we had to dig in to understand the difference of ipv4 and ipv6. From wikipedia: “IPv6 is the most recent version of the Internet Protocol, developed to deal with the long-anticipated problem of IPv4 address exhaustion” We found a [https://stats.labs.apnic.net/ipv6 map] that shows which countries have implemented IPv6 and it seems that if we only use this address then many places won’t have access to the website of TITiPI. We choose to have both addresses.

We also notice that this provider is using Stripe for their payment system. In a [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Frontier parallel universe] TITiPI gives attention to and critique Stripe because of its connections with the Carbon Removal industry.

[[File:Firefox Screenshot 2023-11-28T12-32-24.775Z.png|thumb|Ungleich.ch payment system with Stripe]]Another urgency appears while we are looking at different choices; together with many other organisations, we have been thinking about ways to host and maintain infrastructures in solidarity with communities and networks we are part of. This would mean, for example, hosting digitally a Palestinian video film archive, or research by sex workers. Solidarity is only partially a question of caring for privacy and security because it matters where and how we host our digital infrastructures and whether these spaces do or do not support the flourishing of different lives and struggles. This need make us think again if the server we choose would be suitable for something like that.

Constant and Servus are two accomplice servers that already provide to TITiPI some of their services. Zaclys is a member of Chatons that support open source values and it is located in France. We contacted them to see if they could be an option but we didn't get an answer back.

Part of the desires of an infrastructure that cares we wanted to work with a company that provides ‘green’ infrastructure. Greenhost seems to be a good choice for that and also because it has a positioning as an alternative to AWS, it provides a familiar interface to us, good support and backup option. So far great, but what about its ‘green’ hosting vision? Is it a solarpunk vision, a green cloud utopia? Is their infrastructure resource ‘hungry’? And what are the privacy limits when the material hosted in the servers is political or sensitive?

We choose Greenhost with all the discomforts that this choice entails and with the desire to keep the critique and dialogue alive.

Only by December 2023 we manage to arrange a call with one of Greenhost’s former Managing Directors to get a feeling and more information about their approach and sensitivity. According to him, Greenhost exists in the intersection of activism and technology. It provides consultancy, sustainability solutions in tech projects and structured ''maintenance''; they go for best quality with lowest environmental impact; they maintain the same hardware as much as possible and balance that with higher efficiency; they keep backups at an already existing data center in the university of Amsterdam.
=== Installing, transferring, saving, copying, … ===
On the 28th of November sitting on the sunny corner of the couch next to the radiator, and with warm coffee cups waiting for us on a low table, Femke and I cover our legs with a blanket and open our laptops.

I ask Femke to 'jump' in a ''tmux'' session for sharing ''terminal'' with this command: <code>''sudo'' ''tmux'' attach -t webserver</code>. We start by cleaning the old server and make backups of the files.

We take a lunch break. Femke finds out that if we eat three recurrent meals every week in the office we can have a nice variety of food; lentiles soup, orecchiette pasta with brocoli, rizzoto with mushrooms and lots of fruits. Sometime ago we decided to make multiple short breaks throughout the day because of computer fatigue. The next day we set up the new server and install all the necessary software including a new version of the MediaWiki. We arrange a meeting with Martino Morandi, member of Constant, who created the wiki-to-pdf to help us installing this software and transfer the MediaWiki in the new server. On the 1st of December we successfully install the wiki-to-pdf and because of limited time we decided to meet one more time at the end of the month for the rest.

[[File:Virtual-env-debian.png|thumb|Screenshot from the wiki-to-pdf installation to the new server with Martino, Femke, Aggeliki. Debian supports a different way to create virtual environments for installing python packages and libraries. We try it but it failed.]]

On the 28th we meet with Martino online to complete the transfer, which includes copying the old database of MediaWiki, activate the old plugins and fix any issues on the way. We are all located in different countries (Italy, Greece, Belgium) and so we share a ''tmux'' session. We follow the guides but on the way we had to do some research and configure a lot of things to make the MediaWiki work. Martino was hunting a php module. It seemed that php has shifted to free software culture in an attempt to find another business model. It is not surprising it happens in the context of Ubuntu. The issue is recorded [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Server_transfer_documentation#MediaWiki_upgrade_issues here].

[[File:Firefox Screenshot 2024-01-10T13-59-40.398Z.png|thumb|"Is Titipi.org down?" Helen asks after the transfer. It seems that her browser cache was preventing her from seeing the website]]

The process is documented in our diary and then transferred to a [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Server_transfer_documentation wiki page]. By January 2024 the server transfer and the deletion of our Linode account has been completed.

== Glossaries ==

Italicized terms in the report are included in these glossaries:

* [https://varia.zone/ATNOFS/ATNOFS-screen.pdf#page=11 Glossary of A Traversal Network of Feminist Servers (ATNOFS) publication]
* [[Glossary|TITiPI's glossary]]

== References ==

* Panashe Chigumadzi, ‘Can White South Africa Live up to Ubuntu, the African Philosophy Tutu Globalised?’, The Guardian, 31 December 2021, sec. Opinion, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec/31/white-south-africa-ubuntu-african-tutu
* ‘Community Servers - Monoskop’, accessed 16 July 2024, https://monoskop.org/Community_servers
* David Carroll, ‘How To Open An Outpost In Social Media Exile | TechPolicy.Press’, Tech Policy Press, 26 November 2022, <nowiki>https://techpolicy.press/how-to-open-an-outpost-in-social-media-exile</nowiki>.
* Femke Snelting, ‘Infrastructure Solidarity’, Ardeth. A Magazine on the Power of the Project, no. 8 (1 November 2021): 45–47
* ‘Master-Slave Terminology Alternatives You Can Use Right Now | TheServerSide’, TheServerSide.com, accessed 16 July 2024, https://www.theserverside.com/opinion/Master-slave-terminology-alternatives-you-can-use-right-now
* ‘Ubuntu: A Black Radical Demand for Reparations’, THE FUNAMBULIST MAGAZINE, 25 October 2023, https://thefunambulist.net/magazine/redefining-our-terms/ubuntu-a-black-radical-demand-for-reparations.

== Colophon ==

The text was drafted in <nowiki>https://pad.xpub.nl</nowiki> in Markdown and then transferred in this wiki.

== Footnotes ==

From cloud to crowd: a report on a server transfer

2024-10-17T11:37:00Z

Angeliki:

= From cloud to crowd<ref>The term comes from ... (not sure if it is included in the title)</ref>: A report on a server transfer =

This text is a report on a server migration that took place within the institutional framework of [https://titipi.org/ The Institute for Technology in the Public Interest (TITiPI)], a trans-practice gathering of activists, artists, engineers and theorists. The report is an infrastructural ethnography<ref>[explain--footnote]</ref> and aims to rethink, through a technical process, what ''hosting'' a server means for a community, institution, cultural organisation dealing with technological discomforts and complex digital infrastructures.

Starting from a broad definition a ''server'' is a computer, a combination of software and hardware or an operating system and a physical machine that provides computing services, such as web hosting and cloud storage, via a network (Internet). A ''server migration'' is the process of moving data and transferring software from one server to another with the use of specified tools. Performing such process accommodates a practical and technical solution to fix the problem of an outdated server that is slow or has limited storage.

This report problematizes the materiality of a server, its location, scale, community, architecture and substantial elements, and how and what is migrated when we decide to change servers. The urgency of this issue derives from the question of how does an organisation's digital infrastructure affect its values, structure and infrastructural imaginations? TITiPI treats web hosting with attention, rather than as an outsourced tech service, by including it in the thinking and reflection of its organisational structure. In times of server providers’ scaling up ( ‘''cloud hosting''’ ) and digitizing governmental bureaucracies what does it mean to host your own digital space for supporting your communities and work? Is it necessary to have a sovereign and independent infrastructure? What (non-)dependencies are chosen or taken for granted by institutions when using hosting services?

As a researcher at TITiPI I have been caring for the task to investigate this server migration, that includes web hosting and email, and execute it together with TITiPI’s member Femke Snelting. We meet weekly to keep track and make decisions. We share a ''markdown'' file hosted in the [https://gitlab.constantvzw.org/titipi/ online code repository of the cultural association Constant] that includes a diary of the server migration and reflections. Every now and then we meet online with our colleague Helen Pritchard, to discuss and share the process. This report includes extracts from the server diary and stories from the process.

== Migration or …? ==

In the cold Autumn of 2023 in the newly installed office of TITiPI located in the Koekelberg district of Brussels, I open the browser Chromium in my computer, in order to quickly translate − with the installed Google Translate plugin − the web pages of the different cooperatives, associations, companies that provide hosting services. While doing that I cannot ignore a persistent thought regarding the word ‘migration’ under this context. What does it mean to flatten the experience of migration into a technical term to describe the movement from one server to the other? In what contexts such choices of language are made and who decides about the terminology?

My computer runs the ''open source'' operating system Ubuntu. The term ‘Ubuntu’ is also a word extracted from its original context. It is coming from the African Ubuntu philosophy. According to the creators of the software:

<blockquote>ubuntu |oǒ’boǒntoō| Ubuntu is an ancient African word meaning ‘humanity to others’. It is often described as reminding us that ‘I am what I am because of who we all are’. We bring the spirit of Ubuntu to the world of computers and software. The Ubuntu distribution represents the best of what the world’s software community has shared with the world. <ref>‘About the Ubuntu Project’, Ubuntu, accessed 16 July 2024, https://ubuntu.com/about</ref>
</blockquote>

Paraphrasing [https://thefunambulist.net/magazine/redefining-our-terms/ubuntu-a-black-radical-demand-for-reparations Panashe Chigumadzi] words: in contrast to the western conception of the human as individual, the African conception of the person is a social being who is always becoming, defined by and being responsible for the personhood of the others. "(T)he African philosophy best understood through the proverb found in Bantu languages across the continent, 'umuntu ngumuntu ngabanye bantu' (a person is a person through other people". <ref>Panashe Chigumadzi, ‘Can White South Africa Live up to Ubuntu, the African Philosophy Tutu Globalised?’, The Guardian, 31 December 2021, sec. Opinion, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec/31/white-south-africa-ubuntu-african-tutu</ref>

<blockquote>(D)espite the flourishing of Ubuntu in post-apartheid discourse, lending its name to software, businesses, books and philanthropic organisations, South Africa is a country in which we have, as Dladla argues, Ubuntu without Abantu. Just as Black people have been dispossessed of their land, Ubuntu has been dispossessed of its deeply radical demands for ethical historical and social relations among people. (...) (P)ost apartheid Ubuntu mistranslation 'I am because we are', individualized and interpersonalised Ubuntu, Christianised Ubuntu, mistranslated in order to justify crimes and violence. In Ubuntu violence can be punished even after generations, the misinterpretation of the term allowed individual forgiveness. <ref>‘Ubuntu: A Black Radical Demand for Reparations’, THE FUNAMBULIST MAGAZINE, 25 October 2023, https://thefunambulist.net/magazine/redefining-our-terms/ubuntu-a-black-radical-demand-for-reparations</ref>
</blockquote>I skip these thoughts and I continue browsing the list of servers. While doing so I encounter an [https://www.oziosi.org/ autonomous server] with the DeepL translated title: “:: a shelter for digital exiles ::” accommodated by the image of a woman, a child and a man leaving their home and an introduction: “Exiled from the global village of social networks, we claim an internet that is a simple means of communication: immaterial, anonymous, imaginary, public when it makes sense and secret when we feel the need.”. [https://techpolicy.press/how-to-open-an-outpost-in-social-media-exile/ ‘Social media exiles’] and ‘Twitter migration’ are terms used often after Twitter became X and users have moved to the Fediverse or other alternatives.

Using metaphors like that for a technical process de-contextualizes a word from its origins and may reveal the privileged place these extractions come from, often dominated by white male computer engineers who get inspiration from struggles happening elsewhere. Could this terminology be shifted towards other words? Could words like transfer, share, move, copy, re-install, shift replace the word ‘migration’? From this point on in the report I decide to pick and use the term ‘transfer’.

[[File:Screenshot 2023-10-07 at 11-31-21 esiliati.org.png|thumb|Screenshot of webpage of self-organised server mentioning the term 'digital exiles' ]]

== TITiPI’s case of server transfer ==
On the 27th of September, sitting at the long desks side to side, Femke and I have an online call with Helen, while looking at the depths of our Virtual Private Server (VPS), provided by Linode, that runs Ubuntu on our laptop screens. Linode is an American hosting provider focusing on ''Linux''-based virtual machines originally. The server is physically located in the UK. TITiPI currently uses the Linode server that Helen set up for hosting her own projects. They have been paying for Linode’s monthly fees so far.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-10-11 14-47-06.png|thumb|Screenshot of Linode Ubuntu server overview and ''terminal'' that shows a moment of figuring out what takes space in the server through ''SSH'' access]]

At the time it seemed a good choice, because Linode is based in UK, is ''Linux'' friendly and an alternative to Amazon Web Services (AWS), even though the company was already identifying as ‘''cloud hosting''’. But in February 2023 it has been acquired by the American company Akamai that aims to scale up for [https://www.linode.com/global-infrastructure/ “computing power, optimizing performance and agility.”]. Akamai is actively changing its server policies into an increasingly intense cloud logic. This pushed forward the desire to move to a new place.

[[File:Screenshot 2023-10-11 at 14-50-47 Cloud Computing & Linux Servers Alternative to AWS Linode.png|thumb|Screenshot of Linode website referring to scalability]]

At the moment in Linode we run pico, a flat CMS for the website https://titipi.org. There is a Mediawiki (you are reading a Mediawiki page right now) for notes and collective writing. On the wiki, we also publish our statutes, guidelines and other instituting documents. The wiki has a custom extension, called wiki-to-pdf. Each of these services will need a different way to be transferred. One approach is to build the new server space from scratch, copy the data with rsync and transfer only the Mediawiki, which includes installing a new version and copy the database and the media files.

While preparing to transfer the tools we are defining what are the practical needs and desirable priorities. What fantasies of servers we have; a local physical server hosted in a small computer Raspberry Pi in the office; a software defined server located in a virtual location of a physical machine somewhere in the Alps? We ended up on these server requirements:
* SSH access and VPS
* affordable price (around €20/month)
* Free Software operating system, preferably Debian
* community work is included − desire to slow down, resist to scaling and growth or ‘decloudification’ (small network of partners, less virtualization approach, location of servers nearby etc)
* 25-40GB storage space, 1-2 cores, 2-4GB RAM
* environmental angle
* service support in a language that we all understand (English mostly)

This server transfer happens with an intersectional and feminist approach and the desire to keep questioning. While moving away from Linode we include both the technical and the conceptual thinking in the process. There are a few things that we are looking at:
* Where to be transferred to or what services to transfer to?
* How to be transferred and what to transfer?
* What terminology, language we use?
* What (other) narratives of server hosting can we construct?
TITiPI seeks to exist with an infrastructure that supports inter-dependent practices and solidarity across struggles. It develops [https://titipi.org/wiki-to-pdf/unfold/Counter_Cloud_Action_Plan Counter Cloud Actions] as a way to scale down, de-cloudify, articulate, contest and re-imagine the implications of computational infrastructures (‘the cloud’). We are looking for servers that aspire some of these values:

<blockquote>TITiPI develop tools from feminisms, queer theory, ''Free, Libre and Open Source'' software, intersectionality, anti-coloniality, disability studies, historical materialism and artistic practice to generate currently inexistent vocabularies, imaginaries and methodologies. TITiPI functions as an infrastructure to establish new ways in which socio-technical practices and technologies might support the public interest. <ref>TITiPI, ‘Infrables’, Tangible Cloud Archives, https://docs.tangible-cloud.be/publications-pdf/02_snelting.pdf.</ref></blockquote>

=== A narrative of relational infrastructure and infra-mutuality ===
[[File:Elastic solidarities.png|thumb]]
In June 2023 TITiPI received an email from Gandi to renew the domain titipi.org in 6 days, not realising that at the same time we would need to start paying for our titipi.org email hosting. We had missed reading to the end of another email sent in the middle of June, entitled: 'Pricing update'. Thus we decide to transfer the email besides the web hosting.

We consider to work with Kate Rich to move our mailboxes to the [http://irational.org/ Irational server], soon to be installed on a Raspberry Pi, hosted at Servus. We plan to do this transition slowly and until then renew the emails for 1-2 months through Gandi. Irational server resists virtualization, and as an art community project it makes it an interesting choice.

But why to go through all this effort and not just use one cloud server with mailboxes, file storage and web server together? TITiPI’s response to the question of building institutional digital infrastructure embodies an archipelagic and non-sovereign approach to dependencies. Rather than building a centralised server based on ‘cloud’ from which connections with other institutions and collectives can happen, it conceptualizes inter-infrastructural practices; from the creation of a [https://gitlab.constantvzw.org/titipi/burrow backup script] for saving locally etherpad pads from other servers, hosting emails in an art server (https://irational.org), creating an [https://books.lumbung.space/shelf/26 online bookshelf] on lumbung.space, using the ''XMPP'' chat from Varia to recording conversations with the ''sysadmin'' that maintain the other servers. The institution re-imagines technological dependencies in dialogue with cultural institutions and art collectives. [[File:Titipi-infra-diagram-JAN-24.png|thumb|none|alt=A diagram of TITiPI’s infrastructure. The diagram categorizes the elements according to tools/software (box), structure/organisational form (circle) and place (dashed line). For example Jitsi is the software, Greenhost is the organisation, meet.greenhost.net is the place.|A diagram of TITiPI’s infrastructure. The diagram categorizes the elements according to tools/software (box), structure/organisational form (circle) and place (dashed line). For example Jitsi is the software, Greenhost is the organisation, meet.greenhost.net is the place.]]

How to give life to the common space of TITiPI’s hosting infrastructures? What about building up social dependencies between the ones that host and the ones who are hosted as opposed to a solely technical independence? Infrastructural imaginations are often built by the ''Big Tech'' industry and governmental institutions. Instead, TITiPI practices a fluid inter-institutional approach supported by [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Infra_colophon a variety of hosts].

=== Selection of server providers ===
On the 7th of November through a shared screen at the [https://meet.greenhost.net/ video conferencing software Jitsi of Greenhost] we all three check a list of server providers I collected on a spreadsheet hosted in Constant’s cloud storage (built with the open source Nextcloud software) where TITiPI has an account. I looked at associations, companies, cooperatives, communities coming from commercial context to social struggles, activist, feminist and other. Through a [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/List_server_networks list of networks] I found various servers mainly from Latin America and Europe.

The concept of autonomy, sovereignty, independence or self-managing characterizes most of the servers in the list. Some of them, like [https://www.autistici.org/ Autistici] promote this concept as a way to support anti-capitalist infrastructure and protect the privacy of the users as opposed to the ''Big Tech'' software practices.

<blockquote>The vision is that we - the members of the cooperative - own our own data. This implies and has as a consequence that we will have to own our own infrastructure and have insight and control over the software we use to communicate on the web.<ref>‘Community Servers - Monoskop’, accessed 16 July 2024, https://monoskop.org/Community_servers</ref></blockquote>

Femke had a hunch: "‘technological sovereignty’ and ‘data-sovereignty’ continue to be orientation devices to organise around. ‘Sovereignty’, together with ‘freedom’, ‘independence’ and ‘autonomy’, form an ideological cluster that implicitly and sometimes explicitly foregrounds separation rather than relation."

Servers can act as independent spaces but are also cultural devices and vibrant places. They can manifest different aspects of a full life and reach out to a multiplicity of entities.

Servus and Greenhost, seem to be two of our best choices as they cover a lot of the priorities and values of TITiPI. As one can read from their descriptions they both strive for owning their own data servers and data nodes (they have their own ''IP addresses'') and be independent from third parties. Their big difference is the scale of the infrastructure and their community and network.

<blockquote>Greenhost fully owns and controls its hardware, infrastructure and uplinks. This ensures independence from third parties and proper access control. On this hardware we run our fully virtualised platform. We stand for an Open Internet, and have always embraced open source software.<ref>‘Greenhost.Net | the Sustainable Web’, accessed 16 July 2024, https://greenhost.net/.</ref></blockquote>

<blockquote>We (Servus) do not pass on any data to third parties. You will not receive commercial advertising from us or third parties. We are easily accessible and answer your questions personally. We and our servers are located at Kirchengasse 4 in Linz, Austria.<ref>‘Book Of Servus’, Book Of Servus, accessed 16 July 2024, https://book.servus.at/en/home/.</ref></blockquote>

Even though Greenhost wants to reduce ecological damage, it does that mainly through hardware reductions and does not address scale. They have plans to expand and are part of a network of partners that want to transform Rotterdam into a big hub of data nodes for the upcoming digital transition. But Greenhost is not that big as Linode that goes for [https://www.akamai.com/newsroom/press-release/akamai-takes-cloud-computing-to-the-edge| "(p)lanetary scale"]. Servus on the other hand has one room of data servers, is closer to the scale of their community and maintain personal relations with them.

=== Community server, feminist server, trans*feminist server, radical server, autonomous server, commercial server, art server, free server, ethical server, solidarity-based server, cooperative server, associative server, independent server, alternative server, non-commercial server, … ===
The spreadsheet starts to grow because of an endless burrow of small and big providers.

Some are outdated. 
Some are messy. 
Some have broken links. 
Some are [https://www.julienth37.fr/vps hard to understand]. 
Some require [https://www.actiu.info/index.en.html a lot of engagement]. 
Some use a language that imitates the narratives of ''Big Tech'' and ''agile'' computing. 
Some promote seamless “promissory logic” and “high hopes for a brighter future” [ref] 
Some are big or are scaling up (in matter of space, data centers, partners, users etc). 
Some support NGO’s or sport clubs.

[[File:Screenshot 2023-10-11 at 15-06-35 co-operative web-crop.png|thumb|Screenshot from main page of Co-op Web]]

We also looked at their financial model. Many radical servers stay small, are volunteer based, like [https://www.autistici.org/ Autistici]. and go for horizontal organisational structures. Feminist and activist servers provide space in the internet for the ones who don’t have the means to organise otherwise. The resources and ways of organising for these servers are different from the cooperatives or associations whose structure is inherited from the model they are registered with.

[[File:ATNOFS-Varia-insert-ooooo.jpg|thumb|ooooo atnofs insert diagrams from varia, systerserver, servus]]

TITiPI acknowledges and is connected to the history of community, art and feminist servers and wants to support this network. The art servers started as a way to make autonomous self-managed servers that support artists values and practices. They are often financed by cultural or private funds.

<blockquote>Irational.org began in the 1990s, I joined in 2010. At that time Irational was more active as an art collective who were operating a shared server. Then in 2016, coinciding with a server upgrade, we disbanded and re-formed specifically as a Linux server collective, which is a better description of what Irational is now. A small group of artists who are interested in running a Linux server together. (...) Part of Irational's interest has always been in running a physical server, not a virtual machine as is nearly ubiquitous now. When I started out as Irational sysadmin, we were using rescued servers from commercial server farms – fully working computers that were being thrown out as part of the perpetual cycle of upgrades. We would install Linux on a discarded machine, and get low-cost hosting at a server farm in London. Then when our previous server was reaching the end of its life, this was in 2016, we also felt a tectonic shift. There was a large-scale move to virtualisation, people weren't running individual physical servers in the same way as before, and the supply of deprecated rack mount servers seemed to have dried up. So for the first time we bought a replacement server brand new, and drove it to Cheltenham in west England where we installed it in a server farm run by gamers – one of the few places we could find that was still prepared to host a single machine. 

— quote from [[None of this experiment is evident|interview of Kate Rich by Femke Snelting]] </blockquote>

The screen seems to become brighter as my eyes get tired. What if we skip the online hosting and create a local physical server at TITiPI’s office next to the desks, in a corner, on a Raspberry Pi? All our data would stay on this machine and we would connect with SSH from home, but then we will also have to maintain it ourselves. There is something there about the romanticism of a physical toolbox as a sovereign object. If we choose to do that we will need to think of a backup plan as our data will stay offline and the server will rely on the building's network bandwidth and fire protection system. A second option is to have our own server in a rack at Servus, where we would have connection to high speed reliable internet but electricity costs would be higher and we would rely to somebody else if we need to turn the server off and on. We do that with the email hosting that we share with Irational, where we have root access inside someone else's physical server hosted in Servus. The third option is VPS which is a cloud technology but we have access to our own virtual machine that we can start and stop from distance.

Our list has been reduced because of our priorities. We need SSH and we would like to have a VPS. Who has resources for providing VPS? Resources of labour, time, finances, technical knowledge. This made self-defined feminist servers fall out of the selection. How to be financially sustainable, while keeping up with your own values? How to keep up with infrastructural ''maintenance'' if the scale of the users, community, members and data is big?

<blockquote>The services we offer have no defined price, but as you may easily imagine, keeping the whole system working (i.e. hardware and hosting) is very expensive (at the moment it ranges around 13,000 euro every year).<ref>‘Autistici.Org - Services’, accessed 16 July 2024, https://www.autistici.org/services/</ref></blockquote>

Servus and Maadix provide a series of ''free/libre'' tools that can be installed separately through their interface but they also provide a VPS with SSH access. With Greenhost, Hetzner and Linode there is more flexibility: you can create your own VPS and customize it for your own needs through their interface or the ''terminal'' and install whatever tools you want from scratch without a visual interface.

Technical information and knowledge of digital infrastructure circulate between groups that are tech-oriented with a difficulty to cross with other groups, including feminist servers. The ''sysadmin'' tasks are mostly taken by cis men but feminist servers are radical about that. They find important to have ''sysadmins'' that are not cis men. For example Systerserver and Anarchaserver are learning by themselves together how to do this task.

Many of the servers in the list provide only tools, as a radical way to support small groups, collectives, activists that need privacy and shifting away from Google drive when they want to organise politically and socially. It seems that being limited to tool packages instead of having full access to a server can make things comprehensible and compact for these small groups that have limited ''sysadmin'' knowledge or can’t hire a technician.

[[File:Screenshot 2023-10-07 at 12-23-26 FuturEtic - Services en lignes libres & éthiques-2.png|Screenshot of main page with services by [https://futuretic.fr/ FuturEtic]|thumb]]

[[File:Scrnli 12 10 2023 13-14-32.png|thumb|Screenshot of tools from codigosur]]

== Final decision and server transfers (email and webhosting) ==

We are about to make our decision! Our list ended up to be very small.

On 7th of November in an online call between Helen in Basel, Femke in Brussels and Aggeliki in Rotterdam we limited our list to four options: Constant, Greenhost, Servus, Zaclys. The selection consists of a diversity of scales and positioning that we found interesting to think of. First, we move on with the decision to transfer our mailboxes to Irational hosted at Servus. The rest of the functionalities will be hosted somewhere else.

From our conversations with Femke: “The choice for irational.org opens the possibility for discussions around dependencies, trust and frictions within shared collective servers. Irational.org is an ally art server who uses and maintains its own server for many years. Hosting such a private service at a friend’s environment doesn’t come only with convenience. The closeness to the material of the server makes the dependency more tangible.”

[[File:White-magenta-painful.jpg|thumb|Towel design by psaroskalazines. Image from their website]]

Femke and I are planning different moments for the server transfer to happen in the office of TITiPI. What it is about to take place comes down into three moments; the backup and save of data from the old server, the installation of the necessary software in the new server and the transfer of the old data in the new server.

Specifically we are following these steps:

* Mail transfer from Gandi to irational
* Create a Virtual Private Server (VPS) in the new server
* Install Apache2 and configure domains
* Install and migrate MediaWiki
** Back up the wiki on the Linode VPS
** Upgrade MediaWiki in Linode
** Install MediaWiki and plugins in the Greenhost VPS
** Transfer database and media files from Linode to Greenhost
* Install Wiki-to-pdf
* Install Pico
* Install and configure Certbot

We find ourselves between two virtual spaces and one office, among other indirectly connected spaces like the rooms of our distant collaborators and the office locations of the servers.

=== Trust relationships ===
By now, 14th of November 2023, the office is warm and cozy. Throughout the time I am writing this report I have been noticing a lot of slow and small efforts to renovate the building and set up the heating, by the artists and organisations who share the space with TITiPI. Another infrastructure that needs care.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 15-06-42.png|thumb|Femke and Aggeliki entering Irational’s server space with Kate]]

On a shared screen together with Femke we get introduced to the mail server of Irational by Kate. We use an audio splitter to share the laptop for the call. Kate described her experience as an amateur ''sysadmin'' that had to spend a lot of time to learn and set up the mail server. After that we start the process that has been documented [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Server_transfer_documentation#Mail_transfer here].

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 14-56-26.png|thumb|Screenshot from the TITiPI’s mail transfer with Kate, Femke and Aggeliki during an online 3 hours call]]

Irational uses the Alpine email client. Kate takes us its depths. That is where we start to set up our new email accounts before we configure them in Thunderbird. Femke gets excited on the fact that she can send emails to other Irational accounts through the ''terminal''.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 15-15-07.png|thumb|Using the email client Alpine]]

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 17-04-20.png|thumb|Screenhost from the moment of looking for the syntax of the TXT records. Finding the right syntax for this value was the biggest challenge. This is part of the ''trust relationships'' between the different providers]]

After some more DNS configurations we test if it is possible to exchange emails with ‘outside’ accounts and especially with Gmail that has many security filters for mail servers other than the commercial ones.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-15 13-59-52.png|thumb|Exchange test emails with a Gmail account]]

After three hours of tryouts we manage to make it work! Very proudly and with enjoyment for sharing a technical task together we say goodbye to each other and arrange a next meeting for a final check up.

=== A choice that comes with discomforts ===
Just one day before the start of TITiPI’s server transfer away from Linode on the 28th of November, Helen found the Swiss server ungleich.ch and it seemed like an interesting choice because of the small scale (in terms of community and servers), their experimental attitude and their choice to reduce energy consumption; they avoid using systems for cooling their servers by spreading the servers at the Swiss mountains in old, abandoned buildings.

Ungleich.ch is one of the good options but it is more expensive than other providers. They offer a cheaper choice by choosing to have only ‘ipv6’. But we had to dig in to understand the difference of ipv4 and ipv6. From wikipedia: “IPv6 is the most recent version of the Internet Protocol, developed to deal with the long-anticipated problem of IPv4 address exhaustion” We found a [https://stats.labs.apnic.net/ipv6 map] that shows which countries have implemented IPv6 and it seems that if we only use this address then many places won’t have access to the website of TITiPI. So we choose to have both addresses.

We also notice that this provider is using Stripe for their payment system. In a [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Frontier parallel universe of TITiPI] we give attention to and critique Stripe because of its connections with the Carbon Removal industry.

[[File:Firefox Screenshot 2023-11-28T12-32-24.775Z.png|thumb|Ungleich.ch payment system with Stripe]] [include and correctly reference them and same for the other images as well]

Another urgency appears while we are looking at different choices; together with many other organisations, we have been thinking about ways to host and maintain infrastructures in solidarity with communities and networks we are part of. This would mean, for example, hosting digitally a Palestinian video film archive, or research by sex workers. Solidarity is only partially a question of caring for privacy and security because it matters where and how we host our digital infrastructures and whether these spaces do or do not support the flourishing of different lives and struggles. This need make us think again if the server we choose would be suitable for something like that.

Constant and Servus are two accomplice servers that already provide to TITiPI some of their services. Zaclys is a member of Chatons that support open source values and it is located in France. We contacted them to see if they could be an option but they never responded to us.

We wanted to work with a company that provide ‘green’ infrastructure. Greenhost seem to be a good choice. It provides a familiar interface to us, good support and backup option. It has a positioning as an alternative to AWS. So far great, but what about its ‘green’ hosting vision? Is it a solarpunk vision, a green cloud utopia? Is their infrastructure resource ‘hungry’? What are the privacy limits when the material hosted in the servers is political and sensitive?

We choose Greenhost with all the discomforts that this choice entails and with the desire to keep the critique and dialogue alive.

Only by December 2023 we manage to arrange a call with one of Greenhost’s former Managing Directors to get a feeling and more information about their approach and sensitivity. According to him, Greenhost exists in the intersection of activism and technology. It provides consultancy, sustainability solutions in tech projects and structured ''maintenance''; they go for best quality with lowest environmental impact; they maintain the same hardware as much as possible and balance that with higher efficiency; they keep backups at an already existing data center in the university of Amsterdam.

<nowiki>[[paragraph for Greenhost include? from interview with manager?]]</nowiki>

=== Installing, transferring, saving, copying, … ===
On the 28th of November sitting on the sunny corner of the couch next to the radiator, and with warm coffee cups waiting for us on a low table, Femke and I cover our legs with a blanket and open our laptops.

I ask Femke to 'jump' in a ''tmux'' session for sharing ''terminal'' with this command: <code>''sudo'' ''tmux'' attach -t webserver</code>. We start by cleaning the old server and make backups of the files.

We take a lunch break. Femke finds out that if we eat three recurrent meals every week in the office we can have a nice variety of food; lentiles soup, orecchiette pasta with brocoli, rizzoto with mushrooms and lots of fruits. Sometime ago we decided to make multiple short breaks throughout the day because of computer fatigue. One day I removed all the files from my computer that were older than 90 days because I accidentally run a command on the ''terminal'' instead of a bash script to test the setting up of [https://gitlab.constantvzw.org/titipi/burrow Burrow]. I left this comment in the initial script:

<code># VERY DANGEROUS COMMAND find *txt -mindepth 1 -mtime +$RETAIN -delete</code>
The next day we set up the new server and install all the necessary software including a new version of the MediaWiki. We arrange a meeting with Martino Morandi, member of Constant, who created the wiki-to-pdf to help us installing this software and transfer the MediaWiki in the new server. On the 1st of December we successfully install the wiki-to-pdf and because of limited time we decided to meet one more time at the end of the month for the rest.

[[File:Virtual-env-debian.png|thumb|Screenshot from the wiki-to-pdf installation to the new server with Martino, Femke, Aggeliki. Debian supports a different way to create virtual environments for installing python packages and libraries. We try it but it failed.]]

On the 28th we meet with Martino online to complete the transfer, which includes copying the old database of MediaWiki, activate the old plugins and fix any issues on the way. We are all located in different countries (Italy, Greece, Belgium) and so we share a ''tmux'' session. We follow the guides but on the way we had to do some research and configure a lot of things to make the MediaWiki work. Martino was hunting a php module. It seemed that php has shifted to free software culture in an attempt to find another business model. It is not surprising it happens in the context of Ubuntu. The issue is recorded [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Server_transfer_documentation#MediaWiki_upgrade_issues here].

[[File:Firefox Screenshot 2024-01-10T13-59-40.398Z.png|thumb|"Is Titipi.org down?" Helen asks after the transfer. It seems that her browser cache was preventing her from seeing the website]]

The process is documented in our diary and then transferred to a [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Server_transfer_documentation wiki page]. By January 2024 the server transfer and the deletion of our Linode account has been completed.

== Glossaries ==

Italicized terms in the report are included in these glossaries:

* [https://varia.zone/ATNOFS/ATNOFS-screen.pdf#page=11 Glossary of A Traversal Network of Feminist Servers (ATNOFS) publication]
* [[Glossary|TITiPI's glossary]]

== References ==

* Panashe Chigumadzi, ‘Can White South Africa Live up to Ubuntu, the African Philosophy Tutu Globalised?’, The Guardian, 31 December 2021, sec. Opinion, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec/31/white-south-africa-ubuntu-african-tutu
* ‘Community Servers - Monoskop’, accessed 16 July 2024, https://monoskop.org/Community_servers
* David Carroll, ‘How To Open An Outpost In Social Media Exile | TechPolicy.Press’, Tech Policy Press, 26 November 2022, <nowiki>https://techpolicy.press/how-to-open-an-outpost-in-social-media-exile</nowiki>.
* Elizabeth Landau, ‘Tech Confronts Its Use of the Labels “Master” and “Slave”’, ''Wired'', accessed 16 July 2024, <nowiki>https://www.wired.com/story/tech-confronts-use-labels-master-slave/</nowiki>.
* ‘GitHub Abandons “master” Term to Avoid Slavery Row’, 15 June 2020, https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-53050955
* Femke Snelting, ‘Infrastructure Solidarity’, Ardeth. A Magazine on the Power of the Project, no. 8 (1 November 2021): 45–47
* ‘Master-Slave Terminology Alternatives You Can Use Right Now | TheServerSide’, TheServerSide.com, accessed 16 July 2024, https://www.theserverside.com/opinion/Master-slave-terminology-alternatives-you-can-use-right-now
* ‘Racist Computer Engineering Words: “Master,” “Slave” and the Fight Over Offensive Terms - The New York Times’, accessed 16 July 2024, <nowiki>https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/13/technology/racist-computer-engineering-terms-ietf.html</nowiki>.
* ‘Replace “Master” and “Slave” Terms in Redis · Issue #3185 · Redis/Redis’, GitHub, accessed 16 July 2024, https://github.com/redis/redis/issues/3185
* ‘Ubuntu: A Black Radical Demand for Reparations’, THE FUNAMBULIST MAGAZINE, 25 October 2023, https://thefunambulist.net/magazine/redefining-our-terms/ubuntu-a-black-radical-demand-for-reparations.

== Colophon ==

The text was drafted in pad.xpub.nl in Markdown and then transferred in this wiki.

== Footnotes ==

From cloud to crowd: a report on a server transfer

2024-10-16T17:54:09Z

Angeliki:

= From cloud to crowd<ref>The term comes from ... (not sure if it is included in the title)</ref>: A report on a server transfer =

This text is a report on a server migration that took place within the institutional framework of [https://titipi.org/ The Institute for Technology in the Public Interest (TITiPI)], a trans-practice gathering of activists, artists, engineers and theorists. The report is an infrastructural ethnography<ref>[explain--footnote]</ref> and aims to rethink, through a technical process, what ''hosting'' a server means for a community, institution, cultural organisation dealing with technological discomforts and complex digital infrastructures.

Starting from a broad definition a ''server'' is a computer, a combination of software and hardware or an operating system and a physical machine [(or a piece of software?hardware) what changes--a server being either physical machine or not at all--discuss later--needs attention--transfer from physical place to physical place or software to software--address that--need to problematize and place the question somewhere in the essay-- point out the paradox--then some things later will become easy to read--we problematize and dig into the structure/architecture of a server] that provides computing services, such as web hosting and cloud storage, via a network (Internet). A ''server migration'' is the process of moving data and transferring software from one server to another with the use of specified tools. Performing such process accommodates a practical and technical solution to fix the problem of an outdated server that is slow or has limited storage.

This report problematizes the materiality of a server, its location, its scale, its architecture and substantial elements, and how and what is migrated when we decide to change servers − which could be a physical machine, a piece of software, a virtual entity or other? The urgency of this issue derives from the question: How does an organisation's digital infrastructure affect its values, structure and digital imaginations? TITiPI treats web hosting with attention, rather than as an outsourced tech service, by including it in the thinking and reflection of its organisational structure. In times of server providers’ scaling up ( ‘''cloud hosting''’ ) and digitizing governmental bureaucracies what does it mean to host your own digital space for supporting your communities and work? Is it necessary to have a sovereign and independent infrastructure? What (non-)dependencies are chosen or taken for granted by institutions when using hosting services?

As a researcher at TITiPI I have been caring for the task to investigate this server migration, that includes web hosting and email, and execute it together with TITiPI’s member Femke Snelting. We meet weekly to keep track and make decisions. We share a ''markdown'' file hosted in the [https://gitlab.constantvzw.org/titipi/ online code repository of the cultural association Constant] that includes a diary of the server migration and reflections. Every now and then we meet online with our colleague Helen Pritchard, to discuss and share the process. This report includes extracts from the server diary and stories from the process.

== Migration or …? ==

In the cold Autumn of 2023 in the newly installed office of TITiPI located in the Koekelberg district of Brussels, I open the browser Chromium in my computer, in order to quickly translate − with the installed Google Translate plugin − the web pages of the different cooperatives, associations, companies that provide hosting services. While doing that I cannot ignore a persistent thought regarding the word ‘migration’ under this context. What does it mean to flatten the experience of migration into a technical term to describe the movement from one server to the other? In what contexts such choices of language are made and who decides about the terminology?

My computer runs the ''open source'' operating system Ubuntu. The term ‘Ubuntu’ is also a word extracted from its original context. It is coming from the African Ubuntu philosophy. According to the creators of the software:

<blockquote>ubuntu |oǒ’boǒntoō| Ubuntu is an ancient African word meaning ‘humanity to others’. It is often described as reminding us that ‘I am what I am because of who we all are’. We bring the spirit of Ubuntu to the world of computers and software. The Ubuntu distribution represents the best of what the world’s software community has shared with the world. <ref>‘About the Ubuntu Project’, Ubuntu, accessed 16 July 2024, https://ubuntu.com/about</ref>
</blockquote>

Paraphrasing [https://thefunambulist.net/magazine/redefining-our-terms/ubuntu-a-black-radical-demand-for-reparations Panashe Chigumadzi] words: in contrast to the western conception of the human as individual, the African conception of the person is a social being who is always becoming, defined by and being responsible for the personhood of the others. "(T)he African philosophy best understood through the proverb found in Bantu languages across the continent, 'umuntu ngumuntu ngabanye bantu' (a person is a person through other people". <ref>Panashe Chigumadzi, ‘Can White South Africa Live up to Ubuntu, the African Philosophy Tutu Globalised?’, The Guardian, 31 December 2021, sec. Opinion, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec/31/white-south-africa-ubuntu-african-tutu</ref>

<blockquote>(D)espite the flourishing of Ubuntu in post-apartheid discourse, lending its name to software, businesses, books and philanthropic organisations, South Africa is a country in which we have, as Dladla argues, Ubuntu without Abantu. Just as Black people have been dispossessed of their land, Ubuntu has been dispossessed of its deeply radical demands for ethical historical and social relations among people. (...) post apartheid Ubuntu mistranslation 'I am because we are', individualized and interpersonalised Ubuntu, Christianised Ubuntu, mistranslated in order to justify crimes and violence. In Ubuntu violence can be punished even after generations, the misinterpretation of the term allowed individual forgiveness. <ref>‘Ubuntu: A Black Radical Demand for Reparations’, THE FUNAMBULIST MAGAZINE, 25 October 2023, https://thefunambulist.net/magazine/redefining-our-terms/ubuntu-a-black-radical-demand-for-reparations</ref>
</blockquote>I skip these thoughts and I continue browsing the list of servers. While trying to stay focused something other distracts me; I encounter an [https://www.oziosi.org/ autonomous Italian server] with the title translated with DeepL: “:: a shelter for digital exiles ::” and an image of a woman, a child and a man leaving their home. Also a small introduction: “Exiled from the global village of social networks, we claim an internet that is a simple means of communication: immaterial, anonymous, imaginary, public when it makes sense and secret when we feel the need.”. [https://techpolicy.press/how-to-open-an-outpost-in-social-media-exile/ ‘Social media exiles’] and ‘Twitter migration’ are terms used often after Twitter became X and users have moved to the Fediverse or other alternatives.

Using metaphors like that for a technical process de-contextualizes a word from its origins revealing the privileged place these extractions come from, often dominated by white male computer engineers romanticizing struggles happening elsewhere. Could this terminology be shifted towards less loaded words? Could words like transfer, share, move, copy, re-install, shift replace the word ‘migration’? From this point on in the report I decide to pick and use the term ‘transfer’.

[[File:Screenshot 2023-10-07 at 11-31-21 esiliati.org.png|thumb|Screenshot of webpage of self-organised server mentioning the term 'digital exiles' ]]

== TITiPI’s case of server transfer ==
On the 27th of September, sitting at the long desks side to side, Femke and I have an online call with Helen, while looking at the depths of our Virtual Private Server (VPS), provided by Linode, that runs Ubuntu on our laptop screens. Linode is an American hosting provider focusing on ''Linux''-based virtual machines originally. The server is physically located in the UK. TITiPI currently uses the Linode server that Helen set up for hosting her own projects. They have been paying for Linode’s monthly fees so far.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-10-11 14-47-06.png|thumb|Screenshot of Linode Ubuntu server overview and ''terminal'' that shows a moment of figuring out what takes space in the server through ''SSH'' access]]

At the time it seemed a good choice, because Linode is based in UK, is ''Linux'' friendly and an alternative to Amazon Web Services (AWS), even though the company was already identifying as ‘''cloud hosting''’. But in February 2023 it has been acquired by the American company Akamai that aims to scale up for [https://www.linode.com/global-infrastructure/ “computing power, optimizing performance and agility.”]. Akamai is actively changing its server policies into an increasingly intense cloud logic. This pushed forward the desire to move to a new place.

[[File:Screenshot 2023-10-11 at 14-50-47 Cloud Computing & Linux Servers Alternative to AWS Linode.png|thumb|Screenshot of Linode website referring to scalability]]

At the moment in Linode we run pico, a flat CMS for the website https://titipi.org. There is a Mediawiki (you are reading a Mediawiki page right now) for notes and collective writing. On the wiki, we also publish our statutes, guidelines and other instituting documents. The wiki has a custom extension, called wiki-to-pdf. Each of these services will need a different way to be transferred. One approach is to build the new server space from scratch, copy the data with rsync and transfer only the Mediawiki, which includes installing a new version and copy the database and the media files.

While preparing to transfer the tools we are defining what are the practical needs and desirable priorities. What fantasies of servers we have; a local physical server hosted in a small computer Raspberry Pi in the office; a software defined server located in a virtual location of a physical machine somewhere in the Alps? We ended up on these server requirements:
* ''SSH'' access and wish for VPS
* affordable price (around €20/month)
* run a Free Software operating system, preferably Debian
* involves community work - slowing down, resisting to scaling and growth or ‘decloudification’ (small network of partners, less virtualization approach, location of servers nearby etc)
* 25-40GB storage space, 1-2 cores, 2-4GB RAM
* environmental angle
* service support in a language that we all understand (English mostly)

This server transfer happens with an intersectional and feminist approach and the desire to keep questioning. While moving away from Linode we include both the technical and the conceptual thinking in the process. There are a few things that we are looking at:
* Where to be transferred to or what services to transfer to?
* How to be transferred and what to transfer?
* What terminology, language we use?
* What (other) narratives of server hosting can we construct?
TITiPI seeks to exist with an infrastructure that supports inter-dependent practices and solidarity across struggles. It develops [https://titipi.org/wiki-to-pdf/unfold/Counter_Cloud_Action_Plan Counter Cloud Actions] as a way to scale down, de-cloudify, articulate, contest and re-imagine the implications of computational infrastructures (‘the cloud’).

<blockquote>TITiPI develop tools from feminisms, queer theory, Free, Libre and Open Source software, intersectionality, anti-coloniality, disability studies, historical materialism and artistic practice to generate currently inexistent vocabularies, imaginaries and methodologies. TITiPI functions as an infrastructure to establish new ways in which socio-technical practices and technologies might support the public interest. <ref>TITiPI, ‘Infrables’, Tangible Cloud Archives, https://docs.tangible-cloud.be/publications-pdf/02_snelting.pdf.</ref></blockquote>

We are looking for servers that aspire some of these values.

=== A relational infrastructure narrative/ infra-mutuality/ inter-infrastructural narrative ===
[[File:Elastic solidarities.png|thumb]]
In June 2023 TITiPI received an email from Gandi to renew the domain titipi.org in 6 days, not realising that at the same time we would need to start paying for our titipi.org email hosting. We had missed reading to the end of another email sent in the middle of June, entitled: 'Pricing update'. We decide to transfer the email besides the web hosting.

We consider to work with Kate Rich to move our mailboxes to the [http://irational.org/ Irational server], soon to be installed on a Raspberry Pi, hosted at Servus. We decide to do this transition slowly and until then renew the emails for 1-2 months through Gandi. Irational server resists virtualization, and as an art community project it makes it an interesting choice.

But why to go through all this effort and not just use one cloud server with mailboxes, file storage and web server together? TITiPI’s response to the question of building institutional digital infrastructure embodies an archipelagic and non-sovereign approach to dependencies. Rather than building a centralised server based on ‘cloud’ from which connections with other institutions and collectives can happen, it conceptualizes inter-infrastructural practices; from the creation of a [https://gitlab.constantvzw.org/titipi/burrow backup script] for saving locally etherpad pads from other servers, hosting emails at an art server (https://irational.org), creating an [https://books.lumbung.space/shelf/26 online bookshelf] on lumbung.space, using the ''XMPP'' chat from Varia to recording conversations with the ''sysadmin'' that maintain the other servers. The institution re-imagines technological dependencies in dialogue with cultural institutions and art collectives. [[File:Titipi-infra-diagram-JAN-24.png|thumb|none|alt=A diagram of TITiPI’s infrastructure. The diagram categorizes the elements according to tools/software (box), structure/organisational form (circle) and place (dashed line). For example Jitsi is the software, Greenhost is the organisation, meet.greenhost.net is the place.|A diagram of TITiPI’s infrastructure. The diagram categorizes the elements according to tools/software (box), structure/organisational form (circle) and place (dashed line). For example Jitsi is the software, Greenhost is the organisation, meet.greenhost.net is the place.]]

How to give life to the common space of TITiPI’s hosting infrastructures? What about building up social dependencies between the ones that host and the ones who are hosted as opposed to a technical independence? Infrastructural imaginations are often built by the ''Big Tech'' industry and governmental institutions. Instead, TITiPI practices a fluid inter-institutional approach supported by [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Infra_colophon a variety of hosts].

=== Selection of server providers ===
On the 7th of November through a shared screen at the [https://meet.greenhost.net/ video conferencing software Jitsi of Greenhost] we all three check a list of server providers I collected on a spreadsheet hosted in Constant’s cloud storage (built with the open source Nextcloud software) where TITiPI has an account. I looked at associations, companies/businesses, cooperatives, communities coming from commercial context to social struggles, activist, feminist and other. Through a [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/List_server_networks list of networks] I found various servers mostly from Latin America and Europe.

The concept of autonomy, sovereignty, independence or self-managing characterizes most of the servers in the list. Some of them, like [https://www.autistici.org/ Autistici] promote this concept as a way to support anti-capitalist infrastructure and protect the privacy of the users as opposed to the ''Big Tech'' software practices.

<blockquote>The vision is that we - the members of the cooperative - own our own data. This implies and has as a consequence that we will have to own our own infrastructure and have insight and control over the software we use to communicate on the web.<ref>‘Community Servers - Monoskop’, accessed 16 July 2024, https://monoskop.org/Community_servers</ref></blockquote>

Femke had a hunch: "‘technological sovereignty’ and ‘data-sovereignty’ continue to be orientation devices to organise around. ‘Sovereignty’, together with ‘freedom’, ‘independence’ and ‘autonomy’, form an ideological cluster that implicitly and sometimes explicitly foregrounds separation rather than relation."

Servers can act as independent spaces but are also cultural devices and vibrant spaces. They can manifest different aspects of a full life and reach out to a multiplicity of entities.

Servus and Greenhost, seem to be two of our best choices as they cover a lot of the priorities and values of TITiPI. As one can read from their descriptions they both strive for owning their own data servers and data nodes (they have their own ''IP addresses'') and be independent from third parties. The big difference is the scale of the infrastructure and their community and network.

<blockquote>Greenhost fully owns and controls its hardware, infrastructure and uplinks. This ensures independence from third parties and proper access control. On this hardware we run our fully virtualised platform. We stand for an Open Internet, and have always embraced open source software.<ref>‘Greenhost.Net | the Sustainable Web’, accessed 16 July 2024, https://greenhost.net/.</ref></blockquote>

<blockquote>We (Servus) do not pass on any data to third parties. You will not receive commercial advertising from us or third parties. We are easily accessible and answer your questions personally. We and our servers are located at Kirchengasse 4 in Linz, Austria.<ref>‘Book Of Servus’, Book Of Servus, accessed 16 July 2024, https://book.servus.at/en/home/.</ref></blockquote>

Even though Greenhost wants to reduce ecological damage, it does that mainly through hardware reductions and does not address scale. They have plans to expand and are part of a network of partners that want to transform Rotterdam into a big hub of data nodes for the upcoming digital transition. But Greenhost is not that big as Linode that goes for [https://www.akamai.com/newsroom/press-release/akamai-takes-cloud-computing-to-the-edge| "(p)lanetary scale"]. Servus on the other hand has one room of data servers, is closer to the scale of their community and they maintain personal relations with them.

=== Community server, feminist server, trans*feminist server, radical server, autonomous server, commercial server, art server, free server, ethical server, solidarity-based server, cooperative server, associative server, independent server, alternative server, non-commercial server, … ===
The spreadsheet starts to grow because of an endless burrow of small and big providers.

Some are outdated. 
Some are messy. 
Some have broken links. 
Some are [https://www.julienth37.fr/vps hard to understand]. 
Some require [https://www.actiu.info/index.en.html a lot of engagement]. 
Some use a language that imitates the narratives of ''Big Tech'' and ''agile'' computing. 
Some promote seamless “promissory logic” and “high hopes for a brighter future” [ref] 
Some are big or are scaling up (in matter of space, data centers, partners, users etc). 
Some support NGO’s or sport clubs.

[[File:Screenshot 2023-10-11 at 15-06-35 co-operative web-crop.png|thumb|Screenshot from main page of Co-op Web]]

We also looked at their financial model. Many radical servers stay small, are volunteer based, like [https://www.autistici.org/ Autistici]. and go for horizontal organisational structures. Feminist and activist servers provide space in the internet for the ones who don’t have the means to organise otherwise. The resources and ways of organising for these servers are different from the cooperatives or associations whose structure is inherited from the model they are registered with.

[[File:ATNOFS-Varia-insert-ooooo.jpg|thumb|ooooo atnofs insert diagrams from varia, systerserver, servus]]

TITiPI acknowledges and is connected to the history of community, art and feminist servers and wants to support this network. The art servers started as a way to make autonomous self-managed servers that support artists values and practices. They are often financed by cultural or private funds.

<blockquote>Irational.org began in the 1990s, I joined in 2010. At that time Irational was more active as an art collective who were operating a shared server. Then in 2016, coinciding with a server upgrade, we disbanded and re-formed specifically as a Linux server collective, which is a better description of what Irational is now. A small group of artists who are interested in running a Linux server together. (...) Part of Irational's interest has always been in running a physical server, not a virtual machine as is nearly ubiquitous now. When I started out as Irational sysadmin, we were using rescued servers from commercial server farms – fully working computers that were being thrown out as part of the perpetual cycle of upgrades. We would install Linux on a discarded machine, and get low-cost hosting at a server farm in London. Then when our previous server was reaching the end of its life, this was in 2016, we also felt a tectonic shift. There was a large-scale move to virtualisation, people weren't running individual physical servers in the same way as before, and the supply of deprecated rack mount servers seemed to have dried up. So for the first time we bought a replacement server brand new, and drove it to Cheltenham in west England where we installed it in a server farm run by gamers – one of the few places we could find that was still prepared to host a single machine. 

— quote from [[None of this experiment is evident|interview of Kate Rich by Femke Snelting]] [needs rewritting] </blockquote>

The screen seems to become brighter as my eyes get tired. What if we skip the online hosting and create a local physical server at TITiPI’s office next to the desks, in a corner, on a Raspberry Pi? All our data would stay on this machine and we would connect with ''SSH'' from home, but then we will also have to maintain it ourselves. There is something there about the romanticism of a physical toolbox as a sovereign object. If we choose to do that we will need to think of a backup plan as it will be an experimental set up and all our data will stay offline. We won’t have a provider to take care of that.

Our list has been reduced because of our priorities. We need ''SSH'' and we would like to have a VPS [--why?--part of the first issue on software/hardware server--having material inside someone elses server/email--physical--root access--2nd: to have our own box in a rack--that is expensive--pay for electricity etc and who turns of and on--a pi in our own office--bandwidth internet--in a rack we would have connection to high speed reliable internet--fire protection--4th: vps, it is a cloud technology but we have our own virtual machine that we can start and stop from ditance--with the consequence of using cloud technology--explain these different options--to help the reader].

Who has resources for providing VPS? Resources of labour, time, finances, technical knowledge. This made self-defined feminist servers fall out of the selection. How to be financially sustainable, while keeping up with your own values? How to keep up with infrastructural ''maintenance'' if the scale of the users, community, members and data is big?

<blockquote>The services we offer have no defined price, but as you may easily imagine, keeping the whole system working (i.e. hardware and hosting) is very expensive (at the moment it ranges around 13,000 euro every year).<ref>‘Autistici.Org - Services’, accessed 16 July 2024, https://www.autistici.org/services/</ref></blockquote>

Servus and Maadix provide a series of ''free/libre'' tools that can be installed separately through their interface but they also provide a VPS with ''SSH'' access. With Greenhost, Hetzner and Linode there is more flexibility: you can create your own VPS and customize it for your own needs through their interface or the ''terminal'' and install whatever tools you want from scratch without a visual interface.

Technical information and knowledge of digital infrastructure circulate between groups that are tech-oriented with a difficulty to cross with other groups, including feminist servers. The ''sysadmin'' tasks are mostly taken by cis men but feminist servers are radical about that. They find important to have ''sysadmins'' that are not cis men. For example Systerserver and Anarchaserver are learning by themselves together how to do this task.

Many of the servers in the list provide only tools, as a radical way to support small groups, collectives, activists that need privacy and shifting away from Google drive when they want to organise politically and socially. It seems that being limited to tool packages instead of having full access to a server can make things comprehensible and compact for these small groups that have limited ''sysadmin'' knowledge or can’t hire a technician.

[[File:Screenshot 2023-10-07 at 12-23-26 FuturEtic - Services en lignes libres & éthiques-2.png|Screenshot of main page with services by [https://futuretic.fr/ FuturEtic]|thumb]]

[[File:Scrnli 12 10 2023 13-14-32.png|thumb|Screenshot of tools from codigosur]]

== Final decision and server transfers (email and webhosting) ==

We are about to make our decision! Our list ended up to be very small.

On 7th of November in an online call between Helen in Basel, Femke in Brussels and Aggeliki in Rotterdam we limited our list to four options: Constant, Greenhost, Servus, Zaclys. The selection consists of a diversity of scales and positioning that we found interesting to think of. First, we move on with the decision to transfer our mailboxes to Irational hosted at Servus. The rest of the functionalities will be hosted somewhere else.

From our conversations with Femke: “The choice for irational.org opens the possibility for discussions around dependencies, trust and frictions within shared collective servers. Irational.org is an ally art server who uses and maintains its own server for many years. Hosting such a private service at a friend’s environment doesn’t come only with convenience. The closeness to the material of the server makes the dependency more tangible.”

[[File:White-magenta-painful.jpg|thumb|Towel design by psaroskalazines. Image from their website]]

Femke and I are planning different moments for the server transfer to happen in the office of TITiPI. What it is about to take place comes down into three moments; the backup and save of data from the old server, the installation of the necessary software in the new server and the transfer of the old data in the new server.

Specifically we are following these steps:

* Mail transfer from Gandi to irational
* Create a Virtual Private Server (VPS) in the new server
* Install Apache2 and configure domains
* Install and migrate MediaWiki
** Back up the wiki on the Linode VPS
** Upgrade MediaWiki in Linode
** Install MediaWiki and plugins in the Greenhost VPS
** Transfer database and media files from Linode to Greenhost
* Install Wiki-to-pdf
* Install Pico
* Install and configure Certbot

We find ourselves between two virtual spaces and one office, among other indirectly connected spaces like the rooms of our distant collaborators and the office locations of the servers.

=== Trust relationships ===
By now, 14th of November 2023, the office is warm and cozy. Throughout the time I am writing this report I have been noticing a lot of slow and small efforts to renovate the building and set up the heating, by the artists and organisations who share the space with TITiPI. Another infrastructure that needs care.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 15-06-42.png|thumb|Femke and Aggeliki entering Irational’s server space with Kate]]

On a shared screen together with Femke we get introduced to the mail server of Irational by Kate. We use an audio splitter to share the laptop for the call. Kate described her experience as an amateur ''sysadmin'' that had to spend a lot of time to learn and set up the mail server. After that we start the process that has been documented [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Server_transfer_documentation#Mail_transfer here].

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 14-56-26.png|thumb|Screenshot from the TITiPI’s mail transfer with Kate, Femke and Aggeliki during an online 3 hours call]]

Irational uses the Alpine email client. Kate takes us its depths. That is where we start to set up our new email accounts before we configure them in Thunderbird. Femke gets excited on the fact that she can send emails to other Irational accounts through the ''terminal''.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 15-15-07.png|thumb|Using the email client Alpine]]

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 17-04-20.png|thumb|Screenhost from the moment of looking for the syntax of the TXT records. Finding the right syntax for this value was the biggest challenge. This is part of the ''trust relationships'' between the different providers]]

After some more DNS configurations we test if it is possible to exchange emails with ‘outside’ accounts and especially with Gmail that has many security filters for mail servers other than the commercial ones.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-15 13-59-52.png|thumb|Exchange test emails with a Gmail account]]

After three hours of tryouts we manage to make it work! Very proudly and with enjoyment for sharing a technical task together we say goodbye to each other and arrange a next meeting for a final check up.

=== A choice that comes with discomforts ===
Just one day before the start of TITiPI’s server transfer away from Linode on the 28th of November, Helen found the Swiss server ungleich.ch and it seemed like an interesting choice because of the small scale (in terms of community and servers), their experimental attitude and their choice to reduce energy consumption; they avoid using systems for cooling their servers by spreading the servers at the Swiss mountains in old, abandoned buildings.

Ungleich.ch is one of the good options but it is more expensive than other providers. They offer a cheaper choice by choosing to have only ‘ipv6’. But we had to dig in to understand the difference of ipv4 and ipv6. From wikipedia: “IPv6 is the most recent version of the Internet Protocol, developed to deal with the long-anticipated problem of IPv4 address exhaustion” We found a [https://stats.labs.apnic.net/ipv6 map] that shows which countries have implemented IPv6 and it seems that if we only use this address then many places won’t have access to the website of TITiPI. So we choose to have both addresses.

We also notice that this provider is using Stripe for their payment system. In a [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Frontier parallel universe of TITiPI] we give attention to and critique Stripe because of its connections with the Carbon Removal industry.

[[File:Firefox Screenshot 2023-11-28T12-32-24.775Z.png|thumb|Ungleich.ch payment system with Stripe]] [include and correctly reference them and same for the other images as well]

Another urgency appears while we are looking at different choices; together with many other organisations, we have been thinking about ways to host and maintain infrastructures in solidarity with communities and networks we are part of. This would mean, for example, hosting digitally a Palestinian video film archive, or research by sex workers. Solidarity is only partially a question of caring for privacy and security because it matters where and how we host our digital infrastructures and whether these spaces do or do not support the flourishing of different lives and struggles. This need make us think again if the server we choose would be suitable for something like that.

Constant and Servus are two accomplice servers that already provide to TITiPI some of their services. Zaclys is a member of Chatons that support open source values and it is located in France. We contacted them to see if they could be an option but they never responded to us.

We wanted to work with a company that provide ‘green’ infrastructure. Greenhost seem to be a good choice. It provides a familiar interface to us, good support and backup option. It has a positioning as an alternative to AWS. So far great, but what about its ‘green’ hosting vision? Is it a solarpunk vision, a green cloud utopia? Is their infrastructure resource ‘hungry’? What are the privacy limits when the material hosted in the servers is political and sensitive?

We choose Greenhost with all the discomforts that this choice entails and with the desire to keep the critique and dialogue alive.

Only by December 2023 we manage to arrange a call with one of Greenhost’s former Managing Directors to get a feeling and more information about their approach and sensitivity. According to him, Greenhost exists in the intersection of activism and technology. It provides consultancy, sustainability solutions in tech projects and structured ''maintenance''; they go for best quality with lowest environmental impact; they maintain the same hardware as much as possible and balance that with higher efficiency; they keep backups at an already existing data center in the university of Amsterdam.

<nowiki>[[paragraph for Greenhost include? from interview with manager?]]</nowiki>

=== Installing, transferring, saving, copying, … ===
On the 28th of November sitting on the sunny corner of the couch next to the radiator, and with warm coffee cups waiting for us on a low table, Femke and I cover our legs with a blanket and open our laptops.

I ask Femke to 'jump' in a ''tmux'' session for sharing ''terminal'' with this command: <code>''sudo'' ''tmux'' attach -t webserver</code>. We start by cleaning the old server and make backups of the files.

We take a lunch break. Femke finds out that if we eat three recurrent meals every week in the office we can have a nice variety of food; lentiles soup, orecchiette pasta with brocoli, rizzoto with mushrooms and lots of fruits. Sometime ago we decided to make multiple short breaks throughout the day because of computer fatigue. One day I removed all the files from my computer that were older than 90 days because I accidentally run a command on the ''terminal'' instead of a bash script to test the setting up of [https://gitlab.constantvzw.org/titipi/burrow Burrow]. I left this comment in the initial script:

<code># VERY DANGEROUS COMMAND find *txt -mindepth 1 -mtime +$RETAIN -delete</code>
The next day we set up the new server and install all the necessary software including a new version of the MediaWiki. We arrange a meeting with Martino Morandi, member of Constant, who created the wiki-to-pdf to help us installing this software and transfer the MediaWiki in the new server. On the 1st of December we successfully install the wiki-to-pdf and because of limited time we decided to meet one more time at the end of the month for the rest.

[[File:Virtual-env-debian.png|thumb|Screenshot from the wiki-to-pdf installation to the new server with Martino, Femke, Aggeliki. Debian supports a different way to create virtual environments for installing python packages and libraries. We try it but it failed.]]

On the 28th we meet with Martino online to complete the transfer, which includes copying the old database of MediaWiki, activate the old plugins and fix any issues on the way. We are all located in different countries (Italy, Greece, Belgium) and so we share a ''tmux'' session. We follow the guides but on the way we had to do some research and configure a lot of things to make the MediaWiki work. Martino was hunting a php module. It seemed that php has shifted to free software culture in an attempt to find another business model. It is not surprising it happens in the context of Ubuntu. The issue is recorded [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Server_transfer_documentation#MediaWiki_upgrade_issues here].

[[File:Firefox Screenshot 2024-01-10T13-59-40.398Z.png|thumb|"Is Titipi.org down?" Helen asks after the transfer. It seems that her browser cache was preventing her from seeing the website]]

The process is documented in our diary and then transferred to a [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Server_transfer_documentation wiki page]. By January 2024 the server transfer and the deletion of our Linode account has been completed.

== Glossaries ==

Italicized terms in the report are included in these glossaries:

* [https://varia.zone/ATNOFS/ATNOFS-screen.pdf#page=11 Glossary of A Traversal Network of Feminist Servers (ATNOFS) publication]
* [[Glossary|TITiPI's glossary]]

== References ==

* Panashe Chigumadzi, ‘Can White South Africa Live up to Ubuntu, the African Philosophy Tutu Globalised?’, The Guardian, 31 December 2021, sec. Opinion, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec/31/white-south-africa-ubuntu-african-tutu
* ‘Community Servers - Monoskop’, accessed 16 July 2024, https://monoskop.org/Community_servers
* David Carroll, ‘How To Open An Outpost In Social Media Exile | TechPolicy.Press’, Tech Policy Press, 26 November 2022, <nowiki>https://techpolicy.press/how-to-open-an-outpost-in-social-media-exile</nowiki>.
* Elizabeth Landau, ‘Tech Confronts Its Use of the Labels “Master” and “Slave”’, ''Wired'', accessed 16 July 2024, <nowiki>https://www.wired.com/story/tech-confronts-use-labels-master-slave/</nowiki>.
* ‘GitHub Abandons “master” Term to Avoid Slavery Row’, 15 June 2020, https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-53050955
* Femke Snelting, ‘Infrastructure Solidarity’, Ardeth. A Magazine on the Power of the Project, no. 8 (1 November 2021): 45–47
* ‘Master-Slave Terminology Alternatives You Can Use Right Now | TheServerSide’, TheServerSide.com, accessed 16 July 2024, https://www.theserverside.com/opinion/Master-slave-terminology-alternatives-you-can-use-right-now
* ‘Racist Computer Engineering Words: “Master,” “Slave” and the Fight Over Offensive Terms - The New York Times’, accessed 16 July 2024, <nowiki>https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/13/technology/racist-computer-engineering-terms-ietf.html</nowiki>.
* ‘Replace “Master” and “Slave” Terms in Redis · Issue #3185 · Redis/Redis’, GitHub, accessed 16 July 2024, https://github.com/redis/redis/issues/3185
* ‘Ubuntu: A Black Radical Demand for Reparations’, THE FUNAMBULIST MAGAZINE, 25 October 2023, https://thefunambulist.net/magazine/redefining-our-terms/ubuntu-a-black-radical-demand-for-reparations.

== Colophon ==

The text was drafted in pad.xpub.nl in Markdown and then transferred in this wiki.

== Footnotes ==

From cloud to crowd: a report on a server transfer

2024-10-16T17:38:48Z

Angeliki:

= From cloud to crowd<ref>The term comes from ... (not sure if it is included in the title)</ref>: A report on a server transfer =

This text is a report on a server migration that took place within the institutional framework of [https://titipi.org/ The Institute for Technology in the Public Interest (TITiPI)], a trans-practice gathering of activists, artists, engineers and theorists. The report is an infrastructural ethnography<ref>[explain--footnote]</ref> and aims to rethink, through a technical process, what ''hosting'' a server means for a community, institution, cultural organisation dealing with technological discomforts and complex digital infrastructures.

Starting from a broad definition a ''server'' is a computer, a combination of software and hardware or an operating system and a physical machine [(or a piece of software?hardware) what changes--a server being either physical machine or not at all--discuss later--needs attention--transfer from physical place to physical place or software to software--address that--need to problematize and place the question somewhere in the essay-- point out the paradox--then some things later will become easy to read--we problematize and dig into the structure/architecture of a server] that provides computing services, such as web hosting and cloud storage, via a network (Internet). A ''server migration'' is the process of moving data and transferring software from one server to another with the use of specified tools. Performing such process accommodates a practical and technical solution to fix the problem of an outdated server that is slow or has limited storage.

This report problematizes the materiality of a server, its location, its scale, its architecture and substantial elements, and how and what is migrated when we decide to change servers − which could be a physical machine, a piece of software, a virtual entity or other? The urgency of this issue derives from the question: How does an organisation's digital infrastructure affect its values, structure and digital imaginations? TITiPI treats web hosting with attention, rather than as an outsourced tech service, by including it in the thinking and reflection of its organisational structure. In times of server providers’ scaling up ( ‘''cloud hosting''’ ) and digitizing governmental bureaucracies what does it mean to host your own digital space for supporting your communities and work? Is it necessary to have a sovereign and independent infrastructure? What (non-)dependencies are chosen or taken for granted by institutions when using hosting services?

As a researcher at TITiPI I have been caring for the task to investigate this server migration, that includes web hosting and email, and execute it together with TITiPI’s member Femke Snelting. We meet weekly to keep track and make decisions. We share a ''markdown'' file hosted in the [https://gitlab.constantvzw.org/titipi/ online code repository of the cultural association Constant] that includes a diary of the server migration and reflections. Every now and then we meet online with our colleague Helen Pritchard, to discuss and share the process. This report includes extracts from the server diary and stories from the process.

== Migration or …? [restructuring--what are the differences] ==

In the cold Autumn of 2023 in the newly installed office of TITiPI located in the Koekelberg district of Brussels, I open the browser Chromium in my computer, in order to quickly translate − with the installed Google Translate plugin − the web pages of the different cooperatives, associations, companies that provide hosting services. While doing that I cannot ignore a persistent thought regarding the word ‘migration’ under this context. What does it mean to flatten the experience of migration into a technical term to describe the movement from one server to the other? In what contexts such choices of language are made and who decides about the terminology?

My computer runs the ''open source'' operating system Ubuntu. The term ‘Ubuntu’ is also a word extracted from its original context. It is coming from the African Ubuntu philosophy. According to the creators of the software:

<blockquote>ubuntu |oǒ’boǒntoō| Ubuntu is an ancient African word meaning ‘humanity to others’. It is often described as reminding us that ‘I am what I am because of who we all are’. We bring the spirit of Ubuntu to the world of computers and software. The Ubuntu distribution represents the best of what the world’s software community has shared with the world. <ref>‘About the Ubuntu Project’, Ubuntu, accessed 16 July 2024, https://ubuntu.com/about</ref>
</blockquote>

Paraphrasing [https://thefunambulist.net/magazine/redefining-our-terms/ubuntu-a-black-radical-demand-for-reparations Panashe Chigumadzi] words: in contrast to the western conception of the human as individual, the African conception of the person is a social being who is always becoming, defined by and being responsible for the personhood of the others. "(T)he African philosophy best understood through the proverb found in Bantu languages across the continent, 'umuntu ngumuntu ngabanye bantu' (a person is a person through other people". <ref>Panashe Chigumadzi, ‘Can White South Africa Live up to Ubuntu, the African Philosophy Tutu Globalised?’, The Guardian, 31 December 2021, sec. Opinion, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec/31/white-south-africa-ubuntu-african-tutu</ref>

<blockquote>(D)espite the flourishing of Ubuntu in post-apartheid discourse, lending its name to software, businesses, books and philanthropic organisations, South Africa is a country in which we have, as Dladla argues, Ubuntu without Abantu. Just as Black people have been dispossessed of their land, Ubuntu has been dispossessed of its deeply radical demands for ethical historical and social relations among people. (...) post apartheid Ubuntu mistranslation 'I am because we are', individualized and interpersonalised Ubuntu, Christianised Ubuntu, mistranslated in order to justify crimes and violence. In Ubuntu violence can be punished even after generations, the misinterpretation of the term allowed individual forgiveness. <ref>‘Ubuntu: A Black Radical Demand for Reparations’, THE FUNAMBULIST MAGAZINE, 25 October 2023, https://thefunambulist.net/magazine/redefining-our-terms/ubuntu-a-black-radical-demand-for-reparations</ref>
</blockquote>I skip these thoughts and I continue browsing the list of servers. While trying to stay focused something other distracts me; I encounter an [https://www.oziosi.org/ autonomous Italian server] with the title translated with DeepL: “:: a shelter for digital exiles ::” and an image of a woman, a child and a man leaving their home. Also a small introduction: “Exiled from the global village of social networks, we claim an internet that is a simple means of communication: immaterial, anonymous, imaginary, public when it makes sense and secret when we feel the need.”. [https://techpolicy.press/how-to-open-an-outpost-in-social-media-exile/ ‘Social media exiles’] and ‘Twitter migration’ are terms used often after Twitter became X and users have moved to the Fediverse or other alternatives.

Using metaphors like that for a technical process de-contextualizes a word from its origins revealing the privileged place these extractions come from, often dominated by white male computer engineers romanticizing struggles happening elsewhere. Could this terminology be shifted towards a different point of view? Could words like transfer, share, move, copy, re-install, shift replace the word ‘migration’? From this point on in the report I decide to pick and use the term ‘transfer’.

[[File:Screenshot 2023-10-07 at 11-31-21 esiliati.org.png|thumb|Screenshot of webpage of self-organised server mentioning the term 'digital exiles' ]]

== TITiPI’s case of server transfer ==
On the 27th of September, sitting at the long desks side to side, Femke and I have an online call with Helen, while looking at the depths of our Virtual Private Server (VPS), provided by Linode, that runs Ubuntu on our laptop screens. Linode is an American hosting provider focusing on ''Linux''-based virtual machines originally. The server is physically located in the UK. TITiPI currently uses the Linode server that Helen set up for hosting her own projects. They have been paying for Linode’s monthly fees so far.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-10-11 14-47-06.png|thumb|Screenshot of Linode Ubuntu server overview and ''terminal'' that shows a moment of figuring out what takes space in the server through ''SSH'' access]]

At the time it seemed a good choice, because Linode is based in UK, is ''Linux'' friendly and an alternative to Amazon Web Services (AWS), even though the company was already identifying as ‘''cloud hosting''’. But in February 2023 it has been acquired by the American company Akamai that aims to scale up for [https://www.linode.com/global-infrastructure/ “computing power, optimizing performance and agility.”]. Akamai is actively changing its server policies into an increasingly intense cloud logic. This pushed forward the desire to move to a new place.

[[File:Screenshot 2023-10-11 at 14-50-47 Cloud Computing & Linux Servers Alternative to AWS Linode.png|thumb|Screenshot of Linode website referring to scalability]]

At the moment in Linode we run pico, a flat CMS for the website https://titipi.org. There is a Mediawiki (you are reading a Mediawiki page right now) for notes and collective writing. On the wiki, we also publish our statutes, guidelines and other instituting documents. The wiki has a custom extension, called wiki-to-pdf. Each of these services will need a different way to be transferred. One approach is to build the new server space from scratch, copy the data with rsync and transfer only the Mediawiki, which includes installing a new version and copy the database and the media files.

While preparing to transfer the tools we are defining what are the practical needs and desirable priorities. What fantasies of servers we have; a local physical server hosted in a small computer Raspberry Pi in the office; a software defined server located in a virtual location of a physical machine somewhere in the Alps? We ended up on these server requirements:
* ''SSH'' access and wish for VPS (accessible for everyone, manageable maintenance and safer than a local device exposed to the conditions of the TITiPI's office for now)
* affordable price (around €20/month)
* run a Free Software operating system, preferably Debian
* involves community work - slowing down, resisting to scaling and growth or ‘decloudification’ (small network of partners, less virtualization approach, location of servers nearby etc)
* 25-40GB storage space, 1-2 cores, 2-4GB RAM
* environmental angle
* service support in a language that we all understand (English mostly)

This server transfer happens with an intersectional and feminist approach and the desire to keep questioning. While moving away from Linode we include both the technical and the conceptual thinking in the process. There are a few things that we are looking at:
* Where to be transferred to or what services to transfer to?
* How to be transferred and what to transfer?
* What terminology, language we use?
* What (other) narratives of server hosting can we construct?
TITiPI seeks to exist with an infrastructure that supports inter-dependent practices and solidarity across struggles. It develops [https://titipi.org/wiki-to-pdf/unfold/Counter_Cloud_Action_Plan Counter Cloud Actions] as a way to scale down, de-cloudify, articulate, contest and re-imagine the implications of computational infrastructures (‘the cloud’).

<blockquote>TITiPI develop tools from feminisms, queer theory, Free, Libre and Open Source software, intersectionality, anti-coloniality, disability studies, historical materialism and artistic practice to generate currently inexistent vocabularies, imaginaries and methodologies. TITiPI functions as an infrastructure to establish new ways in which socio-technical practices and technologies might support the public interest. <ref>TITiPI, ‘Infrables’, Tangible Cloud Archives, https://docs.tangible-cloud.be/publications-pdf/02_snelting.pdf.</ref></blockquote>

We are looking for servers that aspire some of these values.

=== A relational infrastructure narrative/ infra-mutuality/ inter-infrastructural narrative ===
[[File:Elastic solidarities.png|thumb]]
In June 2023 TITiPI received an email from Gandi to renew the domain titipi.org in 6 days, not realising that at the same time we would need to start paying for our titipi.org email hosting. We had missed reading to the end of another email sent in the middle of June, entitled: 'Pricing update'. We decide to transfer the email besides the web hosting.

We consider to work with Kate Rich to move our mailboxes to the [http://irational.org/ Irational server], soon to be installed on a Raspberry Pi, hosted at Servus. We decide to do this transition slowly and until then renew the emails for 1-2 months through Gandi. Irational server resists virtualization, and as an art community project it makes it an interesting choice.

But why to go through all this effort and not just use one cloud server with mailboxes, file storage and web server together? TITiPI’s response to the question of building institutional digital infrastructure embodies an archipelagic and non-sovereign approach to dependencies. Rather than building a centralised server based on ‘cloud’ from which connections with other institutions and collectives can happen, it conceptualizes inter-infrastructural practices; from the creation of a [https://gitlab.constantvzw.org/titipi/burrow backup script] for saving locally etherpad pads from other servers, hosting emails at an art server (https://irational.org), creating an [https://books.lumbung.space/shelf/26 online bookshelf] on lumbung.space, using the ''XMPP'' chat from Varia to recording conversations with the ''sysadmin'' that maintain the other servers. The institution re-imagines technological dependencies in dialogue with cultural institutions and art collectives. [[File:Titipi-infra-diagram-JAN-24.png|thumb|none|alt=A diagram of TITiPI’s infrastructure. The diagram categorizes the elements according to tools/software (box), structure/organisational form (circle) and place (dashed line). For example Jitsi is the software, Greenhost is the organisation, meet.greenhost.net is the place.|A diagram of TITiPI’s infrastructure. The diagram categorizes the elements according to tools/software (box), structure/organisational form (circle) and place (dashed line). For example Jitsi is the software, Greenhost is the organisation, meet.greenhost.net is the place.]]

How to give life to the common space of TITiPI’s hosting infrastructures? What about building up social dependencies between the ones that host and the ones who are hosted as opposed to a technical independence? Infrastructural imaginations are often built by the ''Big Tech'' industry and governmental institutions. Instead, TITiPI practices a fluid inter-institutional approach supported by [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Infra_colophon a variety of hosts].

=== Selection of server providers ===
On the 7th of November through a shared screen at the [https://meet.greenhost.net/ video conferencing software Jitsi of Greenhost] we all three check a list of server providers I collected on a spreadsheet hosted in Constant’s cloud storage (built with the open source Nextcloud software) where TITiPI has an account. I looked at associations, companies/businesses, cooperatives, communities coming from commercial context to social struggles, activist, feminist and other. Through a [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/List_server_networks list of networks] I found various servers mostly from Latin America and Europe.

The concept of autonomy, sovereignty, independence or self-managing characterizes most of the servers in the list. Some of them, like [https://www.autistici.org/ Autistici] promote this concept as a way to support anti-capitalist infrastructure and protect the privacy of the users as opposed to the ''Big Tech'' software practices.

<blockquote>The vision is that we - the members of the cooperative - own our own data. This implies and has as a consequence that we will have to own our own infrastructure and have insight and control over the software we use to communicate on the web.<ref>‘Community Servers - Monoskop’, accessed 16 July 2024, https://monoskop.org/Community_servers</ref></blockquote>

Femke had a hunch: "‘technological sovereignty’ and ‘data-sovereignty’ continue to be orientation devices to organise around. ‘Sovereignty’, together with ‘freedom’, ‘independence’ and ‘autonomy’, form an ideological cluster that implicitly and sometimes explicitly foregrounds separation rather than relation."

Servers can act as independent spaces but are also cultural devices and vibrant spaces. They can manifest different aspects of a full life and reach out to a multiplicity of entities.

Servus and Greenhost, seem to be two of our best choices as they cover a lot of the priorities and values of TITiPI. As one can read from their descriptions they both strive for owning their own data servers and data nodes (they have their own ''IP addresses'') and be independent from third parties. The big difference is the scale of the infrastructure and their community and network.

<blockquote>Greenhost fully owns and controls its hardware, infrastructure and uplinks. This ensures independence from third parties and proper access control. On this hardware we run our fully virtualised platform. We stand for an Open Internet, and have always embraced open source software.<ref>‘Greenhost.Net | the Sustainable Web’, accessed 16 July 2024, https://greenhost.net/.</ref></blockquote>

<blockquote>We (Servus) do not pass on any data to third parties. You will not receive commercial advertising from us or third parties. We are easily accessible and answer your questions personally. We and our servers are located at Kirchengasse 4 in Linz, Austria.<ref>‘Book Of Servus’, Book Of Servus, accessed 16 July 2024, https://book.servus.at/en/home/.</ref></blockquote>

Even though Greenhost wants to reduce ecological damage, it does that mainly through hardware reductions and does not address scale. They have plans to expand and are part of a network of partners that want to transform Rotterdam into a big hub of data nodes for the upcoming digital transition. But Greenhost is not that big as Linode that goes for [[https://www.akamai.com/newsroom/press-release/akamai-takes-cloud-computing-to-the-edge| "(p)lanetary scale"]]. Servus on the other hand has one room of data servers, is closer to the scale of their community and they maintain personal relations with them.

[[Image of the server room at Servus at Linz|Image of the server room at Servus at Linz?]]

=== Community server, feminist server, trans*feminist server, radical server, autonomous server, commercial server, art server, free server, ethical server, solidarity-based server, cooperative server, associative server, independent server, alternative server, non-commercial server, … ===
The spreadsheet starts to grow because of an endless/exhaustive burrow of small and big providers.

Some are outdated. 
Some are messy. 
Some have broken links. 
Some are [https://www.julienth37.fr/vps hard to understand]. 
Some require [https://www.actiu.info/index.en.html a lot of engagement]. 
Some use a language that imitates the narratives of ''Big Tech'' and ''agile'' computing. 
Some promote seamless “promissory logic” and “high hopes for a brighter future” (ref) 
Some are big or are scaling up (in matter of space, data centers, partners, users etc). 
Some support NGO’s or sport clubs.

[[File:Screenshot 2023-10-11 at 15-06-35 co-operative web-crop.png|thumb|Screenshot from main page of Co-op Web]]

We also looked at their financial model. Many radical servers stay small, are volunteer based, like [https://www.autistici.org/ Autistici]. and go for horizontal organisational structures. Feminist and activist servers provide space in the internet for the ones who don’t have the means to organise otherwise. The resources and ways of organising for these servers are different from the cooperatives or associations whose structure is inherited from the model they are registered with.

[[File:ATNOFS-Varia-insert-ooooo.jpg|thumb|ooooo atnofs insert diagrams from varia, systerserver, servus]]

TITiPI acknowledges and is connected to the history of community, art and feminist servers and wants to support this network. The art servers started as a way to make autonomous self-managed servers that support artists values and practices. They are often financed by cultural or private funds.

<blockquote>I joined (Irational) sometime in 2000s, I can't remember when and originally it was much more a collective of people working together and then since the early 2010's I think, mid 2010's, there was a bit of a reshuffle of personnel and stuff, so the constituency changed to a smaller group and we actually reformed. We were going to disband Irational and then we actually reformed as an art server collective and we decided we are not really working together but what we have in common is that we're using the server and that is actually what the collective is now. It's the collective that uses the server together and wants to use the server together. And another real defining feature of the server the whole time has been resisting virtualization. 

— quote from [[None of this experiment is evident|interview of Kate Rich by Femke Snelting]] [needs rewritting] </blockquote>

The screen seems to become brighter as my eyes get tired. What if we skip the online hosting and create a local physical server at TITiPI’s office next to the desks, in a corner, on a Raspberry Pi? All our data would stay on this machine and we would connect with ''SSH'' from home, but then we will also have to maintain it ourselves. There is something there about the romanticism of a physical toolbox as a sovereign object. If we choose to do that we will need to think of a backup plan as it will be an experimental set up and all our data will stay offline. We won’t have a provider to take care of that.

Our list has been reduced because of our priorities. We need ''SSH'' and we would like to have a VPS [--why?--part of the first issue on software/hardware server--having material inside someone elses server/email--physical--root access--2nd: to have our own box in a rack--that is expensive--pay for electricity etc and who turns of and on--a pi in our own office--bandwidth internet--in a rack we would have connection to high speed reliable internet--fire protection--4th: vps, it is a cloud technology but we have our own virtual machine that we can start and stop from ditance--with the consequence of using cloud technology--explain these different options--to help the reader]. Who has resources for providing VPS? Resources of labour, time, finances, technical knowledge. This made self-defined feminist servers fall out of the selection. How to be financially sustainable, while keeping up with your own values? How to keep up with infrastructural ''maintenance'' if the scale of the users, community, members and data is big?

<blockquote>The services we offer have no defined price, but as you may easily imagine, keeping the whole system working (i.e. hardware and hosting) is very expensive (at the moment it ranges around 13,000 euro every year).<ref>‘Autistici.Org - Services’, accessed 16 July 2024, https://www.autistici.org/services/</ref></blockquote>

Servus and Maadix provide a series of ''free/libre'' tools that can be installed separately through their interface but they also provide a VPS with ''SSH'' access. With Greenhost, Hetzner and Linode there is more flexibility: you can create your own VPS and customize it for your own needs through their interface or the ''terminal'' and install whatever tools you want from scratch without a visual interface.

Technical information and knowledge of digital infrastructure circulate between groups that are tech-oriented with a difficulty to cross with other groups, including feminist servers. The ''sysadmin'' tasks are mostly taken by cis men but feminist servers are radical about that. They find important to have ''sysadmins'' that are not cis men. For example Systerserver and Anarchaserver are learning by themselves together how to do this task.

Many of the servers in the list provide only tools, as a radical way to support small groups, collectives, activists that need privacy and shifting away from Google drive when they want to organise politically and socially. It seems that being limited to tool packages instead of having full access to a server can make things comprehensible and compact for these small groups that have limited ''sysadmin'' knowledge or can’t hire a technician.

[[File:Screenshot 2023-10-07 at 12-23-26 FuturEtic - Services en lignes libres & éthiques-2.png|Screenshot of main page with services by [https://futuretic.fr/ FuturEtic]|thumb]]

[[File:Scrnli 12 10 2023 13-14-32.png|thumb|Screenshot of tools from codigosur]]

== Final decision and server transfers [email and webhosting] ==

We are about to make our decision! Our list ended up to be very small.

On 7th of November in an online call between Helen in Basel, Femke in Brussels and Aggeliki in Rotterdam we limited our list to four options: Constant, Greenhost, Servus, Zaclys. The selection consists of a diversity of scales and positioning that we found interesting to think of. First, we move on with the decision to transfer our mailboxes to Irational hosted at Servus. The rest of the functionalities will be hosted somewhere else.

From our conversations with Femke: “The choice for irational.org opens the possibility for discussions around dependencies, trust and frictions within shared collective servers. Irational.org is an ally art server who uses and maintains its own server for many years. Hosting such a private service at a friend’s environment doesn’t come only with convenience. The closeness to the material of the server makes the dependency more tangible.” [reference/quote from colophon?]

[[File:White-magenta-painful.jpg|thumb|Towel design by psaroskalazines. Image from their website]]

Femke and I are planning different moments for the server transfer to happen in the office of TITiPI. What it is about to take place comes down into three moments; the backup and save of data from the old server, the installation of the necessary software in the new server and the transfer of the old data in the new server.

Specifically we are following these steps:

* Mail transfer from Gandi to irational
* Create a Virtual Private Server (VPS) in the new server
* Install Apache2 and configure domains
* Install and migrate MediaWiki
** Back up the wiki on the Linode VPS
** Upgrade MediaWiki in Linode
** Install MediaWiki and plugins in the Greenhost VPS
** Transfer database and media files from Linode to Greenhost
* Install Wiki-to-pdf
* Install Pico
* Install and configure Certbot

We find ourselves between two virtual spaces and one office, among other indirectly connected spaces like the rooms of our distant collaborators and the office locations of the servers.

=== Trust relationships ===
By now, 14th of November 2023, the office is warm and cozy. Throughout the time I am writing this report I have been noticing a lot of slow and small efforts to renovate the building and set up the heating, by the artists and organisations who share the space with TITiPI. Another infrastructure that needs care.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 15-06-42.png|thumb|Femke and Aggeliki entering Irational’s server space with Kate]]

On a shared screen together with Femke we get introduced to the mail server of Irational by Kate. We use an audio splitter to share the laptop for the call. Kate described her experience as an amateur ''sysadmin'' that had to spend a lot of time to learn and set up the mail server. After that we start the process that has been documented [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Server_transfer_documentation#Mail_transfer here].

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 14-56-26.png|thumb|Screenshot from the TITiPI’s mail transfer with Kate, Femke and Aggeliki during an online 3 hours call]]

Irational uses the Alpine email client. Kate takes us its depths. That is where we start to set up our new email accounts before we configure them in Thunderbird. Femke gets excited on the fact that she can send emails to other Irational accounts through the ''terminal''.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 15-15-07.png|thumb|Using the email client Alpine]]

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 17-04-20.png|thumb|Screenhost from the moment of looking for the syntax of the TXT records. Finding the right syntax for this value was the biggest challenge. This is part of the ''trust relationships'' between the different providers]]

After some more DNS configurations we test if it is possible to exchange emails with ‘outside’ accounts and especially with Gmail that has many security filters for mail servers other than the commercial ones.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-15 13-59-52.png|thumb|Exchange test emails with a Gmail account]]

After three hours of tryouts we manage to make it work! Very proudly and with enjoyment for sharing a technical task together we say goodbye to each other and arrange a next meeting for a final check up.

=== A choice that comes with discomforts ===
Just one day before the start of TITiPI’s server transfer away from Linode on the 28th of November, Helen found the Swiss server ungleich.ch and it seemed like an interesting choice because of the small scale (in terms of community and servers), their experimental attitude and their choice to reduce energy consumption; they avoid using systems for cooling their servers by spreading the servers at the Swiss mountains in old, abandoned buildings.

Ungleich.ch is one of the good options but it is more expensive than other providers. They offer a cheaper choice by choosing to have only ‘ipv6’. But we had to dig in to understand the difference of ipv4 and ipv6. From wikipedia: “IPv6 is the most recent version of the Internet Protocol, developed to deal with the long-anticipated problem of IPv4 address exhaustion” We found a [https://stats.labs.apnic.net/ipv6 map] that shows which countries have implemented IPv6 and it seems that if we only use this address then many places won’t have access to the website of TITiPI. So we choose to have both addresses.

We also notice that this provider is using Stripe for their payment system. In a [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Frontier parallel universe of TITiPI] we give attention to and critique Stripe because of its connections with the Carbon Removal industry.

[[File:Firefox Screenshot 2023-11-28T12-32-24.775Z.png|thumb|Ungleich.ch payment system with Stripe]] [include and correctly reference them]

Another urgency appears while we are looking at different choices; together with many other organisations, we have been thinking about ways to host and maintain infrastructures in solidarity with communities and networks we are part of. This would mean, for example, hosting digitally a Palestinian video film archive, or research by sex workers. Solidarity is only partially a question of caring for privacy and security because it matters where and how we host our digital infrastructures and whether these spaces do or do not support the flourishing of different lives and struggles. This need make us think again if the server we choose would be suitable for something like that.

Constant and Servus are two accomplice servers that already provide to TITiPI some of their services. Zaclys is a member of Chatons that support open source values and it is located in France. We contacted them to see if they could be an option but they never responded to us.

We wanted to work with a company that provide ‘green’ infrastructure. Greenhost seem to be a good choice. It provides a familiar interface to us, good support and backup option. It has a positioning as an alternative to AWS. So far great, but what about its ‘green’ hosting vision? Is it a solarpunk vision, a green cloud utopia? Is their infrastructure resource ‘hungry’? What are the privacy limits when the material hosted in the servers is political and sensitive?

We choose Greenhost with all the discomforts that this choice entails and with the desire to keep the critique and dialogue alive.

Only by December 2023 we manage to arrange a call with one of Greenhost’s former Managing Directors to get a feeling and more information about their approach and sensitivity. Accordind to him Greenhost exists in the intersection of activism and technology. It provides consultancy, sustainability solutions in tech projects and structured ''maintenance''; they go for best quality with lowest environmental impact; they maintain the same hardware as much as possible and balance that with higher efficiency; they keep backups at an already existing data center in the university of Amsterdam.

<nowiki>[[paragraph for Greenhost include? from interview with manager?]]</nowiki>

=== Installing, transferring, saving, copying, … ===
On the 28th of November sitting on the sunny corner of the couch next to the radiator, and with warm coffee cups waiting for us on a low table, Femke and I cover our legs with a blanket and open our laptops.

I ask Femke to jumb in a ''tmux'' session for sharing ''terminal'' with this command: <code>''sudo'' ''tmux'' attach -t webserver</code>. We start by cleaning the old server and make backups of the files.

We take a lunch break. Femke finds out that if we eat three recurrent meals every week in the office we can have a nice variety of food; lentiles soup, orecchiette pasta with brocoli, rizzoto with mushrooms and lots of fruits. Sometime ago we decided to make multiple short breaks throughout the day because of computer fatigue. One day I removed all the files from my computer that were older than 90 days because I accidentally run a command on the ''terminal'' instead of a bash script to test the setting up of [https://gitlab.constantvzw.org/titipi/burrow Burrow]. I left this comment in the initial script:

<code># VERY DANGEROUS COMMAND find *txt -mindepth 1 -mtime +$RETAIN -delete</code>
The next day we set up the new server and install all the necessary software including a new version of the MediaWiki. We arrange a meeting with Martino Morandi, member of Constant, who created the wiki-to-pdf to help us installing this software and transfer the MediaWiki in the new server. On the 1st of December we successfully install the wiki-to-pdf and because of limited time we decided to meet one more time at the end of the month for the rest.

[[File:Virtual-env-debian.png|thumb|Screenshot from the wiki-to-pdf installation to the new server with Martino, Femke, Aggeliki. Debian supports a different way to create virtual environments for installing python packages and libraries. We try it but it failed.]]

On the 28th we meet with Martino online to complete the transfer, which includes copying the old database of MediaWiki, activate the old plugins and fix any issues on the way. We are all located in different countries (Italy, Greece, Belgium) and so we share a ''tmux'' session. We follow the guides but on the way we had to do some research and configure a lot of things to make the MediaWiki work. Martino was hunting a php module. It seemed that php has shifted to free software culture in an attempt to find another business model. It is not surprising it happens in the context of Ubuntu. The issue is recorded [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Server_transfer_documentation#MediaWiki_upgrade_issues here].

[[File:Firefox Screenshot 2024-01-10T13-59-40.398Z.png|thumb|"Is Titipi.org down?" Helen asks after the transfer. It seems that her browser cache was preventing her from seeing the website]]

The process is documented in our diary and then transferred to a [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Server_transfer_documentation wiki page]. By January 2024 the server transfer and the deletion of our Linode account has been completed.

== Glossaries ==

Italicized terms in the report are included in these glossaries:

* [https://varia.zone/ATNOFS/ATNOFS-screen.pdf#page=11 Glossary of A Traversal Network of Feminist Servers (ATNOFS) publication]
* [[Glossary|TITiPI's glossary]]

== References ==

* Panashe Chigumadzi, ‘Can White South Africa Live up to Ubuntu, the African Philosophy Tutu Globalised?’, The Guardian, 31 December 2021, sec. Opinion, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec/31/white-south-africa-ubuntu-african-tutu
* ‘Community Servers - Monoskop’, accessed 16 July 2024, https://monoskop.org/Community_servers
* David Carroll, ‘How To Open An Outpost In Social Media Exile | TechPolicy.Press’, Tech Policy Press, 26 November 2022, <nowiki>https://techpolicy.press/how-to-open-an-outpost-in-social-media-exile</nowiki>.
* Elizabeth Landau, ‘Tech Confronts Its Use of the Labels “Master” and “Slave”’, ''Wired'', accessed 16 July 2024, <nowiki>https://www.wired.com/story/tech-confronts-use-labels-master-slave/</nowiki>.
* ‘GitHub Abandons “master” Term to Avoid Slavery Row’, 15 June 2020, https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-53050955
* Femke Snelting, ‘Infrastructure Solidarity’, Ardeth. A Magazine on the Power of the Project, no. 8 (1 November 2021): 45–47
* ‘Master-Slave Terminology Alternatives You Can Use Right Now | TheServerSide’, TheServerSide.com, accessed 16 July 2024, https://www.theserverside.com/opinion/Master-slave-terminology-alternatives-you-can-use-right-now
* ‘Racist Computer Engineering Words: “Master,” “Slave” and the Fight Over Offensive Terms - The New York Times’, accessed 16 July 2024, <nowiki>https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/13/technology/racist-computer-engineering-terms-ietf.html</nowiki>.
* ‘Replace “Master” and “Slave” Terms in Redis · Issue #3185 · Redis/Redis’, GitHub, accessed 16 July 2024, https://github.com/redis/redis/issues/3185
* ‘Ubuntu: A Black Radical Demand for Reparations’, THE FUNAMBULIST MAGAZINE, 25 October 2023, https://thefunambulist.net/magazine/redefining-our-terms/ubuntu-a-black-radical-demand-for-reparations.

== Colophon ==

The text was drafted in pad.xpub.nl in Markdown and then transferred in this wiki.

== Footnotes ==

From cloud to crowd: a report on a server transfer

2024-10-16T12:15:23Z

Angeliki:

= From cloud to crowd<ref>The term comes from ... (not sure if it is included in the title)</ref>: A report on a server transfer =

This text is a report on a server migration that took place within the institutional framework of [https://titipi.org/ The Institute for Technology in the Public Interest (TITiPI)], a trans-practice gathering of activists, artists, engineers and theorists. The report is an infrastructural ethnography<ref>[explain--footnote]</ref> and aims to rethink, through a technical process, what ''hosting'' a server means for a community, institution, cultural organisation dealing with technological discomforts and complex digital infrastructures.

Starting from a broad knowledge/ point of view a ''server'' is a computer, a combination of software and hardware or an operating system and a physical machine [(or a piece of software?hardware) what changes--a server being either physical machine or not at all--discuss later--needs attention--transfer from physical place to physical place or software to software--address that--need to problematize and place the question somewhere in the essay-- point out the paradox--then some things later will become easy to read--we problematize and dig into the structure/architecture of a server] that provides computing services, such as web hosting and cloud storage, via a network (Internet). A ''server migration'' is the process of moving data and transferring software from one server to another with the use of specified tools. Performing such process accommodates a practical and technical solution to fix the problem of an outdated server that is slow or has limited storage.

This report problematizes the materiality of a server, its location, its scale, its architecture and substantial elements, and how and what is migrated when we decide to change services/servers/providers/spaces. The urgency of this issue derives from the question: How does an organisation's digital infrastructure, like its server and online platforms, affect its values, structure and computing/infrastructural/digital imaginations? TITiPI treats web hosting with attention, rather than as a tech outsourced service, by including it in the thinking and reflection of its organisational structure. In times of server providers’ scaling up ( ‘''cloud hosting''’ ) and digitizing governmental bureaucracies what does it mean to host your own digital space for supporting your communities and work? Is it necessary to have a sovereign and independent infrastructure? What (non-)dependencies are chosen or taken for granted by institutions when using hosting services?

As a researcher at TITiPI I have been caring for the task to investigate this server migration and execute it together with TITiPI’s member Femke Snelting. The services that we want to migrate are email and web hosting. We meet weekly to keep track and make decisions. We share a ''markdown'' file hosted in the [https://gitlab.constantvzw.org/titipi/ online code repository of the cultural association Constant] that includes a diary of the server migration and reflections. Every now and then we meet online with our colleague Helen Pritchard, to discuss and share the process. This report includes extracts from the server diary and stories from the process.

== Migration or …? [restructuring--what are the differences] ==

In the cold Autumn of 2022 in the newly installed office of TITiPI located in the Koekelberg district of Brussels, I open the browser Chromium in my computer, in order to quickly translate − with the installed Google Translate plugin − the web pages of the different cooperatives, associations, companies that provide hosting services. While doing that I cannot ignore the thought regarding the choice of the word ‘migration’ in this context. [its about appropriation of a way of being--flattening the experience of migration--to pull them apart--to explain discomfort with the word migration--understanding how and why the word migration is problematic] What does it mean to flatten the experience of migration into a technical term to describe the movement from one server to the other?

It makes me think of an [https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/13/technology/racist-computer-engineering-terms-ietf.html online conversation], happening for a few years now, about replacing computer engineering terminology to stop [to address] prevalence of racism in tech. Specifically the conversation [https://www.wired.com/story/tech-confronts-use-labels-master-slave/ evolves around the terms] ‘master/slave’ [the way I link the things need some extra sentences], where one computing process or entity controls another, and ‘blacklists/whitelists’ used for directories of those things that are explicitly banned or allowed.

[My computer runs--for example--why these two parts are different or the same--it hasnt registsred as problematic yet]My computer runs the ''open source'' operating system Ubuntu. The term ‘Ubuntu’ is also a word extracted from its original context. It is coming from the African Ubuntu philosophy. According to the creators of the software:

<blockquote>ubuntu |oǒ’boǒntoō| Ubuntu is an ancient African word meaning ‘humanity to others’. It is often described as reminding us that ‘I am what I am because of who we all are’. We bring the spirit of Ubuntu to the world of computers and software. The Ubuntu distribution represents the best of what the world’s software community has shared with the world. <ref>‘About the Ubuntu Project’, Ubuntu, accessed 16 July 2024, https://ubuntu.com/about</ref>
</blockquote>

Paraphrasing [https://thefunambulist.net/magazine/redefining-our-terms/ubuntu-a-black-radical-demand-for-reparations Panashe Chigumadzi] words: in contrast to the western conception of the human as individual, the African conception of the person is a social being who is always becoming, defined by and being responsible for the personhood of the others. "(T)he African philosophy best understood through the proverb found in Bantu languages across the continent, 'umuntu ngumuntu ngabanye bantu' (a person is a person through other people". <ref>Panashe Chigumadzi, ‘Can White South Africa Live up to Ubuntu, the African Philosophy Tutu Globalised?’, The Guardian, 31 December 2021, sec. Opinion, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec/31/white-south-africa-ubuntu-african-tutu</ref>

<blockquote>(D)espite the flourishing of Ubuntu in post-apartheid discourse, lending its name to software, businesses, books and philanthropic organisations, South Africa is a country in which we have, as Dladla argues, Ubuntu without Abantu. Just as Black people have been dispossessed of their land, Ubuntu has been dispossessed of its deeply radical demands for ethical historical and social relations among people. (...) post apartheid Ubuntu mistranslation 'I am because we are', individualized and interpersonalised Ubuntu, Christianised Ubuntu, mistranslated in order to justify crimes and violence. In Ubuntu violence can be punished even after generations, the misinterpretation of the term allowed individual forgiveness. <ref>‘Ubuntu: A Black Radical Demand for Reparations’, THE FUNAMBULIST MAGAZINE, 25 October 2023, https://thefunambulist.net/magazine/redefining-our-terms/ubuntu-a-black-radical-demand-for-reparations</ref>
</blockquote>

Using metaphors like that for a technical process de-contextualizes a word from its origins and unavoidably perpetuates social injustices. It also shows that the context where such choices of language are made is privileged and untouched or non-triggered by these terms. White male computer engineers have build up this language.

I skip these thoughts and I continue browsing the list of servers. While trying to stay focused something other distracts me; I encounter an [https://www.oziosi.org/ autonomous Italian server] with the title translated with DeepL: “:: a shelter for digital exiles ::” and an image of a woman, a child and a man leaving their home. Also a small introduction: “Exiled from the global village of social networks, we claim an internet that is a simple means of communication: immaterial, anonymous, imaginary, public when it makes sense and secret when we feel the need.”. I am wondering what does this mean for actual exiles having to protect their privacy when communicating back home? [https://techpolicy.press/how-to-open-an-outpost-in-social-media-exile/ ‘Social media exiles’] and ‘Twitter migration’ are terms used often after Twitter became X and users have moved to the Fediverse or other alternatives.

Could words like transferring, sharing, moving, copying, re-installing, shifting replace the word ‘migration’? From this point on in the report I decide to use the term ‘transfer’.

[[File:Screenshot 2023-10-07 at 11-31-21 esiliati.org.png|thumb|Screenshot of webpage of self-organised server mentioning the term 'digital exiles' ]]

== TITiPI’s case of server transfer ==
On the 27th of September, sitting at the long desks side to side, Femke and I have an online call with Helen, while looking at the depths of our Virtual Private Server (VPS), provided by Linode, that runs Ubuntu on our laptop screens. Linode is an American hosting provider focusing on ''Linux''-based virtual machines originally. The server is physically located in the UK. TITiPI currently uses the Linode server that Helen set up for hosting her own projects. They have been paying for Linode’s monthly fees so far.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-10-11 14-47-06.png|thumb|Screenshot of Linode Ubuntu server overview and ''terminal'' that shows a moment of figuring out what takes space in the server through ''SSH'' access]]

At the time it seemed a good choice, because Linode is based in UK, is ''Linux'' friendly and an alternative to Amazon Web Services (AWS), even though the company was already identifying as ‘''cloud hosting''’. But in February 2023 it has been acquired by the American company Akamai that aims to scale up for [https://www.linode.com/global-infrastructure/ “computing power, optimizing performance and agility.”]. Akamai is actively changing its server policies into an increasingly intense cloud logic. This pushed forward the desire to move to a new place.

[[File:Screenshot 2023-10-11 at 14-50-47 Cloud Computing & Linux Servers Alternative to AWS Linode.png|thumb|Screenshot of Linode website referring to scalability]]

At the moment in Linode we run pico, a flat CMS for the website https://titipi.org. There is a Mediawiki (you are reading a Mediawiki page right now) for notes and collective writing. On the wiki, we also publish our statutes, guidelines and other instituting documents. The wiki has a custom extension, called wiki-to-pdf. Each of these services will need a different way to be transferred. One approach is to build the new server space from scratch, copy the data with rsync and transfer only the Mediawiki, which includes installing a new version and copy the database and the media files.

While preparing to transfer the tools we are defining what are the practical needs and desirable priorities; we ended up on these server requirements:
* ''SSH'' access and wish for VPS [pick up gain the fantasy of a server -- make present this questioning of physical or software defined server]
* affordable price (around €20/month)
* run a Free Software operating system, preferably Debian
* involves community work - slowing down, resisting to scaling and growth or ‘decloudification’ (small network of partners, less virtualization approach, location of servers nearby etc)
* 25-40GB storage space, 1-2 cores, 2-4GB RAM
* environmental angle
* service support in a language that we all understand (English mostly)

This server transfer happens with an intersectional and feminist approach and the desire to keep questioning. While moving away from Linode we include both the technical and the conceptual thinking in the process. There are a few things that we are looking at:
* Where to be transferred to or what services to transfer to?
* How to be transferred and what to transfer?
* What terminology, language we use?
* What (other) narratives of server hosting can we construct?
TITiPI seeks to exist with an infrastructure that supports inter-dependent practices and solidarity across struggles. It develops Counter Cloud Actions [ref] as a way to scale down, de-cloudify, articulate, contest and re-imagine the implications of computational infrastructures (‘the cloud’).

<blockquote>TITiPI develop tools from feminisms, queer theory, Free, Libre and Open Source software, intersectionality, anti-coloniality, disability studies, historical materialism and artistic practice to generate currently inexistent vocabularies, imaginaries and methodologies. TITiPI functions as an infrastructure to establish new ways in which socio-technical practices and technologies might support the public interest. <ref>TITiPI, ‘Infrables’, Tangible Cloud Archives, https://docs.tangible-cloud.be/publications-pdf/02_snelting.pdf.</ref></blockquote>

We are looking for servers that aspire some of these values.

=== A relational infrastructure narrative/ infra-mutuality/ inter-infrastructural narrative ===
[[File:Elastic solidarities.png|thumb]]
In June 2023 TITiPI received an email from Gandi to renew the domain titipi.org in 6 days, not realising that at the same time we would need to start paying for our titipi.org email hosting. We had missed reading to the end of another email sent in the middle of June, entitled: 'Pricing update'.

[it is a different decision making--it was never the plan to transfer email]

We consider to work with Kate Rich to move our mailboxes to the [http://irational.org/ Irational server], soon to be installed on a Raspberry Pi, hosted at Servus. We decide to do this transition slowly and until then renew the emails for 1-2 months through Gandi. Irational server resists virtualization, and as an art community project it makes it an interesting choice.

But why to go through all this effort and not just use one cloud server with mailboxes, file storage and web server together? TITiPI’s response to the question of building institutional digital infrastructure embodies an archipelagic and non-sovereign approach to dependencies. Rather than building a centralised server based on ‘cloud’ from which connections with other institutions and collectives can happen, it conceptualizes inter-infrastructural practices; from the creation of a [https://gitlab.constantvzw.org/titipi/burrow backup script] for saving locally etherpad pads from other servers, hosting emails at an art server (https://irational.org), creating an [https://books.lumbung.space/shelf/26 online bookshelf] on lumbung.space, using the ''XMPP'' chat from Varia to recording conversations with the ''sysadmin'' that maintain the other servers. The institution re-imagines technological dependencies in dialogue with cultural institutions and art collectives. [[File:Titipi-infra-diagram-JAN-24.png|thumb|none|alt=A diagram of TITiPI’s infrastructure. The diagram categorizes the elements according to tools/software (box), structure/organisational form (circle) and place (dashed line). For example Jitsi is the software, Greenhost is the organisation, meet.greenhost.net is the place.|A diagram of TITiPI’s infrastructure. The diagram categorizes the elements according to tools/software (box), structure/organisational form (circle) and place (dashed line). For example Jitsi is the software, Greenhost is the organisation, meet.greenhost.net is the place.]]

How to give life to the common space of TITiPI’s hosting infrastructures? What about building up social dependencies between the ones that host and the ones who are hosted as opposed to a technical independence? Infrastructural imaginations are often built by the ''Big Tech'' industry and governmental institutions. Instead, TITiPI practices a fluid inter-institutional approach supported by [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Infra_colophon a variety of hosts].

=== Selection of server providers ===
On the 7th of November through a shared screen at the [https://meet.greenhost.net/ video conferencing software Jitsi of Greenhost] we all three check a list of server providers I collected on a spreadsheet hosted in Constant’s cloud storage (built with Nextcloud software) where TITiPI has an account. I looked at associations, companies/businesses, cooperatives, communities coming from commercial context to social struggles, activist, feminist and other. Through a [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/List_server_networks list of networks] I found various servers mostly from Latin America and Europe.

The concept of autonomy, sovereignty, independence or self-managing characterizes most of the servers in the list. Some of them, like [https://www.autistici.org/ Autistici] promote this concept as a way to support anti-capitalist infrastructure and protect the privacy of the users as opposed to the ''Big Tech'' software practices.

<blockquote>The vision is that we - the members of the cooperative - own our own data. This implies and has as a consequence that we will have to own our own infrastructure and have insight and control over the software we use to communicate on the web.<ref>‘Community Servers - Monoskop’, accessed 16 July 2024, https://monoskop.org/Community_servers</ref></blockquote>

Femke had a hunch: "‘technological sovereignty’ and ‘data-sovereignty’ continue to be orientation devices to organise around. ‘Sovereignty’, together with ‘freedom’, ‘independence’ and ‘autonomy’, form an ideological cluster that implicitly and sometimes explicitly foregrounds separation rather than relation."

Servers can act as independent spaces but are also cultural devices and vibrant spaces. They can manifest different aspects of a full life and reach out to a multiplicity of entities.

Servus and Greenhost, seem to be two of our best choices as they cover a lot of the priorities and values of TITiPI. As one can read from their descriptions they both strive for owning their own data servers and data nodes (they have their own ''IP addresses'') and be independent from third parties. The big difference is the scale of the infrastructure and their community and network.

<blockquote>Greenhost fully owns and controls its hardware, infrastructure and uplinks. This ensures independence from third parties and proper access control. On this hardware we run our fully virtualised platform. We stand for an Open Internet, and have always embraced open source software.<ref>‘Greenhost.Net | the Sustainable Web’, accessed 16 July 2024, https://greenhost.net/.</ref></blockquote>

<blockquote>We (Servus) do not pass on any data to third parties. You will not receive commercial advertising from us or third parties. We are easily accessible and answer your questions personally. We and our servers are located at Kirchengasse 4 in Linz, Austria.<ref>‘Book Of Servus’, Book Of Servus, accessed 16 July 2024, https://book.servus.at/en/home/.</ref></blockquote>

Even though Greenhost wants to reduce ecological damage, it does that mainly through hardware reductions and does not address scale. They have plans to expand and are part of a network of partners that want to transform Rotterdam into a big hub of data nodes for the upcoming digital transition. [it is not as big as Linode--it is not in the list--we are not recosnidering to stay with linode]Linode is even bigger, it goes for [[https://www.akamai.com/newsroom/press-release/akamai-takes-cloud-computing-to-the-edge| "(p)lanetary scale"]]. Servus on the other hand has one room of data servers, is closer to the scale of their community and they maintain personal relations with them.

[[Image of the server room at Servus at Linz|Image of the server room at Servus at Linz?]]

=== Community server, feminist server, trans*feminist server, radical server, autonomous server, commercial server, art server, free server, ethical server, solidarity-based server, cooperative server, associative server, independent server, alternative server, non-commercial server, … ===
The spreadsheet starts to grow because of an endless/exhaustive burrow of small and big providers.

Some are outdated. 
Some are messy. 
Some have broken links. 
Some are [https://www.julienth37.fr/vps hard to understand]. 
Some require [https://www.actiu.info/index.en.html a lot of engagement]. 
Some use a language that imitates the narratives of ''Big Tech'' and ''agile'' computing. 
Some promote seamless “promissory logic” and “high hopes for a brighter future” (ref) 
Some are big or are scaling up (in matter of space, data centers, partners, users etc). 
Some support NGO’s or sport clubs.

[[File:Screenshot 2023-10-11 at 15-06-35 co-operative web-crop.png|thumb|Screenshot from main page of Co-op Web]]

We also looked at their financial model. Many radical servers stay small, are volunteer based, like [https://www.autistici.org/ Autistici]. and go for horizontal organisational structures. Feminist and activist servers provide space in the internet for the ones who don’t have the means to organise otherwise. The resources and ways of organising for these servers are different from the cooperatives or associations whose structure is inherited from the model they are registered with.

[[File:ATNOFS-Varia-insert-ooooo.jpg|thumb|ooooo atnofs insert diagrams from varia, systerserver, servus]]

TITiPI acknowledges and is connected to the history of community, art and feminist servers and wants to support this network. The art servers started as a way to make autonomous self-managed servers that support artists values and practices. They are often financed by cultural or private funds.

<blockquote>I joined (Irational) sometime in 2000s, I can't remember when and originally it was much more a collective of people working together and then since the early 2010's I think, mid 2010's, there was a bit of a reshuffle of personnel and stuff, so the constituency changed to a smaller group and we actually reformed. We were going to disband Irational and then we actually reformed as an art server collective and we decided we are not really working together but what we have in common is that we're using the server and that is actually what the collective is now. It's the collective that uses the server together and wants to use the server together. And another real defining feature of the server the whole time has been resisting virtualization. 

— quote from [[None of this experiment is evident|interview of Kate Rich by Femke Snelting]] [needs rewritting] </blockquote>

The screen seems to become brighter as my eyes get tired. What if we skip the online hosting and create a local physical server at TITiPI’s office next to the desks, in a corner, on a Raspberry Pi? All our data would stay on this machine and we would connect with ''SSH'' from home, but then we will also have to maintain it ourselves. There is something there about the romanticism of a physical toolbox as a sovereign object. If we choose to do that we will need to think of a backup plan as it will be an experimental set up and all our data will stay offline. We won’t have a provider to take care of that.

Our list has been reduced because of our priorities. We need ''SSH'' and we would like to have a VPS [--why?--part of the first issue on software/hardware server--having material inside someone elses server/email--physical--root access--2nd: to have our own box in a rack--that is expensive--pay for electricity etc and who turns of and on--a pi in our own office--bandwidth internet--in a rack we would have connection to high speed reliable internet--fire protection--4th: vps, it is a cloud technology but we have our own virtual machine that we can start and stop from ditance--with the consequence of using cloud technology--explain these different options--to help the reader]. Who has resources for providing VPS? Resources of labour, time, finances, technical knowledge. This made self-defined feminist servers fall out of the selection. How to be financially sustainable, while keeping up with your own values? How to keep up with infrastructural ''maintenance'' if the scale of the users, community, members and data is big?

<blockquote>The services we offer have no defined price, but as you may easily imagine, keeping the whole system working (i.e. hardware and hosting) is very expensive (at the moment it ranges around 13,000 euro every year).<ref>‘Autistici.Org - Services’, accessed 16 July 2024, https://www.autistici.org/services/</ref></blockquote>

Servus and Maadix provide a series of ''free/libre'' tools that can be installed separately through their interface but they also provide a VPS with ''SSH'' access. With Greenhost, Hetzner and Linode there is more flexibility: you can create your own VPS and customize it for your own needs through their interface or the ''terminal'' and install whatever tools you want from scratch without a visual interface.

Technical information and knowledge of digital infrastructure circulate between groups that are tech-oriented with a difficulty to cross with other groups, including feminist servers. The ''sysadmin'' tasks are mostly taken by cis men but feminist servers are radical about that. They find important to have ''sysadmins'' that are not cis men. For example Systerserver and Anarchaserver are learning by themselves together how to do this task.

Many of the servers in the list provide only tools, as a radical way to support small groups, collectives, activists that need privacy and shifting away from Google drive when they want to organise politically and socially. It seems that being limited to tool packages instead of having full access to a server can make things comprehensible and compact for these small groups that have limited ''sysadmin'' knowledge or can’t hire a technician.

[[File:Screenshot 2023-10-07 at 12-23-26 FuturEtic - Services en lignes libres & éthiques-2.png|Screenshot of main page with services by [https://futuretic.fr/ FuturEtic]|thumb]]

[[File:Scrnli 12 10 2023 13-14-32.png|thumb|Screenshot of tools from codigosur]]

== Final decision and server transfers [email and webhosting] ==

We are about to make our decision! Our list ended up to be very small.

On 7th of November in an online call between Helen in Basel, Femke in Brussels and Aggeliki in Rotterdam we limited our list to four options: Constant, Greenhost, Servus, Zaclys. The selection consists of a diversity of scales and positioning that we found interesting to think of. First, we move on with the decision to transfer our mailboxes to Irational hosted at Servus. The rest of the functionalities will be hosted somewhere else.

From our conversations with Femke: “The choice for irational.org opens the possibility for discussions around dependencies, trust and frictions within shared collective servers. Irational.org is an ally art server who uses and maintains its own server for many years. Hosting such a private service at a friend’s environment doesn’t come only with convenience. The closeness to the material of the server makes the dependency more tangible.” [reference/quote from colophon?]

[[File:White-magenta-painful.jpg|thumb|Towel design by psaroskalazines. Image from their website]]

Femke and I are planning different moments for the server transfer to happen in the office of TITiPI. What it is about to take place comes down into three moments; the backup and save of data from the old server, the installation of the necessary software in the new server and the transfer of the old data in the new server.

Specifically we are following these steps:

* Mail transfer from Gandi to irational
* Create a Virtual Private Server (VPS) in the new server
* Install Apache2 and configure domains
* Install and migrate MediaWiki
** Back up the wiki on the Linode VPS
** Upgrade MediaWiki in Linode
** Install MediaWiki and plugins in the Greenhost VPS
** Transfer database and media files from Linode to Greenhost
* Install Wiki-to-pdf
* Install Pico
* Install and configure Certbot

We find ourselves between two virtual spaces and one office, among other indirectly connected spaces like the rooms of our distant collaborators and the office locations of the servers.

=== Trust relationships ===
By now, 14th of November 2023, the office is warm and cozy. Throughout the time I am writing this report I have been noticing a lot of slow and small efforts to renovate the building and set up the heating, by the artists and organisations who share the space with TITiPI. Another infrastructure that needs care.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 15-06-42.png|thumb|Femke and Aggeliki entering Irational’s server space with Kate]]

On a shared screen together with Femke we get introduced to the mail server of Irational by Kate. We use an audio splitter to share the laptop for the call. Kate described her experience as an amateur ''sysadmin'' that had to spend a lot of time to learn and set up the mail server. After that we start the process that has been documented [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Server_transfer_documentation#Mail_transfer here].

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 14-56-26.png|thumb|Screenshot from the TITiPI’s mail transfer with Kate, Femke and Aggeliki during an online 3 hours call]]

Irational uses the Alpine email client. Kate takes us its depths. That is where we start to set up our new email accounts before we configure them in Thunderbird. Femke gets excited on the fact that she can send emails to other Irational accounts through the ''terminal''.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 15-15-07.png|thumb|Using the email client Alpine]]

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 17-04-20.png|thumb|Screenhost from the moment of looking for the syntax of the TXT records. Finding the right syntax for this value was the biggest challenge. This is part of the ''trust relationships'' between the different providers]]

After some more DNS configurations we test if it is possible to exchange emails with ‘outside’ accounts and especially with Gmail that has many security filters for mail servers other than the commercial ones.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-15 13-59-52.png|thumb|Exchange test emails with a Gmail account]]

After three hours of tryouts we manage to make it work! Very proudly and with enjoyment for sharing a technical task together we say goodbye to each other and arrange a next meeting for a final check up.

=== A choice that comes with discomforts ===
Just one day before the start of TITiPI’s server transfer away from Linode on the 28th of November, Helen found the Swiss server ungleich.ch and it seemed like an interesting choice because of the small scale (in terms of community and servers), their experimental attitude and their choice to reduce energy consumption; they avoid using systems for cooling their servers by spreading the servers at the Swiss mountains in old, abandoned buildings.

Ungleich.ch is one of the good options but it is more expensive than other providers. They offer a cheaper choice by choosing to have only ‘ipv6’. But we had to dig in to understand the difference of ipv4 and ipv6. From wikipedia: “IPv6 is the most recent version of the Internet Protocol, developed to deal with the long-anticipated problem of IPv4 address exhaustion” We found a [https://stats.labs.apnic.net/ipv6 map] that shows which countries have implemented IPv6 and it seems that if we only use this address then many places won’t have access to the website of TITiPI. So we choose to have both addresses.

We also notice that this provider is using Stripe for their payment system. In a [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Frontier parallel universe of TITiPI] we give attention to and critique Stripe because of its connections with the Carbon Removal industry.

[[File:Firefox Screenshot 2023-11-28T12-32-24.775Z.png|thumb|Ungleich.ch payment system with Stripe]] [include and correctly reference them]

Another urgency appears while we are looking at different choices; together with many other organisations, we have been thinking about ways to host and maintain infrastructures in solidarity with communities and networks we are part of. This would mean, for example, hosting digitally a Palestinian video film archive, or research by sex workers. Solidarity is only partially a question of caring for privacy and security because it matters where and how we host our digital infrastructures and whether these spaces do or do not support the flourishing of different lives and struggles. This need make us think again if the server we choose would be suitable for something like that.

Constant and Servus are two accomplice servers that already provide to TITiPI some of their services. Zaclys is a member of Chatons that support open source values and it is located in France. We contacted them to see if they could be an option but they never responded to us.

We wanted to work with a company that provide ‘green’ infrastructure. Greenhost seem to be a good choice. It provides a familiar interface to us, good support and backup option. It has a positioning as an alternative to AWS. So far great, but what about its ‘green’ hosting vision? Is it a solarpunk vision, a green cloud utopia? Is their infrastructure resource ‘hungry’? What are the privacy limits when the material hosted in the servers is political and sensitive?

We choose Greenhost with all the discomforts that this choice entails and with the desire to keep the critique and dialogue alive.

Only by December 2023 we manage to arrange a call with one of Greenhost’s former Managing Directors to get a feeling and more information about their approach and sensitivity. Accordind to him Greenhost exists in the intersection of activism and technology. It provides consultancy, sustainability solutions in tech projects and structured ''maintenance''; they go for best quality with lowest environmental impact; they maintain the same hardware as much as possible and balance that with higher efficiency; they keep backups at an already existing data center in the university of Amsterdam.

<nowiki>[[paragraph for Greenhost include? from interview with manager?]]</nowiki>

=== Installing, transferring, saving, copying, … ===
On the 28th of November sitting on the sunny corner of the couch next to the radiator, and with warm coffee cups waiting for us on a low table, Femke and I cover our legs with a blanket and open our laptops.

I ask Femke to jumb in a ''tmux'' session for sharing ''terminal'' with this command: <code>''sudo'' ''tmux'' attach -t webserver</code>. We start by cleaning the old server and make backups of the files.

We take a lunch break. Femke finds out that if we eat three recurrent meals every week in the office we can have a nice variety of food; lentiles soup, orecchiette pasta with brocoli, rizzoto with mushrooms and lots of fruits. Sometime ago we decided to make multiple short breaks throughout the day because of computer fatigue. One day I removed all the files from my computer that were older than 90 days because I accidentally run a command on the ''terminal'' instead of a bash script to test the setting up of [https://gitlab.constantvzw.org/titipi/burrow Burrow]. I left this comment in the initial script:

<code># VERY DANGEROUS COMMAND find *txt -mindepth 1 -mtime +$RETAIN -delete</code>
The next day we set up the new server and install all the necessary software including a new version of the MediaWiki. We arrange a meeting with Martino Morandi, member of Constant, who created the wiki-to-pdf to help us installing this software and transfer the MediaWiki in the new server. On the 1st of December we successfully install the wiki-to-pdf and because of limited time we decided to meet one more time at the end of the month for the rest.

[[File:Virtual-env-debian.png|thumb|Screenshot from the wiki-to-pdf installation to the new server with Martino, Femke, Aggeliki. Debian supports a different way to create virtual environments for installing python packages and libraries. We try it but it failed.]]

On the 28th we meet with Martino online to complete the transfer, which includes copying the old database of MediaWiki, activate the old plugins and fix any issues on the way. We are all located in different countries (Italy, Greece, Belgium) and so we share a ''tmux'' session. We follow the guides but on the way we had to do some research and configure a lot of things to make the MediaWiki work. Martino was hunting a php module. It seemed that php has shifted to free software culture in an attempt to find another business model. It is not surprising it happens in the context of Ubuntu. The issue is recorded [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Server_transfer_documentation#MediaWiki_upgrade_issues here].

[[File:Firefox Screenshot 2024-01-10T13-59-40.398Z.png|thumb|"Is Titipi.org down?" Helen asks after the transfer. It seems that her browser cache was preventing her from seeing the website]]

The process is documented in our diary and then transferred to a [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Server_transfer_documentation wiki page]. By January 2024 the server transfer and the deletion of our Linode account has been completed.

== Glossaries ==

Italicized terms in the report are included in these glossaries:

* [https://varia.zone/ATNOFS/ATNOFS-screen.pdf#page=11 Glossary of A Traversal Network of Feminist Servers (ATNOFS) publication]
* [[Glossary|TITiPI's glossary]]

== References ==

* Panashe Chigumadzi, ‘Can White South Africa Live up to Ubuntu, the African Philosophy Tutu Globalised?’, The Guardian, 31 December 2021, sec. Opinion, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec/31/white-south-africa-ubuntu-african-tutu
* ‘Community Servers - Monoskop’, accessed 16 July 2024, https://monoskop.org/Community_servers
* David Carroll, ‘How To Open An Outpost In Social Media Exile | TechPolicy.Press’, Tech Policy Press, 26 November 2022, <nowiki>https://techpolicy.press/how-to-open-an-outpost-in-social-media-exile</nowiki>.
* Elizabeth Landau, ‘Tech Confronts Its Use of the Labels “Master” and “Slave”’, ''Wired'', accessed 16 July 2024, <nowiki>https://www.wired.com/story/tech-confronts-use-labels-master-slave/</nowiki>.
* ‘GitHub Abandons “master” Term to Avoid Slavery Row’, 15 June 2020, https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-53050955
* Femke Snelting, ‘Infrastructure Solidarity’, Ardeth. A Magazine on the Power of the Project, no. 8 (1 November 2021): 45–47
* ‘Master-Slave Terminology Alternatives You Can Use Right Now | TheServerSide’, TheServerSide.com, accessed 16 July 2024, https://www.theserverside.com/opinion/Master-slave-terminology-alternatives-you-can-use-right-now
* ‘Racist Computer Engineering Words: “Master,” “Slave” and the Fight Over Offensive Terms - The New York Times’, accessed 16 July 2024, <nowiki>https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/13/technology/racist-computer-engineering-terms-ietf.html</nowiki>.
* ‘Replace “Master” and “Slave” Terms in Redis · Issue #3185 · Redis/Redis’, GitHub, accessed 16 July 2024, https://github.com/redis/redis/issues/3185
* ‘Ubuntu: A Black Radical Demand for Reparations’, THE FUNAMBULIST MAGAZINE, 25 October 2023, https://thefunambulist.net/magazine/redefining-our-terms/ubuntu-a-black-radical-demand-for-reparations.

== Colophon ==

The text was drafted in pad.xpub.nl in Markdown and then transferred in this wiki.

== Footnotes ==

From cloud to crowd: a report on a server transfer

2024-10-16T12:07:25Z

Angeliki:

= From cloud to crowd<ref>The term comes from ... (not sure if it is included in the title)</ref>: A report on a server transfer =

This text is a report on a server migration that took place within the institutional framework of [https://titipi.org/ The Institute for Technology in the Public Interest (TITiPI)], a trans-practice gathering of activists, artists, engineers and theorists. The report is an infrastructural ethnography<ref>[explain--footnote]</ref> and aims to rethink, through a technical process, what ''hosting'' a server means for a community, institution, cultural organisation dealing with technological discomforts and complex digital infrastructures.

Starting from a broad knowledge/ point of view a ''server'' is a computer, a combination of software and hardware or an operating system and a physical machine [(or a piece of software?hardware) what changes--a server being either physical machine or not at all--discuss later--needs attention--transfer from physical place to physical place or software to software--address that--need to problematize and place the question somewhere in the essay-- point out the paradox--then some things later will become easy to read--we problematize and dig into the structure/architecture of a server] that provides computing services, such as web hosting and cloud storage, via a network (Internet). A ''server migration'' is the process of moving data and transferring software from one server to another with the use of specified tools. Performing such process accommodates a practical and technical solution to fix the problem of an outdated server that is slow or has limited storage.

This report problematizes the materiality of a server, its location, its scale, its architecture and substantial elements, and how and what is migrated when we decide to change services/servers/providers/spaces. The urgency of this issue derives from the question: How does an organisation's digital infrastructure, like its server and online platforms, affect its values, structure and computing/infrastructural/digital imaginations? TITiPI treats web hosting with attention, rather than as a tech outsourced service, by including it in the thinking and reflection of its organisational structure. In times of server providers’ scaling up ( ‘''cloud hosting''’ ) and digitizing governmental bureaucracies what does it mean to host your own digital space for supporting your communities and work? Is it necessary to have a sovereign and independent infrastructure? What (non-)dependencies are chosen or taken for granted by institutions when using hosting services?

As a researcher at TITiPI I have been caring for the task to investigate this server migration and execute it together with TITiPI’s member Femke Snelting. The services that we want to migrate are email and web hosting. We meet weekly to keep track and make decisions. We share a ''markdown'' file hosted in the [https://gitlab.constantvzw.org/titipi/ online code repository of the cultural association Constant] that includes a diary of the server migration and reflections. Every now and then we meet online with our colleague Helen Pritchard, to discuss and share the process. This report includes extracts from the server diary and stories from the process.

== Migration or …? [restructuring--what are the differences] ==

In the cold Autumn of 2022 in the newly installed office of TITiPI located in the Koekelberg district of Brussels, I open the browser Chromium in my computer, that runs the ''open source'' operating system Ubuntu, in order to quickly translate − with the installed Google Translate plugin − the web pages of the different cooperatives, associations, companies that provide hosting services. While doing that I have this disturbing thought that I try to ignore: the word ‘migration’ [its about appropriation of a way of being--flattening the experience of migration--to pull them apart--to explain discomfort with the word migration--understanding how and why the word migration is problematic] as a technical term to describe the movement from one server to the other. It makes me think of an [https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/13/technology/racist-computer-engineering-terms-ietf.html online conversation], happening for a few years now, about replacing computer engineering terminology to stop [to address] prevalence of racism in tech. Specifically the conversation [https://www.wired.com/story/tech-confronts-use-labels-master-slave/ evolves around the terms] ‘master/slave’ [the way I link the things need some extra sentences], where one computing process or entity controls another, and ‘blacklists/whitelists’ used for directories of those things that are explicitly banned or allowed. Using metaphors like that for a technical process de-contextualizes a word from its origins and unavoidably perpetuates social injustices. It also shows that the context where such choices of language are made is privileged and untouched or non-triggered by these terms. White male computer engineers have build up this language.

[My computer runs--for example--why these two parts are different or the same--it hasnt registsred as problematic yet]‘Ubuntu’ is also a word extracted from its original context. It is coming from the African Ubuntu philosophy. According to the creators of the software:

<blockquote>ubuntu |oǒ’boǒntoō| Ubuntu is an ancient African word meaning ‘humanity to others’. It is often described as reminding us that ‘I am what I am because of who we all are’. We bring the spirit of Ubuntu to the world of computers and software. The Ubuntu distribution represents the best of what the world’s software community has shared with the world. <ref>‘About the Ubuntu Project’, Ubuntu, accessed 16 July 2024, https://ubuntu.com/about</ref>
</blockquote>

Paraphrasing [https://thefunambulist.net/magazine/redefining-our-terms/ubuntu-a-black-radical-demand-for-reparations Panashe Chigumadzi] words: in contrast to the western conception of the human as individual, the African conception of the person is a social being who is always becoming, defined by and being responsible for the personhood of the others. "(T)he African philosophy best understood through the proverb found in Bantu languages across the continent, 'umuntu ngumuntu ngabanye bantu' (a person is a person through other people". <ref>Panashe Chigumadzi, ‘Can White South Africa Live up to Ubuntu, the African Philosophy Tutu Globalised?’, The Guardian, 31 December 2021, sec. Opinion, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec/31/white-south-africa-ubuntu-african-tutu</ref>

<blockquote>(D)espite the flourishing of Ubuntu in post-apartheid discourse, lending its name to software, businesses, books and philanthropic organisations, South Africa is a country in which we have, as Dladla argues, Ubuntu without Abantu. Just as Black people have been dispossessed of their land, Ubuntu has been dispossessed of its deeply radical demands for ethical historical and social relations among people. (...) post apartheid Ubuntu mistranslation 'I am because we are', individualized and interpersonalised Ubuntu, Christianised Ubuntu, mistranslated in order to justify crimes and violence. In Ubuntu violence can be punished even after generations, the misinterpretation of the term allowed individual forgiveness. <ref>‘Ubuntu: A Black Radical Demand for Reparations’, THE FUNAMBULIST MAGAZINE, 25 October 2023, https://thefunambulist.net/magazine/redefining-our-terms/ubuntu-a-black-radical-demand-for-reparations</ref>
</blockquote>

I skip these thoughts and I continue browsing the list of servers. While trying to stay focused something other distracts me; I encounter an [https://www.oziosi.org/ autonomous Italian server] with the title translated with DeepL: “:: a shelter for digital exiles ::” and an image of a woman, a child and a man leaving their home. Also a small introduction: “Exiled from the global village of social networks, we claim an internet that is a simple means of communication: immaterial, anonymous, imaginary, public when it makes sense and secret when we feel the need.”. I am wondering what does this mean for actual exiles having to protect their privacy when communicating back home? [https://techpolicy.press/how-to-open-an-outpost-in-social-media-exile/ ‘Social media exiles’] and ‘Twitter migration’ are terms used often after Twitter became X and users have moved to the Fediverse or other alternatives.

Could words like transferring, sharing, moving, copying, re-installing, shifting replace the word ‘migration’? From this point on in the report I decide to use the term ‘transfer’.

[[File:Screenshot 2023-10-07 at 11-31-21 esiliati.org.png|thumb|Screenshot of webpage of self-organised server mentioning the term 'digital exiles' ]]

== TITiPI’s case of server transfer ==
On the 27th of September, sitting at the long desks side to side, Femke and I have an online call with Helen, while looking at the depths of our Virtual Private Server (VPS), provided by Linode, that runs Ubuntu on our laptop screens. Linode is an American hosting provider focusing on ''Linux''-based virtual machines originally. The server is physically located in the UK. TITiPI currently uses the Linode server that Helen set up for hosting her own projects. They have been paying for Linode’s monthly fees so far.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-10-11 14-47-06.png|thumb|Screenshot of Linode Ubuntu server overview and ''terminal'' that shows a moment of figuring out what takes space in the server through ''SSH'' access]]

At the time it seemed a good choice, because Linode is based in UK, is ''Linux'' friendly and an alternative to Amazon Web Services (AWS), even though the company was already identifying as ‘''cloud hosting''’. But in February 2023 it has been acquired by the American company Akamai that aims to scale up for [https://www.linode.com/global-infrastructure/ “computing power, optimizing performance and agility.”]. Akamai is actively changing its server policies into an increasingly intense cloud logic. This pushed forward the desire to move to a new place.

[[File:Screenshot 2023-10-11 at 14-50-47 Cloud Computing & Linux Servers Alternative to AWS Linode.png|thumb|Screenshot of Linode website referring to scalability]]

At the moment in Linode we run pico, a flat CMS for the website https://titipi.org. There is a Mediawiki (you are reading a Mediawiki page right now) for notes and collective writing. On the wiki, we also publish our statutes, guidelines and other instituting documents. The wiki has a custom extension, called wiki-to-pdf. Each of these services will need a different way to be transferred. One approach is to build the new server space from scratch, copy the data with rsync and transfer only the Mediawiki, which includes installing a new version and copy the database and the media files.

While preparing to transfer the tools we are defining what are the practical needs and desirable priorities; we ended up on these server requirements:
* ''SSH'' access and wish for VPS [pick up gain the fantasy of a server -- make present this questioning of physical or software defined server]
* affordable price (around €20/month)
* run a Free Software operating system, preferably Debian
* involves community work - slowing down, resisting to scaling and growth or ‘decloudification’ (small network of partners, less virtualization approach, location of servers nearby etc)
* 25-40GB storage space, 1-2 cores, 2-4GB RAM
* environmental angle
* service support in a language that we all understand (English mostly)

This server transfer happens with an intersectional and feminist approach and the desire to keep questioning. While moving away from Linode we include both the technical and the conceptual thinking in the process. There are a few things that we are looking at:
* Where to be transferred to or what services to transfer to?
* How to be transferred and what to transfer?
* What terminology, language we use?
* What (other) narratives of server hosting can we construct?
TITiPI seeks to exist with an infrastructure that supports inter-dependent practices and solidarity across struggles. It develops Counter Cloud Actions [ref] as a way to scale down, de-cloudify, articulate, contest and re-imagine the implications of computational infrastructures (‘the cloud’).

<blockquote>TITiPI develop tools from feminisms, queer theory, Free, Libre and Open Source software, intersectionality, anti-coloniality, disability studies, historical materialism and artistic practice to generate currently inexistent vocabularies, imaginaries and methodologies. TITiPI functions as an infrastructure to establish new ways in which socio-technical practices and technologies might support the public interest. <ref>TITiPI, ‘Infrables’, Tangible Cloud Archives, https://docs.tangible-cloud.be/publications-pdf/02_snelting.pdf.</ref></blockquote>

We are looking for servers that aspire some of these values.

=== A relational infrastructure narrative/ infra-mutuality/ inter-infrastructural narrative ===
[[File:Elastic solidarities.png|thumb]]
In June 2023 TITiPI received an email from Gandi to renew the domain titipi.org in 6 days, not realising that at the same time we would need to start paying for our titipi.org email hosting. We had missed reading to the end of another email sent in the middle of June, entitled: 'Pricing update'.

[it is a different decision making--it was never the plan to transfer email]

We consider to work with Kate Rich to move our mailboxes to the [http://irational.org/ Irational server], soon to be installed on a Raspberry Pi, hosted at Servus. We decide to do this transition slowly and until then renew the emails for 1-2 months through Gandi. Irational server resists virtualization, and as an art community project it makes it an interesting choice.

But why to go through all this effort and not just use one cloud server with mailboxes, file storage and web server together? TITiPI’s response to the question of building institutional digital infrastructure embodies an archipelagic and non-sovereign approach to dependencies. Rather than building a centralised server based on ‘cloud’ from which connections with other institutions and collectives can happen, it conceptualizes inter-infrastructural practices; from the creation of a [https://gitlab.constantvzw.org/titipi/burrow backup script] for saving locally etherpad pads from other servers, hosting emails at an art server (https://irational.org), creating an [https://books.lumbung.space/shelf/26 online bookshelf] on lumbung.space, using the ''XMPP'' chat from Varia to recording conversations with the ''sysadmin'' that maintain the other servers. The institution re-imagines technological dependencies in dialogue with cultural institutions and art collectives. [[File:Titipi-infra-diagram-JAN-24.png|thumb|none|alt=A diagram of TITiPI’s infrastructure. The diagram categorizes the elements according to tools/software (box), structure/organisational form (circle) and place (dashed line). For example Jitsi is the software, Greenhost is the organisation, meet.greenhost.net is the place.|A diagram of TITiPI’s infrastructure. The diagram categorizes the elements according to tools/software (box), structure/organisational form (circle) and place (dashed line). For example Jitsi is the software, Greenhost is the organisation, meet.greenhost.net is the place.]]

How to give life to the common space of TITiPI’s hosting infrastructures? What about building up social dependencies between the ones that host and the ones who are hosted as opposed to a technical independence? Infrastructural imaginations are often built by the ''Big Tech'' industry and governmental institutions. Instead, TITiPI practices a fluid inter-institutional approach supported by [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Infra_colophon a variety of hosts].

=== Selection of server providers ===
On the 7th of November through a shared screen at the [https://meet.greenhost.net/ video conferencing software Jitsi of Greenhost] we all three check a list of server providers I collected on a spreadsheet hosted in Constant’s cloud storage (built with Nextcloud software) where TITiPI has an account. I looked at associations, companies/businesses, cooperatives, communities coming from commercial context to social struggles, activist, feminist and other. Through a [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/List_server_networks list of networks] I found various servers mostly from Latin America and Europe.

The concept of autonomy, sovereignty, independence or self-managing characterizes most of the servers in the list. Some of them, like [https://www.autistici.org/ Autistici] promote this concept as a way to support anti-capitalist infrastructure and protect the privacy of the users as opposed to the ''Big Tech'' software practices.

<blockquote>The vision is that we - the members of the cooperative - own our own data. This implies and has as a consequence that we will have to own our own infrastructure and have insight and control over the software we use to communicate on the web.<ref>‘Community Servers - Monoskop’, accessed 16 July 2024, https://monoskop.org/Community_servers</ref></blockquote>

Femke had a hunch: "‘technological sovereignty’ and ‘data-sovereignty’ continue to be orientation devices to organise around. ‘Sovereignty’, together with ‘freedom’, ‘independence’ and ‘autonomy’, form an ideological cluster that implicitly and sometimes explicitly foregrounds separation rather than relation."

Servers can act as independent spaces but are also cultural devices and vibrant spaces. They can manifest different aspects of a full life and reach out to a multiplicity of entities.

Servus and Greenhost, seem to be two of our best choices as they cover a lot of the priorities and values of TITiPI. As one can read from their descriptions they both strive for owning their own data servers and data nodes (they have their own ''IP addresses'') and be independent from third parties. The big difference is the scale of the infrastructure and their community and network.

<blockquote>Greenhost fully owns and controls its hardware, infrastructure and uplinks. This ensures independence from third parties and proper access control. On this hardware we run our fully virtualised platform. We stand for an Open Internet, and have always embraced open source software.<ref>‘Greenhost.Net | the Sustainable Web’, accessed 16 July 2024, https://greenhost.net/.</ref></blockquote>

<blockquote>We (Servus) do not pass on any data to third parties. You will not receive commercial advertising from us or third parties. We are easily accessible and answer your questions personally. We and our servers are located at Kirchengasse 4 in Linz, Austria.<ref>‘Book Of Servus’, Book Of Servus, accessed 16 July 2024, https://book.servus.at/en/home/.</ref></blockquote>

Even though Greenhost wants to reduce ecological damage, it does that mainly through hardware reductions and does not address scale. They have plans to expand and are part of a network of partners that want to transform Rotterdam into a big hub of data nodes for the upcoming digital transition. [it is not as big as Linode--it is not in the list--we are not recosnidering to stay with linode]Linode is even bigger, it goes for [[https://www.akamai.com/newsroom/press-release/akamai-takes-cloud-computing-to-the-edge| "(p)lanetary scale"]]. Servus on the other hand has one room of data servers, is closer to the scale of their community and they maintain personal relations with them.

[[Image of the server room at Servus at Linz|Image of the server room at Servus at Linz?]]

=== Community server, feminist server, trans*feminist server, radical server, autonomous server, commercial server, art server, free server, ethical server, solidarity-based server, cooperative server, associative server, independent server, alternative server, non-commercial server, … ===
The spreadsheet starts to grow because of an endless/exhaustive burrow of small and big providers.

Some are outdated. 
Some are messy. 
Some have broken links. 
Some are [https://www.julienth37.fr/vps hard to understand]. 
Some require [https://www.actiu.info/index.en.html a lot of engagement]. 
Some use a language that imitates the narratives of ''Big Tech'' and ''agile'' computing. 
Some promote seamless “promissory logic” and “high hopes for a brighter future” (ref) 
Some are big or are scaling up (in matter of space, data centers, partners, users etc). 
Some support NGO’s or sport clubs.

[[File:Screenshot 2023-10-11 at 15-06-35 co-operative web-crop.png|thumb|Screenshot from main page of Co-op Web]]

We also looked at their financial model. Many radical servers stay small, are volunteer based, like [https://www.autistici.org/ Autistici]. and go for horizontal organisational structures. Feminist and activist servers provide space in the internet for the ones who don’t have the means to organise otherwise. The resources and ways of organising for these servers are different from the cooperatives or associations whose structure is inherited from the model they are registered with.

[[File:ATNOFS-Varia-insert-ooooo.jpg|thumb|ooooo atnofs insert diagrams from varia, systerserver, servus]]

TITiPI acknowledges and is connected to the history of community, art and feminist servers and wants to support this network. The art servers started as a way to make autonomous self-managed servers that support artists values and practices. They are often financed by cultural or private funds.

<blockquote>I joined (Irational) sometime in 2000s, I can't remember when and originally it was much more a collective of people working together and then since the early 2010's I think, mid 2010's, there was a bit of a reshuffle of personnel and stuff, so the constituency changed to a smaller group and we actually reformed. We were going to disband Irational and then we actually reformed as an art server collective and we decided we are not really working together but what we have in common is that we're using the server and that is actually what the collective is now. It's the collective that uses the server together and wants to use the server together. And another real defining feature of the server the whole time has been resisting virtualization. 

— quote from [[None of this experiment is evident|interview of Kate Rich by Femke Snelting]] [needs rewritting] </blockquote>

The screen seems to become brighter as my eyes get tired. What if we skip the online hosting and create a local physical server at TITiPI’s office next to the desks, in a corner, on a Raspberry Pi? All our data would stay on this machine and we would connect with ''SSH'' from home, but then we will also have to maintain it ourselves. There is something there about the romanticism of a physical toolbox as a sovereign object. If we choose to do that we will need to think of a backup plan as it will be an experimental set up and all our data will stay offline. We won’t have a provider to take care of that.

Our list has been reduced because of our priorities. We need ''SSH'' and we would like to have a VPS [--why?--part of the first issue on software/hardware server--having material inside someone elses server/email--physical--root access--2nd: to have our own box in a rack--that is expensive--pay for electricity etc and who turns of and on--a pi in our own office--bandwidth internet--in a rack we would have connection to high speed reliable internet--fire protection--4th: vps, it is a cloud technology but we have our own virtual machine that we can start and stop from ditance--with the consequence of using cloud technology--explain these different options--to help the reader]. Who has resources for providing VPS? Resources of labour, time, finances, technical knowledge. This made self-defined feminist servers fall out of the selection. How to be financially sustainable, while keeping up with your own values? How to keep up with infrastructural ''maintenance'' if the scale of the users, community, members and data is big?

<blockquote>The services we offer have no defined price, but as you may easily imagine, keeping the whole system working (i.e. hardware and hosting) is very expensive (at the moment it ranges around 13,000 euro every year).<ref>‘Autistici.Org - Services’, accessed 16 July 2024, https://www.autistici.org/services/</ref></blockquote>

Servus and Maadix provide a series of ''free/libre'' tools that can be installed separately through their interface but they also provide a VPS with ''SSH'' access. With Greenhost, Hetzner and Linode there is more flexibility: you can create your own VPS and customize it for your own needs through their interface or the ''terminal'' and install whatever tools you want from scratch without a visual interface.

Technical information and knowledge of digital infrastructure circulate between groups that are tech-oriented with a difficulty to cross with other groups, including feminist servers. The ''sysadmin'' tasks are mostly taken by cis men but feminist servers are radical about that. They find important to have ''sysadmins'' that are not cis men. For example Systerserver and Anarchaserver are learning by themselves together how to do this task.

Many of the servers in the list provide only tools, as a radical way to support small groups, collectives, activists that need privacy and shifting away from Google drive when they want to organise politically and socially. It seems that being limited to tool packages instead of having full access to a server can make things comprehensible and compact for these small groups that have limited ''sysadmin'' knowledge or can’t hire a technician.

[[File:Screenshot 2023-10-07 at 12-23-26 FuturEtic - Services en lignes libres & éthiques-2.png|Screenshot of main page with services by [https://futuretic.fr/ FuturEtic]|thumb]]

[[File:Scrnli 12 10 2023 13-14-32.png|thumb|Screenshot of tools from codigosur]]

== Final decision and server transfers [email and webhosting] ==

We are about to make our decision! Our list ended up to be very small.

On 7th of November in an online call between Helen in Basel, Femke in Brussels and Aggeliki in Rotterdam we limited our list to four options: Constant, Greenhost, Servus, Zaclys. The selection consists of a diversity of scales and positioning that we found interesting to think of. First, we move on with the decision to transfer our mailboxes to Irational hosted at Servus. The rest of the functionalities will be hosted somewhere else.

From our conversations with Femke: “The choice for irational.org opens the possibility for discussions around dependencies, trust and frictions within shared collective servers. Irational.org is an ally art server who uses and maintains its own server for many years. Hosting such a private service at a friend’s environment doesn’t come only with convenience. The closeness to the material of the server makes the dependency more tangible.” [reference/quote from colophon?]

[[File:White-magenta-painful.jpg|thumb|Towel design by psaroskalazines. Image from their website]]

Femke and I are planning different moments for the server transfer to happen in the office of TITiPI. What it is about to take place comes down into three moments; the backup and save of data from the old server, the installation of the necessary software in the new server and the transfer of the old data in the new server.

Specifically we are following these steps:

* Mail transfer from Gandi to irational
* Create a Virtual Private Server (VPS) in the new server
* Install Apache2 and configure domains
* Install and migrate MediaWiki
** Back up the wiki on the Linode VPS
** Upgrade MediaWiki in Linode
** Install MediaWiki and plugins in the Greenhost VPS
** Transfer database and media files from Linode to Greenhost
* Install Wiki-to-pdf
* Install Pico
* Install and configure Certbot

We find ourselves between two virtual spaces and one office, among other indirectly connected spaces like the rooms of our distant collaborators and the office locations of the servers.

=== Trust relationships ===
By now, 14th of November 2023, the office is warm and cozy. Throughout the time I am writing this report I have been noticing a lot of slow and small efforts to renovate the building and set up the heating, by the artists and organisations who share the space with TITiPI. Another infrastructure that needs care.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 15-06-42.png|thumb|Femke and Aggeliki entering Irational’s server space with Kate]]

On a shared screen together with Femke we get introduced to the mail server of Irational by Kate. We use an audio splitter to share the laptop for the call. Kate described her experience as an amateur ''sysadmin'' that had to spend a lot of time to learn and set up the mail server. After that we start the process that has been documented [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Server_transfer_documentation#Mail_transfer here].

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 14-56-26.png|thumb|Screenshot from the TITiPI’s mail transfer with Kate, Femke and Aggeliki during an online 3 hours call]]

Irational uses the Alpine email client. Kate takes us its depths. That is where we start to set up our new email accounts before we configure them in Thunderbird. Femke gets excited on the fact that she can send emails to other Irational accounts through the ''terminal''.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 15-15-07.png|thumb|Using the email client Alpine]]

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 17-04-20.png|thumb|Screenhost from the moment of looking for the syntax of the TXT records. Finding the right syntax for this value was the biggest challenge. This is part of the ''trust relationships'' between the different providers]]

After some more DNS configurations we test if it is possible to exchange emails with ‘outside’ accounts and especially with Gmail that has many security filters for mail servers other than the commercial ones.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-15 13-59-52.png|thumb|Exchange test emails with a Gmail account]]

After three hours of tryouts we manage to make it work! Very proudly and with enjoyment for sharing a technical task together we say goodbye to each other and arrange a next meeting for a final check up.

=== A choice that comes with discomforts ===
Just one day before the start of TITiPI’s server transfer away from Linode on the 28th of November, Helen found the Swiss server ungleich.ch and it seemed like an interesting choice because of the small scale (in terms of community and servers), their experimental attitude and their choice to reduce energy consumption; they avoid using systems for cooling their servers by spreading the servers at the Swiss mountains in old, abandoned buildings.

Ungleich.ch is one of the good options but it is more expensive than other providers. They offer a cheaper choice by choosing to have only ‘ipv6’. But we had to dig in to understand the difference of ipv4 and ipv6. From wikipedia: “IPv6 is the most recent version of the Internet Protocol, developed to deal with the long-anticipated problem of IPv4 address exhaustion” We found a [https://stats.labs.apnic.net/ipv6 map] that shows which countries have implemented IPv6 and it seems that if we only use this address then many places won’t have access to the website of TITiPI. So we choose to have both addresses.

We also notice that this provider is using Stripe for their payment system. In a [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Frontier parallel universe of TITiPI] we give attention to and critique Stripe because of its connections with the Carbon Removal industry.

[[File:Firefox Screenshot 2023-11-28T12-32-24.775Z.png|thumb|Ungleich.ch payment system with Stripe]] [include and correctly reference them]

Another urgency appears while we are looking at different choices; together with many other organisations, we have been thinking about ways to host and maintain infrastructures in solidarity with communities and networks we are part of. This would mean, for example, hosting digitally a Palestinian video film archive, or research by sex workers. Solidarity is only partially a question of caring for privacy and security because it matters where and how we host our digital infrastructures and whether these spaces do or do not support the flourishing of different lives and struggles. This need make us think again if the server we choose would be suitable for something like that.

Constant and Servus are two accomplice servers that already provide to TITiPI some of their services. Zaclys is a member of Chatons that support open source values and it is located in France. We contacted them to see if they could be an option but they never responded to us.

We wanted to work with a company that provide ‘green’ infrastructure. Greenhost seem to be a good choice. It provides a familiar interface to us, good support and backup option. It has a positioning as an alternative to AWS. So far great, but what about its ‘green’ hosting vision? Is it a solarpunk vision, a green cloud utopia? Is their infrastructure resource ‘hungry’? What are the privacy limits when the material hosted in the servers is political and sensitive?

We choose Greenhost with all the discomforts that this choice entails and with the desire to keep the critique and dialogue alive.

Only by December 2023 we manage to arrange a call with one of Greenhost’s former Managing Directors to get a feeling and more information about their approach and sensitivity. Accordind to him Greenhost exists in the intersection of activism and technology. It provides consultancy, sustainability solutions in tech projects and structured ''maintenance''; they go for best quality with lowest environmental impact; they maintain the same hardware as much as possible and balance that with higher efficiency; they keep backups at an already existing data center in the university of Amsterdam.

<nowiki>[[paragraph for Greenhost include? from interview with manager?]]</nowiki>

=== Installing, transferring, saving, copying, … ===
On the 28th of November sitting on the sunny corner of the couch next to the radiator, and with warm coffee cups waiting for us on a low table, Femke and I cover our legs with a blanket and open our laptops.

I ask Femke to jumb in a ''tmux'' session for sharing ''terminal'' with this command: <code>''sudo'' ''tmux'' attach -t webserver</code>. We start by cleaning the old server and make backups of the files.

We take a lunch break. Femke finds out that if we eat three recurrent meals every week in the office we can have a nice variety of food; lentiles soup, orecchiette pasta with brocoli, rizzoto with mushrooms and lots of fruits. Sometime ago we decided to make multiple short breaks throughout the day because of computer fatigue. One day I removed all the files from my computer that were older than 90 days because I accidentally run a command on the ''terminal'' instead of a bash script to test the setting up of [https://gitlab.constantvzw.org/titipi/burrow Burrow]. I left this comment in the initial script:

<code># VERY DANGEROUS COMMAND find *txt -mindepth 1 -mtime +$RETAIN -delete</code>
The next day we set up the new server and install all the necessary software including a new version of the MediaWiki. We arrange a meeting with Martino Morandi, member of Constant, who created the wiki-to-pdf to help us installing this software and transfer the MediaWiki in the new server. On the 1st of December we successfully install the wiki-to-pdf and because of limited time we decided to meet one more time at the end of the month for the rest.

[[File:Virtual-env-debian.png|thumb|Screenshot from the wiki-to-pdf installation to the new server with Martino, Femke, Aggeliki. Debian supports a different way to create virtual environments for installing python packages and libraries. We try it but it failed.]]

On the 28th we meet with Martino online to complete the transfer, which includes copying the old database of MediaWiki, activate the old plugins and fix any issues on the way. We are all located in different countries (Italy, Greece, Belgium) and so we share a ''tmux'' session. We follow the guides but on the way we had to do some research and configure a lot of things to make the MediaWiki work. Martino was hunting a php module. It seemed that php has shifted to free software culture in an attempt to find another business model. It is not surprising it happens in the context of Ubuntu. The issue is recorded [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Server_transfer_documentation#MediaWiki_upgrade_issues here].

[[File:Firefox Screenshot 2024-01-10T13-59-40.398Z.png|thumb|"Is Titipi.org down?" Helen asks after the transfer. It seems that her browser cache was preventing her from seeing the website]]

The process is documented in our diary and then transferred to a [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Server_transfer_documentation wiki page]. By January 2024 the server transfer and the deletion of our Linode account has been completed.

== Glossaries ==

Italicized terms in the report are included in these glossaries:

* [https://varia.zone/ATNOFS/ATNOFS-screen.pdf#page=11 Glossary of A Traversal Network of Feminist Servers (ATNOFS) publication]
* [[Glossary|TITiPI's glossary]]

== References ==

* Panashe Chigumadzi, ‘Can White South Africa Live up to Ubuntu, the African Philosophy Tutu Globalised?’, The Guardian, 31 December 2021, sec. Opinion, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec/31/white-south-africa-ubuntu-african-tutu
* ‘Community Servers - Monoskop’, accessed 16 July 2024, https://monoskop.org/Community_servers
* David Carroll, ‘How To Open An Outpost In Social Media Exile | TechPolicy.Press’, Tech Policy Press, 26 November 2022, <nowiki>https://techpolicy.press/how-to-open-an-outpost-in-social-media-exile</nowiki>.
* Elizabeth Landau, ‘Tech Confronts Its Use of the Labels “Master” and “Slave”’, ''Wired'', accessed 16 July 2024, <nowiki>https://www.wired.com/story/tech-confronts-use-labels-master-slave/</nowiki>.
* ‘GitHub Abandons “master” Term to Avoid Slavery Row’, 15 June 2020, https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-53050955
* Femke Snelting, ‘Infrastructure Solidarity’, Ardeth. A Magazine on the Power of the Project, no. 8 (1 November 2021): 45–47
* ‘Master-Slave Terminology Alternatives You Can Use Right Now | TheServerSide’, TheServerSide.com, accessed 16 July 2024, https://www.theserverside.com/opinion/Master-slave-terminology-alternatives-you-can-use-right-now
* ‘Racist Computer Engineering Words: “Master,” “Slave” and the Fight Over Offensive Terms - The New York Times’, accessed 16 July 2024, <nowiki>https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/13/technology/racist-computer-engineering-terms-ietf.html</nowiki>.
* ‘Replace “Master” and “Slave” Terms in Redis · Issue #3185 · Redis/Redis’, GitHub, accessed 16 July 2024, https://github.com/redis/redis/issues/3185
* ‘Ubuntu: A Black Radical Demand for Reparations’, THE FUNAMBULIST MAGAZINE, 25 October 2023, https://thefunambulist.net/magazine/redefining-our-terms/ubuntu-a-black-radical-demand-for-reparations.

== Colophon ==

The text was drafted in pad.xpub.nl in Markdown and then transferred in this wiki.

== Footnotes ==

From cloud to crowd: a report on a server transfer

2024-10-16T11:52:03Z

Angeliki:

= From cloud to crowd<ref>The term comes from ... (not sure if it is included in the title)</ref>: A report on a server transfer =

This text is a report on a server migration that took place within the institutional framework of [https://titipi.org/ The Institute for Technology in the Public Interest (TITiPI)], a trans-practice gathering of activists, artists, engineers and theorists. The report is an infrastructural ethnography<ref>[explain--footnote]</ref> and aims to rethink, through a technical process, what ''hosting'' a server means for a community, institution, cultural organisation dealing with technological discomforts and complex digital infrastructures.

Starting from a broad knowledge a ''server'' is a computer, a combination of software and hardware or an operating system and a physical machine [(or a piece of software?hardware) what changes--a server being either physical machine or not at all--discuss later--needs attention--transfer from physical place to physical place or software to software--address that--need to problematize and place the question somewhere in the essay-- point out the paradox--then some things later will become easy to read--we problematize and dig into the structure/architecture of a server] that provides computing services, such as web hosting and cloud storage, via a network (Internet). A ''server migration'' is the process of moving data and transferring software from one server to another with the use of specified tools. Performing such process accommodates a practical and technical solution to fix the problem of an outdated server that is slow or has limited storage. This report problematizes the location of a server, its scale, its architecture, substantial elements and materiality, and how and what is migrated when we decide to change services/servers/providers/spaces. The urgency of this issue derives from the question: How does an organisation's digital infrastructure, like its server and online platforms, affect its values, organisational structure and computing/infrastructural/digital imaginations? TITiPI treats web hosting with attention, rather than as an outsourced to tech companies service, by including it in the thinking and reflection of its organisational structure. In times of server providers’ scaling up ( ‘''cloud hosting''’ ) and digitizing governmental bureaucracies what does it mean to host your own digital space for supporting your communities and work? Is it necessary to have a sovereign and independent infrastructure? What (non-)dependencies are chosen or taken for granted by institutions when using hosting services?

As a researcher at TITiPI I have been caring for the task to investigate this server migration and execute it together with TITiPI’s member Femke Snelting. We meet weekly to keep track and make decisions. We share a ''markdown'' file hosted in the online code repository of the cultural association [https://constantvzw.org/site/ Constant] [link of git titipi] that includes a diary of the server migration and reflections. Every now and then we meet online with our colleague Helen Pritchard, to discuss and share the process. This report includes extracts from the server diary and stories from the process.[two processes of transfer--email and web hosting]

== Migration or …? [restructuring--what are the differences] ==

In the cold newly installed office of TITiPI located in the Koekelberg district of Brussels, I open the browser Chromium in my computer, that runs the operating system Ubuntu, in order to translate quickly − with the installed Google Translate plugin; later I found out there is a DeepL version − the web pages of the different cooperatives, associations, companies that provide hosting services. While doing that I have this disturbing thought in my head that I try to ignore: the word ‘migration’ [its about appropriation of a way of being--flattening the experience of migration--to pull them apart--to explain discomfort with the word migration--understanding how and why the word migration is problematic] as a technical term to describe the movement from one server to the other. It makes me think of an [https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/13/technology/racist-computer-engineering-terms-ietf.html online conversation], happening for a few years now, about replacing computer engineering terminology to stop [to address] prevalence of racism in tech. Specifically the conversation [https://www.wired.com/story/tech-confronts-use-labels-master-slave/ evolves around the terms] ‘master/slave’ [the way I link the things need some extra sentences], where one computing process or entity controls another, and ‘blacklists/whitelists’ used for directories of those things that are explicitly banned or allowed. Using metaphors like that for a technical process de-contextualizes a word from its origins and unavoidably perpetuates social injustices. It also shows that the context where such choices of language are made is privileged and untouched or non-triggered by these terms. White male computer engineers have build up this language.

[My computer runs--for example--why these two parts are different or the same--it hasnt registsred as problematic yet]‘Ubuntu’ is also a word extracted from its original context. It is coming from the African Ubuntu philosophy. According to the creators of the software:

<blockquote>ubuntu |oǒ’boǒntoō| Ubuntu is an ancient African word meaning ‘humanity to others’. It is often described as reminding us that ‘I am what I am because of who we all are’. We bring the spirit of Ubuntu to the world of computers and software. The Ubuntu distribution represents the best of what the world’s software community has shared with the world. <ref>‘About the Ubuntu Project’, Ubuntu, accessed 16 July 2024, https://ubuntu.com/about</ref>
</blockquote>

Paraphrasing [https://thefunambulist.net/magazine/redefining-our-terms/ubuntu-a-black-radical-demand-for-reparations Panashe Chigumadzi] words: in contrast to the western conception of the human as individual, the African conception of the person is a social being who is always becoming, defined by and being responsible for the personhood of the others. "(T)he African philosophy best understood through the proverb found in Bantu languages across the continent, 'umuntu ngumuntu ngabanye bantu' (a person is a person through other people". <ref>Panashe Chigumadzi, ‘Can White South Africa Live up to Ubuntu, the African Philosophy Tutu Globalised?’, The Guardian, 31 December 2021, sec. Opinion, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec/31/white-south-africa-ubuntu-african-tutu</ref>

<blockquote>(D)espite the flourishing of Ubuntu in post-apartheid discourse, lending its name to software, businesses, books and philanthropic organisations, South Africa is a country in which we have, as Dladla argues, Ubuntu without Abantu. Just as Black people have been dispossessed of their land, Ubuntu has been dispossessed of its deeply radical demands for ethical historical and social relations among people. (...) post apartheid Ubuntu mistranslation 'I am because we are', individualized and interpersonalised Ubuntu, Christianised Ubuntu, mistranslated in order to justify crimes and violence. In Ubuntu violence can be punished even after generations, the misinterpretation of the term allowed individual forgiveness. <ref>‘Ubuntu: A Black Radical Demand for Reparations’, THE FUNAMBULIST MAGAZINE, 25 October 2023, https://thefunambulist.net/magazine/redefining-our-terms/ubuntu-a-black-radical-demand-for-reparations</ref>
</blockquote>

I skip these thoughts and I continue browsing the list of servers. While trying to stay focused something other distracts me; I encounter an [https://www.oziosi.org/ autonomous Italian server] with the title translated with DeepL: “:: a shelter for digital exiles ::” and an image of a woman, a child and a man leaving their home. Also a small introduction: “Exiled from the global village of social networks, we claim an internet that is a simple means of communication: immaterial, anonymous, imaginary, public when it makes sense and secret when we feel the need.”. I am wondering what does this mean for actual exiles having to protect their privacy when communicating back home? [https://techpolicy.press/how-to-open-an-outpost-in-social-media-exile/ ‘Social media exiles’] and ‘Twitter migration’ are terms used often after Twitter became X and users have moved to the Fediverse or other alternatives.

Could words like transferring, sharing, moving, copying, re-installing, shifting replace the word ‘migration’? From this point on in the report I decide to use the term ‘transfer’.

[[File:Screenshot 2023-10-07 at 11-31-21 esiliati.org.png|thumb|Screenshot of webpage of self-organised server mentioning the term 'digital exiles' ]]

== TITiPI’s case of server transfer ==
On the 27th of September, sitting at the long desks side to side, Femke and I have an online call with Helen, while looking at the depths of our Virtual Private Server (VPS), provided by Linode, that runs Ubuntu on our laptop screens. Linode is an American hosting provider focusing on ''Linux''-based virtual machines originally. The server is physically located in the UK. TITiPI currently uses the Linode server that Helen set up for hosting her own projects. They have been paying for Linode’s monthly fees so far.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-10-11 14-47-06.png|thumb|Screenshot of Linode Ubuntu server overview and ''terminal'' that shows a moment of figuring out what takes space in the server through ''SSH'' access]]

At the time it seemed a good choice, because Linode is based in UK, is ''Linux'' friendly and an alternative to Amazon Web Services (AWS), even though the company was already identifying as ‘''cloud hosting''’. But in February 2023 it has been acquired by the American company Akamai that aims to scale up for [https://www.linode.com/global-infrastructure/ “computing power, optimizing performance and agility.”]. Akamai is actively changing its server policies into an increasingly intense cloud logic. This pushed forward the desire to move to a new place.

[[File:Screenshot 2023-10-11 at 14-50-47 Cloud Computing & Linux Servers Alternative to AWS Linode.png|thumb|Screenshot of Linode website referring to scalability]]

At the moment in Linode we run pico, a flat CMS for the website https://titipi.org. There is a Mediawiki (you are reading a Mediawiki page right now) for notes and collective writing. On the wiki, we also publish our statutes, guidelines and other instituting documents. The wiki has a custom extension, called wiki-to-pdf. Each of these services will need a different way to be transferred. One approach is to build the new server space from scratch, copy the data with rsync and transfer only the Mediawiki, which includes installing a new version and copy the database and the media files.

While preparing to transfer the tools we are defining what are the practical needs and desirable priorities; we ended up on these server requirements:
* ''SSH'' access and wish for VPS [pick up gain the fantasy of a server -- make present this questioning of physical or software defined server]
* affordable price (around €20/month)
* run a Free Software operating system, preferably Debian
* involves community work - slowing down, resisting to scaling and growth or ‘decloudification’ (small network of partners, less virtualization approach, location of servers nearby etc)
* 25-40GB storage space, 1-2 cores, 2-4GB RAM
* environmental angle
* service support in a language that we all understand (English mostly)

This server transfer happens with an intersectional and feminist approach and the desire to keep questioning. While moving away from Linode we include both the technical and the conceptual thinking in the process. There are a few things that we are looking at:
* Where to be transferred to or what services to transfer to?
* How to be transferred and what to transfer?
* What terminology, language we use?
* What (other) narratives of server hosting can we construct?
TITiPI seeks to exist with an infrastructure that supports inter-dependent practices and solidarity across struggles. It develops Counter Cloud Actions [ref] as a way to scale down, de-cloudify, articulate, contest and re-imagine the implications of computational infrastructures (‘the cloud’).

<blockquote>TITiPI develop tools from feminisms, queer theory, Free, Libre and Open Source software, intersectionality, anti-coloniality, disability studies, historical materialism and artistic practice to generate currently inexistent vocabularies, imaginaries and methodologies. TITiPI functions as an infrastructure to establish new ways in which socio-technical practices and technologies might support the public interest. <ref>TITiPI, ‘Infrables’, Tangible Cloud Archives, https://docs.tangible-cloud.be/publications-pdf/02_snelting.pdf.</ref></blockquote>

We are looking for servers that aspire some of these values.

=== A relational infrastructure narrative/ infra-mutuality/ inter-infrastructural narrative ===
[[File:Elastic solidarities.png|thumb]]
In June 2023 TITiPI received an email from Gandi to renew the domain titipi.org in 6 days, not realising that at the same time we would need to start paying for our titipi.org email hosting. We had missed reading to the end of another email sent in the middle of June, entitled: 'Pricing update'.

[it is a different decision making--it was never the plan to transfer email]

We consider to work with Kate Rich to move our mailboxes to the [http://irational.org/ Irational server], soon to be installed on a Raspberry Pi, hosted at Servus. We decide to do this transition slowly and until then renew the emails for 1-2 months through Gandi. Irational server resists virtualization, and as an art community project it makes it an interesting choice.

But why to go through all this effort and not just use one cloud server with mailboxes, file storage and web server together? TITiPI’s response to the question of building institutional digital infrastructure embodies an archipelagic and non-sovereign approach to dependencies. Rather than building a centralised server based on ‘cloud’ from which connections with other institutions and collectives can happen, it conceptualizes inter-infrastructural practices; from the creation of a [https://gitlab.constantvzw.org/titipi/burrow backup script] for saving locally etherpad pads from other servers, hosting emails at an art server (https://irational.org), creating an [https://books.lumbung.space/shelf/26 online bookshelf] on lumbung.space, using the ''XMPP'' chat from Varia to recording conversations with the ''sysadmin'' that maintain the other servers. The institution re-imagines technological dependencies in dialogue with cultural institutions and art collectives. [[File:Titipi-infra-diagram-JAN-24.png|thumb|none|alt=A diagram of TITiPI’s infrastructure. The diagram categorizes the elements according to tools/software (box), structure/organisational form (circle) and place (dashed line). For example Jitsi is the software, Greenhost is the organisation, meet.greenhost.net is the place.|A diagram of TITiPI’s infrastructure. The diagram categorizes the elements according to tools/software (box), structure/organisational form (circle) and place (dashed line). For example Jitsi is the software, Greenhost is the organisation, meet.greenhost.net is the place.]]

How to give life to the common space of TITiPI’s hosting infrastructures? What about building up social dependencies between the ones that host and the ones who are hosted as opposed to a technical independence? Infrastructural imaginations are often built by the ''Big Tech'' industry and governmental institutions. Instead, TITiPI practices a fluid inter-institutional approach supported by [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Infra_colophon a variety of hosts].

=== Selection of server providers ===
On the 7th of November through a shared screen at the [https://meet.greenhost.net/ video conferencing software Jitsi of Greenhost] we all three check a list of server providers I collected on a spreadsheet hosted in Constant’s cloud storage (built with Nextcloud software) where TITiPI has an account. I looked at associations, companies/businesses, cooperatives, communities coming from commercial context to social struggles, activist, feminist and other. Through a [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/List_server_networks list of networks] I found various servers mostly from Latin America and Europe.

The concept of autonomy, sovereignty, independence or self-managing characterizes most of the servers in the list. Some of them, like [https://www.autistici.org/ Autistici] promote this concept as a way to support anti-capitalist infrastructure and protect the privacy of the users as opposed to the ''Big Tech'' software practices.

<blockquote>The vision is that we - the members of the cooperative - own our own data. This implies and has as a consequence that we will have to own our own infrastructure and have insight and control over the software we use to communicate on the web.<ref>‘Community Servers - Monoskop’, accessed 16 July 2024, https://monoskop.org/Community_servers</ref></blockquote>

Femke had a hunch: "‘technological sovereignty’ and ‘data-sovereignty’ continue to be orientation devices to organise around. ‘Sovereignty’, together with ‘freedom’, ‘independence’ and ‘autonomy’, form an ideological cluster that implicitly and sometimes explicitly foregrounds separation rather than relation."

Servers can act as independent spaces but are also cultural devices and vibrant spaces. They can manifest different aspects of a full life and reach out to a multiplicity of entities.

Servus and Greenhost, seem to be two of our best choices as they cover a lot of the priorities and values of TITiPI. As one can read from their descriptions they both strive for owning their own data servers and data nodes (they have their own ''IP addresses'') and be independent from third parties. The big difference is the scale of the infrastructure and their community and network.

<blockquote>Greenhost fully owns and controls its hardware, infrastructure and uplinks. This ensures independence from third parties and proper access control. On this hardware we run our fully virtualised platform. We stand for an Open Internet, and have always embraced open source software.<ref>‘Greenhost.Net | the Sustainable Web’, accessed 16 July 2024, https://greenhost.net/.</ref></blockquote>

<blockquote>We (Servus) do not pass on any data to third parties. You will not receive commercial advertising from us or third parties. We are easily accessible and answer your questions personally. We and our servers are located at Kirchengasse 4 in Linz, Austria.<ref>‘Book Of Servus’, Book Of Servus, accessed 16 July 2024, https://book.servus.at/en/home/.</ref></blockquote>

Even though Greenhost wants to reduce ecological damage, it does that mainly through hardware reductions and does not address scale. They have plans to expand and are part of a network of partners that want to transform Rotterdam into a big hub of data nodes for the upcoming digital transition. [it is not as big as Linode--it is not in the list--we are not recosnidering to stay with linode]Linode is even bigger, it goes for [[https://www.akamai.com/newsroom/press-release/akamai-takes-cloud-computing-to-the-edge| "(p)lanetary scale"]]. Servus on the other hand has one room of data servers, is closer to the scale of their community and they maintain personal relations with them.

[[Image of the server room at Servus at Linz|Image of the server room at Servus at Linz?]]

=== Community server, feminist server, trans*feminist server, radical server, autonomous server, commercial server, art server, free server, ethical server, solidarity-based server, cooperative server, associative server, independent server, alternative server, non-commercial server, … ===
The spreadsheet starts to grow because of an endless/exhaustive burrow of small and big providers.

Some are outdated. 
Some are messy. 
Some have broken links. 
Some are [https://www.julienth37.fr/vps hard to understand]. 
Some require [https://www.actiu.info/index.en.html a lot of engagement]. 
Some use a language that imitates the narratives of ''Big Tech'' and ''agile'' computing. 
Some promote seamless “promissory logic” and “high hopes for a brighter future” (ref) 
Some are big or are scaling up (in matter of space, data centers, partners, users etc). 
Some support NGO’s or sport clubs.

[[File:Screenshot 2023-10-11 at 15-06-35 co-operative web-crop.png|thumb|Screenshot from main page of Co-op Web]]

We also looked at their financial model. Many radical servers stay small, are volunteer based, like [https://www.autistici.org/ Autistici]. and go for horizontal organisational structures. Feminist and activist servers provide space in the internet for the ones who don’t have the means to organise otherwise. The resources and ways of organising for these servers are different from the cooperatives or associations whose structure is inherited from the model they are registered with.

[[File:ATNOFS-Varia-insert-ooooo.jpg|thumb|ooooo atnofs insert diagrams from varia, systerserver, servus]]

TITiPI acknowledges and is connected to the history of community, art and feminist servers and wants to support this network. The art servers started as a way to make autonomous self-managed servers that support artists values and practices. They are often financed by cultural or private funds.

<blockquote>I joined (Irational) sometime in 2000s, I can't remember when and originally it was much more a collective of people working together and then since the early 2010's I think, mid 2010's, there was a bit of a reshuffle of personnel and stuff, so the constituency changed to a smaller group and we actually reformed. We were going to disband Irational and then we actually reformed as an art server collective and we decided we are not really working together but what we have in common is that we're using the server and that is actually what the collective is now. It's the collective that uses the server together and wants to use the server together. And another real defining feature of the server the whole time has been resisting virtualization. 

— quote from [[None of this experiment is evident|interview of Kate Rich by Femke Snelting]] [needs rewritting] </blockquote>

The screen seems to become brighter as my eyes get tired. What if we skip the online hosting and create a local physical server at TITiPI’s office next to the desks, in a corner, on a Raspberry Pi? All our data would stay on this machine and we would connect with ''SSH'' from home, but then we will also have to maintain it ourselves. There is something there about the romanticism of a physical toolbox as a sovereign object. If we choose to do that we will need to think of a backup plan as it will be an experimental set up and all our data will stay offline. We won’t have a provider to take care of that.

Our list has been reduced because of our priorities. We need ''SSH'' and we would like to have a VPS [--why?--part of the first issue on software/hardware server--having material inside someone elses server/email--physical--root access--2nd: to have our own box in a rack--that is expensive--pay for electricity etc and who turns of and on--a pi in our own office--bandwidth internet--in a rack we would have connection to high speed reliable internet--fire protection--4th: vps, it is a cloud technology but we have our own virtual machine that we can start and stop from ditance--with the consequence of using cloud technology--explain these different options--to help the reader]. Who has resources for providing VPS? Resources of labour, time, finances, technical knowledge. This made self-defined feminist servers fall out of the selection. How to be financially sustainable, while keeping up with your own values? How to keep up with infrastructural ''maintenance'' if the scale of the users, community, members and data is big?

<blockquote>The services we offer have no defined price, but as you may easily imagine, keeping the whole system working (i.e. hardware and hosting) is very expensive (at the moment it ranges around 13,000 euro every year).<ref>‘Autistici.Org - Services’, accessed 16 July 2024, https://www.autistici.org/services/</ref></blockquote>

Servus and Maadix provide a series of ''free/libre'' tools that can be installed separately through their interface but they also provide a VPS with ''SSH'' access. With Greenhost, Hetzner and Linode there is more flexibility: you can create your own VPS and customize it for your own needs through their interface or the ''terminal'' and install whatever tools you want from scratch without a visual interface.

Technical information and knowledge of digital infrastructure circulate between groups that are tech-oriented with a difficulty to cross with other groups, including feminist servers. The ''sysadmin'' tasks are mostly taken by cis men but feminist servers are radical about that. They find important to have ''sysadmins'' that are not cis men. For example Systerserver and Anarchaserver are learning by themselves together how to do this task.

Many of the servers in the list provide only tools, as a radical way to support small groups, collectives, activists that need privacy and shifting away from Google drive when they want to organise politically and socially. It seems that being limited to tool packages instead of having full access to a server can make things comprehensible and compact for these small groups that have limited ''sysadmin'' knowledge or can’t hire a technician.

[[File:Screenshot 2023-10-07 at 12-23-26 FuturEtic - Services en lignes libres & éthiques-2.png|Screenshot of main page with services by [https://futuretic.fr/ FuturEtic]|thumb]]

[[File:Scrnli 12 10 2023 13-14-32.png|thumb|Screenshot of tools from codigosur]]

== Final decision and server transfers [email and webhosting] ==

We are about to make our decision! Our list ended up to be very small.

On 7th of November in an online call between Helen in Basel, Femke in Brussels and Aggeliki in Rotterdam we limited our list to four options: Constant, Greenhost, Servus, Zaclys. The selection consists of a diversity of scales and positioning that we found interesting to think of. First, we move on with the decision to transfer our mailboxes to Irational hosted at Servus. The rest of the functionalities will be hosted somewhere else.

From our conversations with Femke: “The choice for irational.org opens the possibility for discussions around dependencies, trust and frictions within shared collective servers. Irational.org is an ally art server who uses and maintains its own server for many years. Hosting such a private service at a friend’s environment doesn’t come only with convenience. The closeness to the material of the server makes the dependency more tangible.” [reference/quote from colophon?]

[[File:White-magenta-painful.jpg|thumb|Towel design by psaroskalazines. Image from their website]]

Femke and I are planning different moments for the server transfer to happen in the office of TITiPI. What it is about to take place comes down into three moments; the backup and save of data from the old server, the installation of the necessary software in the new server and the transfer of the old data in the new server.

Specifically we are following these steps:

* Mail transfer from Gandi to irational
* Create a Virtual Private Server (VPS) in the new server
* Install Apache2 and configure domains
* Install and migrate MediaWiki
** Back up the wiki on the Linode VPS
** Upgrade MediaWiki in Linode
** Install MediaWiki and plugins in the Greenhost VPS
** Transfer database and media files from Linode to Greenhost
* Install Wiki-to-pdf
* Install Pico
* Install and configure Certbot

We find ourselves between two virtual spaces and one office, among other indirectly connected spaces like the rooms of our distant collaborators and the office locations of the servers.

=== Trust relationships ===
By now, 14th of November 2023, the office is warm and cozy. Throughout the time I am writing this report I have been noticing a lot of slow and small efforts to renovate the building and set up the heating, by the artists and organisations who share the space with TITiPI. Another infrastructure that needs care.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 15-06-42.png|thumb|Femke and Aggeliki entering Irational’s server space with Kate]]

On a shared screen together with Femke we get introduced to the mail server of Irational by Kate. We use an audio splitter to share the laptop for the call. Kate described her experience as an amateur ''sysadmin'' that had to spend a lot of time to learn and set up the mail server. After that we start the process that has been documented [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Server_transfer_documentation#Mail_transfer here].

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 14-56-26.png|thumb|Screenshot from the TITiPI’s mail transfer with Kate, Femke and Aggeliki during an online 3 hours call]]

Irational uses the Alpine email client. Kate takes us its depths. That is where we start to set up our new email accounts before we configure them in Thunderbird. Femke gets excited on the fact that she can send emails to other Irational accounts through the ''terminal''.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 15-15-07.png|thumb|Using the email client Alpine]]

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 17-04-20.png|thumb|Screenhost from the moment of looking for the syntax of the TXT records. Finding the right syntax for this value was the biggest challenge. This is part of the ''trust relationships'' between the different providers]]

After some more DNS configurations we test if it is possible to exchange emails with ‘outside’ accounts and especially with Gmail that has many security filters for mail servers other than the commercial ones.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-15 13-59-52.png|thumb|Exchange test emails with a Gmail account]]

After three hours of tryouts we manage to make it work! Very proudly and with enjoyment for sharing a technical task together we say goodbye to each other and arrange a next meeting for a final check up.

=== A choice that comes with discomforts ===
Just one day before the start of TITiPI’s server transfer away from Linode on the 28th of November, Helen found the Swiss server ungleich.ch and it seemed like an interesting choice because of the small scale (in terms of community and servers), their experimental attitude and their choice to reduce energy consumption; they avoid using systems for cooling their servers by spreading the servers at the Swiss mountains in old, abandoned buildings.

Ungleich.ch is one of the good options but it is more expensive than other providers. They offer a cheaper choice by choosing to have only ‘ipv6’. But we had to dig in to understand the difference of ipv4 and ipv6. From wikipedia: “IPv6 is the most recent version of the Internet Protocol, developed to deal with the long-anticipated problem of IPv4 address exhaustion” We found a [https://stats.labs.apnic.net/ipv6 map] that shows which countries have implemented IPv6 and it seems that if we only use this address then many places won’t have access to the website of TITiPI. So we choose to have both addresses.

We also notice that this provider is using Stripe for their payment system. In a [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Frontier parallel universe of TITiPI] we give attention to and critique Stripe because of its connections with the Carbon Removal industry.

[[File:Firefox Screenshot 2023-11-28T12-32-24.775Z.png|thumb|Ungleich.ch payment system with Stripe]] [include and correctly reference them]

Another urgency appears while we are looking at different choices; together with many other organisations, we have been thinking about ways to host and maintain infrastructures in solidarity with communities and networks we are part of. This would mean, for example, hosting digitally a Palestinian video film archive, or research by sex workers. Solidarity is only partially a question of caring for privacy and security because it matters where and how we host our digital infrastructures and whether these spaces do or do not support the flourishing of different lives and struggles. This need make us think again if the server we choose would be suitable for something like that.

Constant and Servus are two accomplice servers that already provide to TITiPI some of their services. Zaclys is a member of Chatons that support open source values and it is located in France. We contacted them to see if they could be an option but they never responded to us.

We wanted to work with a company that provide ‘green’ infrastructure. Greenhost seem to be a good choice. It provides a familiar interface to us, good support and backup option. It has a positioning as an alternative to AWS. So far great, but what about its ‘green’ hosting vision? Is it a solarpunk vision, a green cloud utopia? Is their infrastructure resource ‘hungry’? What are the privacy limits when the material hosted in the servers is political and sensitive?

We choose Greenhost with all the discomforts that this choice entails and with the desire to keep the critique and dialogue alive.

Only by December 2023 we manage to arrange a call with one of Greenhost’s former Managing Directors to get a feeling and more information about their approach and sensitivity. Accordind to him Greenhost exists in the intersection of activism and technology. It provides consultancy, sustainability solutions in tech projects and structured ''maintenance''; they go for best quality with lowest environmental impact; they maintain the same hardware as much as possible and balance that with higher efficiency; they keep backups at an already existing data center in the university of Amsterdam.

<nowiki>[[paragraph for Greenhost include? from interview with manager?]]</nowiki>

=== Installing, transferring, saving, copying, … ===
On the 28th of November sitting on the sunny corner of the couch next to the radiator, and with warm coffee cups waiting for us on a low table, Femke and I cover our legs with a blanket and open our laptops.

I ask Femke to jumb in a ''tmux'' session for sharing ''terminal'' with this command: <code>''sudo'' ''tmux'' attach -t webserver</code>. We start by cleaning the old server and make backups of the files.

We take a lunch break. Femke finds out that if we eat three recurrent meals every week in the office we can have a nice variety of food; lentiles soup, orecchiette pasta with brocoli, rizzoto with mushrooms and lots of fruits. Sometime ago we decided to make multiple short breaks throughout the day because of computer fatigue. One day I removed all the files from my computer that were older than 90 days because I accidentally run a command on the ''terminal'' instead of a bash script to test the setting up of [https://gitlab.constantvzw.org/titipi/burrow Burrow]. I left this comment in the initial script:

<code># VERY DANGEROUS COMMAND find *txt -mindepth 1 -mtime +$RETAIN -delete</code>
The next day we set up the new server and install all the necessary software including a new version of the MediaWiki. We arrange a meeting with Martino Morandi, member of Constant, who created the wiki-to-pdf to help us installing this software and transfer the MediaWiki in the new server. On the 1st of December we successfully install the wiki-to-pdf and because of limited time we decided to meet one more time at the end of the month for the rest.

[[File:Virtual-env-debian.png|thumb|Screenshot from the wiki-to-pdf installation to the new server with Martino, Femke, Aggeliki. Debian supports a different way to create virtual environments for installing python packages and libraries. We try it but it failed.]]

On the 28th we meet with Martino online to complete the transfer, which includes copying the old database of MediaWiki, activate the old plugins and fix any issues on the way. We are all located in different countries (Italy, Greece, Belgium) and so we share a ''tmux'' session. We follow the guides but on the way we had to do some research and configure a lot of things to make the MediaWiki work. Martino was hunting a php module. It seemed that php has shifted to free software culture in an attempt to find another business model. It is not surprising it happens in the context of Ubuntu. The issue is recorded [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Server_transfer_documentation#MediaWiki_upgrade_issues here].

[[File:Firefox Screenshot 2024-01-10T13-59-40.398Z.png|thumb|"Is Titipi.org down?" Helen asks after the transfer. It seems that her browser cache was preventing her from seeing the website]]

The process is documented in our diary and then transferred to a [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Server_transfer_documentation wiki page]. By January 2024 the server transfer and the deletion of our Linode account has been completed.

== Glossaries ==

Italicized terms in the report are included in these glossaries:

* [https://varia.zone/ATNOFS/ATNOFS-screen.pdf Glossary of A Traversal Network of Feminist Servers (ATNOFS) publication]
* [[Glossary|TITiPI's glossary]]

== References ==

* Panashe Chigumadzi, ‘Can White South Africa Live up to Ubuntu, the African Philosophy Tutu Globalised?’, The Guardian, 31 December 2021, sec. Opinion, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec/31/white-south-africa-ubuntu-african-tutu
* ‘Community Servers - Monoskop’, accessed 16 July 2024, https://monoskop.org/Community_servers
* David Carroll, ‘How To Open An Outpost In Social Media Exile | TechPolicy.Press’, Tech Policy Press, 26 November 2022, <nowiki>https://techpolicy.press/how-to-open-an-outpost-in-social-media-exile</nowiki>.
* Elizabeth Landau, ‘Tech Confronts Its Use of the Labels “Master” and “Slave”’, ''Wired'', accessed 16 July 2024, <nowiki>https://www.wired.com/story/tech-confronts-use-labels-master-slave/</nowiki>.
* ‘GitHub Abandons “master” Term to Avoid Slavery Row’, 15 June 2020, https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-53050955
* Femke Snelting, ‘Infrastructure Solidarity’, Ardeth. A Magazine on the Power of the Project, no. 8 (1 November 2021): 45–47
* ‘Master-Slave Terminology Alternatives You Can Use Right Now | TheServerSide’, TheServerSide.com, accessed 16 July 2024, https://www.theserverside.com/opinion/Master-slave-terminology-alternatives-you-can-use-right-now
* ‘Racist Computer Engineering Words: “Master,” “Slave” and the Fight Over Offensive Terms - The New York Times’, accessed 16 July 2024, <nowiki>https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/13/technology/racist-computer-engineering-terms-ietf.html</nowiki>.
* ‘Replace “Master” and “Slave” Terms in Redis · Issue #3185 · Redis/Redis’, GitHub, accessed 16 July 2024, https://github.com/redis/redis/issues/3185
* ‘Ubuntu: A Black Radical Demand for Reparations’, THE FUNAMBULIST MAGAZINE, 25 October 2023, https://thefunambulist.net/magazine/redefining-our-terms/ubuntu-a-black-radical-demand-for-reparations.

== Colophon ==

The text was drafted in pad.xpub.nl in Markdown and then transferred in this wiki.

== Footnotes ==

From cloud to crowd: a report on a server transfer

2024-10-16T11:36:01Z

Angeliki:

= From cloud to crowd<ref>The term comes from ... (not sure if it is included in the title)</ref>: A report on a server transfer =

This text is a report on a server migration that took place within the institutional framework of [https://titipi.org/ The Institute for Technology in the Public Interest (TITiPI)], a trans-practice gathering of activists, artists, engineers and theorists. The report is an infrastructural ethnography<ref>[explain--footnote]</ref> and aims to rethink, through a technical process, what ''hosting'' a server means for a community, institution, cultural organisation dealing with technological discomforts and complex digital infrastructures.

Starting from a broad knowledge a ''server'' is a computer, a combination of software and hardware or an operating system and a physical machine [(or a piece of software?hardware) what changes--a server being either physical machine or not at all--discuss later--needs attention--transfer from physical place to physical place or software to software--address that--need to problematize and place the question somewhere in the essay-- point out the paradox--then some things later will become easy to read--we problematize and dig into the structure/architecture of a server] that provides computing services, such as web hosting and accounting systems, via a network (Internet). A ''server migration'' is the process of moving data and transferring software from one server to another with the use of specified tools. Performing such process accommodates a practical and technical solution to fix the problem of an outdated server that is slow or has limited storage. This report problematizes the location of a server, its architecture, substantial elements and materiality, and how and what is migrated when we decide to change services/servers/providers/spaces.

How does a digital infrastructure of an organisation, like its server and online platforms, affect its values, organisational structure and computing imaginations? TITiPI desired(s) to go with hosting and maintain its own virtual private server instead of outsourcing these services to external tech companies[treat web hosting with attention--pulling that work into the thinking, reflection and organisational--not treated as an external thing--a service]. In times of server providers’ scaling up ( ‘''cloud hosting''’ ) and digitizing governmental bureaucracies what does it mean to host your own digital space for supporting your communities and work? What does it mean to have an independent infrastructure? What (non-)dependencies are chosen or taken for granted by institutions when using hosting services?

As a researcher at TITiPI I have been caring for the task to investigate this server migration and execute it together with TITiPI’s member Femke Snelting. We meet weekly to keep track and make decisions. We share a ''markdown'' file hosted in the online code repository of the cultural association [https://constantvzw.org/site/ Constant] [link of git titipi] that includes a diary of the server migration and reflections. Every now and then we meet online with our colleague Helen Pritchard, to discuss and share the process. This report includes extracts from the server diary and stories from the process.[two processes of transfer--email and web hosting]

== Migration or …? [restructuring--what are the differences] ==

In the cold newly installed office of TITiPI located in the Koekelberg district of Brussels, I open the browser Chromium in my computer, that runs the operating system Ubuntu, in order to translate quickly − with the installed Google Translate plugin; later I found out there is a DeepL version − the web pages of the different cooperatives, associations, companies that provide hosting services. While doing that I have this disturbing thought in my head that I try to ignore: the word ‘migration’ [its about appropriation of a way of being--flattening the experience of migration--to pull them apart--to explain discomfort with the word migration--understanding how and why the word migration is problematic] as a technical term to describe the movement from one server to the other. It makes me think of an [https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/13/technology/racist-computer-engineering-terms-ietf.html online conversation], happening for a few years now, about replacing computer engineering terminology to stop [to address] prevalence of racism in tech. Specifically the conversation [https://www.wired.com/story/tech-confronts-use-labels-master-slave/ evolves around the terms] ‘master/slave’ [the way I link the things need some extra sentences], where one computing process or entity controls another, and ‘blacklists/whitelists’ used for directories of those things that are explicitly banned or allowed. Using metaphors like that for a technical process de-contextualizes a word from its origins and unavoidably perpetuates social injustices. It also shows that the context where such choices of language are made is privileged and untouched or non-triggered by these terms. White male computer engineers have build up this language.

[My computer runs--for example--why these two parts are different or the same--it hasnt registsred as problematic yet]‘Ubuntu’ is also a word extracted from its original context. It is coming from the African Ubuntu philosophy. According to the creators of the software:

<blockquote>ubuntu |oǒ’boǒntoō| Ubuntu is an ancient African word meaning ‘humanity to others’. It is often described as reminding us that ‘I am what I am because of who we all are’. We bring the spirit of Ubuntu to the world of computers and software. The Ubuntu distribution represents the best of what the world’s software community has shared with the world. <ref>‘About the Ubuntu Project’, Ubuntu, accessed 16 July 2024, https://ubuntu.com/about</ref>
</blockquote>

Paraphrasing [https://thefunambulist.net/magazine/redefining-our-terms/ubuntu-a-black-radical-demand-for-reparations Panashe Chigumadzi] words: in contrast to the western conception of the human as individual, the African conception of the person is a social being who is always becoming, defined by and being responsible for the personhood of the others. "(T)he African philosophy best understood through the proverb found in Bantu languages across the continent, 'umuntu ngumuntu ngabanye bantu' (a person is a person through other people". <ref>Panashe Chigumadzi, ‘Can White South Africa Live up to Ubuntu, the African Philosophy Tutu Globalised?’, The Guardian, 31 December 2021, sec. Opinion, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec/31/white-south-africa-ubuntu-african-tutu</ref>

<blockquote>(D)espite the flourishing of Ubuntu in post-apartheid discourse, lending its name to software, businesses, books and philanthropic organisations, South Africa is a country in which we have, as Dladla argues, Ubuntu without Abantu. Just as Black people have been dispossessed of their land, Ubuntu has been dispossessed of its deeply radical demands for ethical historical and social relations among people. (...) post apartheid Ubuntu mistranslation 'I am because we are', individualized and interpersonalised Ubuntu, Christianised Ubuntu, mistranslated in order to justify crimes and violence. In Ubuntu violence can be punished even after generations, the misinterpretation of the term allowed individual forgiveness. <ref>‘Ubuntu: A Black Radical Demand for Reparations’, THE FUNAMBULIST MAGAZINE, 25 October 2023, https://thefunambulist.net/magazine/redefining-our-terms/ubuntu-a-black-radical-demand-for-reparations</ref>
</blockquote>

I skip these thoughts and I continue browsing the list of servers. While trying to stay focused something other distracts me; I encounter an [https://www.oziosi.org/ autonomous Italian server] with the title translated with DeepL: “:: a shelter for digital exiles ::” and an image of a woman, a child and a man leaving their home. Also a small introduction: “Exiled from the global village of social networks, we claim an internet that is a simple means of communication: immaterial, anonymous, imaginary, public when it makes sense and secret when we feel the need.”. I am wondering what does this mean for actual exiles having to protect their privacy when communicating back home? [https://techpolicy.press/how-to-open-an-outpost-in-social-media-exile/ ‘Social media exiles’] and ‘Twitter migration’ are terms used often after Twitter became X and users have moved to the Fediverse or other alternatives.

Could words like transferring, sharing, moving, copying, re-installing, shifting replace the word ‘migration’? From this point on in the report I decide to use the term ‘transfer’.

[[File:Screenshot 2023-10-07 at 11-31-21 esiliati.org.png|thumb|Screenshot of webpage of self-organised server mentioning the term 'digital exiles' ]]

== TITiPI’s case of server transfer ==
On the 27th of September, sitting at the long desks side to side, Femke and I have an online call with Helen, while looking at the depths of our Virtual Private Server (VPS), provided by Linode, that runs Ubuntu on our laptop screens. Linode is an American hosting provider focusing on ''Linux''-based virtual machines originally. The server is physically located in the UK. TITiPI currently uses the Linode server that Helen set up for hosting her own projects. They have been paying for Linode’s monthly fees so far.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-10-11 14-47-06.png|thumb|Screenshot of Linode Ubuntu server overview and ''terminal'' that shows a moment of figuring out what takes space in the server through ''SSH'' access]]

At the time it seemed a good choice, because Linode is based in UK, is ''Linux'' friendly and an alternative to Amazon Web Services (AWS), even though the company was already identifying as ‘''cloud hosting''’. But in February 2023 it has been acquired by the American company Akamai that aims to scale up for [https://www.linode.com/global-infrastructure/ “computing power, optimizing performance and agility.”]. Akamai is actively changing its server policies into an increasingly intense cloud logic. This pushed forward the desire to move to a new place.

[[File:Screenshot 2023-10-11 at 14-50-47 Cloud Computing & Linux Servers Alternative to AWS Linode.png|thumb|Screenshot of Linode website referring to scalability]]

At the moment in Linode we run pico, a flat CMS for the website https://titipi.org. There is a Mediawiki (you are reading a Mediawiki page right now) for notes and collective writing. On the wiki, we also publish our statutes, guidelines and other instituting documents. The wiki has a custom extension, called wiki-to-pdf. Each of these services will need a different way to be transferred. One approach is to build the new server space from scratch, copy the data with rsync and transfer only the Mediawiki, which includes installing a new version and copy the database and the media files.

While preparing to transfer the tools we are defining what are the practical needs and desirable priorities; we ended up on these server requirements:
* ''SSH'' access and wish for VPS [pick up gain the fantasy of a server -- make present this questioning of physical or software defined server]
* affordable price (around €20/month)
* run a Free Software operating system, preferably Debian
* involves community work - slowing down, resisting to scaling and growth or ‘decloudification’ (small network of partners, less virtualization approach, location of servers nearby etc)
* 25-40GB storage space, 1-2 cores, 2-4GB RAM
* environmental angle
* service support in a language that we all understand (English mostly)

This server transfer happens with an intersectional and feminist approach and the desire to keep questioning. While moving away from Linode we include both the technical and the conceptual thinking in the process. There are a few things that we are looking at:
* Where to be transferred to or what services to transfer to?
* How to be transferred and what to transfer?
* What terminology, language we use?
* What (other) narratives of server hosting can we construct?
TITiPI seeks to exist with an infrastructure that supports inter-dependent practices and solidarity across struggles. It develops Counter Cloud Actions [ref] as a way to scale down, de-cloudify, articulate, contest and re-imagine the implications of computational infrastructures (‘the cloud’).

<blockquote>TITiPI develop tools from feminisms, queer theory, Free, Libre and Open Source software, intersectionality, anti-coloniality, disability studies, historical materialism and artistic practice to generate currently inexistent vocabularies, imaginaries and methodologies. TITiPI functions as an infrastructure to establish new ways in which socio-technical practices and technologies might support the public interest. <ref>TITiPI, ‘Infrables’, Tangible Cloud Archives, https://docs.tangible-cloud.be/publications-pdf/02_snelting.pdf.</ref></blockquote>

We are looking for servers that aspire some of these values.

=== A relational infrastructure narrative/ infra-mutuality/ inter-infrastructural narrative ===
[[File:Elastic solidarities.png|thumb]]
In June 2023 TITiPI received an email from Gandi to renew the domain titipi.org in 6 days, not realising that at the same time we would need to start paying for our titipi.org email hosting. We had missed reading to the end of another email sent in the middle of June, entitled: 'Pricing update'.

[it is a different decision making--it was never the plan to transfer email]

We consider to work with Kate Rich to move our mailboxes to the [http://irational.org/ Irational server], soon to be installed on a Raspberry Pi, hosted at Servus. We decide to do this transition slowly and until then renew the emails for 1-2 months through Gandi. Irational server resists virtualization, and as an art community project it makes it an interesting choice.

But why to go through all this effort and not just use one cloud server with mailboxes, file storage and web server together? TITiPI’s response to the question of building institutional digital infrastructure embodies an archipelagic and non-sovereign approach to dependencies. Rather than building a centralised server based on ‘cloud’ from which connections with other institutions and collectives can happen, it conceptualizes inter-infrastructural practices; from the creation of a [https://gitlab.constantvzw.org/titipi/burrow backup script] for saving locally etherpad pads from other servers, hosting emails at an art server (https://irational.org), creating an [https://books.lumbung.space/shelf/26 online bookshelf] on lumbung.space, using the ''XMPP'' chat from Varia to recording conversations with the ''sysadmin'' that maintain the other servers. The institution re-imagines technological dependencies in dialogue with cultural institutions and art collectives. [[File:Titipi-infra-diagram-JAN-24.png|thumb|none|alt=A diagram of TITiPI’s infrastructure. The diagram categorizes the elements according to tools/software (box), structure/organisational form (circle) and place (dashed line). For example Jitsi is the software, Greenhost is the organisation, meet.greenhost.net is the place.|A diagram of TITiPI’s infrastructure. The diagram categorizes the elements according to tools/software (box), structure/organisational form (circle) and place (dashed line). For example Jitsi is the software, Greenhost is the organisation, meet.greenhost.net is the place.]]

How to give life to the common space of TITiPI’s hosting infrastructures? What about building up social dependencies between the ones that host and the ones who are hosted as opposed to a technical independence? Infrastructural imaginations are often built by the ''Big Tech'' industry and governmental institutions. Instead, TITiPI practices a fluid inter-institutional approach supported by [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Infra_colophon a variety of hosts].

=== Selection of server providers ===
On the 7th of November through a shared screen at the [https://meet.greenhost.net/ video conferencing software Jitsi of Greenhost] we all three check a list of server providers I collected on a spreadsheet hosted in Constant’s cloud storage (built with Nextcloud software) where TITiPI has an account. I looked at associations, companies/businesses, cooperatives, communities coming from commercial context to social struggles, activist, feminist and other. Through a [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/List_server_networks list of networks] I found various servers mostly from Latin America and Europe.

The concept of autonomy, sovereignty, independence or self-managing characterizes most of the servers in the list. Some of them, like [https://www.autistici.org/ Autistici] promote this concept as a way to support anti-capitalist infrastructure and protect the privacy of the users as opposed to the ''Big Tech'' software practices.

<blockquote>The vision is that we - the members of the cooperative - own our own data. This implies and has as a consequence that we will have to own our own infrastructure and have insight and control over the software we use to communicate on the web.<ref>‘Community Servers - Monoskop’, accessed 16 July 2024, https://monoskop.org/Community_servers</ref></blockquote>

Femke had a hunch: "‘technological sovereignty’ and ‘data-sovereignty’ continue to be orientation devices to organise around. ‘Sovereignty’, together with ‘freedom’, ‘independence’ and ‘autonomy’, form an ideological cluster that implicitly and sometimes explicitly foregrounds separation rather than relation."

Servers can act as independent spaces but are also cultural devices and vibrant spaces. They can manifest different aspects of a full life and reach out to a multiplicity of entities.

Servus and Greenhost, seem to be two of our best choices as they cover a lot of the priorities and values of TITiPI. As one can read from their descriptions they both strive for owning their own data servers and data nodes (they have their own ''IP addresses'') and be independent from third parties. The big difference is the scale of the infrastructure and their community and network.

<blockquote>Greenhost fully owns and controls its hardware, infrastructure and uplinks. This ensures independence from third parties and proper access control. On this hardware we run our fully virtualised platform. We stand for an Open Internet, and have always embraced open source software.<ref>‘Greenhost.Net | the Sustainable Web’, accessed 16 July 2024, https://greenhost.net/.</ref></blockquote>

<blockquote>We (Servus) do not pass on any data to third parties. You will not receive commercial advertising from us or third parties. We are easily accessible and answer your questions personally. We and our servers are located at Kirchengasse 4 in Linz, Austria.<ref>‘Book Of Servus’, Book Of Servus, accessed 16 July 2024, https://book.servus.at/en/home/.</ref></blockquote>

Even though Greenhost wants to reduce ecological damage, it does that mainly through hardware reductions and does not address scale. They have plans to expand and are part of a network of partners that want to transform Rotterdam into a big hub of data nodes for the upcoming digital transition. [it is not as big as Linode--it is not in the list--we are not recosnidering to stay with linode]Linode is even bigger, it goes for [[https://www.akamai.com/newsroom/press-release/akamai-takes-cloud-computing-to-the-edge| "(p)lanetary scale"]]. Servus on the other hand has one room of data servers, is closer to the scale of their community and they maintain personal relations with them.

[[Image of the server room at Servus at Linz|Image of the server room at Servus at Linz?]]

=== Community server, feminist server, trans*feminist server, radical server, autonomous server, commercial server, art server, free server, ethical server, solidarity-based server, cooperative server, associative server, independent server, alternative server, non-commercial server, … ===
The spreadsheet starts to grow because of an endless/exhaustive burrow of small and big providers.

Some are outdated. 
Some are messy. 
Some have broken links. 
Some are [https://www.julienth37.fr/vps hard to understand]. 
Some require [https://www.actiu.info/index.en.html a lot of engagement]. 
Some use a language that imitates the narratives of ''Big Tech'' and ''agile'' computing. 
Some promote seamless “promissory logic” and “high hopes for a brighter future” (ref) 
Some are big or are scaling up (in matter of space, data centers, partners, users etc). 
Some support NGO’s or sport clubs.

[[File:Screenshot 2023-10-11 at 15-06-35 co-operative web-crop.png|thumb|Screenshot from main page of Co-op Web]]

We also looked at their financial model. Many radical servers stay small, are volunteer based, like [https://www.autistici.org/ Autistici]. and go for horizontal organisational structures. Feminist and activist servers provide space in the internet for the ones who don’t have the means to organise otherwise. The resources and ways of organising for these servers are different from the cooperatives or associations whose structure is inherited from the model they are registered with.

[[File:ATNOFS-Varia-insert-ooooo.jpg|thumb|ooooo atnofs insert diagrams from varia, systerserver, servus]]

TITiPI acknowledges and is connected to the history of community, art and feminist servers and wants to support this network. The art servers started as a way to make autonomous self-managed servers that support artists values and practices. They are often financed by cultural or private funds.

<blockquote>I joined (Irational) sometime in 2000s, I can't remember when and originally it was much more a collective of people working together and then since the early 2010's I think, mid 2010's, there was a bit of a reshuffle of personnel and stuff, so the constituency changed to a smaller group and we actually reformed. We were going to disband Irational and then we actually reformed as an art server collective and we decided we are not really working together but what we have in common is that we're using the server and that is actually what the collective is now. It's the collective that uses the server together and wants to use the server together. And another real defining feature of the server the whole time has been resisting virtualization. 

— quote from [[None of this experiment is evident|interview of Kate Rich by Femke Snelting]] [needs rewritting] </blockquote>

The screen seems to become brighter as my eyes get tired. What if we skip the online hosting and create a local physical server at TITiPI’s office next to the desks, in a corner, on a Raspberry Pi? All our data would stay on this machine and we would connect with ''SSH'' from home, but then we will also have to maintain it ourselves. There is something there about the romanticism of a physical toolbox as a sovereign object. If we choose to do that we will need to think of a backup plan as it will be an experimental set up and all our data will stay offline. We won’t have a provider to take care of that.

Our list has been reduced because of our priorities. We need ''SSH'' and we would like to have a VPS [--why?--part of the first issue on software/hardware server--having material inside someone elses server/email--physical--root access--2nd: to have our own box in a rack--that is expensive--pay for electricity etc and who turns of and on--a pi in our own office--bandwidth internet--in a rack we would have connection to high speed reliable internet--fire protection--4th: vps, it is a cloud technology but we have our own virtual machine that we can start and stop from ditance--with the consequence of using cloud technology--explain these different options--to help the reader]. Who has resources for providing VPS? Resources of labour, time, finances, technical knowledge. This made self-defined feminist servers fall out of the selection. How to be financially sustainable, while keeping up with your own values? How to keep up with infrastructural ''maintenance'' if the scale of the users, community, members and data is big?

<blockquote>The services we offer have no defined price, but as you may easily imagine, keeping the whole system working (i.e. hardware and hosting) is very expensive (at the moment it ranges around 13,000 euro every year).<ref>‘Autistici.Org - Services’, accessed 16 July 2024, https://www.autistici.org/services/</ref></blockquote>

Servus and Maadix provide a series of ''free/libre'' tools that can be installed separately through their interface but they also provide a VPS with ''SSH'' access. With Greenhost, Hetzner and Linode there is more flexibility: you can create your own VPS and customize it for your own needs through their interface or the ''terminal'' and install whatever tools you want from scratch without a visual interface.

Technical information and knowledge of digital infrastructure circulate between groups that are tech-oriented with a difficulty to cross with other groups, including feminist servers. The ''sysadmin'' tasks are mostly taken by cis men but feminist servers are radical about that. They find important to have ''sysadmins'' that are not cis men. For example Systerserver and Anarchaserver are learning by themselves together how to do this task.

Many of the servers in the list provide only tools, as a radical way to support small groups, collectives, activists that need privacy and shifting away from Google drive when they want to organise politically and socially. It seems that being limited to tool packages instead of having full access to a server can make things comprehensible and compact for these small groups that have limited ''sysadmin'' knowledge or can’t hire a technician.

[[File:Screenshot 2023-10-07 at 12-23-26 FuturEtic - Services en lignes libres & éthiques-2.png|Screenshot of main page with services by [https://futuretic.fr/ FuturEtic]|thumb]]

[[File:Scrnli 12 10 2023 13-14-32.png|thumb|Screenshot of tools from codigosur]]

== Final decision and server transfers [email and webhosting] ==

We are about to make our decision! Our list ended up to be very small.

On 7th of November in an online call between Helen in Basel, Femke in Brussels and Aggeliki in Rotterdam we limited our list to four options: Constant, Greenhost, Servus, Zaclys. The selection consists of a diversity of scales and positioning that we found interesting to think of. First, we move on with the decision to transfer our mailboxes to Irational hosted at Servus. The rest of the functionalities will be hosted somewhere else.

From our conversations with Femke: “The choice for irational.org opens the possibility for discussions around dependencies, trust and frictions within shared collective servers. Irational.org is an ally art server who uses and maintains its own server for many years. Hosting such a private service at a friend’s environment doesn’t come only with convenience. The closeness to the material of the server makes the dependency more tangible.” [reference/quote from colophon?]

[[File:White-magenta-painful.jpg|thumb|Towel design by psaroskalazines. Image from their website]]

Femke and I are planning different moments for the server transfer to happen in the office of TITiPI. What it is about to take place comes down into three moments; the backup and save of data from the old server, the installation of the necessary software in the new server and the transfer of the old data in the new server.

Specifically we are following these steps:

* Mail transfer from Gandi to irational
* Create a Virtual Private Server (VPS) in the new server
* Install Apache2 and configure domains
* Install and migrate MediaWiki
** Back up the wiki on the Linode VPS
** Upgrade MediaWiki in Linode
** Install MediaWiki and plugins in the Greenhost VPS
** Transfer database and media files from Linode to Greenhost
* Install Wiki-to-pdf
* Install Pico
* Install and configure Certbot

We find ourselves between two virtual spaces and one office, among other indirectly connected spaces like the rooms of our distant collaborators and the office locations of the servers.

=== Trust relationships ===
By now, 14th of November 2023, the office is warm and cozy. Throughout the time I am writing this report I have been noticing a lot of slow and small efforts to renovate the building and set up the heating, by the artists and organisations who share the space with TITiPI. Another infrastructure that needs care.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 15-06-42.png|thumb|Femke and Aggeliki entering Irational’s server space with Kate]]

On a shared screen together with Femke we get introduced to the mail server of Irational by Kate. We use an audio splitter to share the laptop for the call. Kate described her experience as an amateur ''sysadmin'' that had to spend a lot of time to learn and set up the mail server. After that we start the process that has been documented [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Server_transfer_documentation#Mail_transfer here].

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 14-56-26.png|thumb|Screenshot from the TITiPI’s mail transfer with Kate, Femke and Aggeliki during an online 3 hours call]]

Irational uses the Alpine email client. Kate takes us its depths. That is where we start to set up our new email accounts before we configure them in Thunderbird. Femke gets excited on the fact that she can send emails to other Irational accounts through the ''terminal''.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 15-15-07.png|thumb|Using the email client Alpine]]

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 17-04-20.png|thumb|Screenhost from the moment of looking for the syntax of the TXT records. Finding the right syntax for this value was the biggest challenge. This is part of the ''trust relationships'' between the different providers]]

After some more DNS configurations we test if it is possible to exchange emails with ‘outside’ accounts and especially with Gmail that has many security filters for mail servers other than the commercial ones.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-15 13-59-52.png|thumb|Exchange test emails with a Gmail account]]

After three hours of tryouts we manage to make it work! Very proudly and with enjoyment for sharing a technical task together we say goodbye to each other and arrange a next meeting for a final check up.

=== A choice that comes with discomforts ===
Just one day before the start of TITiPI’s server transfer away from Linode on the 28th of November, Helen found the Swiss server ungleich.ch and it seemed like an interesting choice because of the small scale (in terms of community and servers), their experimental attitude and their choice to reduce energy consumption; they avoid using systems for cooling their servers by spreading the servers at the Swiss mountains in old, abandoned buildings.

Ungleich.ch is one of the good options but it is more expensive than other providers. They offer a cheaper choice by choosing to have only ‘ipv6’. But we had to dig in to understand the difference of ipv4 and ipv6. From wikipedia: “IPv6 is the most recent version of the Internet Protocol, developed to deal with the long-anticipated problem of IPv4 address exhaustion” We found a [https://stats.labs.apnic.net/ipv6 map] that shows which countries have implemented IPv6 and it seems that if we only use this address then many places won’t have access to the website of TITiPI. So we choose to have both addresses.

We also notice that this provider is using Stripe for their payment system. In a [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Frontier parallel universe of TITiPI] we give attention to and critique Stripe because of its connections with the Carbon Removal industry.

[[File:Firefox Screenshot 2023-11-28T12-32-24.775Z.png|thumb|Ungleich.ch payment system with Stripe]] [include and correctly reference them]

Another urgency appears while we are looking at different choices; together with many other organisations, we have been thinking about ways to host and maintain infrastructures in solidarity with communities and networks we are part of. This would mean, for example, hosting digitally a Palestinian video film archive, or research by sex workers. Solidarity is only partially a question of caring for privacy and security because it matters where and how we host our digital infrastructures and whether these spaces do or do not support the flourishing of different lives and struggles. This need make us think again if the server we choose would be suitable for something like that.

Constant and Servus are two accomplice servers that already provide to TITiPI some of their services. Zaclys is a member of Chatons that support open source values and it is located in France. We contacted them to see if they could be an option but they never responded to us.

We wanted to work with a company that provide ‘green’ infrastructure. Greenhost seem to be a good choice. It provides a familiar interface to us, good support and backup option. It has a positioning as an alternative to AWS. So far great, but what about its ‘green’ hosting vision? Is it a solarpunk vision, a green cloud utopia? Is their infrastructure resource ‘hungry’? What are the privacy limits when the material hosted in the servers is political and sensitive?

We choose Greenhost with all the discomforts that this choice entails and with the desire to keep the critique and dialogue alive.

Only by December 2023 we manage to arrange a call with one of Greenhost’s former Managing Directors to get a feeling and more information about their approach and sensitivity. Accordind to him Greenhost exists in the intersection of activism and technology. It provides consultancy, sustainability solutions in tech projects and structured ''maintenance''; they go for best quality with lowest environmental impact; they maintain the same hardware as much as possible and balance that with higher efficiency; they keep backups at an already existing data center in the university of Amsterdam.

<nowiki>[[paragraph for Greenhost include? from interview with manager?]]</nowiki>

=== Installing, transferring, saving, copying, … ===
On the 28th of November sitting on the sunny corner of the couch next to the radiator, and with warm coffee cups waiting for us on a low table, Femke and I cover our legs with a blanket and open our laptops.

I ask Femke to jumb in a ''tmux'' session for sharing ''terminal'' with this command: <code>''sudo'' ''tmux'' attach -t webserver</code>. We start by cleaning the old server and make backups of the files.

We take a lunch break. Femke finds out that if we eat three recurrent meals every week in the office we can have a nice variety of food; lentiles soup, orecchiette pasta with brocoli, rizzoto with mushrooms and lots of fruits. Sometime ago we decided to make multiple short breaks throughout the day because of computer fatigue. One day I removed all the files from my computer that were older than 90 days because I accidentally run a command on the ''terminal'' instead of a bash script to test the setting up of [https://gitlab.constantvzw.org/titipi/burrow Burrow]. I left this comment in the initial script:

<code># VERY DANGEROUS COMMAND find *txt -mindepth 1 -mtime +$RETAIN -delete</code>
The next day we set up the new server and install all the necessary software including a new version of the MediaWiki. We arrange a meeting with Martino Morandi, member of Constant, who created the wiki-to-pdf to help us installing this software and transfer the MediaWiki in the new server. On the 1st of December we successfully install the wiki-to-pdf and because of limited time we decided to meet one more time at the end of the month for the rest.

[[File:Virtual-env-debian.png|thumb|Screenshot from the wiki-to-pdf installation to the new server with Martino, Femke, Aggeliki. Debian supports a different way to create virtual environments for installing python packages and libraries. We try it but it failed.]]

On the 28th we meet with Martino online to complete the transfer, which includes copying the old database of MediaWiki, activate the old plugins and fix any issues on the way. We are all located in different countries (Italy, Greece, Belgium) and so we share a ''tmux'' session. We follow the guides but on the way we had to do some research and configure a lot of things to make the MediaWiki work. Martino was hunting a php module. It seemed that php has shifted to free software culture in an attempt to find another business model. It is not surprising it happens in the context of Ubuntu. The issue is recorded [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Server_transfer_documentation#MediaWiki_upgrade_issues here].

[[File:Firefox Screenshot 2024-01-10T13-59-40.398Z.png|thumb|"Is Titipi.org down?" Helen asks after the transfer. It seems that her browser cache was preventing her from seeing the website]]

The process is documented in our diary and then transferred to a [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Server_transfer_documentation wiki page]. By January 2024 the server transfer and the deletion of our Linode account has been completed.

== Glossaries ==

Italicized terms in the report are included in these glossaries:

* [https://varia.zone/ATNOFS/ATNOFS-screen.pdf Glossary of A Traversal Network of Feminist Servers (ATNOFS) publication]
* [[Glossary|TITiPI's glossary]]

== References ==

* Panashe Chigumadzi, ‘Can White South Africa Live up to Ubuntu, the African Philosophy Tutu Globalised?’, The Guardian, 31 December 2021, sec. Opinion, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec/31/white-south-africa-ubuntu-african-tutu
* ‘Community Servers - Monoskop’, accessed 16 July 2024, https://monoskop.org/Community_servers
* David Carroll, ‘How To Open An Outpost In Social Media Exile | TechPolicy.Press’, Tech Policy Press, 26 November 2022, <nowiki>https://techpolicy.press/how-to-open-an-outpost-in-social-media-exile</nowiki>.
* Elizabeth Landau, ‘Tech Confronts Its Use of the Labels “Master” and “Slave”’, ''Wired'', accessed 16 July 2024, <nowiki>https://www.wired.com/story/tech-confronts-use-labels-master-slave/</nowiki>.
* ‘GitHub Abandons “master” Term to Avoid Slavery Row’, 15 June 2020, https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-53050955
* Femke Snelting, ‘Infrastructure Solidarity’, Ardeth. A Magazine on the Power of the Project, no. 8 (1 November 2021): 45–47
* ‘Master-Slave Terminology Alternatives You Can Use Right Now | TheServerSide’, TheServerSide.com, accessed 16 July 2024, https://www.theserverside.com/opinion/Master-slave-terminology-alternatives-you-can-use-right-now
* ‘Racist Computer Engineering Words: “Master,” “Slave” and the Fight Over Offensive Terms - The New York Times’, accessed 16 July 2024, <nowiki>https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/13/technology/racist-computer-engineering-terms-ietf.html</nowiki>.
* ‘Replace “Master” and “Slave” Terms in Redis · Issue #3185 · Redis/Redis’, GitHub, accessed 16 July 2024, https://github.com/redis/redis/issues/3185
* ‘Ubuntu: A Black Radical Demand for Reparations’, THE FUNAMBULIST MAGAZINE, 25 October 2023, https://thefunambulist.net/magazine/redefining-our-terms/ubuntu-a-black-radical-demand-for-reparations.

== Colophon ==

The text was drafted in pad.xpub.nl in Markdown and then transferred in this wiki.

== Footnotes ==

From cloud to crowd: a report on a server transfer

2024-10-16T11:00:39Z

Angeliki:

= From cloud to crowd<ref>The term comes from ... (not sure if it is included in the title)</ref>: A report on a server transfer =

This text is a report on a server migration that took place within the institutional framework of [https://titipi.org/ The Institute for Technology in the Public Interest (TITiPI)], a trans-practice gathering of activists, artists, engineers and theorists. The report is an infrastructural ethnography<ref>[explain--footnote]</ref> and aims to rethink, through a technical process, what ''hosting'' a server means for a community, institution, cultural organisation dealing with technological discomforts and complex digital infrastructures.

A ''server'' is a computer (or a piece of software?hardware)[what changes--a server being either physical machine or not at all--discuss later--needs attention--transfer from physical place to physical place or software to software--address that--need to problematize and place the question somewhere in the essay-- point out the paradox--then some things later will become easy to read] that provides functionalities via a network (Internet). A ''server migration'' is the process of moving data and transferring software from one server to another with the use of specified tools. Performing such process accommodates a practical and technical solution to fix the problem of an outdated server that is slow or has limited storage. But it also affects the values, the structure and infrastructural imaginations of the organisations it supports. TITiPI desired(s) to go with hosting and maintain its own virtual private server instead of outsourcing these services to external tech companies[treat web hosting with attention--pulling that work into the thinking, reflection and organisational--not treated as an external thing--a service]. In times of server providers’ scaling up ( ‘''cloud hosting''’ ) and digitizing governmental bureaucracies what does it mean to host your own digital space for supporting your communities and work? What does it mean to have an independent infrastructure? What (non-)dependencies are chosen or taken for granted by institutions when using hosting services?

As a researcher at TITiPI I have been caring for the task to investigate this server migration and execute it together with TITiPI’s member Femke Snelting. We meet weekly to keep track and make decisions. We share a ''markdown'' file hosted in the online code repository of the cultural association [https://constantvzw.org/site/ Constant] [link of git titipi] that includes a diary of the server migration and reflections. Every now and then we meet online with our colleague Helen Pritchard, to discuss and share the process. This report includes extracts from the server diary and stories from the process.[two processes of transfer--email and web hosting]

== Migration or …? [restructuring--what are the differences] ==

In the cold newly installed office of TITiPI located in the Koekelberg district of Brussels, I open the browser Chromium in my computer, that runs the operating system Ubuntu, in order to translate quickly − with the installed Google Translate plugin; later I found out there is a DeepL version − the web pages of the different cooperatives, associations, companies that provide hosting services. While doing that I have this disturbing thought in my head that I try to ignore: the word ‘migration’ [its about appropriation of a way of being--flattening the experience of migration--to pull them apart--to explain discomfort with the word migration--understanding how and why the word migration is problematic] as a technical term to describe the movement from one server to the other. It makes me think of an [https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/13/technology/racist-computer-engineering-terms-ietf.html online conversation], happening for a few years now, about replacing computer engineering terminology to stop [to address] prevalence of racism in tech. Specifically the conversation [https://www.wired.com/story/tech-confronts-use-labels-master-slave/ evolves around the terms] ‘master/slave’ [the way I link the things need some extra sentences], where one computing process or entity controls another, and ‘blacklists/whitelists’ used for directories of those things that are explicitly banned or allowed. Using metaphors like that for a technical process de-contextualizes a word from its origins and unavoidably perpetuates social injustices. It also shows that the context where such choices of language are made is privileged and untouched or non-triggered by these terms. White male computer engineers have build up this language.

[My computer runs--for example--why these two parts are different or the same--it hasnt registsred as problematic yet]‘Ubuntu’ is also a word extracted from its original context. It is coming from the African Ubuntu philosophy. According to the creators of the software:

<blockquote>ubuntu |oǒ’boǒntoō| Ubuntu is an ancient African word meaning ‘humanity to others’. It is often described as reminding us that ‘I am what I am because of who we all are’. We bring the spirit of Ubuntu to the world of computers and software. The Ubuntu distribution represents the best of what the world’s software community has shared with the world. <ref>‘About the Ubuntu Project’, Ubuntu, accessed 16 July 2024, https://ubuntu.com/about</ref>
</blockquote>

Paraphrasing [https://thefunambulist.net/magazine/redefining-our-terms/ubuntu-a-black-radical-demand-for-reparations Panashe Chigumadzi] words: in contrast to the western conception of the human as individual, the African conception of the person is a social being who is always becoming, defined by and being responsible for the personhood of the others. "(T)he African philosophy best understood through the proverb found in Bantu languages across the continent, 'umuntu ngumuntu ngabanye bantu' (a person is a person through other people". <ref>Panashe Chigumadzi, ‘Can White South Africa Live up to Ubuntu, the African Philosophy Tutu Globalised?’, The Guardian, 31 December 2021, sec. Opinion, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec/31/white-south-africa-ubuntu-african-tutu</ref>

<blockquote>(D)espite the flourishing of Ubuntu in post-apartheid discourse, lending its name to software, businesses, books and philanthropic organisations, South Africa is a country in which we have, as Dladla argues, Ubuntu without Abantu. Just as Black people have been dispossessed of their land, Ubuntu has been dispossessed of its deeply radical demands for ethical historical and social relations among people. (...) post apartheid Ubuntu mistranslation 'I am because we are', individualized and interpersonalised Ubuntu, Christianised Ubuntu, mistranslated in order to justify crimes and violence. In Ubuntu violence can be punished even after generations, the misinterpretation of the term allowed individual forgiveness. <ref>‘Ubuntu: A Black Radical Demand for Reparations’, THE FUNAMBULIST MAGAZINE, 25 October 2023, https://thefunambulist.net/magazine/redefining-our-terms/ubuntu-a-black-radical-demand-for-reparations</ref>
</blockquote>

I skip these thoughts and I continue browsing the list of servers. While trying to stay focused something other distracts me; I encounter an [https://www.oziosi.org/ autonomous Italian server] with the title translated with DeepL: “:: a shelter for digital exiles ::” and an image of a woman, a child and a man leaving their home. Also a small introduction: “Exiled from the global village of social networks, we claim an internet that is a simple means of communication: immaterial, anonymous, imaginary, public when it makes sense and secret when we feel the need.”. I am wondering what does this mean for actual exiles having to protect their privacy when communicating back home? [https://techpolicy.press/how-to-open-an-outpost-in-social-media-exile/ ‘Social media exiles’] and ‘Twitter migration’ are terms used often after Twitter became X and users have moved to the Fediverse or other alternatives.

Could words like transferring, sharing, moving, copying, re-installing, shifting replace the word ‘migration’? From this point on in the report I decide to use the term ‘transfer’.

[[File:Screenshot 2023-10-07 at 11-31-21 esiliati.org.png|thumb|Screenshot of webpage of self-organised server mentioning the term 'digital exiles' ]]

== TITiPI’s case of server transfer ==
On the 27th of September, sitting at the long desks side to side, Femke and I have an online call with Helen, while looking at the depths of our Virtual Private Server (VPS), provided by Linode, that runs Ubuntu on our laptop screens. Linode is an American hosting provider focusing on ''Linux''-based virtual machines originally. The server is physically located in the UK. TITiPI currently uses the Linode server that Helen set up for hosting her own projects. They have been paying for Linode’s monthly fees so far.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-10-11 14-47-06.png|thumb|Screenshot of Linode Ubuntu server overview and ''terminal'' that shows a moment of figuring out what takes space in the server through ''SSH'' access]]

At the time it seemed a good choice, because Linode is based in UK, is ''Linux'' friendly and an alternative to Amazon Web Services (AWS), even though the company was already identifying as ‘''cloud hosting''’. But in February 2023 it has been acquired by the American company Akamai that aims to scale up for [https://www.linode.com/global-infrastructure/ “computing power, optimizing performance and agility.”]. Akamai is actively changing its server policies into an increasingly intense cloud logic. This pushed forward the desire to move to a new place.

[[File:Screenshot 2023-10-11 at 14-50-47 Cloud Computing & Linux Servers Alternative to AWS Linode.png|thumb|Screenshot of Linode website referring to scalability]]

At the moment in Linode we run pico, a flat CMS for the website https://titipi.org. There is a Mediawiki (you are reading a Mediawiki page right now) for notes and collective writing. On the wiki, we also publish our statutes, guidelines and other instituting documents. The wiki has a custom extension, called wiki-to-pdf. Each of these services will need a different way to be transferred. One approach is to build the new server space from scratch, copy the data with rsync and transfer only the Mediawiki, which includes installing a new version and copy the database and the media files.

While preparing to transfer the tools we are defining what are the practical needs and desirable priorities; we ended up on these server requirements:
* ''SSH'' access and wish for VPS [pick up gain the fantasy of a server -- make present this questioning of physical or software defined server]
* affordable price (around €20/month)
* run a Free Software operating system, preferably Debian
* involves community work - slowing down, resisting to scaling and growth or ‘decloudification’ (small network of partners, less virtualization approach, location of servers nearby etc)
* 25-40GB storage space, 1-2 cores, 2-4GB RAM
* environmental angle
* service support in a language that we all understand (English mostly)

This server transfer happens with an intersectional and feminist approach and the desire to keep questioning. While moving away from Linode we include both the technical and the conceptual thinking in the process. There are a few things that we are looking at:
* Where to be transferred to or what services to transfer to?
* How to be transferred and what to transfer?
* What terminology, language we use?
* What (other) narratives of server hosting can we construct?
TITiPI seeks to exist with an infrastructure that supports inter-dependent practices and solidarity across struggles. It develops Counter Cloud Actions [ref] as a way to scale down, de-cloudify, articulate, contest and re-imagine the implications of computational infrastructures (‘the cloud’).

<blockquote>TITiPI develop tools from feminisms, queer theory, Free, Libre and Open Source software, intersectionality, anti-coloniality, disability studies, historical materialism and artistic practice to generate currently inexistent vocabularies, imaginaries and methodologies. TITiPI functions as an infrastructure to establish new ways in which socio-technical practices and technologies might support the public interest. <ref>TITiPI, ‘Infrables’, Tangible Cloud Archives, https://docs.tangible-cloud.be/publications-pdf/02_snelting.pdf.</ref></blockquote>

We are looking for servers that aspire some of these values.

=== A relational infrastructure narrative/ infra-mutuality/ inter-infrastructural narrative ===
[[File:Elastic solidarities.png|thumb]]
In June 2023 TITiPI received an email from Gandi to renew the domain titipi.org in 6 days, not realising that at the same time we would need to start paying for our titipi.org email hosting. We had missed reading to the end of another email sent in the middle of June, entitled: 'Pricing update'.

[it is a different decision making--it was never the plan to transfer email]

We consider to work with Kate Rich to move our mailboxes to the [http://irational.org/ Irational server], soon to be installed on a Raspberry Pi, hosted at Servus. We decide to do this transition slowly and until then renew the emails for 1-2 months through Gandi. Irational server resists virtualization, and as an art community project it makes it an interesting choice.

But why to go through all this effort and not just use one cloud server with mailboxes, file storage and web server together? TITiPI’s response to the question of building institutional digital infrastructure embodies an archipelagic and non-sovereign approach to dependencies. Rather than building a centralised server based on ‘cloud’ from which connections with other institutions and collectives can happen, it conceptualizes inter-infrastructural practices; from the creation of a [https://gitlab.constantvzw.org/titipi/burrow backup script] for saving locally etherpad pads from other servers, hosting emails at an art server (https://irational.org), creating an [https://books.lumbung.space/shelf/26 online bookshelf] on lumbung.space, using the ''XMPP'' chat from Varia to recording conversations with the ''sysadmin'' that maintain the other servers. The institution re-imagines technological dependencies in dialogue with cultural institutions and art collectives. [[File:Titipi-infra-diagram-JAN-24.png|thumb|none|alt=A diagram of TITiPI’s infrastructure. The diagram categorizes the elements according to tools/software (box), structure/organisational form (circle) and place (dashed line). For example Jitsi is the software, Greenhost is the organisation, meet.greenhost.net is the place.|A diagram of TITiPI’s infrastructure. The diagram categorizes the elements according to tools/software (box), structure/organisational form (circle) and place (dashed line). For example Jitsi is the software, Greenhost is the organisation, meet.greenhost.net is the place.]]

How to give life to the common space of TITiPI’s hosting infrastructures? What about building up social dependencies between the ones that host and the ones who are hosted as opposed to a technical independence? Infrastructural imaginations are often built by the ''Big Tech'' industry and governmental institutions. Instead, TITiPI practices a fluid inter-institutional approach supported by [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Infra_colophon a variety of hosts].

=== Selection of server providers ===
On the 7th of November through a shared screen at the [https://meet.greenhost.net/ video conferencing software Jitsi of Greenhost] we all three check a list of server providers I collected on a spreadsheet hosted in Constant’s cloud storage (built with Nextcloud software) where TITiPI has an account. I looked at associations, companies/businesses, cooperatives, communities coming from commercial context to social struggles, activist, feminist and other. Through a [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/List_server_networks list of networks] I found various servers mostly from Latin America and Europe.

The concept of autonomy, sovereignty, independence or self-managing characterizes most of the servers in the list. Some of them, like [https://www.autistici.org/ Autistici] promote this concept as a way to support anti-capitalist infrastructure and protect the privacy of the users as opposed to the ''Big Tech'' software practices.

<blockquote>The vision is that we - the members of the cooperative - own our own data. This implies and has as a consequence that we will have to own our own infrastructure and have insight and control over the software we use to communicate on the web.<ref>‘Community Servers - Monoskop’, accessed 16 July 2024, https://monoskop.org/Community_servers</ref></blockquote>

Femke had a hunch: "‘technological sovereignty’ and ‘data-sovereignty’ continue to be orientation devices to organise around. ‘Sovereignty’, together with ‘freedom’, ‘independence’ and ‘autonomy’, form an ideological cluster that implicitly and sometimes explicitly foregrounds separation rather than relation."

Servers can act as independent spaces but are also cultural devices and vibrant spaces. They can manifest different aspects of a full life and reach out to a multiplicity of entities.

Servus and Greenhost, seem to be two of our best choices as they cover a lot of the priorities and values of TITiPI. As one can read from their descriptions they both strive for owning their own data servers and data nodes (they have their own ''IP addresses'') and be independent from third parties. The big difference is the scale of the infrastructure and their community and network.

<blockquote>Greenhost fully owns and controls its hardware, infrastructure and uplinks. This ensures independence from third parties and proper access control. On this hardware we run our fully virtualised platform. We stand for an Open Internet, and have always embraced open source software.<ref>‘Greenhost.Net | the Sustainable Web’, accessed 16 July 2024, https://greenhost.net/.</ref></blockquote>

<blockquote>We (Servus) do not pass on any data to third parties. You will not receive commercial advertising from us or third parties. We are easily accessible and answer your questions personally. We and our servers are located at Kirchengasse 4 in Linz, Austria.<ref>‘Book Of Servus’, Book Of Servus, accessed 16 July 2024, https://book.servus.at/en/home/.</ref></blockquote>

Even though Greenhost wants to reduce ecological damage, it does that mainly through hardware reductions and does not address scale. They have plans to expand and are part of a network of partners that want to transform Rotterdam into a big hub of data nodes for the upcoming digital transition. [it is not as big as Linode--it is not in the list--we are not recosnidering to stay with linode]Linode is even bigger, it goes for [[https://www.akamai.com/newsroom/press-release/akamai-takes-cloud-computing-to-the-edge| "(p)lanetary scale"]]. Servus on the other hand has one room of data servers, is closer to the scale of their community and they maintain personal relations with them.

[[Image of the server room at Servus at Linz|Image of the server room at Servus at Linz?]]

=== Community server, feminist server, trans*feminist server, radical server, autonomous server, commercial server, art server, free server, ethical server, solidarity-based server, cooperative server, associative server, independent server, alternative server, non-commercial server, … ===
The spreadsheet starts to grow because of an endless/exhaustive burrow of small and big providers.

Some are outdated. 
Some are messy. 
Some have broken links. 
Some are [https://www.julienth37.fr/vps hard to understand]. 
Some require [https://www.actiu.info/index.en.html a lot of engagement]. 
Some use a language that imitates the narratives of ''Big Tech'' and ''agile'' computing. 
Some promote seamless “promissory logic” and “high hopes for a brighter future” (ref) 
Some are big or are scaling up (in matter of space, data centers, partners, users etc). 
Some support NGO’s or sport clubs.

[[File:Screenshot 2023-10-11 at 15-06-35 co-operative web-crop.png|thumb|Screenshot from main page of Co-op Web]]

We also looked at their financial model. Many radical servers stay small, are volunteer based, like [https://www.autistici.org/ Autistici]. and go for horizontal organisational structures. Feminist and activist servers provide space in the internet for the ones who don’t have the means to organise otherwise. The resources and ways of organising for these servers are different from the cooperatives or associations whose structure is inherited from the model they are registered with.

[[File:ATNOFS-Varia-insert-ooooo.jpg|thumb|ooooo atnofs insert diagrams from varia, systerserver, servus]]

TITiPI acknowledges and is connected to the history of community, art and feminist servers and wants to support this network. The art servers started as a way to make autonomous self-managed servers that support artists values and practices. They are often financed by cultural or private funds.

<blockquote>I joined (Irational) sometime in 2000s, I can't remember when and originally it was much more a collective of people working together and then since the early 2010's I think, mid 2010's, there was a bit of a reshuffle of personnel and stuff, so the constituency changed to a smaller group and we actually reformed. We were going to disband Irational and then we actually reformed as an art server collective and we decided we are not really working together but what we have in common is that we're using the server and that is actually what the collective is now. It's the collective that uses the server together and wants to use the server together. And another real defining feature of the server the whole time has been resisting virtualization. 

— quote from [[None of this experiment is evident|interview of Kate Rich by Femke Snelting]] [needs rewritting] </blockquote>

The screen seems to become brighter as my eyes get tired. What if we skip the online hosting and create a local physical server at TITiPI’s office next to the desks, in a corner, on a Raspberry Pi? All our data would stay on this machine and we would connect with ''SSH'' from home, but then we will also have to maintain it ourselves. There is something there about the romanticism of a physical toolbox as a sovereign object. If we choose to do that we will need to think of a backup plan as it will be an experimental set up and all our data will stay offline. We won’t have a provider to take care of that.

Our list has been reduced because of our priorities. We need ''SSH'' and we would like to have a VPS [--why?--part of the first issue on software/hardware server--having material inside someone elses server/email--physical--root access--2nd: to have our own box in a rack--that is expensive--pay for electricity etc and who turns of and on--a pi in our own office--bandwidth internet--in a rack we would have connection to high speed reliable internet--fire protection--4th: vps, it is a cloud technology but we have our own virtual machine that we can start and stop from ditance--with the consequence of using cloud technology--explain these different options--to help the reader]. Who has resources for providing VPS? Resources of labour, time, finances, technical knowledge. This made self-defined feminist servers fall out of the selection. How to be financially sustainable, while keeping up with your own values? How to keep up with infrastructural ''maintenance'' if the scale of the users, community, members and data is big?

<blockquote>The services we offer have no defined price, but as you may easily imagine, keeping the whole system working (i.e. hardware and hosting) is very expensive (at the moment it ranges around 13,000 euro every year).<ref>‘Autistici.Org - Services’, accessed 16 July 2024, https://www.autistici.org/services/</ref></blockquote>

Servus and Maadix provide a series of ''free/libre'' tools that can be installed separately through their interface but they also provide a VPS with ''SSH'' access. With Greenhost, Hetzner and Linode there is more flexibility: you can create your own VPS and customize it for your own needs through their interface or the ''terminal'' and install whatever tools you want from scratch without a visual interface.

Technical information and knowledge of digital infrastructure circulate between groups that are tech-oriented with a difficulty to cross with other groups, including feminist servers. The ''sysadmin'' tasks are mostly taken by cis men but feminist servers are radical about that. They find important to have ''sysadmins'' that are not cis men. For example Systerserver and Anarchaserver are learning by themselves together how to do this task.

Many of the servers in the list provide only tools, as a radical way to support small groups, collectives, activists that need privacy and shifting away from Google drive when they want to organise politically and socially. It seems that being limited to tool packages instead of having full access to a server can make things comprehensible and compact for these small groups that have limited ''sysadmin'' knowledge or can’t hire a technician.

[[File:Screenshot 2023-10-07 at 12-23-26 FuturEtic - Services en lignes libres & éthiques-2.png|Screenshot of main page with services by [https://futuretic.fr/ FuturEtic]|thumb]]

[[File:Scrnli 12 10 2023 13-14-32.png|thumb|Screenshot of tools from codigosur]]

== Final decision and server transfers [email and webhosting] ==

We are about to make our decision! Our list ended up to be very small.

On 7th of November in an online call between Helen in Basel, Femke in Brussels and Aggeliki in Rotterdam we limited our list to four options: Constant, Greenhost, Servus, Zaclys. The selection consists of a diversity of scales and positioning that we found interesting to think of. First, we move on with the decision to transfer our mailboxes to Irational hosted at Servus. The rest of the functionalities will be hosted somewhere else.

From our conversations with Femke: “The choice for irational.org opens the possibility for discussions around dependencies, trust and frictions within shared collective servers. Irational.org is an ally art server who uses and maintains its own server for many years. Hosting such a private service at a friend’s environment doesn’t come only with convenience. The closeness to the material of the server makes the dependency more tangible.” [reference/quote from colophon?]

[[File:White-magenta-painful.jpg|thumb|Towel design by psaroskalazines. Image from their website]]

Femke and I are planning different moments for the server transfer to happen in the office of TITiPI. What it is about to take place comes down into three moments; the backup and save of data from the old server, the installation of the necessary software in the new server and the transfer of the old data in the new server.

Specifically we are following these steps:

* Mail transfer from Gandi to irational
* Create a Virtual Private Server (VPS) in the new server
* Install Apache2 and configure domains
* Install and migrate MediaWiki
** Back up the wiki on the Linode VPS
** Upgrade MediaWiki in Linode
** Install MediaWiki and plugins in the Greenhost VPS
** Transfer database and media files from Linode to Greenhost
* Install Wiki-to-pdf
* Install Pico
* Install and configure Certbot

We find ourselves between two virtual spaces and one office, among other indirectly connected spaces like the rooms of our distant collaborators and the office locations of the servers.

=== Trust relationships ===
By now, 14th of November 2023, the office is warm and cozy. Throughout the time I am writing this report I have been noticing a lot of slow and small efforts to renovate the building and set up the heating, by the artists and organisations who share the space with TITiPI. Another infrastructure that needs care.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 15-06-42.png|thumb|Femke and Aggeliki entering Irational’s server space with Kate]]

On a shared screen together with Femke we get introduced to the mail server of Irational by Kate. We use an audio splitter to share the laptop for the call. Kate described her experience as an amateur ''sysadmin'' that had to spend a lot of time to learn and set up the mail server. After that we start the process that has been documented [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Server_transfer_documentation#Mail_transfer here].

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 14-56-26.png|thumb|Screenshot from the TITiPI’s mail transfer with Kate, Femke and Aggeliki during an online 3 hours call]]

Irational uses the Alpine email client. Kate takes us its depths. That is where we start to set up our new email accounts before we configure them in Thunderbird. Femke gets excited on the fact that she can send emails to other Irational accounts through the ''terminal''.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 15-15-07.png|thumb|Using the email client Alpine]]

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 17-04-20.png|thumb|Screenhost from the moment of looking for the syntax of the TXT records. Finding the right syntax for this value was the biggest challenge. This is part of the ''trust relationships'' between the different providers]]

After some more DNS configurations we test if it is possible to exchange emails with ‘outside’ accounts and especially with Gmail that has many security filters for mail servers other than the commercial ones.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-15 13-59-52.png|thumb|Exchange test emails with a Gmail account]]

After three hours of tryouts we manage to make it work! Very proudly and with enjoyment for sharing a technical task together we say goodbye to each other and arrange a next meeting for a final check up.

=== A choice that comes with discomforts ===
Just one day before the start of TITiPI’s server transfer away from Linode on the 28th of November, Helen found the Swiss server ungleich.ch and it seemed like an interesting choice because of the small scale (in terms of community and servers), their experimental attitude and their choice to reduce energy consumption; they avoid using systems for cooling their servers by spreading the servers at the Swiss mountains in old, abandoned buildings.

Ungleich.ch is one of the good options but it is more expensive than other providers. They offer a cheaper choice by choosing to have only ‘ipv6’. But we had to dig in to understand the difference of ipv4 and ipv6. From wikipedia: “IPv6 is the most recent version of the Internet Protocol, developed to deal with the long-anticipated problem of IPv4 address exhaustion” We found a [https://stats.labs.apnic.net/ipv6 map] that shows which countries have implemented IPv6 and it seems that if we only use this address then many places won’t have access to the website of TITiPI. So we choose to have both addresses.

We also notice that this provider is using Stripe for their payment system. In a [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Frontier parallel universe of TITiPI] we give attention to and critique Stripe because of its connections with the Carbon Removal industry.

[[File:Firefox Screenshot 2023-11-28T12-32-24.775Z.png|thumb|Ungleich.ch payment system with Stripe]] [include and correctly reference them]

Another urgency appears while we are looking at different choices; together with many other organisations, we have been thinking about ways to host and maintain infrastructures in solidarity with communities and networks we are part of. This would mean, for example, hosting digitally a Palestinian video film archive, or research by sex workers. Solidarity is only partially a question of caring for privacy and security because it matters where and how we host our digital infrastructures and whether these spaces do or do not support the flourishing of different lives and struggles. This need make us think again if the server we choose would be suitable for something like that.

Constant and Servus are two accomplice servers that already provide to TITiPI some of their services. Zaclys is a member of Chatons that support open source values and it is located in France. We contacted them to see if they could be an option but they never responded to us.

We wanted to work with a company that provide ‘green’ infrastructure. Greenhost seem to be a good choice. It provides a familiar interface to us, good support and backup option. It has a positioning as an alternative to AWS. So far great, but what about its ‘green’ hosting vision? Is it a solarpunk vision, a green cloud utopia? Is their infrastructure resource ‘hungry’? What are the privacy limits when the material hosted in the servers is political and sensitive?

We choose Greenhost with all the discomforts that this choice entails and with the desire to keep the critique and dialogue alive.

Only by December 2023 we manage to arrange a call with one of Greenhost’s former Managing Directors to get a feeling and more information about their approach and sensitivity. Accordind to him Greenhost exists in the intersection of activism and technology. It provides consultancy, sustainability solutions in tech projects and structured ''maintenance''; they go for best quality with lowest environmental impact; they maintain the same hardware as much as possible and balance that with higher efficiency; they keep backups at an already existing data center in the university of Amsterdam.

<nowiki>[[paragraph for Greenhost include? from interview with manager?]]</nowiki>

=== Installing, transferring, saving, copying, … ===
On the 28th of November sitting on the sunny corner of the couch next to the radiator, and with warm coffee cups waiting for us on a low table, Femke and I cover our legs with a blanket and open our laptops.

I ask Femke to jumb in a ''tmux'' session for sharing ''terminal'' with this command: <code>''sudo'' ''tmux'' attach -t webserver</code>. We start by cleaning the old server and make backups of the files.

We take a lunch break. Femke finds out that if we eat three recurrent meals every week in the office we can have a nice variety of food; lentiles soup, orecchiette pasta with brocoli, rizzoto with mushrooms and lots of fruits. Sometime ago we decided to make multiple short breaks throughout the day because of computer fatigue. One day I removed all the files from my computer that were older than 90 days because I accidentally run a command on the ''terminal'' instead of a bash script to test the setting up of [https://gitlab.constantvzw.org/titipi/burrow Burrow]. I left this comment in the initial script:

<code># VERY DANGEROUS COMMAND find *txt -mindepth 1 -mtime +$RETAIN -delete</code>
The next day we set up the new server and install all the necessary software including a new version of the MediaWiki. We arrange a meeting with Martino Morandi, member of Constant, who created the wiki-to-pdf to help us installing this software and transfer the MediaWiki in the new server. On the 1st of December we successfully install the wiki-to-pdf and because of limited time we decided to meet one more time at the end of the month for the rest.

[[File:Virtual-env-debian.png|thumb|Screenshot from the wiki-to-pdf installation to the new server with Martino, Femke, Aggeliki. Debian supports a different way to create virtual environments for installing python packages and libraries. We try it but it failed.]]

On the 28th we meet with Martino online to complete the transfer, which includes copying the old database of MediaWiki, activate the old plugins and fix any issues on the way. We are all located in different countries (Italy, Greece, Belgium) and so we share a ''tmux'' session. We follow the guides but on the way we had to do some research and configure a lot of things to make the MediaWiki work. Martino was hunting a php module. It seemed that php has shifted to free software culture in an attempt to find another business model. It is not surprising it happens in the context of Ubuntu. The issue is recorded [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Server_transfer_documentation#MediaWiki_upgrade_issues here].

[[File:Firefox Screenshot 2024-01-10T13-59-40.398Z.png|thumb|"Is Titipi.org down?" Helen asks after the transfer. It seems that her browser cache was preventing her from seeing the website]]

The process is documented in our diary and then transferred to a [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Server_transfer_documentation wiki page]. By January 2024 the server transfer and the deletion of our Linode account has been completed.

== Glossaries ==

Italicized terms in the report are included in these glossaries:

* [https://varia.zone/ATNOFS/ATNOFS-screen.pdf Glossary of A Traversal Network of Feminist Servers (ATNOFS) publication]
* [[Glossary|TITiPI's glossary]]

== References ==

* Panashe Chigumadzi, ‘Can White South Africa Live up to Ubuntu, the African Philosophy Tutu Globalised?’, The Guardian, 31 December 2021, sec. Opinion, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec/31/white-south-africa-ubuntu-african-tutu
* ‘Community Servers - Monoskop’, accessed 16 July 2024, https://monoskop.org/Community_servers
* David Carroll, ‘How To Open An Outpost In Social Media Exile | TechPolicy.Press’, Tech Policy Press, 26 November 2022, <nowiki>https://techpolicy.press/how-to-open-an-outpost-in-social-media-exile</nowiki>.
* Elizabeth Landau, ‘Tech Confronts Its Use of the Labels “Master” and “Slave”’, ''Wired'', accessed 16 July 2024, <nowiki>https://www.wired.com/story/tech-confronts-use-labels-master-slave/</nowiki>.
* ‘GitHub Abandons “master” Term to Avoid Slavery Row’, 15 June 2020, https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-53050955
* Femke Snelting, ‘Infrastructure Solidarity’, Ardeth. A Magazine on the Power of the Project, no. 8 (1 November 2021): 45–47
* ‘Master-Slave Terminology Alternatives You Can Use Right Now | TheServerSide’, TheServerSide.com, accessed 16 July 2024, https://www.theserverside.com/opinion/Master-slave-terminology-alternatives-you-can-use-right-now
* ‘Racist Computer Engineering Words: “Master,” “Slave” and the Fight Over Offensive Terms - The New York Times’, accessed 16 July 2024, <nowiki>https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/13/technology/racist-computer-engineering-terms-ietf.html</nowiki>.
* ‘Replace “Master” and “Slave” Terms in Redis · Issue #3185 · Redis/Redis’, GitHub, accessed 16 July 2024, https://github.com/redis/redis/issues/3185
* ‘Ubuntu: A Black Radical Demand for Reparations’, THE FUNAMBULIST MAGAZINE, 25 October 2023, https://thefunambulist.net/magazine/redefining-our-terms/ubuntu-a-black-radical-demand-for-reparations.

== Colophon ==

The text was drafted in pad.xpub.nl in Markdown and then transferred in this wiki.

== Footnotes ==

From cloud to crowd: a report on a server transfer

2024-10-16T10:57:35Z

Angeliki:

= From cloud to crowd<ref>The term comes from ... (not sure if it is included in the title)</ref>: A report on a server transfer =

This text is a report on a server migration that took place within the institutional framework of [https://titipi.org/ The Institute for Technology in the Public Interest (TITiPI)], a trans-practice gathering of activists, artists, engineers and theorists. This report is an infrastructural ethnography [explain--footnote] and aims to rethink, through a technical process, what ''hosting'' a server means for a community, institution, cultural organisation dealing with technological discomforts and complex digital infrastructures.

A ''server'' is a computer (or a piece of software?hardware)[what changes--a server being either physical machine or not at all--discuss later--needs attention--transfer from physical place to physical place or software to software--address that--need to problematize and place the question somewhere in the essay-- point out the paradox--then some things later will become easy to read] that provides functionalities via a network (Internet). A ''server migration'' is the process of moving data and transferring software from one server to another with the use of specified tools. Performing such process accommodates a practical and technical solution to fix the problem of an outdated server that is slow or has limited storage. But it also affects the values, the structure and infrastructural imaginations of the organisations it supports. TITiPI desired(s) to go with hosting and maintain its own virtual private server instead of outsourcing these services to external tech companies[treat web hosting with attention--pulling that work into the thinking, reflection and organisational--not treated as an external thing--a service]. In times of server providers’ scaling up ( ‘''cloud hosting''’ ) and digitizing governmental bureaucracies what does it mean to host your own digital space for supporting your communities and work? What does it mean to have an independent infrastructure? What (non-)dependencies are chosen or taken for granted by institutions when using hosting services?

As a researcher at TITiPI I have been caring for the task to investigate this server migration and execute it together with TITiPI’s member Femke Snelting. We meet weekly to keep track and make decisions. We share a ''markdown'' file hosted in the online code repository of the cultural association [https://constantvzw.org/site/ Constant] [link of git titipi] that includes a diary of the server migration and reflections. Every now and then we meet online with our colleague Helen Pritchard, to discuss and share the process. This report includes extracts from the server diary and stories from the process.[two processes of transfer--email and web hosting]

== Migration or …? [restructuring--what are the differences] ==

In the cold newly installed office of TITiPI located in the Koekelberg district of Brussels, I open the browser Chromium in my computer, that runs the operating system Ubuntu, in order to translate quickly − with the installed Google Translate plugin; later I found out there is a DeepL version − the web pages of the different cooperatives, associations, companies that provide hosting services. While doing that I have this disturbing thought in my head that I try to ignore: the word ‘migration’ [its about appropriation of a way of being--flattening the experience of migration--to pull them apart--to explain discomfort with the word migration--understanding how and why the word migration is problematic] as a technical term to describe the movement from one server to the other. It makes me think of an [https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/13/technology/racist-computer-engineering-terms-ietf.html online conversation], happening for a few years now, about replacing computer engineering terminology to stop [to address] prevalence of racism in tech. Specifically the conversation [https://www.wired.com/story/tech-confronts-use-labels-master-slave/ evolves around the terms] ‘master/slave’ [the way I link the things need some extra sentences], where one computing process or entity controls another, and ‘blacklists/whitelists’ used for directories of those things that are explicitly banned or allowed. Using metaphors like that for a technical process de-contextualizes a word from its origins and unavoidably perpetuates social injustices. It also shows that the context where such choices of language are made is privileged and untouched or non-triggered by these terms. White male computer engineers have build up this language.

[My computer runs--for example--why these two parts are different or the same--it hasnt registsred as problematic yet]‘Ubuntu’ is also a word extracted from its original context. It is coming from the African Ubuntu philosophy. According to the creators of the software:

<blockquote>ubuntu |oǒ’boǒntoō| Ubuntu is an ancient African word meaning ‘humanity to others’. It is often described as reminding us that ‘I am what I am because of who we all are’. We bring the spirit of Ubuntu to the world of computers and software. The Ubuntu distribution represents the best of what the world’s software community has shared with the world. <ref>‘About the Ubuntu Project’, Ubuntu, accessed 16 July 2024, https://ubuntu.com/about</ref>
</blockquote>

Paraphrasing [https://thefunambulist.net/magazine/redefining-our-terms/ubuntu-a-black-radical-demand-for-reparations Panashe Chigumadzi] words: in contrast to the western conception of the human as individual, the African conception of the person is a social being who is always becoming, defined by and being responsible for the personhood of the others. "(T)he African philosophy best understood through the proverb found in Bantu languages across the continent, 'umuntu ngumuntu ngabanye bantu' (a person is a person through other people". <ref>Panashe Chigumadzi, ‘Can White South Africa Live up to Ubuntu, the African Philosophy Tutu Globalised?’, The Guardian, 31 December 2021, sec. Opinion, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec/31/white-south-africa-ubuntu-african-tutu</ref>

<blockquote>(D)espite the flourishing of Ubuntu in post-apartheid discourse, lending its name to software, businesses, books and philanthropic organisations, South Africa is a country in which we have, as Dladla argues, Ubuntu without Abantu. Just as Black people have been dispossessed of their land, Ubuntu has been dispossessed of its deeply radical demands for ethical historical and social relations among people. (...) post apartheid Ubuntu mistranslation 'I am because we are', individualized and interpersonalised Ubuntu, Christianised Ubuntu, mistranslated in order to justify crimes and violence. In Ubuntu violence can be punished even after generations, the misinterpretation of the term allowed individual forgiveness. <ref>‘Ubuntu: A Black Radical Demand for Reparations’, THE FUNAMBULIST MAGAZINE, 25 October 2023, https://thefunambulist.net/magazine/redefining-our-terms/ubuntu-a-black-radical-demand-for-reparations</ref>
</blockquote>

I skip these thoughts and I continue browsing the list of servers. While trying to stay focused something other distracts me; I encounter an [https://www.oziosi.org/ autonomous Italian server] with the title translated with DeepL: “:: a shelter for digital exiles ::” and an image of a woman, a child and a man leaving their home. Also a small introduction: “Exiled from the global village of social networks, we claim an internet that is a simple means of communication: immaterial, anonymous, imaginary, public when it makes sense and secret when we feel the need.”. I am wondering what does this mean for actual exiles having to protect their privacy when communicating back home? [https://techpolicy.press/how-to-open-an-outpost-in-social-media-exile/ ‘Social media exiles’] and ‘Twitter migration’ are terms used often after Twitter became X and users have moved to the Fediverse or other alternatives.

Could words like transferring, sharing, moving, copying, re-installing, shifting replace the word ‘migration’? From this point on in the report I decide to use the term ‘transfer’.

[[File:Screenshot 2023-10-07 at 11-31-21 esiliati.org.png|thumb|Screenshot of webpage of self-organised server mentioning the term 'digital exiles' ]]

== TITiPI’s case of server transfer ==
On the 27th of September, sitting at the long desks side to side, Femke and I have an online call with Helen, while looking at the depths of our Virtual Private Server (VPS), provided by Linode, that runs Ubuntu on our laptop screens. Linode is an American hosting provider focusing on ''Linux''-based virtual machines originally. The server is physically located in the UK. TITiPI currently uses the Linode server that Helen set up for hosting her own projects. They have been paying for Linode’s monthly fees so far.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-10-11 14-47-06.png|thumb|Screenshot of Linode Ubuntu server overview and ''terminal'' that shows a moment of figuring out what takes space in the server through ''SSH'' access]]

At the time it seemed a good choice, because Linode is based in UK, is ''Linux'' friendly and an alternative to Amazon Web Services (AWS), even though the company was already identifying as ‘''cloud hosting''’. But in February 2023 it has been acquired by the American company Akamai that aims to scale up for [https://www.linode.com/global-infrastructure/ “computing power, optimizing performance and agility.”]. Akamai is actively changing its server policies into an increasingly intense cloud logic. This pushed forward the desire to move to a new place.

[[File:Screenshot 2023-10-11 at 14-50-47 Cloud Computing & Linux Servers Alternative to AWS Linode.png|thumb|Screenshot of Linode website referring to scalability]]

At the moment in Linode we run pico, a flat CMS for the website https://titipi.org. There is a Mediawiki (you are reading a Mediawiki page right now) for notes and collective writing. On the wiki, we also publish our statutes, guidelines and other instituting documents. The wiki has a custom extension, called wiki-to-pdf. Each of these services will need a different way to be transferred. One approach is to build the new server space from scratch, copy the data with rsync and transfer only the Mediawiki, which includes installing a new version and copy the database and the media files.

While preparing to transfer the tools we are defining what are the practical needs and desirable priorities; we ended up on these server requirements:
* ''SSH'' access and wish for VPS [pick up gain the fantasy of a server -- make present this questioning of physical or software defined server]
* affordable price (around €20/month)
* run a Free Software operating system, preferably Debian
* involves community work - slowing down, resisting to scaling and growth or ‘decloudification’ (small network of partners, less virtualization approach, location of servers nearby etc)
* 25-40GB storage space, 1-2 cores, 2-4GB RAM
* environmental angle
* service support in a language that we all understand (English mostly)

This server transfer happens with an intersectional and feminist approach and the desire to keep questioning. While moving away from Linode we include both the technical and the conceptual thinking in the process. There are a few things that we are looking at:
* Where to be transferred to or what services to transfer to?
* How to be transferred and what to transfer?
* What terminology, language we use?
* What (other) narratives of server hosting can we construct?
TITiPI seeks to exist with an infrastructure that supports inter-dependent practices and solidarity across struggles. It develops Counter Cloud Actions [ref] as a way to scale down, de-cloudify, articulate, contest and re-imagine the implications of computational infrastructures (‘the cloud’).

<blockquote>TITiPI develop tools from feminisms, queer theory, Free, Libre and Open Source software, intersectionality, anti-coloniality, disability studies, historical materialism and artistic practice to generate currently inexistent vocabularies, imaginaries and methodologies. TITiPI functions as an infrastructure to establish new ways in which socio-technical practices and technologies might support the public interest. <ref>TITiPI, ‘Infrables’, Tangible Cloud Archives, https://docs.tangible-cloud.be/publications-pdf/02_snelting.pdf.</ref></blockquote>

We are looking for servers that aspire some of these values.

=== A relational infrastructure narrative/ infra-mutuality/ inter-infrastructural narrative ===
[[File:Elastic solidarities.png|thumb]]
In June 2023 TITiPI received an email from Gandi to renew the domain titipi.org in 6 days, not realising that at the same time we would need to start paying for our titipi.org email hosting. We had missed reading to the end of another email sent in the middle of June, entitled: 'Pricing update'.

[it is a different decision making--it was never the plan to transfer email]

We consider to work with Kate Rich to move our mailboxes to the [http://irational.org/ Irational server], soon to be installed on a Raspberry Pi, hosted at Servus. We decide to do this transition slowly and until then renew the emails for 1-2 months through Gandi. Irational server resists virtualization, and as an art community project it makes it an interesting choice.

But why to go through all this effort and not just use one cloud server with mailboxes, file storage and web server together? TITiPI’s response to the question of building institutional digital infrastructure embodies an archipelagic and non-sovereign approach to dependencies. Rather than building a centralised server based on ‘cloud’ from which connections with other institutions and collectives can happen, it conceptualizes inter-infrastructural practices; from the creation of a [https://gitlab.constantvzw.org/titipi/burrow backup script] for saving locally etherpad pads from other servers, hosting emails at an art server (https://irational.org), creating an [https://books.lumbung.space/shelf/26 online bookshelf] on lumbung.space, using the ''XMPP'' chat from Varia to recording conversations with the ''sysadmin'' that maintain the other servers. The institution re-imagines technological dependencies in dialogue with cultural institutions and art collectives. [[File:Titipi-infra-diagram-JAN-24.png|thumb|none|alt=A diagram of TITiPI’s infrastructure. The diagram categorizes the elements according to tools/software (box), structure/organisational form (circle) and place (dashed line). For example Jitsi is the software, Greenhost is the organisation, meet.greenhost.net is the place.|A diagram of TITiPI’s infrastructure. The diagram categorizes the elements according to tools/software (box), structure/organisational form (circle) and place (dashed line). For example Jitsi is the software, Greenhost is the organisation, meet.greenhost.net is the place.]]

How to give life to the common space of TITiPI’s hosting infrastructures? What about building up social dependencies between the ones that host and the ones who are hosted as opposed to a technical independence? Infrastructural imaginations are often built by the ''Big Tech'' industry and governmental institutions. Instead, TITiPI practices a fluid inter-institutional approach supported by [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Infra_colophon a variety of hosts].

=== Selection of server providers ===
On the 7th of November through a shared screen at the [https://meet.greenhost.net/ video conferencing software Jitsi of Greenhost] we all three check a list of server providers I collected on a spreadsheet hosted in Constant’s cloud storage (built with Nextcloud software) where TITiPI has an account. I looked at associations, companies/businesses, cooperatives, communities coming from commercial context to social struggles, activist, feminist and other. Through a [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/List_server_networks list of networks] I found various servers mostly from Latin America and Europe.

The concept of autonomy, sovereignty, independence or self-managing characterizes most of the servers in the list. Some of them, like [https://www.autistici.org/ Autistici] promote this concept as a way to support anti-capitalist infrastructure and protect the privacy of the users as opposed to the ''Big Tech'' software practices.

<blockquote>The vision is that we - the members of the cooperative - own our own data. This implies and has as a consequence that we will have to own our own infrastructure and have insight and control over the software we use to communicate on the web.<ref>‘Community Servers - Monoskop’, accessed 16 July 2024, https://monoskop.org/Community_servers</ref></blockquote>

Femke had a hunch: "‘technological sovereignty’ and ‘data-sovereignty’ continue to be orientation devices to organise around. ‘Sovereignty’, together with ‘freedom’, ‘independence’ and ‘autonomy’, form an ideological cluster that implicitly and sometimes explicitly foregrounds separation rather than relation."

Servers can act as independent spaces but are also cultural devices and vibrant spaces. They can manifest different aspects of a full life and reach out to a multiplicity of entities.

Servus and Greenhost, seem to be two of our best choices as they cover a lot of the priorities and values of TITiPI. As one can read from their descriptions they both strive for owning their own data servers and data nodes (they have their own ''IP addresses'') and be independent from third parties. The big difference is the scale of the infrastructure and their community and network.

<blockquote>Greenhost fully owns and controls its hardware, infrastructure and uplinks. This ensures independence from third parties and proper access control. On this hardware we run our fully virtualised platform. We stand for an Open Internet, and have always embraced open source software.<ref>‘Greenhost.Net | the Sustainable Web’, accessed 16 July 2024, https://greenhost.net/.</ref></blockquote>

<blockquote>We (Servus) do not pass on any data to third parties. You will not receive commercial advertising from us or third parties. We are easily accessible and answer your questions personally. We and our servers are located at Kirchengasse 4 in Linz, Austria.<ref>‘Book Of Servus’, Book Of Servus, accessed 16 July 2024, https://book.servus.at/en/home/.</ref></blockquote>

Even though Greenhost wants to reduce ecological damage, it does that mainly through hardware reductions and does not address scale. They have plans to expand and are part of a network of partners that want to transform Rotterdam into a big hub of data nodes for the upcoming digital transition. [it is not as big as Linode--it is not in the list--we are not recosnidering to stay with linode]Linode is even bigger, it goes for [[https://www.akamai.com/newsroom/press-release/akamai-takes-cloud-computing-to-the-edge| "(p)lanetary scale"]]. Servus on the other hand has one room of data servers, is closer to the scale of their community and they maintain personal relations with them.

[[Image of the server room at Servus at Linz|Image of the server room at Servus at Linz?]]

=== Community server, feminist server, trans*feminist server, radical server, autonomous server, commercial server, art server, free server, ethical server, solidarity-based server, cooperative server, associative server, independent server, alternative server, non-commercial server, … ===
The spreadsheet starts to grow because of an endless/exhaustive burrow of small and big providers.

Some are outdated. 
Some are messy. 
Some have broken links. 
Some are [https://www.julienth37.fr/vps hard to understand]. 
Some require [https://www.actiu.info/index.en.html a lot of engagement]. 
Some use a language that imitates the narratives of ''Big Tech'' and ''agile'' computing. 
Some promote seamless “promissory logic” and “high hopes for a brighter future” (ref) 
Some are big or are scaling up (in matter of space, data centers, partners, users etc). 
Some support NGO’s or sport clubs.

[[File:Screenshot 2023-10-11 at 15-06-35 co-operative web-crop.png|thumb|Screenshot from main page of Co-op Web]]

We also looked at their financial model. Many radical servers stay small, are volunteer based, like [https://www.autistici.org/ Autistici]. and go for horizontal organisational structures. Feminist and activist servers provide space in the internet for the ones who don’t have the means to organise otherwise. The resources and ways of organising for these servers are different from the cooperatives or associations whose structure is inherited from the model they are registered with.

[[File:ATNOFS-Varia-insert-ooooo.jpg|thumb|ooooo atnofs insert diagrams from varia, systerserver, servus]]

TITiPI acknowledges and is connected to the history of community, art and feminist servers and wants to support this network. The art servers started as a way to make autonomous self-managed servers that support artists values and practices. They are often financed by cultural or private funds.

<blockquote>I joined (Irational) sometime in 2000s, I can't remember when and originally it was much more a collective of people working together and then since the early 2010's I think, mid 2010's, there was a bit of a reshuffle of personnel and stuff, so the constituency changed to a smaller group and we actually reformed. We were going to disband Irational and then we actually reformed as an art server collective and we decided we are not really working together but what we have in common is that we're using the server and that is actually what the collective is now. It's the collective that uses the server together and wants to use the server together. And another real defining feature of the server the whole time has been resisting virtualization. 

— quote from [[None of this experiment is evident|interview of Kate Rich by Femke Snelting]] [needs rewritting] </blockquote>

The screen seems to become brighter as my eyes get tired. What if we skip the online hosting and create a local physical server at TITiPI’s office next to the desks, in a corner, on a Raspberry Pi? All our data would stay on this machine and we would connect with ''SSH'' from home, but then we will also have to maintain it ourselves. There is something there about the romanticism of a physical toolbox as a sovereign object. If we choose to do that we will need to think of a backup plan as it will be an experimental set up and all our data will stay offline. We won’t have a provider to take care of that.

Our list has been reduced because of our priorities. We need ''SSH'' and we would like to have a VPS [--why?--part of the first issue on software/hardware server--having material inside someone elses server/email--physical--root access--2nd: to have our own box in a rack--that is expensive--pay for electricity etc and who turns of and on--a pi in our own office--bandwidth internet--in a rack we would have connection to high speed reliable internet--fire protection--4th: vps, it is a cloud technology but we have our own virtual machine that we can start and stop from ditance--with the consequence of using cloud technology--explain these different options--to help the reader]. Who has resources for providing VPS? Resources of labour, time, finances, technical knowledge. This made self-defined feminist servers fall out of the selection. How to be financially sustainable, while keeping up with your own values? How to keep up with infrastructural ''maintenance'' if the scale of the users, community, members and data is big?

<blockquote>The services we offer have no defined price, but as you may easily imagine, keeping the whole system working (i.e. hardware and hosting) is very expensive (at the moment it ranges around 13,000 euro every year).<ref>‘Autistici.Org - Services’, accessed 16 July 2024, https://www.autistici.org/services/</ref></blockquote>

Servus and Maadix provide a series of ''free/libre'' tools that can be installed separately through their interface but they also provide a VPS with ''SSH'' access. With Greenhost, Hetzner and Linode there is more flexibility: you can create your own VPS and customize it for your own needs through their interface or the ''terminal'' and install whatever tools you want from scratch without a visual interface.

Technical information and knowledge of digital infrastructure circulate between groups that are tech-oriented with a difficulty to cross with other groups, including feminist servers. The ''sysadmin'' tasks are mostly taken by cis men but feminist servers are radical about that. They find important to have ''sysadmins'' that are not cis men. For example Systerserver and Anarchaserver are learning by themselves together how to do this task.

Many of the servers in the list provide only tools, as a radical way to support small groups, collectives, activists that need privacy and shifting away from Google drive when they want to organise politically and socially. It seems that being limited to tool packages instead of having full access to a server can make things comprehensible and compact for these small groups that have limited ''sysadmin'' knowledge or can’t hire a technician.

[[File:Screenshot 2023-10-07 at 12-23-26 FuturEtic - Services en lignes libres & éthiques-2.png|Screenshot of main page with services by [https://futuretic.fr/ FuturEtic]|thumb]]

[[File:Scrnli 12 10 2023 13-14-32.png|thumb|Screenshot of tools from codigosur]]

== Final decision and server transfers [email and webhosting] ==

We are about to make our decision! Our list ended up to be very small.

On 7th of November in an online call between Helen in Basel, Femke in Brussels and Aggeliki in Rotterdam we limited our list to four options: Constant, Greenhost, Servus, Zaclys. The selection consists of a diversity of scales and positioning that we found interesting to think of. First, we move on with the decision to transfer our mailboxes to Irational hosted at Servus. The rest of the functionalities will be hosted somewhere else.

From our conversations with Femke: “The choice for irational.org opens the possibility for discussions around dependencies, trust and frictions within shared collective servers. Irational.org is an ally art server who uses and maintains its own server for many years. Hosting such a private service at a friend’s environment doesn’t come only with convenience. The closeness to the material of the server makes the dependency more tangible.” [reference/quote from colophon?]

[[File:White-magenta-painful.jpg|thumb|Towel design by psaroskalazines. Image from their website]]

Femke and I are planning different moments for the server transfer to happen in the office of TITiPI. What it is about to take place comes down into three moments; the backup and save of data from the old server, the installation of the necessary software in the new server and the transfer of the old data in the new server.

Specifically we are following these steps:

* Mail transfer from Gandi to irational
* Create a Virtual Private Server (VPS) in the new server
* Install Apache2 and configure domains
* Install and migrate MediaWiki
** Back up the wiki on the Linode VPS
** Upgrade MediaWiki in Linode
** Install MediaWiki and plugins in the Greenhost VPS
** Transfer database and media files from Linode to Greenhost
* Install Wiki-to-pdf
* Install Pico
* Install and configure Certbot

We find ourselves between two virtual spaces and one office, among other indirectly connected spaces like the rooms of our distant collaborators and the office locations of the servers.

=== Trust relationships ===
By now, 14th of November 2023, the office is warm and cozy. Throughout the time I am writing this report I have been noticing a lot of slow and small efforts to renovate the building and set up the heating, by the artists and organisations who share the space with TITiPI. Another infrastructure that needs care.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 15-06-42.png|thumb|Femke and Aggeliki entering Irational’s server space with Kate]]

On a shared screen together with Femke we get introduced to the mail server of Irational by Kate. We use an audio splitter to share the laptop for the call. Kate described her experience as an amateur ''sysadmin'' that had to spend a lot of time to learn and set up the mail server. After that we start the process that has been documented [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Server_transfer_documentation#Mail_transfer here].

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 14-56-26.png|thumb|Screenshot from the TITiPI’s mail transfer with Kate, Femke and Aggeliki during an online 3 hours call]]

Irational uses the Alpine email client. Kate takes us its depths. That is where we start to set up our new email accounts before we configure them in Thunderbird. Femke gets excited on the fact that she can send emails to other Irational accounts through the ''terminal''.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 15-15-07.png|thumb|Using the email client Alpine]]

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 17-04-20.png|thumb|Screenhost from the moment of looking for the syntax of the TXT records. Finding the right syntax for this value was the biggest challenge. This is part of the ''trust relationships'' between the different providers]]

After some more DNS configurations we test if it is possible to exchange emails with ‘outside’ accounts and especially with Gmail that has many security filters for mail servers other than the commercial ones.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-15 13-59-52.png|thumb|Exchange test emails with a Gmail account]]

After three hours of tryouts we manage to make it work! Very proudly and with enjoyment for sharing a technical task together we say goodbye to each other and arrange a next meeting for a final check up.

=== A choice that comes with discomforts ===
Just one day before the start of TITiPI’s server transfer away from Linode on the 28th of November, Helen found the Swiss server ungleich.ch and it seemed like an interesting choice because of the small scale (in terms of community and servers), their experimental attitude and their choice to reduce energy consumption; they avoid using systems for cooling their servers by spreading the servers at the Swiss mountains in old, abandoned buildings.

Ungleich.ch is one of the good options but it is more expensive than other providers. They offer a cheaper choice by choosing to have only ‘ipv6’. But we had to dig in to understand the difference of ipv4 and ipv6. From wikipedia: “IPv6 is the most recent version of the Internet Protocol, developed to deal with the long-anticipated problem of IPv4 address exhaustion” We found a [https://stats.labs.apnic.net/ipv6 map] that shows which countries have implemented IPv6 and it seems that if we only use this address then many places won’t have access to the website of TITiPI. So we choose to have both addresses.

We also notice that this provider is using Stripe for their payment system. In a [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Frontier parallel universe of TITiPI] we give attention to and critique Stripe because of its connections with the Carbon Removal industry.

[[File:Firefox Screenshot 2023-11-28T12-32-24.775Z.png|thumb|Ungleich.ch payment system with Stripe]] [include and correctly reference them]

Another urgency appears while we are looking at different choices; together with many other organisations, we have been thinking about ways to host and maintain infrastructures in solidarity with communities and networks we are part of. This would mean, for example, hosting digitally a Palestinian video film archive, or research by sex workers. Solidarity is only partially a question of caring for privacy and security because it matters where and how we host our digital infrastructures and whether these spaces do or do not support the flourishing of different lives and struggles. This need make us think again if the server we choose would be suitable for something like that.

Constant and Servus are two accomplice servers that already provide to TITiPI some of their services. Zaclys is a member of Chatons that support open source values and it is located in France. We contacted them to see if they could be an option but they never responded to us.

We wanted to work with a company that provide ‘green’ infrastructure. Greenhost seem to be a good choice. It provides a familiar interface to us, good support and backup option. It has a positioning as an alternative to AWS. So far great, but what about its ‘green’ hosting vision? Is it a solarpunk vision, a green cloud utopia? Is their infrastructure resource ‘hungry’? What are the privacy limits when the material hosted in the servers is political and sensitive?

We choose Greenhost with all the discomforts that this choice entails and with the desire to keep the critique and dialogue alive.

Only by December 2023 we manage to arrange a call with one of Greenhost’s former Managing Directors to get a feeling and more information about their approach and sensitivity. Accordind to him Greenhost exists in the intersection of activism and technology. It provides consultancy, sustainability solutions in tech projects and structured ''maintenance''; they go for best quality with lowest environmental impact; they maintain the same hardware as much as possible and balance that with higher efficiency; they keep backups at an already existing data center in the university of Amsterdam.

<nowiki>[[paragraph for Greenhost include? from interview with manager?]]</nowiki>

=== Installing, transferring, saving, copying, … ===
On the 28th of November sitting on the sunny corner of the couch next to the radiator, and with warm coffee cups waiting for us on a low table, Femke and I cover our legs with a blanket and open our laptops.

I ask Femke to jumb in a ''tmux'' session for sharing ''terminal'' with this command: <code>''sudo'' ''tmux'' attach -t webserver</code>. We start by cleaning the old server and make backups of the files.

We take a lunch break. Femke finds out that if we eat three recurrent meals every week in the office we can have a nice variety of food; lentiles soup, orecchiette pasta with brocoli, rizzoto with mushrooms and lots of fruits. Sometime ago we decided to make multiple short breaks throughout the day because of computer fatigue. One day I removed all the files from my computer that were older than 90 days because I accidentally run a command on the ''terminal'' instead of a bash script to test the setting up of [https://gitlab.constantvzw.org/titipi/burrow Burrow]. I left this comment in the initial script:

<code># VERY DANGEROUS COMMAND find *txt -mindepth 1 -mtime +$RETAIN -delete</code>
The next day we set up the new server and install all the necessary software including a new version of the MediaWiki. We arrange a meeting with Martino Morandi, member of Constant, who created the wiki-to-pdf to help us installing this software and transfer the MediaWiki in the new server. On the 1st of December we successfully install the wiki-to-pdf and because of limited time we decided to meet one more time at the end of the month for the rest.

[[File:Virtual-env-debian.png|thumb|Screenshot from the wiki-to-pdf installation to the new server with Martino, Femke, Aggeliki. Debian supports a different way to create virtual environments for installing python packages and libraries. We try it but it failed.]]

On the 28th we meet with Martino online to complete the transfer, which includes copying the old database of MediaWiki, activate the old plugins and fix any issues on the way. We are all located in different countries (Italy, Greece, Belgium) and so we share a ''tmux'' session. We follow the guides but on the way we had to do some research and configure a lot of things to make the MediaWiki work. Martino was hunting a php module. It seemed that php has shifted to free software culture in an attempt to find another business model. It is not surprising it happens in the context of Ubuntu. The issue is recorded [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Server_transfer_documentation#MediaWiki_upgrade_issues here].

[[File:Firefox Screenshot 2024-01-10T13-59-40.398Z.png|thumb|"Is Titipi.org down?" Helen asks after the transfer. It seems that her browser cache was preventing her from seeing the website]]

The process is documented in our diary and then transferred to a [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Server_transfer_documentation wiki page]. By January 2024 the server transfer and the deletion of our Linode account has been completed.

== Glossaries ==

Italicized terms in the report are included in these glossaries:

* [https://varia.zone/ATNOFS/ATNOFS-screen.pdf Glossary of A Traversal Network of Feminist Servers (ATNOFS) publication]
* [[Glossary|TITiPI's glossary]]

== References ==

* Panashe Chigumadzi, ‘Can White South Africa Live up to Ubuntu, the African Philosophy Tutu Globalised?’, The Guardian, 31 December 2021, sec. Opinion, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec/31/white-south-africa-ubuntu-african-tutu
* ‘Community Servers - Monoskop’, accessed 16 July 2024, https://monoskop.org/Community_servers
* David Carroll, ‘How To Open An Outpost In Social Media Exile | TechPolicy.Press’, Tech Policy Press, 26 November 2022, <nowiki>https://techpolicy.press/how-to-open-an-outpost-in-social-media-exile</nowiki>.
* Elizabeth Landau, ‘Tech Confronts Its Use of the Labels “Master” and “Slave”’, ''Wired'', accessed 16 July 2024, <nowiki>https://www.wired.com/story/tech-confronts-use-labels-master-slave/</nowiki>.
* ‘GitHub Abandons “master” Term to Avoid Slavery Row’, 15 June 2020, https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-53050955
* Femke Snelting, ‘Infrastructure Solidarity’, Ardeth. A Magazine on the Power of the Project, no. 8 (1 November 2021): 45–47
* ‘Master-Slave Terminology Alternatives You Can Use Right Now | TheServerSide’, TheServerSide.com, accessed 16 July 2024, https://www.theserverside.com/opinion/Master-slave-terminology-alternatives-you-can-use-right-now
* ‘Racist Computer Engineering Words: “Master,” “Slave” and the Fight Over Offensive Terms - The New York Times’, accessed 16 July 2024, <nowiki>https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/13/technology/racist-computer-engineering-terms-ietf.html</nowiki>.
* ‘Replace “Master” and “Slave” Terms in Redis · Issue #3185 · Redis/Redis’, GitHub, accessed 16 July 2024, https://github.com/redis/redis/issues/3185
* ‘Ubuntu: A Black Radical Demand for Reparations’, THE FUNAMBULIST MAGAZINE, 25 October 2023, https://thefunambulist.net/magazine/redefining-our-terms/ubuntu-a-black-radical-demand-for-reparations.

== Colophon ==

The text was drafted in pad.xpub.nl in Markdown and then transferred in this wiki.

== Footnotes ==

File:Firefox Screenshot 2023-11-28T12-32-24.775Z.png

2024-10-16T10:57:12Z

Angeliki:

Ungleich.ch payment system with Stripe

File:White-magenta-painful.jpg

2024-10-16T10:56:13Z

Angeliki:

Towel design by psaroskalazines. Image from their website

File:Scrnli 12 10 2023 13-14-32.png

2024-10-16T10:55:01Z

Angeliki:

Screenshot of tools from codigosur

File:Screenshot 2023-10-07 at 12-23-26 FuturEtic - Services en lignes libres & éthiques-2.png

2024-10-16T10:53:43Z

Angeliki:

Screenshot of tools from codigosur

File:Screenshot 2023-10-11 at 15-06-35 co-operative web-crop.png

2024-10-16T10:52:52Z

Angeliki:

Screenshot from main page of Co-op Web

File:Screenshot 2023-10-11 at 14-50-47 Cloud Computing & Linux Servers Alternative to AWS Linode.png

2024-10-16T10:51:17Z

Angeliki:

Screenshot of Linode website referring to scalability

File:Screenshot 2023-10-07 at 11-31-21 esiliati.org.png

2024-10-16T10:49:27Z

Angeliki:

Screenshot of webpage of self-organised server mentioning the term 'digital exiles'

TITiPI's local server

2024-10-16T10:23:04Z

Angeliki: /* NOPUBLISH pads */

TITiPI's local server

2024-10-14T14:30:07Z

Angeliki: Created page with "The server takes set-up fragments and inspiration from the [https://networksofonesown.constantvzw.org/etherbox/manual.html Networks Of Ones Own] and [https://hub.vvvvvvaria.org/rosa/ Rosa]. In this version the server includes the collaborative note keeping tool ''etherpad'', the periodic publishing tool of etherpads to static files ''etherdump'' and the file manager ''tiny file manager''. Take into consideration that this manual may not be accurate or some things may no..."

The server takes set-up fragments and inspiration from the [https://networksofonesown.constantvzw.org/etherbox/manual.html Networks Of Ones Own] and [https://hub.vvvvvvaria.org/rosa/ Rosa]. In this version the server includes the collaborative note keeping tool ''etherpad'', the periodic publishing tool of etherpads to static files ''etherdump'' and the file manager ''tiny file manager''.

Take into consideration that this manual may not be accurate or some things may not work as wished. Have all your eyes open and ask the help of your peers and the Internet for more eyes. Sometimes you may have to run the following commands with sudo user.

[[File:Titipi-local-server-main-page.png|thumb]]

== Server requirements ==

=== hardware ===

* Transcend 16GB microSD High-Endurance (storage space can be more)
* Raspberry Pi 5 - 4GB ram (for Etherpad use more than 2GB ram and it works with older versions of Raspberry Pi)

=== software ===

* RPi OS 64-bit (download and install with Raspberry Pi Imager [https://www.raspberrypi.com/software/ here]

Connect the Raspberry Pi to a screen, keyboard, mouse. Plug it in and connect to the wifi.

Change hostname and password for the RPi through the steps of the Raspberry Pi Imager or the RPi terminal after the installation of the RPi OS: 
<code>$ sudo nano /etc/hosts</code> A file opens that only contains the default hostname: “raspberrypi”. Remove the word and replace it with the one you want. Exit and save the file with ctrl+x. 
Reboot: <code>$ sudo reboot</code>

OR 
In the main menu, go to Preferences > Raspberry Pi Configuration. In the configuration tool, click on “Change Hostname” and update the field. Same with the password. Click “OK” to save the changes. And as with the other solutions, a reboot is needed to apply changes. Click on “Yes” to immediately reboot.

Activate remote access through SSH:

* Boot into the graphical desktop on your Raspberry Pi.
* Click the Raspberry Pi icon in the system tray of your desktop.
* Select Preferences > Raspberry Pi Configuration from the menu.
* Navigate to the Interfaces tab.
* Click the radio button next to SSH into the active position.

== Apache2 installation and configuration ==

Install the web server Apache2 in order to have access to the web based tools (etherpad, etherdump, tiny file manager) through the local network of your wifi. Open the terminal and run the following commands:

<code>$ sudo apt-get update</code>

<code>$ sudo apt-get upgrade</code>

<code>$ sudo apt-get install apache2</code>

<code>$ hostname -I</code> output of this is the IP address of your RPi.

You can continue either through the RPi terminal or through SSH access from your computer. For the second run this command in your computer:

<code>$ ssh username@ipaddress</code> Replace the username and ipaddress according to your RPi's details. After filling the RPi's password you are in the local server.

== IP static address ==

Follow this guide https://networksofonesown.constantvzw.org/etherbox/manual.html#setup-hotspot based on https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/configuration/wireless/access-point.md#internet-sharing

=== Configuring a static IP ===

<code>$ sudo apt-get install dnsmasq hostapd</code>

Since the configuration files are not ready yet, turn the new software off as follows:

<code>$ sudo systemctl stop dnsmasq</code> 
<code>$ sudo systemctl stop hostapd</code>

We are configuring a standalone network to act as a server, so the Raspberry Pi needs to have a static IP address assigned to the wireless port. This documentation assumes that we are using the standard 192.168.x.x IP addresses for our wireless network, so we will assign the server the IP address 192.168.4.1. It is also assumed that the wireless device being used is wlan0.

To configure the static IP address, edit the dhcpcd configuration file with:

<code>$ sudo nano /etc/dhcpcd.conf</code>

Go to the end of the file and edit it so that it looks like the following:

<pre>interface wlan0

static ip_address=10.9.8.1/24
nohook wpa_supplicant</pre>
Now restart the dhcpcd daemon and set up the new wlan0 configuration:

<code>$ sudo service dhcpcd restart</code> or <code>$ sudo systemctl restart dnsmasq</code>

=== Configuring the DHCP server (dnsmasq) ===

The DHCP service is provided by dnsmasq. By default, the configuration file contains a lot of information that is not needed, and it is easier to start from scratch. Rename this configuration file, and edit a new one:

<code>$ sudo mv /etc/dnsmasq.conf /etc/dnsmasq.conf.orig</code> 
<code>$ sudo nano /etc/dnsmasq.conf</code>

Type or copy the following information into the dnsmasq configuration file and save it:

<pre>interface=wlan0

dhcp-range=10.9.8.50,10.9.8.254,255.255.255.0,24h
</pre>
So for wlan0, we are going to provide IP addresses between 10.9.8.50 and 10.9.8.254 with a lease time of 24 hours. If you are providing DHCP services for other network devices (e.g. eth0), you could add more sections with the appropriate interface header, with the range of addresses you intend to provide to that interface.

There are many more options for dnsmasq; see the [http://www.thekelleys.org.uk/dnsmasq/doc.html dnsmasq documentation] for more details.

=== Configuring the access point host software (hostapd) ===

You need to edit the hostapd configuration file, located at /etc/hostapd/hostapd.conf, to add the various parameters for your wireless network. After initial install, this will be a new/empty file.

<code>$ sudo nano /etc/hostapd/hostapd.conf</code>

Add the information below to the configuration file. This configuration assumes we are using channel 7, with a network name of NameOfNetwork, and a password AardvarkBadgerHedgehog. Note that the name and password should not have quotes around them. The passphrase should be between 8 and 64 characters in length.

<pre>interface=wlan0
driver=nl80211
ssid=etherbox
hw_mode=g
channel=7
wmm_enabled=0
macaddr_acl=0
auth_algs=1
ignore_broadcast_ssid=0
</pre>
To password protect the hotspot:

<pre>wpa=2
wpa_passphrase=AardvarkBadgerHedgehog
wpa_key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
wpa_pairwise=TKIP
rsn_pairwise=CCMP</pre>
We now need to tell the system where to find this configuration file.

<code>$ sudo nano /etc/default/hostapd</code>

Find the line with #DAEMON_CONF, and replace it with this:

<pre>DAEMON_CONF="/etc/hostapd/hostapd.conf"</pre>
=== Start it up ===

Now start up the remaining services:

<code>$ sudo systemctl start hostapd</code> 
<code>$ sudo systemctl start dnsmasq</code>

=== Add routing and masquerade ===

Edit /etc/sysctl.conf and uncomment this line:

<pre>net.ipv4.ip_forward=1</pre>
<code>$ sudo apt-get install iptables</code>

Add a masquerade for outbound traffic on eth0:

<code>$ sudo iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -o eth0 -j MASQUERADE</code>

Edit /etc/rc.local and add this just above "exit 0" to install these rules on boot.

<code>$ iptables-restore < /etc/iptables.ipv4.nat</code>

Save the iptables rule.

<code>$ sudo sh -c "iptables-save > /etc/iptables.ipv4.nat"</code>

Reboot

If necessary throughout this manual:

<code>$ sudo apt-get update</code> <code>$ sudo apt-get upgrade</code>

== Etherpad-lite installation ==

[[File:Titipi-local-server-etherpad.png|thumb]]

=== installation ===

Follow that guide: https://github.com/ether/etherpad-lite combined with that https://networksofonesown.constantvzw.org/etherbox/manual.html#install-etherpad

<code>$ nvm install 20</code> Install Node.js version 20

<code>$ node -v</code> Check version of node installed

<code>$ sudo apt-get install npm git</code>

Install pnpm: <code>$ npm install -g pnpm</code> (Administrator privileges may be required).

<code>$ cd /opt</code>

Clone the repository: <code>$ sudo git clone -b master https://github.com/ether/etherpad-lite.git</code>

<code>$ sudo mv etherpad-lite etherpad</code>

<code>$ sudo adduser --system --no-create-home --home=/opt/etherpad --group etherpad</code>

<code>$ sudo chown -R etherpad:etherpad etherpad</code>

<code>$ cd etherpad/</code>

<code>$ Run pnpm i</code>

Run <code>$ pnpm run build:etherpad</code>

Run <code>$ pnpm run prod</code>

<code>$ sudo --user etherpad cp settings.json.template settings.json</code> Create your setting file.

<code>$ sudo --user etherpad nano settings.json</code>

Find and change this part :

<pre> //The Type of the database. You can choose between dirty, postgres, sqlite and mysql
//You shouldn't use "dirty" for for anything else than testing or development
/* "dbType" : "dirty",
//the database specific settings
"dbSettings" : {
"filename" : "var/dirty.db"
},
*/
//An Example of MySQL Configuration
"dbType" : "mysql",
"dbSettings" : {
"user" : "etherpaduser",
"host" : "localhost",
"password": "etherpadpass",
"database": "etherpad",
"charset" : "utf8mb4"
},</pre>
Change the authentication method in order to create an API key when Etherpad starts so we can use it for the follow-up tool, etherdump. In the settings find that line:

<pre> "authenticationMethod": "${AUTHENTICATION_METHOD:sso}",</pre>
and replace with

<pre> "authenticationMethod": "${AUTHENTICATION_METHOD:apikey}",</pre>
Visit http://ipadressofrpi:9001 in your browser (replace ipadressofrpi with the IP address of the RPi). or http://hostname.local:9001 (replace hostname with the hostname of the RPi)

In case the port 9001 is occupied in your network (for example a printer maybe is using it) then stop etherpad with cntrl+c and run:

<code>$ sudo nano settings.json</code> Find where the port is configured and change the number from 9001 to something else like 8001. You change it in this line

<pre>"port": 9001,</pre>
and

<pre> "sso": {
"issuer": "${SSO_ISSUER:http://localhost:9001}",
"clients": [
{
"client_id": "${ADMIN_CLIENT:admin_client}",
"client_secret": "${ADMIN_SECRET:admin}",
"grant_types": ["authorization_code"],
"response_types": ["code"],
"redirect_uris": ["${ADMIN_REDIRECT:http://localhost:9001/admin/}"]
},
{
"client_id": "${USER_CLIENT:user_client}",
"client_secret": "${USER_SECRET:user}",
"grant_types": ["authorization_code"],
"response_types": ["code"],
"redirect_uris": ["${USER_REDIRECT:http://localhost:9001/}"]
}
]
}</pre>
Run again: <code>$ pnpm run prod</code> and access the etherpad in the right port.

Style the main page of Etherpad here:

<code>$ nano /opt/etherpad/src/static/skins/colibris/index.css</code>

=== Set up Mysql ===

First thing to do is to install MySQL :

<code>$ sudo apt-get install mysql-server</code>

Then create the database, for this we need to login with the Root user (super-user): 
<code>$ sudo su</code>

Run mysql : 
<code>$ mysql</code>

Then create the database and the user 'etherpaduser' with the password 'etherpadpass' :

<pre>create database etherpad;
grant all on etherpad.* to 'etherpaduser'@'localhost' identified by 'etherpadpass';</pre>
Use Ctrl-D to quit mysql. And exit to quit su.

Just to test if it works :

<code>$ mysql -u etherpaduser -p etherpad</code>

=== Run etherpad for the first time as the etherpad user... ===

<code>$ cd /opt/etherpad</code> 
<code>$ sudo --user etherpad bin/run.sh</code>

The first time you run the etherpad software it takes a '''long''' time as it downloads related packages. It may also give quite some warnings, but hopefully no errors.

Setup etherpad to start as a service

<code>$ sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/etherpad.service</code>

<pre>[Unit]
Description=Etherpad-lite, the collaborative editor.
After=syslog.target network.target

[Service]
Type=simple
User=etherpad
Group=etherpad
WorkingDirectory=/opt/etherpad
ExecStart=/usr/bin/nodejs /opt/etherpad/node_modules/ep_etherpad-lite/node/server.js
Restart=always

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target</pre>
After this, to start once...

<code>$ sudo systemctl start etherpad</code>

Check if it's working with:

<code>$ sudo systemctl status etherpad</code>

And finally automatically start on boot:

<code>$ sudo systemctl enable etherpad</code>

If this way doesn't work then activate it every time you reboot manually with tmux:

<code>$ sudo apt-get install tmux</code> 
<code>$ tmux new -s etherpad</code> 
<code>$ sudo --user etherpad /opt/etherpad/bin/run.sh</code>

Press ctrl+B and D to exit

Come back to this tmux session with: <code>$ tmux attach -t etherpad</code>

=== '''NOPUBLISH''' pads ===

If you want to keep the pad private, add the '''NOPUBLISH''' tag into the body text

== Etherdump installation ==

[[File:Titipi-local-server-etherdump.png|thumb]]

Etherdump is a script that dumps all pads to different format text files. It's run periodically by a cron job to create a running archive of the etherpads. Follow this guide https://gitlab.constantvzw.org/aa/etherdump in combination with https://networksofonesown.constantvzw.org/etherbox/manual.html#etherdump

=== Installation ===

Install deps:

<code>$ sudo apt install python3-pip</code> <code>$ sudo pip3 install python-dateutil jinja2 html5lib</code>

Install from repo:

<code>$ cd</code> <code>$ mkdir Software</code> <code>$ cd Software</code> <code>$ git clone http://murtaugh@gitlab.constantvzw.org/aa/etherdump.git</code> <code>$ cd etherdump</code> <code>$ sudo python3 setup.py install</code>

=== Init the folder ===

You need the etherpad API key (which is generated the first time you ran the software, see above). Copy it from:

<code>$ cat /opt/etherpad/APIKEY.txt'</code>

Then...

<code>$ cd /home/username</code> <code>$ mkdir etherdump</code> <code>$ cd etherdump</code> <code>$ etherdump init</code>

For the URL use: http://ipadressofpi:9001/ (which is the URL of the etherpad)

And paste the API key.

<code>$ sudo mkdir /var/www/html/etherdump</code>

=== Use pandoc to convert pads to HTML ===

Pandoc is used to convert markdown files to HTML.

<code>$ sudo apt-get install pandoc</code>

Create an image gallery with imagemagick

Imagemagick to make thumbnails.

<code>$ sudo apt-get install imagemagick</code>

=== cron.sh ===

<code>$ mkdir /home/username/include</code>

<code>$ cp /home/username/Software/etherdump/etherdump/data/templates/index.html /home/username/include/etherdump.template.html</code> This is the template for how the etherdump index page looks like.

<code>$ nano /home/username/cron.sh</code>

<pre># Dump the etherpad to files
cd etherdump
sudo -u titipi etherdump pull --meta --text --dhtml --pub . --no-raw-ext
sudo -u titipi etherdump index \
*.meta.json \
--templatepath /home/username/include \
--template etherdump.template.html \
--title "TITiPI etherdump" > index2.html
sudo -u root cp index2.html /var/www/html/etherdump/index.html
sudo -u root cp * /var/www/html/etherdump/</pre>
Make it executable:

<code>$ chmod +x /home/username/cron.sh</code>

Enable the cron job

<code>$ crontab -e</code>

The following runs the cron.sh every minute.

<pre>PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin$

# For more information see the manual pages of crontab(5) and cro$
#
# m h dom mon dow command
* * * * * /home/username/cron.sh 2> /home/username/cron.log</pre>
You may need to do this if it doesn't work:

<code>$ sudo chown -R username:www-data files/</code>

You can access etherdump here: http://hostname.local/etherdump/index.html

== Install tiny file manager ==

[[File:Titipi-local-server-file-manager.png|thumb]]

=== installation ===

Follow guide https://github.com/prasathmani/tinyfilemanager

<code>$ sudo apt-get install php</code> 
<code>$ sudo apt-get install wget</code> 
<code>$ wget -c https://github.com/prasathmani/tinyfilemanager/archive/refs/heads/master.zip</code> 
<code>$ sudo apt install unzip</code> 
<code>$ unzip master.zip</code> 
<code>$ rm master.zip</code> 
<code>$ cd tinyfilemanager-master/</code> 
<code>$ cp tinyfilemanager.php /var/www/html/files/files.php</code>

Access the file manager here: http://titipi.local/files/files.php

== Create an index page ==

<code>$ nano /var /www/html/index.html</code>

Replace paths accordingly and names:

<pre><!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<link rel="stylesheet" href="styles.css">
<body>
<a href="http://hostname.local:9001"><button> Create a pad</button></a>

<a href="http://hostname/etherdump/index.html"><button>Pads list</button></a>

<a href="http://hostname/files/files.php?p=files">
<button>Drop files</button></a>
 
 
 
<hr>
<ul>
<li>Resistant Infra <a href="https://circulations.constantvzw.org/octomode/infra-resistance/pdf/">pdf</a>, <a href="https://circulations.constantvzw.org/octomode/infra-resistance/pad/">pad</a></li>
<li>Genocidal Tech Map <a href="https://circulations.constantvzw.org/octomode/genocidal_tech/pdf/">pdf</a></li>
<li>Inspiration from<a href="https://hub.vvvvvvaria.org/rosa/"> Rosa server</a> and <a href="https://networksofonesown.constantvzw.org">Networks Of One's Own</a></li>
</ul>


</body>
</html></pre>
styles.css:

<pre>
@font-face {
font-family: 'workavec';
src: url(workavec-semibold-webfont.woff);
}

button {
color: #0c9f9d;
padding: 0.3em 1.5em 0.5em;
border: groove;
border-radius: 15px;
font-weight: bold;
background-color: #f0f0f0;
margin-left: -0.1em;
font-size:1em;}

body {
font-size: 1em;
font-family: 'workavec';
background: url(etherdump/worms.png) center center no-repeat fixed #fff;
}

hr {
border-top: 1px dashed #0c9f9d;
}
</pre>
== Install burrow ==

Instead of etherdump install burrow: https://gitlab.constantvzw.org/titipi/burrow

Needs editing...

== Change server's language ==

Play with the server's languages following this example from Rosa: https://hub.vvvvvvaria.org/rosa/pad/p/languages-within-languages

Needs editing...

== Install Icecast ==

Make a streaming server.

Needs editing...

File:Titipi-local-server-file-manager.png

2024-10-14T14:29:45Z

Angeliki:

titipi-local-server-file-manager

File:Titipi-local-server-etherdump.png

2024-10-14T14:29:18Z

Angeliki:

titipi-local-server-etherdump

File:Titipi-local-server-etherpad.png

2024-10-14T14:28:34Z

Angeliki:

titipi-local-server-etherpad

File:Titipi-local-server-main-page.png

2024-10-14T14:27:46Z

Angeliki:

titipi-local-server-index-page

From cloud to crowd: a report on a server transfer

2024-08-20T10:51:20Z

Angeliki:

= From cloud to crowd<ref>The term comes from ... (not sure if it is included in the title)</ref>: A report on a server transfer =

This text is a report on a server migration that took place within the institutional framework of [https://titipi.org/ The Institute for Technology in the Public Interest (TITiPI)], a trans-practice gathering of activists, artists, engineers and theorists. This report is an infrastructural ethnography [explain--footnote] and aims to rethink, through a technical process, what ''hosting'' a server means for a community, institution, cultural organisation dealing with technological discomforts and complex digital infrastructures.

A ''server'' is a computer (or a piece of software?hardware)[what changes--a server being either physical machine or not at all--discuss later--needs attention--transfer from physical place to physical place or software to software--address that--need to problematize and place the question somewhere in the essay-- point out the paradox--then some things later will become easy to read] that provides functionalities via a network (Internet). A ''server migration'' is the process of moving data and transferring software from one server to another with the use of specified tools. Performing such process accommodates a practical and technical solution to fix the problem of an outdated server that is slow or has limited storage. But it also affects the values, the structure and infrastructural imaginations of the organisations it supports. TITiPI desired(s) to go with hosting and maintain its own virtual private server instead of outsourcing these services to external tech companies[treat web hosting with attention--pulling that work into the thinking, reflection and organisational--not treated as an external thing--a service]. In times of server providers’ scaling up ( ‘''cloud hosting''’ ) and digitizing governmental bureaucracies what does it mean to host your own digital space for supporting your communities and work? What does it mean to have an independent infrastructure? What (non-)dependencies are chosen or taken for granted by institutions when using hosting services?

As a researcher at TITiPI I have been caring for the task to investigate this server migration and execute it together with TITiPI’s member Femke Snelting. We meet weekly to keep track and make decisions. We share a ''markdown'' file hosted in the online code repository of the cultural association [https://constantvzw.org/site/ Constant] [link of git titipi] that includes a diary of the server migration and reflections. Every now and then we meet online with our colleague Helen Pritchard, to discuss and share the process. This report includes extracts from the server diary and stories from the process.[two processes of transfer--email and web hosting]

== Migration or …? [restructuring--what are the differences] ==

In the cold newly installed office of TITiPI located in the Koekelberg district of Brussels, I open the browser Chromium in my computer, that runs the operating system Ubuntu, in order to translate quickly − with the installed Google Translate plugin; later I found out there is a DeepL version − the web pages of the different cooperatives, associations, companies that provide hosting services. While doing that I have this disturbing thought in my head that I try to ignore: the word ‘migration’ [its about appropriation of a way of being--flattening the experience of migration--to pull them apart--to explain discomfort with the word migration--understanding how and why the word migration is problematic] as a technical term to describe the movement from one server to the other. It makes me think of an [https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/13/technology/racist-computer-engineering-terms-ietf.html online conversation], happening for a few years now, about replacing computer engineering terminology to stop [to address] prevalence of racism in tech. Specifically the conversation [https://www.wired.com/story/tech-confronts-use-labels-master-slave/ evolves around the terms] ‘master/slave’ [the way I link the things need some extra sentences], where one computing process or entity controls another, and ‘blacklists/whitelists’ used for directories of those things that are explicitly banned or allowed. Using metaphors like that for a technical process de-contextualizes a word from its origins and unavoidably perpetuates social injustices. It also shows that the context where such choices of language are made is privileged and untouched or non-triggered by these terms. White male computer engineers have build up this language.

[My computer runs--for example--why these two parts are different or the same--it hasnt registsred as problematic yet]‘Ubuntu’ is also a word extracted from its original context. It is coming from the African Ubuntu philosophy. According to the creators of the software:

<blockquote>ubuntu |oǒ’boǒntoō| Ubuntu is an ancient African word meaning ‘humanity to others’. It is often described as reminding us that ‘I am what I am because of who we all are’. We bring the spirit of Ubuntu to the world of computers and software. The Ubuntu distribution represents the best of what the world’s software community has shared with the world. <ref>‘About the Ubuntu Project’, Ubuntu, accessed 16 July 2024, https://ubuntu.com/about</ref>
</blockquote>

Paraphrasing [https://thefunambulist.net/magazine/redefining-our-terms/ubuntu-a-black-radical-demand-for-reparations Panashe Chigumadzi] words: in contrast to the western conception of the human as individual, the African conception of the person is a social being who is always becoming, defined by and being responsible for the personhood of the others. "(T)he African philosophy best understood through the proverb found in Bantu languages across the continent, 'umuntu ngumuntu ngabanye bantu' (a person is a person through other people". <ref>Panashe Chigumadzi, ‘Can White South Africa Live up to Ubuntu, the African Philosophy Tutu Globalised?’, The Guardian, 31 December 2021, sec. Opinion, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec/31/white-south-africa-ubuntu-african-tutu</ref>

<blockquote>(D)espite the flourishing of Ubuntu in post-apartheid discourse, lending its name to software, businesses, books and philanthropic organisations, South Africa is a country in which we have, as Dladla argues, Ubuntu without Abantu. Just as Black people have been dispossessed of their land, Ubuntu has been dispossessed of its deeply radical demands for ethical historical and social relations among people. (...) post apartheid Ubuntu mistranslation 'I am because we are', individualized and interpersonalised Ubuntu, Christianised Ubuntu, mistranslated in order to justify crimes and violence. In Ubuntu violence can be punished even after generations, the misinterpretation of the term allowed individual forgiveness. <ref>‘Ubuntu: A Black Radical Demand for Reparations’, THE FUNAMBULIST MAGAZINE, 25 October 2023, https://thefunambulist.net/magazine/redefining-our-terms/ubuntu-a-black-radical-demand-for-reparations</ref>
</blockquote>

I skip these thoughts and I continue browsing the list of servers. While trying to stay focused something other distracts me; I encounter an [https://www.oziosi.org/ autonomous Italian server] with the title translated with DeepL: “:: a shelter for digital exiles ::” and an image of a woman, a child and a man leaving their home. Also a small introduction: “Exiled from the global village of social networks, we claim an internet that is a simple means of communication: immaterial, anonymous, imaginary, public when it makes sense and secret when we feel the need.”. I am wondering what does this mean for actual exiles having to protect their privacy when communicating back home? [https://techpolicy.press/how-to-open-an-outpost-in-social-media-exile/ ‘Social media exiles’] and ‘Twitter migration’ are terms used often after Twitter became X and users have moved to the Fediverse or other alternatives.

Could words like transferring, sharing, moving, copying, re-installing, shifting replace the word ‘migration’? From this point on in the report I decide to use the term ‘transfer’.

[[Screenshot of the 'digital exiles' image, image not included because of copyrights issues?]]

== TITiPI’s case of server transfer ==
On the 27th of September, sitting at the long desks side to side, Femke and I have an online call with Helen, while looking at the depths of our Virtual Private Server (VPS), provided by Linode, that runs Ubuntu on our laptop screens. Linode is an American hosting provider focusing on ''Linux''-based virtual machines originally. The server is physically located in the UK. TITiPI currently uses the Linode server that Helen set up for hosting her own projects. They have been paying for Linode’s monthly fees so far.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-10-11 14-47-06.png|thumb|Screenshot of Linode Ubuntu server overview and ''terminal'' that shows a moment of figuring out what takes space in the server through ''SSH'' access]]

At the time it seemed a good choice, because Linode is based in UK, is ''Linux'' friendly and an alternative to Amazon Web Services (AWS), even though the company was already identifying as ‘''cloud hosting''’. But in February 2023 it has been acquired by the American company Akamai that aims to scale up for [https://www.linode.com/global-infrastructure/ “computing power, optimizing performance and agility.”]. Akamai is actively changing its server policies into an increasingly intense cloud logic. This pushed forward the desire to move to a new place.

[[Screenshot of Linode website referring to scalability -- copyright issues?]]

At the moment in Linode we run pico, a flat CMS for the website https://titipi.org. There is a Mediawiki (you are reading a Mediawiki page right now) for notes and collective writing. On the wiki, we also publish our statutes, guidelines and other instituting documents. The wiki has a custom extension, called wiki-to-pdf. Each of these services will need a different way to be transferred. One approach is to build the new server space from scratch, copy the data with rsync and transfer only the Mediawiki, which includes installing a new version and copy the database and the media files.

While preparing to transfer the tools we are defining what are the practical needs and desirable priorities; we ended up on these server requirements:
* ''SSH'' access and wish for VPS [pick up gain the fantasy of a server -- make present this questioning of physical or software defined server]
* affordable price (around €20/month)
* run a Free Software operating system, preferably Debian
* involves community work - slowing down, resisting to scaling and growth or ‘decloudification’ (small network of partners, less virtualization approach, location of servers nearby etc)
* 25-40GB storage space, 1-2 cores, 2-4GB RAM
* environmental angle
* service support in a language that we all understand (English mostly)

This server transfer happens with an intersectional and feminist approach and the desire to keep questioning. While moving away from Linode we include both the technical and the conceptual thinking in the process. There are a few things that we are looking at:
* Where to be transferred to or what services to transfer to?
* How to be transferred and what to transfer?
* What terminology, language we use?
* What (other) narratives of server hosting can we construct?
TITiPI seeks to exist with an infrastructure that supports inter-dependent practices and solidarity across struggles. It develops Counter Cloud Actions [ref] as a way to scale down, de-cloudify, articulate, contest and re-imagine the implications of computational infrastructures (‘the cloud’).

<blockquote>TITiPI develop tools from feminisms, queer theory, Free, Libre and Open Source software, intersectionality, anti-coloniality, disability studies, historical materialism and artistic practice to generate currently inexistent vocabularies, imaginaries and methodologies. TITiPI functions as an infrastructure to establish new ways in which socio-technical practices and technologies might support the public interest. <ref>TITiPI, ‘Infrables’, Tangible Cloud Archives, https://docs.tangible-cloud.be/publications-pdf/02_snelting.pdf.</ref></blockquote>

We are looking for servers that aspire some of these values.

=== A relational infrastructure narrative/ infra-mutuality/ inter-infrastructural narrative ===
[[File:Elastic solidarities.png|thumb]]
In June 2023 TITiPI received an email from Gandi to renew the domain titipi.org in 6 days, not realising that at the same time we would need to start paying for our titipi.org email hosting. We had missed reading to the end of another email sent in the middle of June, entitled: 'Pricing update'.

[it is a different decision making--it was never the plan to transfer email]

We consider to work with Kate Rich to move our mailboxes to the [http://irational.org/ Irational server], soon to be installed on a Raspberry Pi, hosted at Servus. We decide to do this transition slowly and until then renew the emails for 1-2 months through Gandi. Irational server resists virtualization, and as an art community project it makes it an interesting choice.

But why to go through all this effort and not just use one cloud server with mailboxes, file storage and web server together? TITiPI’s response to the question of building institutional digital infrastructure embodies an archipelagic and non-sovereign approach to dependencies. Rather than building a centralised server based on ‘cloud’ from which connections with other institutions and collectives can happen, it conceptualizes inter-infrastructural practices; from the creation of a [https://gitlab.constantvzw.org/titipi/burrow backup script] for saving locally etherpad pads from other servers, hosting emails at an art server (https://irational.org), creating an [https://books.lumbung.space/shelf/26 online bookshelf] on lumbung.space, using the ''XMPP'' chat from Varia to recording conversations with the ''sysadmin'' that maintain the other servers. The institution re-imagines technological dependencies in dialogue with cultural institutions and art collectives. [[File:Titipi-infra-diagram-JAN-24.png|thumb|none|alt=A diagram of TITiPI’s infrastructure. The diagram categorizes the elements according to tools/software (box), structure/organisational form (circle) and place (dashed line). For example Jitsi is the software, Greenhost is the organisation, meet.greenhost.net is the place.|A diagram of TITiPI’s infrastructure. The diagram categorizes the elements according to tools/software (box), structure/organisational form (circle) and place (dashed line). For example Jitsi is the software, Greenhost is the organisation, meet.greenhost.net is the place.]]

How to give life to the common space of TITiPI’s hosting infrastructures? What about building up social dependencies between the ones that host and the ones who are hosted as opposed to a technical independence? Infrastructural imaginations are often built by the ''Big Tech'' industry and governmental institutions. Instead, TITiPI practices a fluid inter-institutional approach supported by [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Infra_colophon a variety of hosts].

=== Selection of server providers ===
On the 7th of November through a shared screen at the [https://meet.greenhost.net/ video conferencing software Jitsi of Greenhost] we all three check a list of server providers I collected on a spreadsheet hosted in Constant’s cloud storage (built with Nextcloud software) where TITiPI has an account. I looked at associations, companies/businesses, cooperatives, communities coming from commercial context to social struggles, activist, feminist and other. Through a [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/List_server_networks list of networks] I found various servers mostly from Latin America and Europe.

The concept of autonomy, sovereignty, independence or self-managing characterizes most of the servers in the list. Some of them, like [https://www.autistici.org/ Autistici] promote this concept as a way to support anti-capitalist infrastructure and protect the privacy of the users as opposed to the ''Big Tech'' software practices.

<blockquote>The vision is that we - the members of the cooperative - own our own data. This implies and has as a consequence that we will have to own our own infrastructure and have insight and control over the software we use to communicate on the web.<ref>‘Community Servers - Monoskop’, accessed 16 July 2024, https://monoskop.org/Community_servers</ref></blockquote>

Femke had a hunch: "‘technological sovereignty’ and ‘data-sovereignty’ continue to be orientation devices to organise around. ‘Sovereignty’, together with ‘freedom’, ‘independence’ and ‘autonomy’, form an ideological cluster that implicitly and sometimes explicitly foregrounds separation rather than relation."

Servers can act as independent spaces but are also cultural devices and vibrant spaces. They can manifest different aspects of a full life and reach out to a multiplicity of entities.

Servus and Greenhost, seem to be two of our best choices as they cover a lot of the priorities and values of TITiPI. As one can read from their descriptions they both strive for owning their own data servers and data nodes (they have their own ''IP addresses'') and be independent from third parties. The big difference is the scale of the infrastructure and their community and network.

<blockquote>Greenhost fully owns and controls its hardware, infrastructure and uplinks. This ensures independence from third parties and proper access control. On this hardware we run our fully virtualised platform. We stand for an Open Internet, and have always embraced open source software.<ref>‘Greenhost.Net | the Sustainable Web’, accessed 16 July 2024, https://greenhost.net/.</ref></blockquote>

<blockquote>We (Servus) do not pass on any data to third parties. You will not receive commercial advertising from us or third parties. We are easily accessible and answer your questions personally. We and our servers are located at Kirchengasse 4 in Linz, Austria.<ref>‘Book Of Servus’, Book Of Servus, accessed 16 July 2024, https://book.servus.at/en/home/.</ref></blockquote>

Even though Greenhost wants to reduce ecological damage, it does that mainly through hardware reductions and does not address scale. They have plans to expand and are part of a network of partners that want to transform Rotterdam into a big hub of data nodes for the upcoming digital transition. [it is not as big as Linode--it is not in the list--we are not recosnidering to stay with linode]Linode is even bigger, it goes for [[https://www.akamai.com/newsroom/press-release/akamai-takes-cloud-computing-to-the-edge| "(p)lanetary scale"]]. Servus on the other hand has one room of data servers, is closer to the scale of their community and they maintain personal relations with them.

[[Image of the server room at Servus at Linz|Image of the server room at Servus at Linz?]]

=== Community server, feminist server, trans*feminist server, radical server, autonomous server, commercial server, art server, free server, ethical server, solidarity-based server, cooperative server, associative server, independent server, alternative server, non-commercial server, … ===
The spreadsheet starts to grow because of an endless/exhaustive burrow of small and big providers.

Some are outdated. 
Some are messy. 
Some have broken links. 
Some are [https://www.julienth37.fr/vps hard to understand]. 
Some require [https://www.actiu.info/index.en.html a lot of engagement]. 
Some use a language that imitates the narratives of ''Big Tech'' and ''agile'' computing. 
Some promote seamless “promissory logic” and “high hopes for a brighter future” (ref) 
Some are big or are scaling up (in matter of space, data centers, partners, users etc). 
Some support NGO’s or sport clubs.

[[copyright issues? Screenshot from main page of Co-op Web]]

We also looked at their financial model. Many radical servers stay small, are volunteer based, like [https://www.autistici.org/ Autistici]. and go for horizontal organisational structures. Feminist and activist servers provide space in the internet for the ones who don’t have the means to organise otherwise. The resources and ways of organising for these servers are different from the cooperatives or associations whose structure is inherited from the model they are registered with.

[[File:ATNOFS-Varia-insert-ooooo.jpg|thumb|ooooo atnofs insert diagrams from varia, systerserver, servus]]

TITiPI acknowledges and is connected to the history of community, art and feminist servers and wants to support this network. The art servers started as a way to make autonomous self-managed servers that support artists values and practices. They are often financed by cultural or private funds.

<blockquote>I joined (Irational) sometime in 2000s, I can't remember when and originally it was much more a collective of people working together and then since the early 2010's I think, mid 2010's, there was a bit of a reshuffle of personnel and stuff, so the constituency changed to a smaller group and we actually reformed. We were going to disband Irational and then we actually reformed as an art server collective and we decided we are not really working together but what we have in common is that we're using the server and that is actually what the collective is now. It's the collective that uses the server together and wants to use the server together. And another real defining feature of the server the whole time has been resisting virtualization. 

— quote from [[None of this experiment is evident|interview of Kate Rich by Femke Snelting]] [needs rewritting] </blockquote>

The screen seems to become brighter as my eyes get tired. What if we skip the online hosting and create a local physical server at TITiPI’s office next to the desks, in a corner, on a Raspberry Pi? All our data would stay on this machine and we would connect with ''SSH'' from home, but then we will also have to maintain it ourselves. There is something there about the romanticism of a physical toolbox as a sovereign object. If we choose to do that we will need to think of a backup plan as it will be an experimental set up and all our data will stay offline. We won’t have a provider to take care of that.

Our list has been reduced because of our priorities. We need ''SSH'' and we would like to have a VPS [--why?--part of the first issue on software/hardware server--having material inside someone elses server/email--physical--root access--2nd: to have our own box in a rack--that is expensive--pay for electricity etc and who turns of and on--a pi in our own office--bandwidth internet--in a rack we would have connection to high speed reliable internet--fire protection--4th: vps, it is a cloud technology but we have our own virtual machine that we can start and stop from ditance--with the consequence of using cloud technology--explain these different options--to help the reader]. Who has resources for providing VPS? Resources of labour, time, finances, technical knowledge. This made self-defined feminist servers fall out of the selection. How to be financially sustainable, while keeping up with your own values? How to keep up with infrastructural ''maintenance'' if the scale of the users, community, members and data is big?

<blockquote>The services we offer have no defined price, but as you may easily imagine, keeping the whole system working (i.e. hardware and hosting) is very expensive (at the moment it ranges around 13,000 euro every year).<ref>‘Autistici.Org - Services’, accessed 16 July 2024, https://www.autistici.org/services/</ref></blockquote>

Servus and Maadix provide a series of ''free/libre'' tools that can be installed separately through their interface but they also provide a VPS with ''SSH'' access. With Greenhost, Hetzner and Linode there is more flexibility: you can create your own VPS and customize it for your own needs through their interface or the ''terminal'' and install whatever tools you want from scratch without a visual interface.

Technical information and knowledge of digital infrastructure circulate between groups that are tech-oriented with a difficulty to cross with other groups, including feminist servers. The ''sysadmin'' tasks are mostly taken by cis men but feminist servers are radical about that. They find important to have ''sysadmins'' that are not cis men. For example Systerserver and Anarchaserver are learning by themselves together how to do this task.

Many of the servers in the list provide only tools, as a radical way to support small groups, collectives, activists that need privacy and shifting away from Google drive when they want to organise politically and socially. It seems that being limited to tool packages instead of having full access to a server can make things comprehensible and compact for these small groups that have limited ''sysadmin'' knowledge or can’t hire a technician.

[copyrights issue? Screenshot of main page with services by [https://futuretic.fr/ FuturEtic]]

[[copyrights issue? Screenshot of tools from codigosur]]

== Final decision and server transfers [email and webhosting] ==

We are about to make our decision! Our list ended up to be very small.

On 7th of November in an online call between Helen in Basel, Femke in Brussels and Aggeliki in Rotterdam we limited our list to four options: Constant, Greenhost, Servus, Zaclys. The selection consists of a diversity of scales and positioning that we found interesting to think of. First, we move on with the decision to transfer our mailboxes to Irational hosted at Servus. The rest of the functionalities will be hosted somewhere else.

From our conversations with Femke: “The choice for irational.org opens the possibility for discussions around dependencies, trust and frictions within shared collective servers. Irational.org is an ally art server who uses and maintains its own server for many years. Hosting such a private service at a friend’s environment doesn’t come only with convenience. The closeness to the material of the server makes the dependency more tangible.” [reference/quote from colophon?]

[[copyrights issue? towel design by psaroskalazines|towel design by psaroskalazines]] copyrights?

Femke and I are planning different moments for the server transfer to happen in the office of TITiPI. What it is about to take place comes down into three moments; the backup and save of data from the old server, the installation of the necessary software in the new server and the transfer of the old data in the new server.

Specifically we are following these steps:

* Mail transfer from Gandi to irational
* Create a Virtual Private Server (VPS) in the new server
* Install Apache2 and configure domains
* Install and migrate MediaWiki
** Back up the wiki on the Linode VPS
** Upgrade MediaWiki in Linode
** Install MediaWiki and plugins in the Greenhost VPS
** Transfer database and media files from Linode to Greenhost
* Install Wiki-to-pdf
* Install Pico
* Install and configure Certbot

We find ourselves between two virtual spaces and one office, among other indirectly connected spaces like the rooms of our distant collaborators and the office locations of the servers.

=== Trust relationships ===
By now, 14th of November 2023, the office is warm and cozy. Throughout the time I am writing this report I have been noticing a lot of slow and small efforts to renovate the building and set up the heating, by the artists and organisations who share the space with TITiPI. Another infrastructure that needs care.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 15-06-42.png|thumb|Femke and Aggeliki entering Irational’s server space with Kate]]

On a shared screen together with Femke we get introduced to the mail server of Irational by Kate. We use an audio splitter to share the laptop for the call. Kate described her experience as an amateur ''sysadmin'' that had to spend a lot of time to learn and set up the mail server. After that we start the process that has been documented [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Server_transfer_documentation#Mail_transfer here].

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 14-56-26.png|thumb|Screenshot from the TITiPI’s mail transfer with Kate, Femke and Aggeliki during an online 3 hours call]]

Irational uses the Alpine email client. Kate takes us its depths. That is where we start to set up our new email accounts before we configure them in Thunderbird. Femke gets excited on the fact that she can send emails to other Irational accounts through the ''terminal''.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 15-15-07.png|thumb|Using the email client Alpine]]

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 17-04-20.png|thumb|Screenhost from the moment of looking for the syntax of the TXT records. Finding the right syntax for this value was the biggest challenge. This is part of the ''trust relationships'' between the different providers]]

After some more DNS configurations we test if it is possible to exchange emails with ‘outside’ accounts and especially with Gmail that has many security filters for mail servers other than the commercial ones.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-15 13-59-52.png|thumb|Exchange test emails with a Gmail account]]

After three hours of tryouts we manage to make it work! Very proudly and with enjoyment for sharing a technical task together we say goodbye to each other and arrange a next meeting for a final check up.

=== A choice that comes with discomforts ===
Just one day before the start of TITiPI’s server transfer away from Linode on the 28th of November, Helen found the Swiss server ungleich.ch and it seemed like an interesting choice because of the small scale (in terms of community and servers), their experimental attitude and their choice to reduce energy consumption; they avoid using systems for cooling their servers by spreading the servers at the Swiss mountains in old, abandoned buildings.

Ungleich.ch is one of the good options but it is more expensive than other providers. They offer a cheaper choice by choosing to have only ‘ipv6’. But we had to dig in to understand the difference of ipv4 and ipv6. From wikipedia: “IPv6 is the most recent version of the Internet Protocol, developed to deal with the long-anticipated problem of IPv4 address exhaustion” We found a [https://stats.labs.apnic.net/ipv6 map] that shows which countries have implemented IPv6 and it seems that if we only use this address then many places won’t have access to the website of TITiPI. So we choose to have both addresses.

We also notice that this provider is using Stripe for their payment system. In a [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Frontier parallel universe of TITiPI] we give attention to and critique Stripe because of its connections with the Carbon Removal industry.

[[copyright issues? Ungleich.ch payment system with Stripe]] [include and correctly reference them]

Another urgency appears while we are looking at different choices; together with many other organisations, we have been thinking about ways to host and maintain infrastructures in solidarity with communities and networks we are part of. This would mean, for example, hosting digitally a Palestinian video film archive, or research by sex workers. Solidarity is only partially a question of caring for privacy and security because it matters where and how we host our digital infrastructures and whether these spaces do or do not support the flourishing of different lives and struggles. This need make us think again if the server we choose would be suitable for something like that.

Constant and Servus are two accomplice servers that already provide to TITiPI some of their services. Zaclys is a member of Chatons that support open source values and it is located in France. We contacted them to see if they could be an option but they never responded to us.

We wanted to work with a company that provide ‘green’ infrastructure. Greenhost seem to be a good choice. It provides a familiar interface to us, good support and backup option. It has a positioning as an alternative to AWS. So far great, but what about its ‘green’ hosting vision? Is it a solarpunk vision, a green cloud utopia? Is their infrastructure resource ‘hungry’? What are the privacy limits when the material hosted in the servers is political and sensitive?

We choose Greenhost with all the discomforts that this choice entails and with the desire to keep the critique and dialogue alive.

Only by December 2023 we manage to arrange a call with one of Greenhost’s former Managing Directors to get a feeling and more information about their approach and sensitivity. Accordind to him Greenhost exists in the intersection of activism and technology. It provides consultancy, sustainability solutions in tech projects and structured ''maintenance''; they go for best quality with lowest environmental impact; they maintain the same hardware as much as possible and balance that with higher efficiency; they keep backups at an already existing data center in the university of Amsterdam.

<nowiki>[[paragraph for Greenhost include? from interview with manager?]]</nowiki>

=== Installing, transferring, saving, copying, … ===
On the 28th of November sitting on the sunny corner of the couch next to the radiator, and with warm coffee cups waiting for us on a low table, Femke and I cover our legs with a blanket and open our laptops.

I ask Femke to jumb in a ''tmux'' session for sharing ''terminal'' with this command: <code>''sudo'' ''tmux'' attach -t webserver</code>. We start by cleaning the old server and make backups of the files.

We take a lunch break. Femke finds out that if we eat three recurrent meals every week in the office we can have a nice variety of food; lentiles soup, orecchiette pasta with brocoli, rizzoto with mushrooms and lots of fruits. Sometime ago we decided to make multiple short breaks throughout the day because of computer fatigue. One day I removed all the files from my computer that were older than 90 days because I accidentally run a command on the ''terminal'' instead of a bash script to test the setting up of [https://gitlab.constantvzw.org/titipi/burrow Burrow]. I left this comment in the initial script:

<code># VERY DANGEROUS COMMAND find *txt -mindepth 1 -mtime +$RETAIN -delete</code>
The next day we set up the new server and install all the necessary software including a new version of the MediaWiki. We arrange a meeting with Martino Morandi, member of Constant, who created the wiki-to-pdf to help us installing this software and transfer the MediaWiki in the new server. On the 1st of December we successfully install the wiki-to-pdf and because of limited time we decided to meet one more time at the end of the month for the rest.

[[File:Virtual-env-debian.png|thumb|Screenshot from the wiki-to-pdf installation to the new server with Martino, Femke, Aggeliki. Debian supports a different way to create virtual environments for installing python packages and libraries. We try it but it failed.]]

On the 28th we meet with Martino online to complete the transfer, which includes copying the old database of MediaWiki, activate the old plugins and fix any issues on the way. We are all located in different countries (Italy, Greece, Belgium) and so we share a ''tmux'' session. We follow the guides but on the way we had to do some research and configure a lot of things to make the MediaWiki work. Martino was hunting a php module. It seemed that php has shifted to free software culture in an attempt to find another business model. It is not surprising it happens in the context of Ubuntu. The issue is recorded [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Server_transfer_documentation#MediaWiki_upgrade_issues here].

[[File:Firefox Screenshot 2024-01-10T13-59-40.398Z.png|thumb|"Is Titipi.org down?" Helen asks after the transfer. It seems that her browser cache was preventing her from seeing the website]]

The process is documented in our diary and then transferred to a [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Server_transfer_documentation wiki page]. By January 2024 the server transfer and the deletion of our Linode account has been completed.

== Glossaries ==

Italicized terms in the report are included in these glossaries:

* [https://varia.zone/ATNOFS/ATNOFS-screen.pdf Glossary of A Traversal Network of Feminist Servers (ATNOFS) publication]
* [[Glossary|TITiPI's glossary]]

== References ==

* Panashe Chigumadzi, ‘Can White South Africa Live up to Ubuntu, the African Philosophy Tutu Globalised?’, The Guardian, 31 December 2021, sec. Opinion, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec/31/white-south-africa-ubuntu-african-tutu
* ‘Community Servers - Monoskop’, accessed 16 July 2024, https://monoskop.org/Community_servers
* David Carroll, ‘How To Open An Outpost In Social Media Exile | TechPolicy.Press’, Tech Policy Press, 26 November 2022, <nowiki>https://techpolicy.press/how-to-open-an-outpost-in-social-media-exile</nowiki>.
* Elizabeth Landau, ‘Tech Confronts Its Use of the Labels “Master” and “Slave”’, ''Wired'', accessed 16 July 2024, <nowiki>https://www.wired.com/story/tech-confronts-use-labels-master-slave/</nowiki>.
* ‘GitHub Abandons “master” Term to Avoid Slavery Row’, 15 June 2020, https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-53050955
* Femke Snelting, ‘Infrastructure Solidarity’, Ardeth. A Magazine on the Power of the Project, no. 8 (1 November 2021): 45–47
* ‘Master-Slave Terminology Alternatives You Can Use Right Now | TheServerSide’, TheServerSide.com, accessed 16 July 2024, https://www.theserverside.com/opinion/Master-slave-terminology-alternatives-you-can-use-right-now
* ‘Racist Computer Engineering Words: “Master,” “Slave” and the Fight Over Offensive Terms - The New York Times’, accessed 16 July 2024, <nowiki>https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/13/technology/racist-computer-engineering-terms-ietf.html</nowiki>.
* ‘Replace “Master” and “Slave” Terms in Redis · Issue #3185 · Redis/Redis’, GitHub, accessed 16 July 2024, https://github.com/redis/redis/issues/3185
* ‘Ubuntu: A Black Radical Demand for Reparations’, THE FUNAMBULIST MAGAZINE, 25 October 2023, https://thefunambulist.net/magazine/redefining-our-terms/ubuntu-a-black-radical-demand-for-reparations.

== Colophon ==

The text was drafted in pad.xpub.nl in Markdown and then transferred in this wiki.

== Footnotes ==

From cloud to crowd: a report on a server transfer

2024-08-20T10:36:24Z

Angeliki:

= From cloud to crowd<ref>The term comes from ... (not sure if it is included in the title)</ref>: A report on a server transfer =

This text is a report on a server migration that took place within the institutional framework of [https://titipi.org/ The Institute for Technology in the Public Interest (TITiPI)], a trans-practice gathering of activists, artists, engineers and theorists. This report is an infrastructural ethnography [explain--footnote] and aims to rethink, through a technical process, what ''hosting'' a server means for a community, institution, cultural organisation dealing with technological discomforts and complex digital infrastructures.

A ''server'' is a computer (or a piece of software?hardware)[what changes--a server being either physical machine or not at all--discuss later--needs attention--transfer from physical place to physical place or software to software--address that--need to problematize and place the question somewhere in the essay-- point out the paradox--then some things later will become easy to read] that provides functionalities via a network (Internet). A ''server migration'' is the process of moving data and transferring software from one server to another with the use of specified tools. Performing such process accommodates a practical and technical solution to fix the problem of an outdated server that is slow or has limited storage. But it also affects the values, the structure and infrastructural imaginations of the organisations it supports. TITiPI desired(s) to go with hosting and maintain its own virtual private server instead of outsourcing these services to external tech companies[treat web hosting with attention--pulling that work into the thinking, reflection and organisational--not treated as an external thing--a service]. In times of server providers’ scaling up ( ‘''cloud hosting''’ ) and digitizing governmental bureaucracies what does it mean to host your own digital space for supporting your communities and work? What does it mean to have an independent infrastructure? What (non-)dependencies are chosen or taken for granted by institutions when using hosting services?

As a researcher at TITiPI I have been caring for the task to investigate this server migration and execute it together with TITiPI’s member Femke Snelting. We meet weekly to keep track and make decisions. We share a ''markdown'' file hosted in the online code repository of the cultural association [https://constantvzw.org/site/ Constant] [link of git titipi] that includes a diary of the server migration and reflections. Every now and then we meet online with our colleague Helen Pritchard, to discuss and share the process. This report includes extracts from the server diary and stories from the process.

== Migration or …? [restructuring--what are the differences] ==

In the cold newly installed office of TITiPI located in the Koekelberg district of Brussels, I open the browser Chromium in my computer, that runs the operating system Ubuntu, in order to translate quickly − with the installed Google Translate plugin; later I found out there is a DeepL version − the web pages of the different cooperatives, associations, companies that provide hosting services. While doing that I have this disturbing thought in my head that I try to ignore: the word ‘migration’ [its about appropriation of a way of being--flattening the experience of migration--to pull them apart--to explain discomfort with the word migration--understanding how and why the word migration is problematic] as a technical term to describe the movement from one server to the other. It makes me think of an [https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/13/technology/racist-computer-engineering-terms-ietf.html online conversation], happening for a few years now, about replacing computer engineering terminology to stop [to address] prevalence of racism in tech. Specifically the conversation [https://www.wired.com/story/tech-confronts-use-labels-master-slave/ evolves around the terms] ‘master/slave’ [the way I link the things need some extra sentences], where one computing process or entity controls another, and ‘blacklists/whitelists’ used for directories of those things that are explicitly banned or allowed. Using metaphors like that for a technical process de-contextualizes a word from its origins and unavoidably perpetuates social injustices. It also shows that the context where such choices of language are made is privileged and untouched or non-triggered by these terms. White male computer engineers have build up this language.

[My computer runs--for example--why these two parts are different or the same--it hasnt registsred as problematic yet]‘Ubuntu’ is also a word extracted from its original context. It is coming from the African Ubuntu philosophy. According to the creators of the software:

<blockquote>ubuntu |oǒ’boǒntoō| Ubuntu is an ancient African word meaning ‘humanity to others’. It is often described as reminding us that ‘I am what I am because of who we all are’. We bring the spirit of Ubuntu to the world of computers and software. The Ubuntu distribution represents the best of what the world’s software community has shared with the world. <ref>‘About the Ubuntu Project’, Ubuntu, accessed 16 July 2024, https://ubuntu.com/about</ref>
</blockquote>

Paraphrasing [https://thefunambulist.net/magazine/redefining-our-terms/ubuntu-a-black-radical-demand-for-reparations Panashe Chigumadzi] words: in contrast to the western conception of the human as individual, the African conception of the person is a social being who is always becoming, defined by and being responsible for the personhood of the others. "(T)he African philosophy best understood through the proverb found in Bantu languages across the continent, 'umuntu ngumuntu ngabanye bantu' (a person is a person through other people". <ref>Panashe Chigumadzi, ‘Can White South Africa Live up to Ubuntu, the African Philosophy Tutu Globalised?’, The Guardian, 31 December 2021, sec. Opinion, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec/31/white-south-africa-ubuntu-african-tutu</ref>

<blockquote>(D)espite the flourishing of Ubuntu in post-apartheid discourse, lending its name to software, businesses, books and philanthropic organisations, South Africa is a country in which we have, as Dladla argues, Ubuntu without Abantu. Just as Black people have been dispossessed of their land, Ubuntu has been dispossessed of its deeply radical demands for ethical historical and social relations among people. (...) post apartheid Ubuntu mistranslation 'I am because we are', individualized and interpersonalised Ubuntu, Christianised Ubuntu, mistranslated in order to justify crimes and violence. In Ubuntu violence can be punished even after generations, the misinterpretation of the term allowed individual forgiveness. <ref>‘Ubuntu: A Black Radical Demand for Reparations’, THE FUNAMBULIST MAGAZINE, 25 October 2023, https://thefunambulist.net/magazine/redefining-our-terms/ubuntu-a-black-radical-demand-for-reparations</ref>
</blockquote>

I skip these thoughts and I continue browsing the list of servers. While trying to stay focused something other distracts me; I encounter an [https://www.oziosi.org/ autonomous Italian server] with the title translated with DeepL: “:: a shelter for digital exiles ::” and an image of a woman, a child and a man leaving their home. Also a small introduction: “Exiled from the global village of social networks, we claim an internet that is a simple means of communication: immaterial, anonymous, imaginary, public when it makes sense and secret when we feel the need.”. I am wondering what does this mean for actual exiles having to protect their privacy when communicating back home? [https://techpolicy.press/how-to-open-an-outpost-in-social-media-exile/ ‘Social media exiles’] and ‘Twitter migration’ are terms used often after Twitter became X and users have moved to the Fediverse or other alternatives.

Could words like transferring, sharing, moving, copying, re-installing, shifting replace the word ‘migration’? From this point on in the report I decide to use the term ‘transfer’.

[[Screenshot of the 'digital exiles' image, image not included because of copyrights issues?]]

== TITiPI’s case of server transfer ==
On the 27th of September, sitting at the long desks side to side, Femke and I have an online call with Helen, while looking at the depths of our Virtual Private Server (VPS), provided by Linode, that runs Ubuntu on our laptop screens. Linode is an American hosting provider focusing on ''Linux''-based virtual machines originally. The server is physically located in the UK. TITiPI currently uses the Linode server that Helen set up for hosting her own projects. They have been paying for Linode’s monthly fees so far.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-10-11 14-47-06.png|thumb|Screenshot of Linode Ubuntu server overview and ''terminal'' that shows a moment of figuring out what takes space in the server through ''SSH'' access]]

At the time it seemed a good choice, because Linode is based in UK, is ''Linux'' friendly and an alternative to Amazon Web Services (AWS), even though the company was already identifying as ‘''cloud hosting''’. But in February 2023 it has been acquired by the American company Akamai that aims to scale up for [https://www.linode.com/global-infrastructure/ “computing power, optimizing performance and agility.”]. Akamai is actively changing its server policies into an increasingly intense cloud logic. This pushed forward the desire to move to a new place.

[[Screenshot of Linode website referring to scalability -- copyright issues?]]

At the moment in Linode we run pico, a flat CMS for the website https://titipi.org. There is a Mediawiki (you are reading a Mediawiki page right now) for notes and collective writing. On the wiki, we also publish our statutes, guidelines and other instituting documents. The wiki has a custom extension, called wiki-to-pdf. Each of these services will need a different way to be transferred. One approach is to build the new server space from scratch, copy the data with rsync and transfer only the Mediawiki, which includes installing a new version and copy the database and the media files.

While preparing to transfer the tools we are defining what are the practical needs and desirable priorities; we ended up on these server requirements:
* ''SSH'' access and wish for VPS [pick up gain the fantasy of a server -- make present this questioning of physical or software defined server]
* affordable price (around €20/month)
* run a Free Software operating system, preferably Debian
* involves community work - slowing down, resisting to scaling and growth or ‘decloudification’ (small network of partners, less virtualization approach, location of servers nearby etc)
* 25-40GB storage space, 1-2 cores, 2-4GB RAM
* environmental angle
* service support in a language that we all understand (English mostly)

This server transfer happens with an intersectional and feminist approach and the desire to keep questioning. While moving away from Linode we include both the technical and the conceptual thinking in the process. There are a few things that we are looking at:
* Where to be transferred to or what services to transfer to?
* How to be transferred and what to transfer?
* What terminology, language we use?
* What (other) narratives of server hosting can we construct?
TITiPI seeks to exist with an infrastructure that supports inter-dependent practices and solidarity across struggles. It develops Counter Cloud Actions [ref] as a way to scale down, de-cloudify, articulate, contest and re-imagine the implications of computational infrastructures (‘the cloud’).

<blockquote>TITiPI develop tools from feminisms, queer theory, Free, Libre and Open Source software, intersectionality, anti-coloniality, disability studies, historical materialism and artistic practice to generate currently inexistent vocabularies, imaginaries and methodologies. TITiPI functions as an infrastructure to establish new ways in which socio-technical practices and technologies might support the public interest. <ref>TITiPI, ‘Infrables’, Tangible Cloud Archives, https://docs.tangible-cloud.be/publications-pdf/02_snelting.pdf.</ref></blockquote>

We are looking for servers that aspire some of these values.

=== A relational infrastructure narrative/ infra-mutuality/ inter-infrastructural narrative ===
[[File:Elastic solidarities.png|thumb]]
In June 2023 TITiPI received an email from Gandi to renew the domain titipi.org in 6 days, not realising that at the same time we would need to start paying for our titipi.org email hosting. We had missed reading to the end of another email sent in the middle of June, entitled: 'Pricing update'.

We consider to work with Kate Rich to move our mailboxes to the [http://irational.org/ Irational server], soon to be installed on a Raspberry Pi, hosted at Servus. Currently it is in a rack in the UK. We decide to do this transition slowly and until then renew the emails for 1-2 months through Gandi. Irational server resists virtualization, and as an art community project it makes it an interesting choice.

But why to go through all this effort and not just use one cloud server with mailboxes, file storage and web server together? TITiPI’s response to the question of building institutional digital infrastructure embodies an archipelagic and non-sovereign approach to dependencies. Rather than building a centralised server based on ‘cloud’ from which connections with other institutions and collectives can happen, it conceptualizes inter-infrastructural practices; from the creation of a [https://gitlab.constantvzw.org/titipi/burrow backup script] for saving locally etherpad pads from other servers, hosting emails at an art server (https://irational.org), creating an [https://books.lumbung.space/shelf/26 online bookshelf] on lumbung.space, using the ''XMPP'' chat from Varia to recording conversations with the ''sysadmin'' that maintain the other servers. The institution re-imagines technological dependencies in dialogue with cultural institutions and art collectives. [[File:Titipi-infra-diagram-JAN-24.png|thumb|none|alt=A diagram of TITiPI’s infrastructure. The diagram categorizes the elements according to tools/software (box), structure/organisational form (circle) and place (dashed line). For example Jitsi is the software, Greenhost is the organisation, meet.greenhost.net is the place.|A diagram of TITiPI’s infrastructure. The diagram categorizes the elements according to tools/software (box), structure/organisational form (circle) and place (dashed line). For example Jitsi is the software, Greenhost is the organisation, meet.greenhost.net is the place.]]

How to give life to the common space of TITiPI’s hosting infrastructures? What about building up social dependencies between the ones that host and the ones who are hosted as opposed to a technical independence? Infrastructural imaginations are often built by the ''Big Tech'' industry and governmental institutions. Instead, TITiPI practices a fluid inter-institutional approach supported by [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Infra_colophon a variety of hosts].

=== Selection of server providers ===
On the 7th of November through a shared screen at the [https://meet.greenhost.net/ video conferencing software Jitsi of Greenhost] we all three check a list of server providers I collected on a spreadsheet hosted in Constant’s cloud storage (built with Nextcloud software) where TITiPI has an account. I looked at associations, companies/businesses, cooperatives, communities coming from commercial context to social struggles, activist, feminist and other. Through a [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/List_server_networks list of networks] I found various servers mostly from Latin America and Europe.

The concept of autonomy, sovereignty, independence or self-managing characterizes most of the servers in the list. Some of them, like [https://www.autistici.org/ Autistici] promote this concept as a way to support anti-capitalist infrastructure and protect the privacy of the users as opposed to the ''Big Tech'' software practices.

<blockquote>The vision is that we - the members of the cooperative - own our own data. This implies and has as a consequence that we will have to own our own infrastructure and have insight and control over the software we use to communicate on the web.<ref>‘Community Servers - Monoskop’, accessed 16 July 2024, https://monoskop.org/Community_servers</ref></blockquote>

Femke had a hunch: "‘technological sovereignty’ and ‘data-sovereignty’ continue to be orientation devices to organise around. ‘Sovereignty’, together with ‘freedom’, ‘independence’ and ‘autonomy’, form an ideological cluster that implicitly and sometimes explicitly foregrounds separation rather than relation."

Servers can act as independent spaces but are also cultural devices and vibrant spaces. They can manifest different aspects of a full life and reach out to a multiplicity of entities.

Servus and Greenhost, seem to be two of our best choices as they cover a lot of the priorities and values of TITiPI. As one can read from their descriptions they both strive for owning their own data servers and data nodes (they have their own ''IP addresses'') and be independent from third parties. The big difference is the scale of the infrastructure and their community and network.

<blockquote>Greenhost fully owns and controls its hardware, infrastructure and uplinks. This ensures independence from third parties and proper access control. On this hardware we run our fully virtualised platform. We stand for an Open Internet, and have always embraced open source software.<ref>‘Greenhost.Net | the Sustainable Web’, accessed 16 July 2024, https://greenhost.net/.</ref></blockquote>

<blockquote>We (Servus) do not pass on any data to third parties. You will not receive commercial advertising from us or third parties. We are easily accessible and answer your questions personally. We and our servers are located at Kirchengasse 4 in Linz, Austria.<ref>‘Book Of Servus’, Book Of Servus, accessed 16 July 2024, https://book.servus.at/en/home/.</ref></blockquote>

Even though Greenhost wants to reduce ecological damage, it does that mainly through hardware reductions and does not address scale. They have plans to expand and are part of a network of partners that want to transform Rotterdam into a big hub of data nodes for the upcoming digital transition. Linode is even bigger, it goes for [[https://www.akamai.com/newsroom/press-release/akamai-takes-cloud-computing-to-the-edge| "(p)lanetary scale"]]. Servus on the other hand has one room of data servers, is closer to the scale of their community and they maintain personal relations with them.

[[Image of the server room at Servus at Linz|Image of the server room at Servus at Linz?]]

=== Community server, feminist server, trans*feminist server, radical server, autonomous server, commercial server, art server, free server, ethical server, solidarity-based server, cooperative server, associative server, independent server, alternative server, non-commercial server, … ===
The spreadsheet starts to grow because of an endless/exhaustive burrow of small and big providers.

Some are outdated. 
Some are messy. 
Some have broken links. 
Some are [https://www.julienth37.fr/vps hard to understand]. 
Some require [https://www.actiu.info/index.en.html a lot of engagement]. 
Some use a language that imitates the narratives of ''Big Tech'' and ''agile'' computing. 
Some promote seamless “promissory logic” and “high hopes for a brighter future” (ref) 
Some are big or are scaling up (in matter of space, data centers, partners, users etc). 
Some support NGO’s or sport clubs.

[[copyright issues? Screenshot from main page of Co-op Web]]

We also looked at their financial model. Many radical servers stay small, are volunteer based, like [https://www.autistici.org/ Autistici]. and go for horizontal organisational structures. Feminist and activist servers provide space in the internet for the ones who don’t have the means to organise otherwise. The resources and ways of organising for these servers are different from the cooperatives or associations whose structure is inherited from the model they are registered with.

[[File:ATNOFS-Varia-insert-ooooo.jpg|thumb|ooooo atnofs insert diagrams from varia, systerserver, servus]]

TITiPI acknowledges and is connected to the history of community, art and feminist servers and wants to support this network. The art servers started as a way to make autonomous self-managed servers that support artists values and practices. They are often financed by cultural or private funds.

<blockquote>I joined (Irational) sometime in 2000s, I can't remember when and originally it was much more a collective of people working together and then since the early 2010's I think, mid 2010's, there was a bit of a reshuffle of personnel and stuff, so the constituency changed to a smaller group and we actually reformed. We were going to disband Irational and then we actually reformed as an art server collective and we decided we are not really working together but what we have in common is that we're using the server and that is actually what the collective is now. It's the collective that uses the server together and wants to use the server together. And another real defining feature of the server the whole time has been resisting virtualization. 

— quote from [[None of this experiment is evident|interview of Kate Rich by Femke Snelting]] [needs rewritting] </blockquote>

The screen seems to become brighter as my eyes get tired. What if we skip the online hosting and create a local physical server at TITiPI’s office next to the desks, in a corner, on a Raspberry Pi? All our data would stay on this machine and we would connect with ''SSH'' from home, but then we will also have to maintain it ourselves. There is something there about the romanticism of a physical toolbox as a sovereign object. If we choose to do that we will need to think of a backup plan as it will be an experimental set up and all our data will stay offline. We won’t have a provider to take care of that.

Our list has been reduced because of our priorities. We need ''SSH'' and we would like to have a VPS. Who has resources for providing VPS? Resources of labour, time, finances, technical knowledge. This made self-defined feminist servers fall out of the selection. How to be financially sustainable, while keeping up with your own values? How to keep up with infrastructural ''maintenance'' if the scale of the users, community, members and data is big?

<blockquote>The services we offer have no defined price, but as you may easily imagine, keeping the whole system working (i.e. hardware and hosting) is very expensive (at the moment it ranges around 13,000 euro every year).<ref>‘Autistici.Org - Services’, accessed 16 July 2024, https://www.autistici.org/services/</ref></blockquote>

Servus and Maadix provide a series of ''free/libre'' tools that can be installed separately through their interface but they also provide a VPS with ''SSH'' access. With Greenhost, Hetzner and Linode there is more flexibility: you can create your own VPS and customize it for your own needs through their interface or the ''terminal'' and install whatever tools you want from scratch without a visual interface.

Technical information and knowledge of digital infrastructure circulate between groups that are tech-oriented with a difficulty to cross with other groups, including feminist servers. The ''sysadmin'' tasks are mostly taken by cis men but feminist servers are radical about that. They find important to have ''sysadmins'' that are not cis men. For example Systerserver and Anarchaserver are learning by themselves together how to do this task.

Many of the servers in the list provide only tools, as a radical way to support small groups, collectives, activists that need privacy and shifting away from Google drive when they want to organise politically and socially. It seems that being limited to tool packages instead of having full access to a server can make things comprehensible and compact for these small groups that have limited ''sysadmin'' knowledge or can’t hire a technician.

[copyrights issue? Screenshot of main page with services by [https://futuretic.fr/ FuturEtic]]

[[copyrights issue? Screenshot of tools from codigosur]]

== Final decision and server transfer ==

We are about to make our decision! Our list ended up to be very small.

On 7th of November in an online call between Helen in Basel, Femke in Brussels and Aggeliki in Rotterdam we limited our list to four options: Constant, Greenhost, Servus, Zaclys. The selection consists of a diversity of scales and positioning that we found interesting to think of. First, we move on with the decision to transfer our mailboxes to Irational hosted at Servus. The rest of the functionalities will be hosted somewhere else.

From our conversations with Femke: “The choice for irational.org opens the possibility for discussions around dependencies, trust and frictions within shared collective servers. Irational.org is an ally art server who uses and maintains its own server for many years. Hosting such a private service at a friend’s environment doesn’t come only with convenience. The closeness to the material of the server makes the dependency more tangible.” [reference/quote from colophon?]

[[copyrights issue? towel design by psaroskalazines|towel design by psaroskalazines]] copyrights?

Femke and I are planning different moments for the server transfer to happen in the office of TITiPI. What it is about to take place comes down into three moments; the backup and save of data from the old server, the installation of the necessary software in the new server and the transfer of the old data in the new server.

Specifically we are following these steps:

* Mail transfer from Gandi to irational
* Create a Virtual Private Server (VPS) in the new server
* Install Apache2 and configure domains
* Install and migrate MediaWiki
** Back up the wiki on the Linode VPS
** Upgrade MediaWiki in Linode
** Install MediaWiki and plugins in the Greenhost VPS
** Transfer database and media files from Linode to Greenhost
* Install Wiki-to-pdf
* Install Pico
* Install and configure Certbot

We find ourselves between two virtual spaces and one office, among other indirectly connected spaces like the rooms of our distant collaborators and the office locations of the servers.

=== Trust relationships ===
By now, 14th of November 2023, the office is warm and cozy. Throughout the time I am writing this report I have been noticing a lot of slow and small efforts to renovate the building and set up the heating, by the artists and organisations who share the space with TITiPI. Another infrastructure that needs care.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 15-06-42.png|thumb|Femke and Aggeliki entering Irational’s server space with Kate]]

On a shared screen together with Femke we get introduced to the mail server of Irational by Kate. We use an audio splitter to share the laptop for the call. Kate described her experience as an amateur ''sysadmin'' that had to spend a lot of time to learn and set up the mail server. After that we start the process that has been documented [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Server_transfer_documentation#Mail_transfer here].

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 14-56-26.png|thumb|Screenshot from the TITiPI’s mail transfer with Kate, Femke and Aggeliki during an online 3 hours call]]

Irational uses the Alpine email client. Kate takes us its depths. That is where we start to set up our new email accounts before we configure them in Thunderbird. Femke gets excited on the fact that she can send emails to other Irational accounts through the ''terminal''.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 15-15-07.png|thumb|Using the email client Alpine]]

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 17-04-20.png|thumb|Screenhost from the moment of looking for the syntax of the TXT records. Finding the right syntax for this value was the biggest challenge. This is part of the ''trust relationships'' between the different providers]]

After some more DNS configurations we test if it is possible to exchange emails with ‘outside’ accounts and especially with Gmail that has many security filters for mail servers other than the commercial ones.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-15 13-59-52.png|thumb|Exchange test emails with a Gmail account]]

After three hours of tryouts we manage to make it work! Very proudly and with enjoyment for sharing a technical task together we say goodbye to each other and arrange a next meeting for a final check up.

=== A choice that comes with discomforts ===
Just one day before the start of TITiPI’s server transfer away from Linode on the 28th of November, Helen found the Swiss server ungleich.ch and it seemed like an interesting choice because of the small scale (in terms of community and servers), their experimental attitude and their choice to reduce energy consumption; they avoid using systems for cooling their servers by spreading the servers at the Swiss mountains in old, abandoned buildings.

Ungleich.ch is one of the good options but it is more expensive than other providers. They offer a cheaper choice by choosing to have only ‘ipv6’. But we had to dig in to understand the difference of ipv4 and ipv6. From wikipedia: “IPv6 is the most recent version of the Internet Protocol, developed to deal with the long-anticipated problem of IPv4 address exhaustion” We found a [https://stats.labs.apnic.net/ipv6 map] that shows which countries have implemented IPv6 and it seems that if we only use this address then many places won’t have access to the website of TITiPI. So we choose to have both addresses.

We also notice that this provider is using Stripe for their payment system. In a [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Frontier parallel universe of TITiPI] we give attention to and critique Stripe because of its connections with the Carbon Removal industry.

[[copyright issues? Ungleich.ch payment system with Stripe]] [include and correctly reference them]

Another urgency appears while we are looking at different choices; together with many other organisations, we have been thinking about ways to host and maintain infrastructures in solidarity with communities and networks we are part of. This would mean, for example, hosting digitally a Palestinian video film archive, or research by sex workers. Solidarity is only partially a question of caring for privacy and security because it matters where and how we host our digital infrastructures and whether these spaces do or do not support the flourishing of different lives and struggles. This need make us think again if the server we choose would be suitable for something like that.

Constant and Servus are two accomplice servers that already provide to TITiPI some of their services. Zaclys is a member of Chatons that support open source values and it is located in France. We contacted them to see if they could be an option but they never responded to us.

We wanted to work with a company that provide ‘green’ infrastructure. Greenhost seem to be a good choice. It provides a familiar interface to us, good support and backup option. It has a positioning as an alternative to AWS. So far great, but what about its ‘green’ hosting vision? Is it a solarpunk vision, a green cloud utopia? Is their infrastructure resource ‘hungry’? What are the privacy limits when the material hosted in the servers is political and sensitive?

We choose Greenhost with all the discomforts that this choice entails and with the desire to keep the critique and dialogue alive.

Only by December 2023 we manage to arrange a call with one of Greenhost’s former Managing Directors to get a feeling and more information about their approach and sensitivity. Accordind to him Greenhost exists in the intersection of activism and technology. It provides consultancy, sustainability solutions in tech projects and structured ''maintenance''; they go for best quality with lowest environmental impact; they maintain the same hardware as much as possible and balance that with higher efficiency; they keep backups at an already existing data center in the university of Amsterdam.

<nowiki>[[paragraph for Greenhost include? from interview with manager?]]</nowiki>

=== Installing, transferring, saving, copying, … ===
On the 28th of November sitting on the sunny corner of the couch next to the radiator, and with warm coffee cups waiting for us on a low table, Femke and I cover our legs with a blanket and open our laptops.

I ask Femke to jumb in a ''tmux'' session for sharing ''terminal'' with this command: <code>''sudo'' ''tmux'' attach -t webserver</code>. We start by cleaning the old server and make backups of the files.

We take a lunch break. Femke finds out that if we eat three recurrent meals every week in the office we can have a nice variety of food; lentiles soup, orecchiette pasta with brocoli, rizzoto with mushrooms and lots of fruits. Sometime ago we decided to make multiple short breaks throughout the day because of computer fatigue. One day I removed all the files from my computer that were older than 90 days because I accidentally run a command on the ''terminal'' instead of a bash script to test the setting up of [https://gitlab.constantvzw.org/titipi/burrow Burrow]. I left this comment in the initial script:

<code># VERY DANGEROUS COMMAND find *txt -mindepth 1 -mtime +$RETAIN -delete</code>
The next day we set up the new server and install all the necessary software including a new version of the MediaWiki. We arrange a meeting with Martino Morandi, member of Constant, who created the wiki-to-pdf to help us installing this software and transfer the MediaWiki in the new server. On the 1st of December we successfully install the wiki-to-pdf and because of limited time we decided to meet one more time at the end of the month for the rest.

[[File:Virtual-env-debian.png|thumb|Screenshot from the wiki-to-pdf installation to the new server with Martino, Femke, Aggeliki. Debian supports a different way to create virtual environments for installing python packages and libraries. We try it but it failed.]]

On the 28th we meet with Martino online to complete the transfer, which includes copying the old database of MediaWiki, activate the old plugins and fix any issues on the way. We are all located in different countries (Italy, Greece, Belgium) and so we share a ''tmux'' session. We follow the guides but on the way we had to do some research and configure a lot of things to make the MediaWiki work. Martino was hunting a php module. It seemed that php has shifted to free software culture in an attempt to find another business model. It is not surprising it happens in the context of Ubuntu. The issue is recorded [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Server_transfer_documentation#MediaWiki_upgrade_issues here].

[[File:Firefox Screenshot 2024-01-10T13-59-40.398Z.png|thumb|"Is Titipi.org down?" Helen asks after the transfer. It seems that her browser cache was preventing her from seeing the website]]

The process is documented in our diary and then transferred to a [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Server_transfer_documentation wiki page]. By January 2024 the server transfer and the deletion of our Linode account has been completed.

== Glossaries ==

Italicized terms in the report are included in these glossaries:

* [https://varia.zone/ATNOFS/ATNOFS-screen.pdf Glossary of A Traversal Network of Feminist Servers (ATNOFS) publication]
* [[Glossary|TITiPI's glossary]]

== References ==

* Panashe Chigumadzi, ‘Can White South Africa Live up to Ubuntu, the African Philosophy Tutu Globalised?’, The Guardian, 31 December 2021, sec. Opinion, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec/31/white-south-africa-ubuntu-african-tutu
* ‘Community Servers - Monoskop’, accessed 16 July 2024, https://monoskop.org/Community_servers
* David Carroll, ‘How To Open An Outpost In Social Media Exile | TechPolicy.Press’, Tech Policy Press, 26 November 2022, <nowiki>https://techpolicy.press/how-to-open-an-outpost-in-social-media-exile</nowiki>.
* Elizabeth Landau, ‘Tech Confronts Its Use of the Labels “Master” and “Slave”’, ''Wired'', accessed 16 July 2024, <nowiki>https://www.wired.com/story/tech-confronts-use-labels-master-slave/</nowiki>.
* ‘GitHub Abandons “master” Term to Avoid Slavery Row’, 15 June 2020, https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-53050955
* Femke Snelting, ‘Infrastructure Solidarity’, Ardeth. A Magazine on the Power of the Project, no. 8 (1 November 2021): 45–47
* ‘Master-Slave Terminology Alternatives You Can Use Right Now | TheServerSide’, TheServerSide.com, accessed 16 July 2024, https://www.theserverside.com/opinion/Master-slave-terminology-alternatives-you-can-use-right-now
* ‘Racist Computer Engineering Words: “Master,” “Slave” and the Fight Over Offensive Terms - The New York Times’, accessed 16 July 2024, <nowiki>https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/13/technology/racist-computer-engineering-terms-ietf.html</nowiki>.
* ‘Replace “Master” and “Slave” Terms in Redis · Issue #3185 · Redis/Redis’, GitHub, accessed 16 July 2024, https://github.com/redis/redis/issues/3185
* ‘Ubuntu: A Black Radical Demand for Reparations’, THE FUNAMBULIST MAGAZINE, 25 October 2023, https://thefunambulist.net/magazine/redefining-our-terms/ubuntu-a-black-radical-demand-for-reparations.

== Colophon ==

The text was drafted in pad.xpub.nl in Markdown and then transferred in this wiki.

== Footnotes ==

From cloud to crowd: a report on a server transfer

2024-07-16T14:40:38Z

Angeliki:

= From cloud to crowd<ref>The term comes from ... (not sure if it is included in the title)</ref>: A report on a server transfer =

This text is a report on a server migration that took place within the institutional framework of [https://titipi.org/ The Institute for Technology in the Public Interest (TITiPI)], a trans-practice gathering of activists, artists, engineers and theorists. TITiPI convenes communities to articulate, activate and re-imagine together what computational technologies in the 'public interest' might be. This report is an infrastructural ethnography and aims to rethink, through a technical process, what ''hosting'' a server means for a community, institution, cultural organisation dealing with technological discomforts and often inaccessible complex digital infrastructures.

A ''server'' is a computer (or a piece of software/hardware) that provides functionalities via a network (Internet). A ''server migration'' is the process of moving data and transferring software from one server to another with the use of specified tools. Performing such process accommodates a practical and technical solution to fix the problem of an outdated server that is slow or has limited storage. But it also affects the values, the structure and infrastructural imaginations of the organisations it supports. TITiPI desired(s) to go with hosting and maintain its own virtual private server instead of outsourcing these services to external tech companies. In times of server providers’ scaling up ( ‘''cloud hosting''’ ) and digitizing governmental bureaucracies what does it mean to host your own digital space for supporting your communities and work? What does it mean to have an independent infrastructure? What (non-)dependencies are chosen or taken for granted by institutions when using hosting services?

As a researcher at TITiPI I have been caring for the task to investigate this server migration and execute it together with TITiPI’s member Femke Snelting. We meet weekly to keep track and make decisions. We share a ''markdown'' file hosted in the git of the cultural association [https://constantvzw.org/site/ Constant] that includes a diary of the server migration and reflections. Every now and then we meet online with our colleague Helen Pritchard, to discuss and share the process. This report shares extracts from the server diary and stories from the process.

== Migration or …? ==

In the cold newly installed office of TITiPI located in the Koekelberg district of Brussels, I open Chromium in my computer, that runs the operating system Ubuntu, in order to translate quickly − with the installed Google Translate plugin; later I found out there is a DeepL version − the web pages of the different cooperatives, associations, companies that provide hosting services. While doing that I have this disturbing thought in my head that I try to ignore: the word ‘migration’ as a technical term to describe the movement from one server to the other. It makes me think of an [https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/13/technology/racist-computer-engineering-terms-ietf.html online conversation], happening for a few years now, about replacing computer engineering terminology to stop prevalence of racism in tech. Specifically the conversation [https://www.wired.com/story/tech-confronts-use-labels-master-slave/ evolves around the terms] ‘master/slave’, where one computing process or entity controls another, and ‘blacklists/whitelists’ used for directories of those things that are explicitly banned or allowed. Using metaphors like that for a technical process de-contextualizes a word from its origins and unavoidably perpetuates social injustices. It also shows that the context where such choices of language are made is privileged and untouched or non-triggered by these terms. White male computer engineers have build up this language. Could words like transferring, sharing, moving, copying, re-installing, shifting replace the word ‘migration’? From this point on in the report I decide to use the term ‘transfer’.

‘Ubuntu’ is also a word extracted from its original context. It is coming from the African Ubuntu philosophy. According to the creators of the software:

<blockquote>ubuntu |oǒ’boǒntoō| Ubuntu is an ancient African word meaning ‘humanity to others’. It is often described as reminding us that ‘I am what I am because of who we all are’. We bring the spirit of Ubuntu to the world of computers and software. The Ubuntu distribution represents the best of what the world’s software community has shared with the world. <ref>‘About the Ubuntu Project’, Ubuntu, accessed 16 July 2024, https://ubuntu.com/about</ref>
</blockquote>

Paraphrasing [https://thefunambulist.net/magazine/redefining-our-terms/ubuntu-a-black-radical-demand-for-reparations Panashe Chigumadzi] words: in contrast to the western conception of the human as individual, the African conception of the person is a social being who is always becoming, defined by and being responsible for the personhood of the others. "(T)he African philosophy best understood through the proverb found in Bantu languages across the continent, 'umuntu ngumuntu ngabanye bantu' (a person is a person through other people". <ref>Panashe Chigumadzi, ‘Can White South Africa Live up to Ubuntu, the African Philosophy Tutu Globalised?’, The Guardian, 31 December 2021, sec. Opinion, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec/31/white-south-africa-ubuntu-african-tutu</ref>

<blockquote>(D)espite the flourishing of Ubuntu in post-apartheid discourse, lending its name to software, businesses, books and philanthropic organisations, South Africa is a country in which we have, as Dladla argues, Ubuntu without Abantu. Just as Black people have been dispossessed of their land, Ubuntu has been dispossessed of its deeply radical demands for ethical historical and social relations among people. (...) post apartheid Ubuntu mistranslation 'I am because we are', individualized and interpersonalised Ubuntu, Christianised Ubuntu, mistranslated in order to justify crimes and violence. In Ubuntu violence can be punished even after generations, the misinterpretation of the term allowed individual forgiveness. <ref>‘Ubuntu: A Black Radical Demand for Reparations’, THE FUNAMBULIST MAGAZINE, 25 October 2023, https://thefunambulist.net/magazine/redefining-our-terms/ubuntu-a-black-radical-demand-for-reparations</ref>
</blockquote>

I skip these thoughts and I continue browsing the list of servers. While trying to stay focused something other distracts me; I encounter an [https://www.oziosi.org/ autonomous Italian server] with the title translated with DeepL: “:: a shelter for digital exiles ::” and an image of a woman, a child and a man leaving their home. Also a small introduction: “Exiled from the global village of social networks, we claim an internet that is a simple means of communication: immaterial, anonymous, imaginary, public when it makes sense and secret when we feel the need.”. I am wondering what does this mean for actual exiles having to protect their privacy when communicating back home? [https://techpolicy.press/how-to-open-an-outpost-in-social-media-exile/ ‘Social media exiles’] and ‘Twitter migration’ are terms used often after Twitter became X and users have moved to the Fediverse or other alternatives.

[[Screenshot of the 'digital exiles' image, image not included because of copyrights issues?]]

== TITiPI’s case of server transfer ==
On the 27th of September, sitting at the long desks side to side, Femke and I have an online call with Helen, while looking at the depths of our Virtual Private Server (VPS), provided by Linode, that runs Ubuntu on our laptop screens. Linode is an American hosting provider focusing on ''Linux''-based virtual machines originally. The server is physically located in the UK. TITiPI currently uses the Linode server that Helen set up for hosting her own projects. She has been paying for Linode’s monthly fees so far.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-10-11 14-47-06.png|thumb|Screenshot of Linode Ubuntu server overview and ''terminal'' that shows a moment of figuring out what takes space in the server through ''SSH'' access]]

At the time it seemed a good choice, because it is based in UK, is ''Linux'' friendly and an alternative to Amazon Web Services (AWS), even though it was already identifying as ‘''cloud hosting''’. But in February 2023 it has been acquired by the American company Akamai that aims to scale up for [https://www.linode.com/global-infrastructure/ “computing power, optimizing performance and agility.”]. Akamai is actively changing its server policies into an increasingly intense cloud logic. This pushed forward the desire to move to a new place.

[[Screenshot of Linode website referring to scalability -- copyright issues?]]

At the moment in Linode we run pico, a flat CMS for the website https://titipi.org. There is a Mediawiki (you are reading a Mediawiki page right now) for notes and collective writing. On the wiki, we also publish our statutes, guidelines and other instituting documents. The wiki has a custom extension, called wiki-to-pdf. Each of these services will need a different way to be transferred. One approach is to build the new server space from scratch, copy the data with rsync and transfer only the Mediawiki, which includes installing a new version and copy the database and the media files.

While preparing to transfer the tools we are defining what are the practical needs and desirable priorities; we ended up on these server requirements:
* ''SSH'' access and wish for VPS
* affordable price (around €20/month)
* run a Free Software operating system, preferably Debian
* involves community work - slowing down, resisting to scaling and growth or ‘decloudification’ (small network of partners, less virtualization approach, location of servers nearby etc)
* 25-40GB storage space, 1-2 cores, 2-4GB RAM
* environmental angle
* service support in a language that we all understand (English mostly)

This server transfer happens with an intersectional and feminist approach and the desire to keep questioning. While moving away from Linode we include both the technical and the conceptual thinking in the process. There are a few things that we are looking at:
* Where to be transferred to or what services to transfer to?
* How to be transferred and what to tranfer?
* What terminology, language we use?
* What (other) narratives of server hosting can we construct?
TITiPI seeks to exist with an infrastructure that supports inter-dependent practices and solidarity across struggles. It develops Counter Cloud Actions [ref] as a way to scale down, de-cloudify, articulate, contest and re-imagine the implications of computational infrastructures (‘the cloud’).

<blockquote>TITiPI develop tools from feminisms, queer theory, Free, Libre and Open Source software, intersectionality, anti-coloniality, disability studies, historical materialism and artistic practice to generate currently inexistent vocabularies, imaginaries and methodologies. TITiPI functions as an infrastructure to establish new ways in which socio-technical practices and technologies might support the public interest. <ref>TITiPI, ‘Infrables’, Tangible Cloud Archives, https://docs.tangible-cloud.be/publications-pdf/02_snelting.pdf.</ref></blockquote>

We are looking for servers that aspire some of these values.

=== A relational infrastructure narrative/ infra-mutuality/ inter-infrastructural narrative ===
[[File:Elastic solidarities.png|thumb]]
In June 2023 TITiPI received an email from Gandi to renew the domain titipi.org in 6 days, not realising that at the same time we would need to start paying for our titipi.org email hosting. We had missed reading to the end of another email sent in the middle of June, entitled: 'Pricing update'.

We consider to work with Kate Rich to move our mailboxes to the [http://irational.org/ Irational server], soon to be installed on a Raspberry Pi, hosted at Servus. Currently it is in a rack in the UK. We decide to do this transition slowly and until then renew the emails for 1-2 months through Gandi. Irational server resists virtualization, and as an art community project it makes it an interesting choice.

But why to go through all this effort and not just use one cloud server with mailboxes, file storage and web server together? TITiPI’s response to the question of building institutional digital infrastructure embodies an archipelagic and non-sovereign approach to dependencies. Rather than building a centralised server based on ‘cloud’ from which connections with other institutions and collectives can happen, it conceptualizes inter-infrastructural practices; from the creation of a [https://gitlab.constantvzw.org/titipi/burrow backup script] for saving locally etherpad pads from other servers, hosting emails at an art server (https://irational.org), creating an [https://books.lumbung.space/shelf/26 online bookshelf] on lumbung.space, using the ''XMPP'' chat from Varia to recording conversations with the ''sysadmin'' that maintain the other servers. The institution re-imagines technological dependencies in dialogue with cultural institutions and art collectives. [[File:Titipi-infra-diagram-JAN-24.png|thumb|none|alt=A diagram of TITiPI’s infrastructure. The diagram categorizes the elements according to tools/software (box), structure/organisational form (circle) and place (dashed line). For example Jitsi is the software, Greenhost is the organisation, meet.greenhost.net is the place.|A diagram of TITiPI’s infrastructure. The diagram categorizes the elements according to tools/software (box), structure/organisational form (circle) and place (dashed line). For example Jitsi is the software, Greenhost is the organisation, meet.greenhost.net is the place.]]

How to give life to the common space of TITiPI’s hosting infrastructures? What about building up social dependencies between the ones that host and the ones who are hosted as opposed to a technical independence? Infrastructural imaginations are often built by the ''Big Tech'' industry and governmental institutions. Instead, TITiPI practices a fluid inter-institutional approach supported by [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Infra_colophon a variety of hosts].

=== Selection of server providers ===
On the 7th of November through a shared screen at the [https://meet.greenhost.net/ video conferencing software Jitsi of Greenhost] we all three check a list of server providers I collected on a spreadsheet hosted in Constant’s cloud storage (built with Nextcloud software) where TITiPI has an account. I looked at associations, companies/businesses, cooperatives, communities coming from commercial context to social struggles, activist, feminist and other. Through a [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/List_server_networks list of networks] I found various servers mostly from Latin America and Europe.

The concept of autonomy, sovereignty, independence or self-managing characterizes most of the servers in the list. Some of them, like [https://www.autistici.org/ Autistici] promote this concept as a way to support anti-capitalist infrastructure and protect the privacy of the users as opposed to the ''Big Tech'' software practices.

<blockquote>The vision is that we - the members of the cooperative - own our own data. This implies and has as a consequence that we will have to own our own infrastructure and have insight and control over the software we use to communicate on the web.<ref>‘Community Servers - Monoskop’, accessed 16 July 2024, https://monoskop.org/Community_servers</ref></blockquote>

Femke had a hunch: "‘technological sovereignty’ and ‘data-sovereignty’ continue to be orientation devices to organise around. ‘Sovereignty’, together with ‘freedom’, ‘independence’ and ‘autonomy’, form an ideological cluster that implicitly and sometimes explicitly foregrounds separation rather than relation."

Servers can act as independent spaces but are also cultural devices and vibrant spaces. They can manifest different aspects of a full life and reach out to a multiplicity of entities.

Servus and Greenhost, seem to be two of our best choices as they cover a lot of the priorities and values of TITiPI. As one can read from their descriptions they both strive for owning their own data servers and data nodes (they have their own ''IP addresses'') and be independent from third parties. The big difference is the scale of the infrastructure and their community and network.

<blockquote>Greenhost fully owns and controls its hardware, infrastructure and uplinks. This ensures independence from third parties and proper access control. On this hardware we run our fully virtualised platform. We stand for an Open Internet, and have always embraced open source software.<ref>‘Greenhost.Net | the Sustainable Web’, accessed 16 July 2024, https://greenhost.net/.</ref></blockquote>

<blockquote>We (Servus) do not pass on any data to third parties. You will not receive commercial advertising from us or third parties. We are easily accessible and answer your questions personally. We and our servers are located at Kirchengasse 4 in Linz, Austria.<ref>‘Book Of Servus’, Book Of Servus, accessed 16 July 2024, https://book.servus.at/en/home/.</ref></blockquote>

Even though Greenhost wants to reduce ecological damage, it does that mainly through hardware reductions and does not address scale. They have plans to expand and are part of a network of partners that want to transform Rotterdam into a big hub of data nodes for the upcoming digital transition. Linode is even bigger, it goes for [[https://www.akamai.com/newsroom/press-release/akamai-takes-cloud-computing-to-the-edge| "(p)lanetary scale"]]. Servus on the other hand has one room of data servers, is closer to the scale of their community and they maintain personal relations with them.

[[Image of the server room at Servus at Linz|Image of the server room at Servus at Linz?]]

=== Community server, feminist server, trans*feminist server, radical server, autonomous server, commercial server, art server, free server, ethical server, solidarity-based server, cooperative server, associative server, independent server, alternative server, non-commercial server, … ===
The spreadsheet starts to grow because of an endless/exhaustive burrow of small and big providers.

Some are outdated. 
Some are messy. 
Some have broken links. 
Some are [https://www.julienth37.fr/vps hard to understand]. 
Some require [https://www.actiu.info/index.en.html a lot of engagement]. 
Some use a language that imitates the narratives of ''Big Tech'' and ''agile'' computing. 
Some promote seamless “promissory logic” and “high hopes for a brighter future” (ref) 
Some are big or are scaling up (in matter of space, data centers, partners, users etc). 
Some support NGO’s or sport clubs.

[[copyright issues? Screenshot from main page of Co-op Web]]

We also looked at their financial model. Many radical servers stay small, are volunteer based, like [https://www.autistici.org/ Autistici]. and go for horizontal organisational structures. Feminist and activist servers provide space in the internet for the ones who don’t have the means to organise otherwise. The resources and ways of organising for these servers are different from the cooperatives or associations whose structure is inherited from the model they are registered with.

[[File:ATNOFS-Varia-insert-ooooo.jpg|thumb|ooooo atnofs insert diagrams from varia, systerserver, servus]]

TITiPI acknowledges and is connected to the history of community, art and feminist servers and wants to support this network. The art servers started as a way to make autonomous self-managed servers that support artists values and practices. They are often financed by cultural or private funds.

<blockquote>I joined (Irational) sometime in 2000s, I can't remember when and originally it was much more a collective of people working together and then since the early 2010's I think, mid 2010's, there was a bit of a reshuffle of personnel and stuff, so the constituency changed to a smaller group and we actually reformed. We were going to disband Irational and then we actually reformed as an art server collective and we decided we are not really working together but what we have in common is that we're using the server and that is actually what the collective is now. It's the collective that uses the server together and wants to use the server together. And another real defining feature of the server the whole time has been resisting virtualization. 

— quote from [[None of this experiment is evident|interview of Kate Rich by Femke Snelting]] [needs rewritting] </blockquote>

The screen seems to become brighter as my eyes get tired. What if we skip the online hosting and create a local physical server at TITiPI’s office next to the desks, in a corner, on a Raspberry Pi? All our data would stay on this machine and we would connect with ''SSH'' from home, but then we will also have to maintain it ourselves. There is something there about the romanticism of a physical toolbox as a sovereign object. If we choose to do that we will need to think of a backup plan as it will be an experimental set up and all our data will stay offline. We won’t have a provider to take care of that.

Our list has been reduced because of our priorities. We need ''SSH'' and we would like to have a VPS. Who has resources for providing VPS? Resources of labour, time, finances, technical knowledge. This made self-defined feminist servers fall out of the selection. How to be financially sustainable, while keeping up with your own values? How to keep up with infrastructural ''maintenance'' if the scale of the users, community, members and data is big?

<blockquote>The services we offer have no defined price, but as you may easily imagine, keeping the whole system working (i.e. hardware and hosting) is very expensive (at the moment it ranges around 13,000 euro every year).<ref>‘Autistici.Org - Services’, accessed 16 July 2024, https://www.autistici.org/services/</ref></blockquote>

Servus and Maadix provide a series of ''free/libre'' tools that can be installed separately through their interface but they also provide a VPS with ''SSH'' access. With Greenhost, Hetzner and Linode there is more flexibility: you can create your own VPS and customize it for your own needs through their interface or the ''terminal'' and install whatever tools you want from scratch without a visual interface.

Technical information and knowledge of digital infrastructure circulate between groups that are tech-oriented with a difficulty to cross with other groups, including feminist servers. The ''sysadmin'' tasks are mostly taken by cis men but feminist servers are radical about that. They find important to have ''sysadmins'' that are not cis men. For example Systerserver and Anarchaserver are learning by themselves together how to do this task.

Many of the servers in the list provide only tools, as a radical way to support small groups, collectives, activists that need privacy and shifting away from Google drive when they want to organise politically and socially. It seems that being limited to tool packages instead of having full access to a server can make things comprehensible and compact for these small groups that have limited ''sysadmin'' knowledge or can’t hire a technician.

[copyrights issue? Screenshot of main page with services by [https://futuretic.fr/ FuturEtic]]

[[copyrights issue? Screenshot of tools from codigosur]]

== Final decision and server transfer ==

We are about to make our decision! Our list ended up to be very small.

On 7th of November in an online call between Helen in Basel, Femke in Brussels and Aggeliki in Rotterdam we limited our list to four options: Constant, Greenhost, Servus, Zaclys. The selection consists of a diversity of scales and positioning that we found interesting to think of. First, we move on with the decision to transfer our mailboxes to Irational hosted at Servus. The rest of the functionalities will be hosted somewhere else.

From our conversations with Femke: “The choice for irational.org opens the possibility for discussions around dependencies, trust and frictions within shared collective servers. Irational.org is an ally art server who uses and maintains its own server for many years. Hosting such a private service at a friend’s environment doesn’t come only with convenience. The closeness to the material of the server makes the dependency more tangible.” [reference/quote from colophon?]

[[copyrights issue? towel design by psaroskalazines|towel design by psaroskalazines]] copyrights?

Femke and I are planning different moments for the server transfer to happen in the office of TITiPI. What it is about to take place comes down into three moments; the backup and save of data from the old server, the installation of the necessary software in the new server and the transfer of the old data in the new server.

Specifically we are following these steps:

* Mail transfer from Gandi to irational
* Create a Virtual Private Server (VPS) in the new server
* Install Apache2 and configure domains
* Install and migrate MediaWiki
** Back up the wiki on the Linode VPS
** Upgrade MediaWiki in Linode
** Install MediaWiki and plugins in the Greenhost VPS
** Transfer database and media files from Linode to Greenhost
* Install Wiki-to-pdf
* Install Pico
* Install and configure Certbot

We find ourselves between two virtual spaces and one office, among other indirectly connected spaces like the rooms of our distant collaborators and the office locations of the servers.

=== Trust relationships ===
By now, 14th of November 2023, the office is warm and cozy. Throughout the time I am writing this report I have been noticing a lot of slow and small efforts to renovate the building and set up the heating, by the artists and organisations who share the space with TITiPI. Another infrastructure that needs care.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 15-06-42.png|thumb|Femke and Aggeliki entering Irational’s server space with Kate]]

On a shared screen together with Femke we get introduced to the mail server of Irational by Kate. We use an audio splitter to share the laptop for the call. Kate described her experience as an amateur ''sysadmin'' that had to spend a lot of time to learn and set up the mail server. After that we start the process that has been documented [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Server_transfer_documentation#Mail_transfer here].

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 14-56-26.png|thumb|Screenshot from the TITiPI’s mail transfer with Kate, Femke and Aggeliki during an online 3 hours call]]

Irational uses the Alpine email client. Kate takes us its depths. That is where we start to set up our new email accounts before we configure them in Thunderbird. Femke gets excited on the fact that she can send emails to other Irational accounts through the ''terminal''.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 15-15-07.png|thumb|Using the email client Alpine]]

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 17-04-20.png|thumb|Screenhost from the moment of looking for the syntax of the TXT records. Finding the right syntax for this value was the biggest challenge. This is part of the ''trust relationships'' between the different providers]]

After some more DNS configurations we test if it is possible to exchange emails with ‘outside’ accounts and especially with Gmail that has many security filters for mail servers other than the commercial ones.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-15 13-59-52.png|thumb|Exchange test emails with a Gmail account]]

After three hours of tryouts we manage to make it work! Very proudly and with enjoyment for sharing a technical task together we say goodbye to each other and arrange a next meeting for a final check up.

=== A choice that comes with discomforts ===
Just one day before the start of TITiPI’s server transfer away from Linode on the 28th of November, Helen found the Swiss server ungleich.ch and it seemed like an interesting choice because of the small scale (in terms of community and servers), their experimental attitude and their choice to reduce energy consumption; they avoid using systems for cooling their servers by spreading the servers at the Swiss mountains in old, abandoned buildings.

Ungleich.ch is one of the good options but it is more expensive than other providers. They offer a cheaper choice by choosing to have only ‘ipv6’. But we had to dig in to understand the difference of ipv4 and ipv6. From wikipedia: “IPv6 is the most recent version of the Internet Protocol, developed to deal with the long-anticipated problem of IPv4 address exhaustion” We found a [https://stats.labs.apnic.net/ipv6 map] that shows which countries have implemented IPv6 and it seems that if we only use this address then many places won’t have access to the website of TITiPI. So we choose to have both addresses.

We also notice that this provider is using Stripe for their payment system. In a [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Frontier parallel universe of TITiPI] we give attention to and critique Stripe because of its connections with the Carbon Removal industry.

[[copyright issues? Ungleich.ch payment system with Stripe]]

Another urgency appears while we are looking at different choices; together with many other organisations, we have been thinking about ways to host and maintain infrastructures in solidarity with communities and networks we are part of. This would mean, for example, hosting digitally a Palestinian video film archive, or research by sex workers. Solidarity is only partially a question of caring for privacy and security because it matters where and how we host our digital infrastructures and whether these spaces do or do not support the flourishing of different lives and struggles. This need make us think again if the server we choose would be suitable for something like that.

Constant and Servus are two accomplice servers that already provide to TITiPI some of their services. Zaclys is a member of Chatons that support open source values and it is located in France. We contacted them to see if they could be an option but they never responded to us.

We wanted to work with a company that provide ‘green’ infrastructure. Greenhost seem to be a good choice. It provides a familiar interface to us, good support and backup option. It has a positioning as an alternative to AWS. So far great, but what about its ‘green’ hosting vision? Is it a solarpunk vision, a green cloud utopia? Is their infrastructure resource ‘hungry’? What are the privacy limits when the material hosted in the servers is political and sensitive?

We choose Greenhost with all the discomforts that this choice entails and with the desire to keep the critique and dialogue alive.

Only by December 2023 we manage to arrange a call with one of Greenhost’s former Managing Directors to get a feeling and more information about their approach and sensitivity. Accordind to him Greenhost exists in the intersection of activism and technology. It provides consultancy, sustainability solutions in tech projects and structured ''maintenance''; they go for best quality with lowest environmental impact; they maintain the same hardware as much as possible and balance that with higher efficiency; they keep backups at an already existing data center in the university of Amsterdam.

<nowiki>[[paragraph for Greenhost include? from interview with manager?]]</nowiki>

=== Installing, tranferring, saving, copying, … ===
On the 28th of November sitting on the sunny corner of the couch next to the radiator, and with warm coffee cups waiting for us on a low table, Femke and I cover our legs with a blanket and open our laptops.

I ask Femke to jumb in a ''tmux'' session for sharing ''terminal'' with this command: <code>''sudo'' ''tmux'' attach -t webserver</code>. We start by cleaning the old server and make backups of the files.

We take a lunch break. Femke finds out that if we eat three recurrent meals every week in the office we can have a nice variety of food; lentiles soup, orecchiette pasta with brocoli, rizzoto with mushrooms and lots of fruits. Sometime ago we decided to make multiple short breaks throughout the day because of computer fatigue. One day I removed all the files from my computer that were older than 90 days because I accidentally run a command on the ''terminal'' instead of a bash script to test the setting up of [https://gitlab.constantvzw.org/titipi/burrow Burrow]. I left this comment in the initial script:

<code># VERY DANGEROUS COMMAND find *txt -mindepth 1 -mtime +$RETAIN -delete</code>
The next day we set up the new server and install all the necessary software including a new version of the MediaWiki. We arrange a meeting with Martino Morandi, member of Constant, who created the wiki-to-pdf to help us installing this software and tranfer the MediaWiki in the new server. On the 1st of December we successfully install the wiki-to-pdf and because of limited time we decided to meet one more time at the end of the month for the rest.

[[File:Virtual-env-debian.png|thumb|Screenshot from the wiki-to-pdf installation to the new server with Martino, Femke, Aggeliki. Debian supports a different way to create virtual environments for installing python packages and libraries. We try it but it failed.]]

On the 28th we meet with Martino online to complete the transfer, which includes copying the old database of MediaWiki, activate the old plugins and fix any issues on the way. We are all located in different countries (Italy, Greece, Belgium) and so we share a ''tmux'' session. We follow the guides but on the way we had to do some research and configure a lot of things to make the MediaWiki work. Martino was hunting a php module. It seemed that php has shifted to free software culture in an attempt to find another business model. It is not surprising it happens in the context of Ubuntu. The issue is recorded [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Server_transfer_documentation#MediaWiki_upgrade_issues here].

[[File:Firefox Screenshot 2024-01-10T13-59-40.398Z.png|thumb|"Is Titipi.org down?" Helen asks after the transfer. It seems that her browser cache was preventing her from seeing the website]]

The process is documented in our diary and then transferred to a [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Server_transfer_documentation wiki page]. By January 2024 the server transfer and the deletion of our Linode account has been completed.

== Glossaries ==

Italicized terms in the report are included in these glossaries:

* [https://varia.zone/ATNOFS/ATNOFS-screen.pdf Glossary of A Traversal Network of Feminist Servers (ATNOFS) publication]
* [[Glossary|TITiPI's glossary]]

== References ==

* Panashe Chigumadzi, ‘Can White South Africa Live up to Ubuntu, the African Philosophy Tutu Globalised?’, The Guardian, 31 December 2021, sec. Opinion, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec/31/white-south-africa-ubuntu-african-tutu
* ‘Community Servers - Monoskop’, accessed 16 July 2024, https://monoskop.org/Community_servers
* David Carroll, ‘How To Open An Outpost In Social Media Exile | TechPolicy.Press’, Tech Policy Press, 26 November 2022, <nowiki>https://techpolicy.press/how-to-open-an-outpost-in-social-media-exile</nowiki>.
* Elizabeth Landau, ‘Tech Confronts Its Use of the Labels “Master” and “Slave”’, ''Wired'', accessed 16 July 2024, <nowiki>https://www.wired.com/story/tech-confronts-use-labels-master-slave/</nowiki>.
* ‘GitHub Abandons “master” Term to Avoid Slavery Row’, 15 June 2020, https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-53050955
* Femke Snelting, ‘Infrastructure Solidarity’, Ardeth. A Magazine on the Power of the Project, no. 8 (1 November 2021): 45–47
* ‘Master-Slave Terminology Alternatives You Can Use Right Now | TheServerSide’, TheServerSide.com, accessed 16 July 2024, https://www.theserverside.com/opinion/Master-slave-terminology-alternatives-you-can-use-right-now
* ‘Racist Computer Engineering Words: “Master,” “Slave” and the Fight Over Offensive Terms - The New York Times’, accessed 16 July 2024, <nowiki>https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/13/technology/racist-computer-engineering-terms-ietf.html</nowiki>.
* ‘Replace “Master” and “Slave” Terms in Redis · Issue #3185 · Redis/Redis’, GitHub, accessed 16 July 2024, https://github.com/redis/redis/issues/3185
* ‘Ubuntu: A Black Radical Demand for Reparations’, THE FUNAMBULIST MAGAZINE, 25 October 2023, https://thefunambulist.net/magazine/redefining-our-terms/ubuntu-a-black-radical-demand-for-reparations.

== Colophon ==

The text was drafted in pad.xpub.nl in Markdown and then transferred in this wiki.

== Footnotes ==

From cloud to crowd: a report on a server transfer

2024-07-16T14:34:46Z

Angeliki: /* Community server, feminist server, trans*feminist server, radical server, autonomous server, commercial server, art server, free server, ethical server, solidarity-based server, cooperative server, associative server, independent server, altern */

= From cloud to crowd<ref>The term comes from ... (not sure if it is included in the title)</ref>: A report on a server transfer =

This text is a report on a server migration that took place within the institutional framework of [https://titipi.org/ The Institute for Technology in the Public Interest (TITiPI)], a trans-practice gathering of activists, artists, engineers and theorists. TITiPI convenes communities to articulate, activate and re-imagine together what computational technologies in the 'public interest' might be. This report is an infrastructural ethnography and aims to rethink, through a technical process, what ''hosting'' a server means for a community, institution, cultural organisation dealing with technological discomforts and often inaccessible complex digital infrastructures.

A ''server'' is a computer (or a piece of software/hardware) that provides functionalities via a network (Internet). A ''server migration'' is the process of moving data and transferring software from one server to another with the use of specified tools. Performing such process accommodates a practical and technical solution to fix the problem of an outdated server that is slow or has limited storage. But it also affects the values, the structure and infrastructural imaginations of the organisations it supports. TITiPI desired(s) to go with hosting and maintain its own virtual private server instead of outsourcing these services to external tech companies. In times of server providers’ scaling up ( ‘''cloud hosting''’ ) and digitizing governmental bureaucracies what does it mean to host your own digital space for supporting your communities and work? What does it mean to have an independent infrastructure? What (non-)dependencies are chosen or taken for granted by institutions when using hosting services?

As a researcher at TITiPI I have been caring for the task to investigate this server migration and execute it together with TITiPI’s member Femke Snelting. We meet weekly to keep track and make decisions. We share a ''markdown'' file hosted in the git of the cultural association [https://constantvzw.org/site/ Constant] that includes a diary of the server migration and reflections. Every now and then we meet online with our colleague Helen Pritchard, to discuss and share the process. This report shares extracts from the server diary and stories from the process.

== Migration or …? ==

In the cold newly installed office of TITiPI located in the Koekelberg district of Brussels, I open Chromium in my computer, that runs the operating system Ubuntu, in order to translate quickly − with the installed Google Translate plugin; later I found out there is a DeepL version − the web pages of the different cooperatives, associations, companies that provide hosting services. While doing that I have this disturbing thought in my head that I try to ignore: the word ‘migration’ as a technical term to describe the movement from one server to the other. It makes me think of an [https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/13/technology/racist-computer-engineering-terms-ietf.html online conversation], happening for a few years now, about replacing computer engineering terminology to stop prevalence of racism in tech. Specifically the conversation [https://www.wired.com/story/tech-confronts-use-labels-master-slave/ evolves around the terms] ‘master/slave’, where one computing process or entity controls another, and ‘blacklists/whitelists’ used for directories of those things that are explicitly banned or allowed. Using metaphors like that for a technical process de-contextualizes a word from its origins and unavoidably perpetuates social injustices. It also shows that the context where such choices of language are made is privileged and untouched or non-triggered by these terms. White male computer engineers have build up this language. Could words like transferring, sharing, moving, copying, re-installing, shifting replace the word ‘migration’? From this point on in the report I decide to use the term ‘transfer’.

‘Ubuntu’ is also a word extracted from its original context. It is coming from the African Ubuntu philosophy. According to the creators of the software:

<blockquote>ubuntu |oǒ’boǒntoō| Ubuntu is an ancient African word meaning ‘humanity to others’. It is often described as reminding us that ‘I am what I am because of who we all are’. We bring the spirit of Ubuntu to the world of computers and software. The Ubuntu distribution represents the best of what the world’s software community has shared with the world. <ref>‘About the Ubuntu Project’, Ubuntu, accessed 16 July 2024, https://ubuntu.com/about</ref>
</blockquote>

Paraphrasing [https://thefunambulist.net/magazine/redefining-our-terms/ubuntu-a-black-radical-demand-for-reparations Panashe Chigumadzi] words: in contrast to the western conception of the human as individual, the African conception of the person is a social being who is always becoming, defined by and being responsible for the personhood of the others. "(T)he African philosophy best understood through the proverb found in Bantu languages across the continent, 'umuntu ngumuntu ngabanye bantu' (a person is a person through other people". <ref>Panashe Chigumadzi, ‘Can White South Africa Live up to Ubuntu, the African Philosophy Tutu Globalised?’, The Guardian, 31 December 2021, sec. Opinion, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec/31/white-south-africa-ubuntu-african-tutu</ref>

<blockquote>(D)espite the flourishing of Ubuntu in post-apartheid discourse, lending its name to software, businesses, books and philanthropic organisations, South Africa is a country in which we have, as Dladla argues, Ubuntu without Abantu. Just as Black people have been dispossessed of their land, Ubuntu has been dispossessed of its deeply radical demands for ethical historical and social relations among people. (...) post apartheid Ubuntu mistranslation 'I am because we are', individualized and interpersonalised Ubuntu, Christianised Ubuntu, mistranslated in order to justify crimes and violence. In Ubuntu violence can be punished even after generations, the misinterpretation of the term allowed individual forgiveness. <ref>‘Ubuntu: A Black Radical Demand for Reparations’, THE FUNAMBULIST MAGAZINE, 25 October 2023, https://thefunambulist.net/magazine/redefining-our-terms/ubuntu-a-black-radical-demand-for-reparations</ref>
</blockquote>

I skip these thoughts and I continue browsing the list of servers. While trying to stay focused something other distracts me; I encounter an [https://www.oziosi.org/ autonomous Italian server] with the title translated with DeepL: “:: a shelter for digital exiles ::” and an image of a woman, a child and a man leaving their home. Also a small introduction: “Exiled from the global village of social networks, we claim an internet that is a simple means of communication: immaterial, anonymous, imaginary, public when it makes sense and secret when we feel the need.”. I am wondering what does this mean for actual exiles having to protect their privacy when communicating back home? [https://techpolicy.press/how-to-open-an-outpost-in-social-media-exile/ ‘Social media exiles’] and ‘Twitter migration’ are terms used often after Twitter became X and users have moved to the Fediverse or other alternatives.

[[Screenshot of the 'digital exiles' image, image not included because of copyrights issues?]]

== TITiPI’s case of server transfer ==
On the 27th of September, sitting at the long desks side to side, Femke and I have an online call with Helen, while looking at the depths of our Virtual Private Server (VPS), provided by Linode, that runs Ubuntu on our laptop screens. Linode is an American hosting provider focusing on ''Linux''-based virtual machines originally. The server is physically located in the UK. TITiPI currently uses the Linode server that Helen set up for hosting her own projects. She has been paying for Linode’s monthly fees so far.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-10-11 14-47-06.png|thumb|Screenshot of Linode Ubuntu server overview and ''terminal'' that shows a moment of figuring out what takes space in the server through ''SSH'' access]]

At the time it seemed a good choice, because it is based in UK, is ''Linux'' friendly and an alternative to Amazon Web Services (AWS), even though it was already identifying as ‘''cloud hosting''’. But in February 2023 it has been acquired by the American company Akamai that aims to scale up for [https://www.linode.com/global-infrastructure/ “computing power, optimizing performance and agility.”]. Akamai is actively changing its server policies into an increasingly intense cloud logic. This pushed forward the desire to move to a new place.

[[Screenshot of Linode website referring to scalability -- copyright issues?]]

At the moment in Linode we run pico, a flat CMS for the website https://titipi.org. There is a Mediawiki (you are reading a Mediawiki page right now) for notes and collective writing. On the wiki, we also publish our statutes, guidelines and other instituting documents. The wiki has a custom extension, called wiki-to-pdf. Each of these services will need a different way to be transferred. One approach is to build the new server space from scratch, copy the data with rsync and transfer only the Mediawiki, which includes installing a new version and copy the database and the media files.

While preparing to transfer the tools we are defining what are the practical needs and desirable priorities; we ended up on these server requirements:
* ''SSH'' access and wish for VPS
* affordable price (around €20/month)
* run a Free Software operating system, preferably Debian
* involves community work - slowing down, resisting to scaling and growth or ‘decloudification’ (small network of partners, less virtualization approach, location of servers nearby etc)
* 25-40GB storage space, 1-2 cores, 2-4GB RAM
* environmental angle
* service support in a language that we all understand (English mostly)

This server transfer happens with an intersectional and feminist approach and the desire to keep questioning. While moving away from Linode we include both the technical and the conceptual thinking in the process. There are a few things that we are looking at:
* Where to be transferred to or what services to transfer to?
* How to be transferred and what to tranfer?
* What terminology, language we use?
* What (other) narratives of server hosting can we construct?
TITiPI seeks to exist with an infrastructure that supports inter-dependent practices and solidarity across struggles. It develops Counter Cloud Actions [ref] as a way to scale down, de-cloudify, articulate, contest and re-imagine the implications of computational infrastructures (‘the cloud’).

<blockquote>TITiPI develop tools from feminisms, queer theory, Free, Libre and Open Source software, intersectionality, anti-coloniality, disability studies, historical materialism and artistic practice to generate currently inexistent vocabularies, imaginaries and methodologies. TITiPI functions as an infrastructure to establish new ways in which socio-technical practices and technologies might support the public interest. <ref>TITiPI, ‘Infrables’, Tangible Cloud Archives, https://docs.tangible-cloud.be/publications-pdf/02_snelting.pdf.</ref></blockquote>

We are looking for servers that aspire some of these values.

=== A relational infrastructure narrative/ infra-mutuality/ inter-infrastructural narrative ===
[[File:Elastic solidarities.png|thumb]]
In June 2023 TITiPI received an email from Gandi to renew the domain titipi.org in 6 days, not realising that at the same time we would need to start paying for our titipi.org email hosting. We had missed reading to the end of another email sent in the middle of June, entitled: 'Pricing update'.

We consider to work with Kate Rich to move our mailboxes to the [http://irational.org/ Irational server], soon to be installed on a Raspberry Pi, hosted at Servus. Currently it is in a rack in the UK. We decide to do this transition slowly and until then renew the emails for 1-2 months through Gandi. Irational server resists virtualization, and as an art community project it makes it an interesting choice.

But why to go through all this effort and not just use one cloud server with mailboxes, file storage and web server together? TITiPI’s response to the question of building institutional digital infrastructure embodies an archipelagic and non-sovereign approach to dependencies. Rather than building a centralised server based on ‘cloud’ from which connections with other institutions and collectives can happen, it conceptualizes inter-infrastructural practices; from the creation of a [https://gitlab.constantvzw.org/titipi/burrow backup script] for saving locally etherpad pads from other servers, hosting emails at an art server (https://irational.org), creating an [https://books.lumbung.space/shelf/26 online bookshelf] on lumbung.space, using the ''XMPP'' chat from Varia to recording conversations with the ''sysadmin'' that maintain the other servers. The institution re-imagines technological dependencies in dialogue with cultural institutions and art collectives. [[File:Titipi-infra-diagram-JAN-24.png|thumb|none|alt=A diagram of TITiPI’s infrastructure. The diagram categorizes the elements according to tools/software (box), structure/organisational form (circle) and place (dashed line). For example Jitsi is the software, Greenhost is the organisation, meet.greenhost.net is the place.|A diagram of TITiPI’s infrastructure. The diagram categorizes the elements according to tools/software (box), structure/organisational form (circle) and place (dashed line). For example Jitsi is the software, Greenhost is the organisation, meet.greenhost.net is the place.]]

How to give life to the common space of TITiPI’s hosting infrastructures? What about building up social dependencies between the ones that host and the ones who are hosted as opposed to a technical independence? Infrastructural imaginations are often built by the ''Big Tech'' industry and governmental institutions. Instead, TITiPI practices a fluid inter-institutional approach supported by [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Infra_colophon a variety of hosts].

=== Selection of server providers ===
On the 7th of November through a shared screen at the [https://meet.greenhost.net/ video conferencing software Jitsi of Greenhost] we all three check a list of server providers I collected on a spreadsheet hosted in Constant’s cloud storage (built with Nextcloud software) where TITiPI has an account. I looked at associations, companies/businesses, cooperatives, communities coming from commercial context to social struggles, activist, feminist and other. Through a [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/List_server_networks list of networks] I found various servers mostly from Latin America and Europe.

The concept of autonomy, sovereignty, independence or self-managing characterizes most of the servers in the list. Some of them, like [https://www.autistici.org/ Autistici] promote this concept as a way to support anti-capitalist infrastructure and protect the privacy of the users as opposed to the ''Big Tech'' software practices.

<blockquote>The vision is that we - the members of the cooperative - own our own data. This implies and has as a consequence that we will have to own our own infrastructure and have insight and control over the software we use to communicate on the web.<ref>‘Community Servers - Monoskop’, accessed 16 July 2024, https://monoskop.org/Community_servers</ref></blockquote>

Femke had a hunch: "‘technological sovereignty’ and ‘data-sovereignty’ continue to be orientation devices to organise around. ‘Sovereignty’, together with ‘freedom’, ‘independence’ and ‘autonomy’, form an ideological cluster that implicitly and sometimes explicitly foregrounds separation rather than relation."

Servers can act as independent spaces but are also cultural devices and vibrant spaces. They can manifest different aspects of a full life and reach out to a multiplicity of entities.

Servus and Greenhost, seem to be two of our best choices as they cover a lot of the priorities and values of TITiPI. As one can read from their descriptions they both strive for owning their own data servers and data nodes (they have their own ''IP addresses'') and be independent from third parties. The big difference is the scale of the infrastructure and their community and network.

<blockquote>Greenhost fully owns and controls its hardware, infrastructure and uplinks. This ensures independence from third parties and proper access control. On this hardware we run our fully virtualised platform. We stand for an Open Internet, and have always embraced open source software.<ref>‘Greenhost.Net | the Sustainable Web’, accessed 16 July 2024, https://greenhost.net/.</ref></blockquote>

<blockquote>We (Servus) do not pass on any data to third parties. You will not receive commercial advertising from us or third parties. We are easily accessible and answer your questions personally. We and our servers are located at Kirchengasse 4 in Linz, Austria.<ref>‘Book Of Servus’, Book Of Servus, accessed 16 July 2024, https://book.servus.at/en/home/.</ref></blockquote>

Even though Greenhost wants to reduce ecological damage, it does that mainly through hardware reductions and does not address scale. They have plans to expand and are part of a network of partners that want to transform Rotterdam into a big hub of data nodes for the upcoming digital transition. Linode is even bigger, it goes for [[https://www.akamai.com/newsroom/press-release/akamai-takes-cloud-computing-to-the-edge| "(p)lanetary scale"]]. Servus on the other hand has one room of data servers, is closer to the scale of their community and they maintain personal relations with them.

[[Image of the server room at Servus at Linz|Image of the server room at Servus at Linz?]]

=== Community server, feminist server, trans*feminist server, radical server, autonomous server, commercial server, art server, free server, ethical server, solidarity-based server, cooperative server, associative server, independent server, alternative server, non-commercial server, … ===
The spreadsheet starts to grow because of an endless/exhaustive burrow of small and big providers.

Some are outdated. 
Some are messy. 
Some have broken links. 
Some are [https://www.julienth37.fr/vps hard to understand]. 
Some require [https://www.actiu.info/index.en.html a lot of engagement]. 
Some use a language that imitates the narratives of ''Big Tech'' and ''agile'' computing. 
Some promote seamless “promissory logic” and “high hopes for a brighter future” (ref) 
Some are big or are scaling up (in matter of space, data centers, partners, users etc). 
Some support NGO’s or sport clubs.

[[copyright issues? Screenshot from main page of Co-op Web]]

We also looked at their financial model. Many radical servers stay small, are volunteer based, like [https://www.autistici.org/ Autistici]. and go for horizontal organisational structures. Feminist and activist servers provide space in the internet for the ones who don’t have the means to organise otherwise. The resources and ways of organising for these servers are different from the cooperatives or associations whose structure is inherited from the model they are registered with.

[[File:ATNOFS-Varia-insert-ooooo.jpg|thumb|ooooo atnofs insert diagrams from varia, systerserver, servus]]

TITiPI acknowledges and is connected to the history of community, art and feminist servers and wants to support this network. The art servers started as a way to make autonomous self-managed servers that support artists values and practices. They are often financed by cultural or private funds.

<blockquote>I joined (Irational) sometime in 2000s, I can't remember when and originally it was much more a collective of people working together and then since the early 2010's I think, mid 2010's, there was a bit of a reshuffle of personnel and stuff, so the constituency changed to a smaller group and we actually reformed. We were going to disband Irational and then we actually reformed as an art server collective and we decided we are not really working together but what we have in common is that we're using the server and that is actually what the collective is now. It's the collective that uses the server together and wants to use the server together. And another real defining feature of the server the whole time has been resisting virtualization. 

— quote from [[None of this experiment is evident|interview of Kate Rich by Femke Snelting]] </blockquote>

The screen seems to become brighter as my eyes get tired. What if we skip the online hosting and create a local physical server at TITiPI’s office next to the desks, in a corner, on a Raspberry Pi? All our data would stay on this machine and we would connect with ''SSH'' from home, but then we will also have to maintain it ourselves. There is something there about the romanticism of a physical toolbox as a sovereign object. If we choose to do that we will need to think of a backup plan as it will be an experimental set up and all our data will stay offline. We won’t have a provider to take care of that.

Our list has been reduced because of our priorities. We need ''SSH'' and we would like to have a VPS. Who has resources for providing VPS? Resources of labour, time, finances, technical knowledge. This made self-defined feminist servers fall out of the selection. How to be financially sustainable, while keeping up with your own values? How to keep up with infrastructural ''maintenance'' if the scale of the users, community, members and data is big?

<blockquote>The services we offer have no defined price, but as you may easily imagine, keeping the whole system working (i.e. hardware and hosting) is very expensive (at the moment it ranges around 13,000 euro every year).<ref>‘Autistici.Org - Services’, accessed 16 July 2024, https://www.autistici.org/services/</ref></blockquote>

Servus and Maadix provide a series of ''free/libre'' tools that can be installed separately through their interface but they also provide a VPS with ''SSH'' access. With Greenhost, Hetzner and Linode there is more flexibility: you can create your own VPS and customize it for your own needs through their interface or the ''terminal'' and install whatever tools you want from scratch without a visual interface.

Technical information and knowledge of digital infrastructure circulate between groups that are tech-oriented with a difficulty to cross with other groups, including feminist servers. The ''sysadmin'' tasks are mostly taken by cis men but feminist servers are radical about that. They find important to have ''sysadmins'' that are not cis men. For example Systerserver and Anarchaserver are learning by themselves together how to do this task.

Many of the servers in the list provide only tools, as a radical way to support small groups, collectives, activists that need privacy and shifting away from Google drive when they want to organise politically and socially. It seems that being limited to tool packages instead of having full access to a server can make things comprehensible and compact for these small groups that have limited ''sysadmin'' knowledge or can’t hire a technician.

[copyrights issue? Screenshot of main page with services by [https://futuretic.fr/ FuturEtic]]

[[copyrights issue? Screenshot of tools from codigosur]]

== Final decision and server transfer ==

We are about to make our decision! Our list ended up to be very small.

On 7th of November in an online call between Helen in Basel, Femke in Brussels and Aggeliki in Rotterdam we limited our list to four options: Constant, Greenhost, Servus, Zaclys. The selection consists of a diversity of scales and positioning that we found interesting to think of. First, we move on with the decision to transfer our mailboxes to Irational hosted at Servus. The rest of the functionalities will be hosted somewhere else.

From our conversations with Femke: “The choice for irational.org opens the possibility for discussions around dependencies, trust and frictions within shared collective servers. Irational.org is an ally art server who uses and maintains its own server for many years. Hosting such a private service at a friend’s environment doesn’t come only with convenience. The closeness to the material of the server makes the dependency more tangible.” [reference/quote from colophon?]

[[copyrights issue? towel design by psaroskalazines|towel design by psaroskalazines]] copyrights?

Femke and I are planning different moments for the server transfer to happen in the office of TITiPI. What it is about to take place comes down into three moments; the backup and save of data from the old server, the installation of the necessary software in the new server and the transfer of the old data in the new server.

Specifically we are following these steps:

* Mail transfer from Gandi to irational
* Create a Virtual Private Server (VPS) in the new server
* Install Apache2 and configure domains
* Install and migrate MediaWiki
** Back up the wiki on the Linode VPS
** Upgrade MediaWiki in Linode
** Install MediaWiki and plugins in the Greenhost VPS
** Transfer database and media files from Linode to Greenhost
* Install Wiki-to-pdf
* Install Pico
* Install and configure Certbot

We find ourselves between two virtual spaces and one office, among other indirectly connected spaces like the rooms of our distant collaborators and the office locations of the servers.

=== Trust relationships ===
By now, 14th of November 2023, the office is warm and cozy. Throughout the time I am writing this report I have been noticing a lot of slow and small efforts to renovate the building and set up the heating, by the artists and organisations who share the space with TITiPI. Another infrastructure that needs care.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 15-06-42.png|thumb|Femke and Aggeliki entering Irational’s server space with Kate]]

On a shared screen together with Femke we get introduced to the mail server of Irational by Kate. We use an audio splitter to share the laptop for the call. Kate described her experience as an amateur ''sysadmin'' that had to spend a lot of time to learn and set up the mail server. After that we start the process that has been documented [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Server_transfer_documentation#Mail_transfer here].

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 14-56-26.png|thumb|Screenshot from the TITiPI’s mail transfer with Kate, Femke and Aggeliki during an online 3 hours call]]

Irational uses the Alpine email client. Kate takes us its depths. That is where we start to set up our new email accounts before we configure them in Thunderbird. Femke gets excited on the fact that she can send emails to other Irational accounts through the ''terminal''.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 15-15-07.png|thumb|Using the email client Alpine]]

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 17-04-20.png|thumb|Screenhost from the moment of looking for the syntax of the TXT records. Finding the right syntax for this value was the biggest challenge. This is part of the ''trust relationships'' between the different providers]]

After some more DNS configurations we test if it is possible to exchange emails with ‘outside’ accounts and especially with Gmail that has many security filters for mail servers other than the commercial ones.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-15 13-59-52.png|thumb|Exchange test emails with a Gmail account]]

After three hours of tryouts we manage to make it work! Very proudly and with enjoyment for sharing a technical task together we say goodbye to each other and arrange a next meeting for a final check up.

=== A choice that comes with discomforts ===
Just one day before the start of TITiPI’s server transfer away from Linode on the 28th of November, Helen found the Swiss server ungleich.ch and it seemed like an interesting choice because of the small scale (in terms of community and servers), their experimental attitude and their choice to reduce energy consumption; they avoid using systems for cooling their servers by spreading the servers at the Swiss mountains in old, abandoned buildings.

Ungleich.ch is one of the good options but it is more expensive than other providers. They offer a cheaper choice by choosing to have only ‘ipv6’. But we had to dig in to understand the difference of ipv4 and ipv6. From wikipedia: “IPv6 is the most recent version of the Internet Protocol, developed to deal with the long-anticipated problem of IPv4 address exhaustion” We found a [https://stats.labs.apnic.net/ipv6 map] that shows which countries have implemented IPv6 and it seems that if we only use this address then many places won’t have access to the website of TITiPI. So we choose to have both addresses.

We also notice that this provider is using Stripe for their payment system. In a [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Frontier parallel universe of TITiPI] we give attention to and critique Stripe because of its connections with the Carbon Removal industry.

[[copyright issues? Ungleich.ch payment system with Stripe]]

Another urgency appears while we are looking at different choices; together with many other organisations, we have been thinking about ways to host and maintain infrastructures in solidarity with communities and networks we are part of. This would mean, for example, hosting digitally a Palestinian video film archive, or research by sex workers. Solidarity is only partially a question of caring for privacy and security because it matters where and how we host our digital infrastructures and whether these spaces do or do not support the flourishing of different lives and struggles. This need make us think again if the server we choose would be suitable for something like that.

Constant and Servus are two accomplice servers that already provide to TITiPI some of their services. Zaclys is a member of Chatons that support open source values and it is located in France. We contacted them to see if they could be an option but they never responded to us.

We wanted to work with a company that provide ‘green’ infrastructure. Greenhost seem to be a good choice. It provides a familiar interface to us, good support and backup option. It has a positioning as an alternative to AWS. So far great, but what about its ‘green’ hosting vision? Is it a solarpunk vision, a green cloud utopia? Is their infrastructure resource ‘hungry’? What are the privacy limits when the material hosted in the servers is political and sensitive?

We choose Greenhost with all the discomforts that this choice entails and with the desire to keep the critique and dialogue alive.

Only by December 2023 we manage to arrange a call with one of Greenhost’s former Managing Directors to get a feeling and more information about their approach and sensitivity. Accordind to him Greenhost exists in the intersection of activism and technology. It provides consultancy, sustainability solutions in tech projects and structured ''maintenance''; they go for best quality with lowest environmental impact; they maintain the same hardware as much as possible and balance that with higher efficiency; they keep backups at an already existing data center in the university of Amsterdam.

<nowiki>[[paragraph for Greenhost include? from interview with manager?]]</nowiki>

=== Installing, tranferring, saving, copying, … ===
On the 28th of November sitting on the sunny corner of the couch next to the radiator, and with warm coffee cups waiting for us on a low table, Femke and I cover our legs with a blanket and open our laptops.

I ask Femke to jumb in a ''tmux'' session for sharing ''terminal'' with this command: <code>''sudo'' ''tmux'' attach -t webserver</code>. We start by cleaning the old server and make backups of the files.

We take a lunch break. Femke finds out that if we eat three recurrent meals every week in the office we can have a nice variety of food; lentiles soup, orecchiette pasta with brocoli, rizzoto with mushrooms and lots of fruits. Sometime ago we decided to make multiple short breaks throughout the day because of computer fatigue. One day I removed all the files from my computer that were older than 90 days because I accidentally run a command on the ''terminal'' instead of a bash script to test the setting up of [https://gitlab.constantvzw.org/titipi/burrow Burrow]. I left this comment in the initial script:

<code># VERY DANGEROUS COMMAND find *txt -mindepth 1 -mtime +$RETAIN -delete</code>
The next day we set up the new server and install all the necessary software including a new version of the MediaWiki. We arrange a meeting with Martino Morandi, member of Constant, who created the wiki-to-pdf to help us installing this software and tranfer the MediaWiki in the new server. On the 1st of December we successfully install the wiki-to-pdf and because of limited time we decided to meet one more time at the end of the month for the rest.

[[File:Virtual-env-debian.png|thumb|Screenshot from the wiki-to-pdf installation to the new server with Martino, Femke, Aggeliki. Debian supports a different way to create virtual environments for installing python packages and libraries. We try it but it failed.]]

On the 28th we meet with Martino online to complete the transfer, which includes copying the old database of MediaWiki, activate the old plugins and fix any issues on the way. We are all located in different countries (Italy, Greece, Belgium) and so we share a ''tmux'' session. We follow the guides but on the way we had to do some research and configure a lot of things to make the MediaWiki work. Martino was hunting a php module. It seemed that php has shifted to free software culture in an attempt to find another business model. It is not surprising it happens in the context of Ubuntu. The issue is recorded [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Server_transfer_documentation#MediaWiki_upgrade_issues here].

[[File:Firefox Screenshot 2024-01-10T13-59-40.398Z.png|thumb|"Is Titipi.org down?" Helen asks after the transfer. It seems that her browser cache was preventing her from seeing the website]]

The process is documented in our diary and then transferred to a [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Server_transfer_documentation wiki page]. By January 2024 the server transfer and the deletion of our Linode account has been completed.

== Glossaries ==

Italicized terms in the report are included in these glossaries:

* [https://varia.zone/ATNOFS/ATNOFS-screen.pdf Glossary of A Traversal Network of Feminist Servers (ATNOFS) publication]
* [[Glossary|TITiPI's glossary]]

== References ==

* Panashe Chigumadzi, ‘Can White South Africa Live up to Ubuntu, the African Philosophy Tutu Globalised?’, The Guardian, 31 December 2021, sec. Opinion, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec/31/white-south-africa-ubuntu-african-tutu
* ‘Community Servers - Monoskop’, accessed 16 July 2024, https://monoskop.org/Community_servers
* David Carroll, ‘How To Open An Outpost In Social Media Exile | TechPolicy.Press’, Tech Policy Press, 26 November 2022, <nowiki>https://techpolicy.press/how-to-open-an-outpost-in-social-media-exile</nowiki>.
* Elizabeth Landau, ‘Tech Confronts Its Use of the Labels “Master” and “Slave”’, ''Wired'', accessed 16 July 2024, <nowiki>https://www.wired.com/story/tech-confronts-use-labels-master-slave/</nowiki>.
* ‘GitHub Abandons “master” Term to Avoid Slavery Row’, 15 June 2020, https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-53050955
* Femke Snelting, ‘Infrastructure Solidarity’, Ardeth. A Magazine on the Power of the Project, no. 8 (1 November 2021): 45–47
* ‘Master-Slave Terminology Alternatives You Can Use Right Now | TheServerSide’, TheServerSide.com, accessed 16 July 2024, https://www.theserverside.com/opinion/Master-slave-terminology-alternatives-you-can-use-right-now
* ‘Racist Computer Engineering Words: “Master,” “Slave” and the Fight Over Offensive Terms - The New York Times’, accessed 16 July 2024, <nowiki>https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/13/technology/racist-computer-engineering-terms-ietf.html</nowiki>.
* ‘Replace “Master” and “Slave” Terms in Redis · Issue #3185 · Redis/Redis’, GitHub, accessed 16 July 2024, https://github.com/redis/redis/issues/3185
* ‘Ubuntu: A Black Radical Demand for Reparations’, THE FUNAMBULIST MAGAZINE, 25 October 2023, https://thefunambulist.net/magazine/redefining-our-terms/ubuntu-a-black-radical-demand-for-reparations.

== Colophon ==

The text was drafted in pad.xpub.nl in Markdown and then transferred in this wiki.

== Footnotes ==

From cloud to crowd: a report on a server transfer

2024-07-16T14:20:42Z

Angeliki:

= From cloud to crowd<ref>The term comes from ... (not sure if it is included in the title)</ref>: A report on a server transfer =

This text is a report on a server migration that took place within the institutional framework of [https://titipi.org/ The Institute for Technology in the Public Interest (TITiPI)], a trans-practice gathering of activists, artists, engineers and theorists. TITiPI convenes communities to articulate, activate and re-imagine together what computational technologies in the 'public interest' might be. This report is an infrastructural ethnography and aims to rethink, through a technical process, what ''hosting'' a server means for a community, institution, cultural organisation dealing with technological discomforts and often inaccessible complex digital infrastructures.

A ''server'' is a computer (or a piece of software/hardware) that provides functionalities via a network (Internet). A ''server migration'' is the process of moving data and transferring software from one server to another with the use of specified tools. Performing such process accommodates a practical and technical solution to fix the problem of an outdated server that is slow or has limited storage. But it also affects the values, the structure and infrastructural imaginations of the organisations it supports. TITiPI desired(s) to go with hosting and maintain its own virtual private server instead of outsourcing these services to external tech companies. In times of server providers’ scaling up ( ‘''cloud hosting''’ ) and digitizing governmental bureaucracies what does it mean to host your own digital space for supporting your communities and work? What does it mean to have an independent infrastructure? What (non-)dependencies are chosen or taken for granted by institutions when using hosting services?

As a researcher at TITiPI I have been caring for the task to investigate this server migration and execute it together with TITiPI’s member Femke Snelting. We meet weekly to keep track and make decisions. We share a ''markdown'' file hosted in the git of the cultural association [https://constantvzw.org/site/ Constant] that includes a diary of the server migration and reflections. Every now and then we meet online with our colleague Helen Pritchard, to discuss and share the process. This report shares extracts from the server diary and stories from the process.

== Migration or …? ==

In the cold newly installed office of TITiPI located in the Koekelberg district of Brussels, I open Chromium in my computer, that runs the operating system Ubuntu, in order to translate quickly − with the installed Google Translate plugin; later I found out there is a DeepL version − the web pages of the different cooperatives, associations, companies that provide hosting services. While doing that I have this disturbing thought in my head that I try to ignore: the word ‘migration’ as a technical term to describe the movement from one server to the other. It makes me think of an [https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/13/technology/racist-computer-engineering-terms-ietf.html online conversation], happening for a few years now, about replacing computer engineering terminology to stop prevalence of racism in tech. Specifically the conversation [https://www.wired.com/story/tech-confronts-use-labels-master-slave/ evolves around the terms] ‘master/slave’, where one computing process or entity controls another, and ‘blacklists/whitelists’ used for directories of those things that are explicitly banned or allowed. Using metaphors like that for a technical process de-contextualizes a word from its origins and unavoidably perpetuates social injustices. It also shows that the context where such choices of language are made is privileged and untouched or non-triggered by these terms. White male computer engineers have build up this language. Could words like transferring, sharing, moving, copying, re-installing, shifting replace the word ‘migration’? From this point on in the report I decide to use the term ‘transfer’.

‘Ubuntu’ is also a word extracted from its original context. It is coming from the African Ubuntu philosophy. According to the creators of the software:

<blockquote>ubuntu |oǒ’boǒntoō| Ubuntu is an ancient African word meaning ‘humanity to others’. It is often described as reminding us that ‘I am what I am because of who we all are’. We bring the spirit of Ubuntu to the world of computers and software. The Ubuntu distribution represents the best of what the world’s software community has shared with the world. <ref>‘About the Ubuntu Project’, Ubuntu, accessed 16 July 2024, https://ubuntu.com/about</ref>
</blockquote>

Paraphrasing [https://thefunambulist.net/magazine/redefining-our-terms/ubuntu-a-black-radical-demand-for-reparations Panashe Chigumadzi] words: in contrast to the western conception of the human as individual, the African conception of the person is a social being who is always becoming, defined by and being responsible for the personhood of the others. "(T)he African philosophy best understood through the proverb found in Bantu languages across the continent, 'umuntu ngumuntu ngabanye bantu' (a person is a person through other people". <ref>Panashe Chigumadzi, ‘Can White South Africa Live up to Ubuntu, the African Philosophy Tutu Globalised?’, The Guardian, 31 December 2021, sec. Opinion, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec/31/white-south-africa-ubuntu-african-tutu</ref>

<blockquote>(D)espite the flourishing of Ubuntu in post-apartheid discourse, lending its name to software, businesses, books and philanthropic organisations, South Africa is a country in which we have, as Dladla argues, Ubuntu without Abantu. Just as Black people have been dispossessed of their land, Ubuntu has been dispossessed of its deeply radical demands for ethical historical and social relations among people. (...) post apartheid Ubuntu mistranslation 'I am because we are', individualized and interpersonalised Ubuntu, Christianised Ubuntu, mistranslated in order to justify crimes and violence. In Ubuntu violence can be punished even after generations, the misinterpretation of the term allowed individual forgiveness. <ref>‘Ubuntu: A Black Radical Demand for Reparations’, THE FUNAMBULIST MAGAZINE, 25 October 2023, https://thefunambulist.net/magazine/redefining-our-terms/ubuntu-a-black-radical-demand-for-reparations</ref>
</blockquote>

I skip these thoughts and I continue browsing the list of servers. While trying to stay focused something other distracts me; I encounter an [https://www.oziosi.org/ autonomous Italian server] with the title translated with DeepL: “:: a shelter for digital exiles ::” and an image of a woman, a child and a man leaving their home. Also a small introduction: “Exiled from the global village of social networks, we claim an internet that is a simple means of communication: immaterial, anonymous, imaginary, public when it makes sense and secret when we feel the need.”. I am wondering what does this mean for actual exiles having to protect their privacy when communicating back home? [https://techpolicy.press/how-to-open-an-outpost-in-social-media-exile/ ‘Social media exiles’] and ‘Twitter migration’ are terms used often after Twitter became X and users have moved to the Fediverse or other alternatives.

[[Screenshot of the 'digital exiles' image, image not included because of copyrights issues?]]

== TITiPI’s case of server transfer ==
On the 27th of September, sitting at the long desks side to side, Femke and I have an online call with Helen, while looking at the depths of our Virtual Private Server (VPS), provided by Linode, that runs Ubuntu on our laptop screens. Linode is an American hosting provider focusing on ''Linux''-based virtual machines originally. The server is physically located in the UK. TITiPI currently uses the Linode server that Helen set up for hosting her own projects. She has been paying for Linode’s monthly fees so far.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-10-11 14-47-06.png|thumb|Screenshot of Linode Ubuntu server overview and ''terminal'' that shows a moment of figuring out what takes space in the server through ''SSH'' access]]

At the time it seemed a good choice, because it is based in UK, is ''Linux'' friendly and an alternative to Amazon Web Services (AWS), even though it was already identifying as ‘''cloud hosting''’. But in February 2023 it has been acquired by the American company Akamai that aims to scale up for [https://www.linode.com/global-infrastructure/ “computing power, optimizing performance and agility.”]. Akamai is actively changing its server policies into an increasingly intense cloud logic. This pushed forward the desire to move to a new place.

[[Screenshot of Linode website referring to scalability -- copyright issues?]]

At the moment in Linode we run pico, a flat CMS for the website https://titipi.org. There is a Mediawiki (you are reading a Mediawiki page right now) for notes and collective writing. On the wiki, we also publish our statutes, guidelines and other instituting documents. The wiki has a custom extension, called wiki-to-pdf. Each of these services will need a different way to be transferred. One approach is to build the new server space from scratch, copy the data with rsync and transfer only the Mediawiki, which includes installing a new version and copy the database and the media files.

While preparing to transfer the tools we are defining what are the practical needs and desirable priorities; we ended up on these server requirements:
* ''SSH'' access and wish for VPS
* affordable price (around €20/month)
* run a Free Software operating system, preferably Debian
* involves community work - slowing down, resisting to scaling and growth or ‘decloudification’ (small network of partners, less virtualization approach, location of servers nearby etc)
* 25-40GB storage space, 1-2 cores, 2-4GB RAM
* environmental angle
* service support in a language that we all understand (English mostly)

This server transfer happens with an intersectional and feminist approach and the desire to keep questioning. While moving away from Linode we include both the technical and the conceptual thinking in the process. There are a few things that we are looking at:
* Where to be transferred to or what services to transfer to?
* How to be transferred and what to tranfer?
* What terminology, language we use?
* What (other) narratives of server hosting can we construct?
TITiPI seeks to exist with an infrastructure that supports inter-dependent practices and solidarity across struggles. It develops Counter Cloud Actions [ref] as a way to scale down, de-cloudify, articulate, contest and re-imagine the implications of computational infrastructures (‘the cloud’).

<blockquote>TITiPI develop tools from feminisms, queer theory, Free, Libre and Open Source software, intersectionality, anti-coloniality, disability studies, historical materialism and artistic practice to generate currently inexistent vocabularies, imaginaries and methodologies. TITiPI functions as an infrastructure to establish new ways in which socio-technical practices and technologies might support the public interest. <ref>TITiPI, ‘Infrables’, Tangible Cloud Archives, https://docs.tangible-cloud.be/publications-pdf/02_snelting.pdf.</ref></blockquote>

We are looking for servers that aspire some of these values.

=== A relational infrastructure narrative/ infra-mutuality/ inter-infrastructural narrative ===
[[File:Elastic solidarities.png|thumb]]
In June 2023 TITiPI received an email from Gandi to renew the domain titipi.org in 6 days, not realising that at the same time we would need to start paying for our titipi.org email hosting. We had missed reading to the end of another email sent in the middle of June, entitled: 'Pricing update'.

We consider to work with Kate Rich to move our mailboxes to the [http://irational.org/ Irational server], soon to be installed on a Raspberry Pi, hosted at Servus. Currently it is in a rack in the UK. We decide to do this transition slowly and until then renew the emails for 1-2 months through Gandi. Irational server resists virtualization, and as an art community project it makes it an interesting choice.

But why to go through all this effort and not just use one cloud server with mailboxes, file storage and web server together? TITiPI’s response to the question of building institutional digital infrastructure embodies an archipelagic and non-sovereign approach to dependencies. Rather than building a centralised server based on ‘cloud’ from which connections with other institutions and collectives can happen, it conceptualizes inter-infrastructural practices; from the creation of a [https://gitlab.constantvzw.org/titipi/burrow backup script] for saving locally etherpad pads from other servers, hosting emails at an art server (https://irational.org), creating an [https://books.lumbung.space/shelf/26 online bookshelf] on lumbung.space, using the ''XMPP'' chat from Varia to recording conversations with the ''sysadmin'' that maintain the other servers. The institution re-imagines technological dependencies in dialogue with cultural institutions and art collectives. [[File:Titipi-infra-diagram-JAN-24.png|thumb|none|alt=A diagram of TITiPI’s infrastructure. The diagram categorizes the elements according to tools/software (box), structure/organisational form (circle) and place (dashed line). For example Jitsi is the software, Greenhost is the organisation, meet.greenhost.net is the place.|A diagram of TITiPI’s infrastructure. The diagram categorizes the elements according to tools/software (box), structure/organisational form (circle) and place (dashed line). For example Jitsi is the software, Greenhost is the organisation, meet.greenhost.net is the place.]]

How to give life to the common space of TITiPI’s hosting infrastructures? What about building up social dependencies between the ones that host and the ones who are hosted as opposed to a technical independence? Infrastructural imaginations are often built by the ''Big Tech'' industry and governmental institutions. Instead, TITiPI practices a fluid inter-institutional approach supported by [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Infra_colophon a variety of hosts].

=== Selection of server providers ===
On the 7th of November through a shared screen at the [https://meet.greenhost.net/ video conferencing software Jitsi of Greenhost] we all three check a list of server providers I collected on a spreadsheet hosted in Constant’s cloud storage (built with Nextcloud software) where TITiPI has an account. I looked at associations, companies/businesses, cooperatives, communities coming from commercial context to social struggles, activist, feminist and other. Through a [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/List_server_networks list of networks] I found various servers mostly from Latin America and Europe.

The concept of autonomy, sovereignty, independence or self-managing characterizes most of the servers in the list. Some of them, like [https://www.autistici.org/ Autistici] promote this concept as a way to support anti-capitalist infrastructure and protect the privacy of the users as opposed to the ''Big Tech'' software practices.

<blockquote>The vision is that we - the members of the cooperative - own our own data. This implies and has as a consequence that we will have to own our own infrastructure and have insight and control over the software we use to communicate on the web.<ref>‘Community Servers - Monoskop’, accessed 16 July 2024, https://monoskop.org/Community_servers</ref></blockquote>

Femke had a hunch: "‘technological sovereignty’ and ‘data-sovereignty’ continue to be orientation devices to organise around. ‘Sovereignty’, together with ‘freedom’, ‘independence’ and ‘autonomy’, form an ideological cluster that implicitly and sometimes explicitly foregrounds separation rather than relation."

Servers can act as independent spaces but are also cultural devices and vibrant spaces. They can manifest different aspects of a full life and reach out to a multiplicity of entities.

Servus and Greenhost, seem to be two of our best choices as they cover a lot of the priorities and values of TITiPI. As one can read from their descriptions they both strive for owning their own data servers and data nodes (they have their own ''IP addresses'') and be independent from third parties. The big difference is the scale of the infrastructure and their community and network.

<blockquote>Greenhost fully owns and controls its hardware, infrastructure and uplinks. This ensures independence from third parties and proper access control. On this hardware we run our fully virtualised platform. We stand for an Open Internet, and have always embraced open source software.<ref>‘Greenhost.Net | the Sustainable Web’, accessed 16 July 2024, https://greenhost.net/.</ref></blockquote>

<blockquote>We (Servus) do not pass on any data to third parties. You will not receive commercial advertising from us or third parties. We are easily accessible and answer your questions personally. We and our servers are located at Kirchengasse 4 in Linz, Austria.<ref>‘Book Of Servus’, Book Of Servus, accessed 16 July 2024, https://book.servus.at/en/home/.</ref></blockquote>

Even though Greenhost wants to reduce ecological damage, it does that mainly through hardware reductions and does not address scale. They have plans to expand and are part of a network of partners that want to transform Rotterdam into a big hub of data nodes for the upcoming digital transition. Linode is even bigger, it goes for [[https://www.akamai.com/newsroom/press-release/akamai-takes-cloud-computing-to-the-edge| "(p)lanetary scale"]]. Servus on the other hand has one room of data servers, is closer to the scale of their community and they maintain personal relations with them.

[[Image of the server room at Servus at Linz|Image of the server room at Servus at Linz?]]

=== Community server, feminist server, trans*feminist server, radical server, autonomous server, commercial server, art server, free server, ethical server, solidarity-based server, cooperative server, associative server, independent server, alternative server, non-commercial server, … ===
The spreadsheet starts to grow because of an endless/exhaustive burrow of small and big providers.

Some are outdated. 
Some are messy. 
Some have broken links. 
Some are [https://www.julienth37.fr/vps hard to understand]. 
Some require [https://www.actiu.info/index.en.html a lot of engagement]. 
Some use a language that imitates the narratives of ''Big Tech'' and ''agile'' computing. 
Some promote seamless “promissory logic” and “high hopes for a brighter future” (ref) 
Some are big or are scaling up (in matter of space, data centers, partners, users etc). 
Some support NGO’s or sport clubs.

[[copyright issues? Screenshot from main page of Co-op Web]]

We also looked at their financial model. Many radical servers stay small, are volunteer based, like [https://www.autistici.org/ Autistici]. and go for horizontal organisational structures. Feminist and activist servers provide space in the internet for the ones who don’t have the means to organise otherwise. The resources and ways of organising for these servers are different from the cooperatives or associations whose structure is inherited from the model they are registered with.

[[File:ATNOFS-Varia-insert-ooooo.jpg|thumb|ooooo atnofs insert diagrams from varia, systerserver, servus]]

TITiPI acknowledges and is connected to the history of community, art and feminist servers and wants to support this network. The art servers started as a way to make autonomous self-managed servers that support artists values and practices. They are often financed by cultural or private funds.

<blockquote>I joined (Irational) sometime in 2000s, I can't remember when and originally it was much more a collective of people working together and then since the early 2010's I think, mid 2010's, there was a bit of a reshuffle of personnel and stuff, so the constituency changed to a smaller group and we actually reformed. We were going to disband Irational and then we actually reformed as an art server collective and we decided we are not really working together but what we have in common is that we're using the server and that is actually what the collective is now. It's the collective that uses the server together and wants to use the server together. And another real defining feature of the server the whole time has been resisting virtualization. 

— quote from interview of Kate Rich by TITiPI </blockquote>

The screen seems to become brighter as my eyes get tired. What if we skip the online hosting and create a local physical server at TITiPI’s office next to the desks, in a corner, on a Raspberry Pi? All our data would stay on this machine and we would connect with ''SSH'' from home, but then we will also have to maintain it ourselves. There is something there about the romanticism of a physical toolbox as a sovereign object. If we choose to do that we will need to think of a backup plan as it will be an experimental set up and all our data will stay offline. We won’t have a provider to take care of that.

Our list has been reduced because of our priorities. We need ''SSH'' and we would like to have a VPS. Who has resources for providing VPS? Resources of labour, time, finances, technical knowledge. This made self-defined feminist servers fall out of the selection. How to be financially sustainable, while keeping up with your own values? How to keep up with infrastructural ''maintenance'' if the scale of the users, community, members and data is big?

<blockquote>The services we offer have no defined price, but as you may easily imagine, keeping the whole system working (i.e. hardware and hosting) is very expensive (at the moment it ranges around 13,000 euro every year).<ref>‘Autistici.Org - Services’, accessed 16 July 2024, https://www.autistici.org/services/</ref></blockquote>

Servus and Maadix provide a series of ''free/libre'' tools that can be installed separately through their interface but they also provide a VPS with ''SSH'' access. With Greenhost, Hetzner and Linode there is more flexibility: you can create your own VPS and customize it for your own needs through their interface or the ''terminal'' and install whatever tools you want from scratch without a visual interface.

Technical information and knowledge of digital infrastructure circulate between groups that are tech-oriented with a difficulty to cross with other groups, including feminist servers. The ''sysadmin'' tasks are mostly taken by cis men but feminist servers are radical about that. They find important to have ''sysadmins'' that are not cis men. For example Systerserver and Anarchaserver are learning by themselves together how to do this task.

Many of the servers in the list provide only tools, as a radical way to support small groups, collectives, activists that need privacy and shifting away from Google drive when they want to organise politically and socially. It seems that being limited to tool packages instead of having full access to a server can make things comprehensible and compact for these small groups that have limited ''sysadmin'' knowledge or can’t hire a technician.

[copyrights issue? Screenshot of main page with services by [https://futuretic.fr/ FuturEtic]]

[[copyrights issue? Screenshot of tools from codigosur]]

== Final decision and server transfer ==

We are about to make our decision! Our list ended up to be very small.

On 7th of November in an online call between Helen in Basel, Femke in Brussels and Aggeliki in Rotterdam we limited our list to four options: Constant, Greenhost, Servus, Zaclys. The selection consists of a diversity of scales and positioning that we found interesting to think of. First, we move on with the decision to transfer our mailboxes to Irational hosted at Servus. The rest of the functionalities will be hosted somewhere else.

From our conversations with Femke: “The choice for irational.org opens the possibility for discussions around dependencies, trust and frictions within shared collective servers. Irational.org is an ally art server who uses and maintains its own server for many years. Hosting such a private service at a friend’s environment doesn’t come only with convenience. The closeness to the material of the server makes the dependency more tangible.” [reference/quote from colophon?]

[[copyrights issue? towel design by psaroskalazines|towel design by psaroskalazines]] copyrights?

Femke and I are planning different moments for the server transfer to happen in the office of TITiPI. What it is about to take place comes down into three moments; the backup and save of data from the old server, the installation of the necessary software in the new server and the transfer of the old data in the new server.

Specifically we are following these steps:

* Mail transfer from Gandi to irational
* Create a Virtual Private Server (VPS) in the new server
* Install Apache2 and configure domains
* Install and migrate MediaWiki
** Back up the wiki on the Linode VPS
** Upgrade MediaWiki in Linode
** Install MediaWiki and plugins in the Greenhost VPS
** Transfer database and media files from Linode to Greenhost
* Install Wiki-to-pdf
* Install Pico
* Install and configure Certbot

We find ourselves between two virtual spaces and one office, among other indirectly connected spaces like the rooms of our distant collaborators and the office locations of the servers.

=== Trust relationships ===
By now, 14th of November 2023, the office is warm and cozy. Throughout the time I am writing this report I have been noticing a lot of slow and small efforts to renovate the building and set up the heating, by the artists and organisations who share the space with TITiPI. Another infrastructure that needs care.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 15-06-42.png|thumb|Femke and Aggeliki entering Irational’s server space with Kate]]

On a shared screen together with Femke we get introduced to the mail server of Irational by Kate. We use an audio splitter to share the laptop for the call. Kate described her experience as an amateur ''sysadmin'' that had to spend a lot of time to learn and set up the mail server. After that we start the process that has been documented [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Server_transfer_documentation#Mail_transfer here].

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 14-56-26.png|thumb|Screenshot from the TITiPI’s mail transfer with Kate, Femke and Aggeliki during an online 3 hours call]]

Irational uses the Alpine email client. Kate takes us its depths. That is where we start to set up our new email accounts before we configure them in Thunderbird. Femke gets excited on the fact that she can send emails to other Irational accounts through the ''terminal''.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 15-15-07.png|thumb|Using the email client Alpine]]

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 17-04-20.png|thumb|Screenhost from the moment of looking for the syntax of the TXT records. Finding the right syntax for this value was the biggest challenge. This is part of the ''trust relationships'' between the different providers]]

After some more DNS configurations we test if it is possible to exchange emails with ‘outside’ accounts and especially with Gmail that has many security filters for mail servers other than the commercial ones.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-15 13-59-52.png|thumb|Exchange test emails with a Gmail account]]

After three hours of tryouts we manage to make it work! Very proudly and with enjoyment for sharing a technical task together we say goodbye to each other and arrange a next meeting for a final check up.

=== A choice that comes with discomforts ===
Just one day before the start of TITiPI’s server transfer away from Linode on the 28th of November, Helen found the Swiss server ungleich.ch and it seemed like an interesting choice because of the small scale (in terms of community and servers), their experimental attitude and their choice to reduce energy consumption; they avoid using systems for cooling their servers by spreading the servers at the Swiss mountains in old, abandoned buildings.

Ungleich.ch is one of the good options but it is more expensive than other providers. They offer a cheaper choice by choosing to have only ‘ipv6’. But we had to dig in to understand the difference of ipv4 and ipv6. From wikipedia: “IPv6 is the most recent version of the Internet Protocol, developed to deal with the long-anticipated problem of IPv4 address exhaustion” We found a [https://stats.labs.apnic.net/ipv6 map] that shows which countries have implemented IPv6 and it seems that if we only use this address then many places won’t have access to the website of TITiPI. So we choose to have both addresses.

We also notice that this provider is using Stripe for their payment system. In a [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Frontier parallel universe of TITiPI] we give attention to and critique Stripe because of its connections with the Carbon Removal industry.

[[copyright issues? Ungleich.ch payment system with Stripe]]

Another urgency appears while we are looking at different choices; together with many other organisations, we have been thinking about ways to host and maintain infrastructures in solidarity with communities and networks we are part of. This would mean, for example, hosting digitally a Palestinian video film archive, or research by sex workers. Solidarity is only partially a question of caring for privacy and security because it matters where and how we host our digital infrastructures and whether these spaces do or do not support the flourishing of different lives and struggles. This need make us think again if the server we choose would be suitable for something like that.

Constant and Servus are two accomplice servers that already provide to TITiPI some of their services. Zaclys is a member of Chatons that support open source values and it is located in France. We contacted them to see if they could be an option but they never responded to us.

We wanted to work with a company that provide ‘green’ infrastructure. Greenhost seem to be a good choice. It provides a familiar interface to us, good support and backup option. It has a positioning as an alternative to AWS. So far great, but what about its ‘green’ hosting vision? Is it a solarpunk vision, a green cloud utopia? Is their infrastructure resource ‘hungry’? What are the privacy limits when the material hosted in the servers is political and sensitive?

We choose Greenhost with all the discomforts that this choice entails and with the desire to keep the critique and dialogue alive.

Only by December 2023 we manage to arrange a call with one of Greenhost’s former Managing Directors to get a feeling and more information about their approach and sensitivity. Accordind to him Greenhost exists in the intersection of activism and technology. It provides consultancy, sustainability solutions in tech projects and structured ''maintenance''; they go for best quality with lowest environmental impact; they maintain the same hardware as much as possible and balance that with higher efficiency; they keep backups at an already existing data center in the university of Amsterdam.

<nowiki>[[paragraph for Greenhost include? from interview with manager?]]</nowiki>

=== Installing, tranferring, saving, copying, … ===
On the 28th of November sitting on the sunny corner of the couch next to the radiator, and with warm coffee cups waiting for us on a low table, Femke and I cover our legs with a blanket and open our laptops.

I ask Femke to jumb in a ''tmux'' session for sharing ''terminal'' with this command: <code>''sudo'' ''tmux'' attach -t webserver</code>. We start by cleaning the old server and make backups of the files.

We take a lunch break. Femke finds out that if we eat three recurrent meals every week in the office we can have a nice variety of food; lentiles soup, orecchiette pasta with brocoli, rizzoto with mushrooms and lots of fruits. Sometime ago we decided to make multiple short breaks throughout the day because of computer fatigue. One day I removed all the files from my computer that were older than 90 days because I accidentally run a command on the ''terminal'' instead of a bash script to test the setting up of [https://gitlab.constantvzw.org/titipi/burrow Burrow]. I left this comment in the initial script:

<code># VERY DANGEROUS COMMAND find *txt -mindepth 1 -mtime +$RETAIN -delete</code>
The next day we set up the new server and install all the necessary software including a new version of the MediaWiki. We arrange a meeting with Martino Morandi, member of Constant, who created the wiki-to-pdf to help us installing this software and tranfer the MediaWiki in the new server. On the 1st of December we successfully install the wiki-to-pdf and because of limited time we decided to meet one more time at the end of the month for the rest.

[[File:Virtual-env-debian.png|thumb|Screenshot from the wiki-to-pdf installation to the new server with Martino, Femke, Aggeliki. Debian supports a different way to create virtual environments for installing python packages and libraries. We try it but it failed.]]

On the 28th we meet with Martino online to complete the transfer, which includes copying the old database of MediaWiki, activate the old plugins and fix any issues on the way. We are all located in different countries (Italy, Greece, Belgium) and so we share a ''tmux'' session. We follow the guides but on the way we had to do some research and configure a lot of things to make the MediaWiki work. Martino was hunting a php module. It seemed that php has shifted to free software culture in an attempt to find another business model. It is not surprising it happens in the context of Ubuntu. The issue is recorded [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Server_transfer_documentation#MediaWiki_upgrade_issues here].

[[File:Firefox Screenshot 2024-01-10T13-59-40.398Z.png|thumb|"Is Titipi.org down?" Helen asks after the transfer. It seems that her browser cache was preventing her from seeing the website]]

The process is documented in our diary and then transferred to a [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Server_transfer_documentation wiki page]. By January 2024 the server transfer and the deletion of our Linode account has been completed.

== Glossaries ==

Italicized terms in the report are included in these glossaries:

* [https://varia.zone/ATNOFS/ATNOFS-screen.pdf Glossary of A Traversal Network of Feminist Servers (ATNOFS) publication]
* [[Glossary|TITiPI's glossary]]

== References ==

* Panashe Chigumadzi, ‘Can White South Africa Live up to Ubuntu, the African Philosophy Tutu Globalised?’, The Guardian, 31 December 2021, sec. Opinion, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec/31/white-south-africa-ubuntu-african-tutu
* ‘Community Servers - Monoskop’, accessed 16 July 2024, https://monoskop.org/Community_servers
* David Carroll, ‘How To Open An Outpost In Social Media Exile | TechPolicy.Press’, Tech Policy Press, 26 November 2022, <nowiki>https://techpolicy.press/how-to-open-an-outpost-in-social-media-exile</nowiki>.
* Elizabeth Landau, ‘Tech Confronts Its Use of the Labels “Master” and “Slave”’, ''Wired'', accessed 16 July 2024, <nowiki>https://www.wired.com/story/tech-confronts-use-labels-master-slave/</nowiki>.
* ‘GitHub Abandons “master” Term to Avoid Slavery Row’, 15 June 2020, https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-53050955
* Femke Snelting, ‘Infrastructure Solidarity’, Ardeth. A Magazine on the Power of the Project, no. 8 (1 November 2021): 45–47
* ‘Master-Slave Terminology Alternatives You Can Use Right Now | TheServerSide’, TheServerSide.com, accessed 16 July 2024, https://www.theserverside.com/opinion/Master-slave-terminology-alternatives-you-can-use-right-now
* ‘Racist Computer Engineering Words: “Master,” “Slave” and the Fight Over Offensive Terms - The New York Times’, accessed 16 July 2024, <nowiki>https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/13/technology/racist-computer-engineering-terms-ietf.html</nowiki>.
* ‘Replace “Master” and “Slave” Terms in Redis · Issue #3185 · Redis/Redis’, GitHub, accessed 16 July 2024, https://github.com/redis/redis/issues/3185
* ‘Ubuntu: A Black Radical Demand for Reparations’, THE FUNAMBULIST MAGAZINE, 25 October 2023, https://thefunambulist.net/magazine/redefining-our-terms/ubuntu-a-black-radical-demand-for-reparations.

== Colophon ==

The text was drafted in pad.xpub.nl in Markdown and then transferred in this wiki.

== Footnotes ==

From cloud to crowd: a report on a server transfer

2024-07-16T14:08:12Z

Angeliki:

= From cloud to crowd<ref>The term comes from ... (not sure if it is included in the title)</ref>: A report on a server transfer =

This text is a report on a server migration that took place within the institutional framework of [https://titipi.org/ The Institute for Technology in the Public Interest (TITiPI)], a trans-practice gathering of activists, artists, engineers and theorists. TITiPI convenes communities to articulate, activate and re-imagine together what computational technologies in the 'public interest' might be. This report is an infrastructural ethnography and aims to rethink, through a technical process, what ''hosting'' a server means for a community, institution, cultural organisation dealing with technological discomforts and often inaccessible complex digital infrastructures.

A ''server'' is a computer (or a piece of software/hardware) that provides functionalities via a network (Internet). A ''server migration'' is the process of moving data and transferring software from one server to another with the use of specified tools. Performing such process accommodates a practical and technical solution to fix the problem of an outdated server that is slow or has limited storage. But it also affects the values, the structure and infrastructural imaginations of the organisations it supports. TITiPI desired(s) to go with hosting and maintain its own virtual private server instead of outsourcing these services to external tech companies. In times of server providers’ scaling up ( ‘''cloud hosting''’ ) and digitizing governmental bureaucracies what does it mean to host your own digital space for supporting your communities and work? What does it mean to have an independent infrastructure? What (non-)dependencies are chosen or taken for granted by institutions when using hosting services?

As a researcher at TITiPI I have been caring for the task to investigate this server migration and execute it together with TITiPI’s member Femke Snelting. We meet weekly to keep track and make decisions. We share a ''markdown'' file hosted in the git of the cultural association [https://constantvzw.org/site/ Constant] that includes a diary of the server migration and reflections. Every now and then we meet online with our colleague Helen Pritchard, to discuss and share the process. This report shares extracts from the server diary and stories from the process.

== Migration or …? ==

In the cold newly installed office of TITiPI located in the Koekelberg district of Brussels, I open Chromium in my computer, that runs the operating system Ubuntu, in order to translate quickly − with the installed Google Translate plugin; later I found out there is a DeepL version − the web pages of the different cooperatives, associations, companies that provide hosting services. While doing that I have this disturbing thought in my head that I try to ignore: the word ‘migration’ as a technical term to describe the movement from one server to the other. It makes me think of an [https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/13/technology/racist-computer-engineering-terms-ietf.html online conversation], happening for a few years now, about replacing computer engineering terminology to stop prevalence of racism in tech. Specifically the conversation [https://www.wired.com/story/tech-confronts-use-labels-master-slave/ evolves around the terms] ‘master/slave’, where one computing process or entity controls another, and ‘blacklists/whitelists’ used for directories of those things that are explicitly banned or allowed. Using metaphors like that for a technical process de-contextualizes a word from its origins and unavoidably perpetuates social injustices. It also shows that the context where such choices of language are made is privileged and untouched or non-triggered by these terms. White male computer engineers have build up this language. Could words like transferring, sharing, moving, copying, re-installing, shifting replace the word ‘migration’? From this point on in the report I decide to use the term ‘transfer’.

‘Ubuntu’ is also a word extracted from its original context. It is coming from the African Ubuntu philosophy. According to the creators of the software:

<blockquote>ubuntu |oǒ’boǒntoō| Ubuntu is an ancient African word meaning ‘humanity to others’. It is often described as reminding us that ‘I am what I am because of who we all are’. We bring the spirit of Ubuntu to the world of computers and software. The Ubuntu distribution represents the best of what the world’s software community has shared with the world. <ref>‘About the Ubuntu Project’, Ubuntu, accessed 16 July 2024, https://ubuntu.com/about</ref>
</blockquote>

Paraphrasing [https://thefunambulist.net/magazine/redefining-our-terms/ubuntu-a-black-radical-demand-for-reparations Panashe Chigumadzi] words: in contrast to the western conception of the human as individual, the African conception of the person is a social being who is always becoming, defined by and being responsible for the personhood of the others. "(T)he African philosophy best understood through the proverb found in Bantu languages across the continent, 'umuntu ngumuntu ngabanye bantu' (a person is a person through other people". <ref>Panashe Chigumadzi, ‘Can White South Africa Live up to Ubuntu, the African Philosophy Tutu Globalised?’, The Guardian, 31 December 2021, sec. Opinion, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec/31/white-south-africa-ubuntu-african-tutu</ref>

<blockquote>(D)espite the flourishing of Ubuntu in post-apartheid discourse, lending its name to software, businesses, books and philanthropic organisations, South Africa is a country in which we have, as Dladla argues, Ubuntu without Abantu. Just as Black people have been dispossessed of their land, Ubuntu has been dispossessed of its deeply radical demands for ethical historical and social relations among people. (...) post apartheid Ubuntu mistranslation 'I am because we are', individualized and interpersonalised Ubuntu, Christianised Ubuntu, mistranslated in order to justify crimes and violence. In Ubuntu violence can be punished even after generations, the misinterpretation of the term allowed individual forgiveness. <ref>‘Ubuntu: A Black Radical Demand for Reparations’, THE FUNAMBULIST MAGAZINE, 25 October 2023, https://thefunambulist.net/magazine/redefining-our-terms/ubuntu-a-black-radical-demand-for-reparations</ref>
</blockquote>

I skip these thoughts and I continue browsing the list of servers. While trying to stay focused something other distracts me; I encounter an [https://www.oziosi.org/ autonomous Italian server] with the title translated with DeepL: “:: a shelter for digital exiles ::” and an image of a woman, a child and a man leaving their home. Also a small introduction: “Exiled from the global village of social networks, we claim an internet that is a simple means of communication: immaterial, anonymous, imaginary, public when it makes sense and secret when we feel the need.”. I am wondering what does this mean for actual exiles having to protect their privacy when communicating back home? [https://techpolicy.press/how-to-open-an-outpost-in-social-media-exile/ ‘Social media exiles’] and ‘Twitter migration’ are terms used often after Twitter became X and users have moved to the Fediverse or other alternatives.

[[Screenshot of the 'digital exiles' image, image not included because of copyrights issues?]]

== TITiPI’s case of server transfer ==
On the 27th of September, sitting at the long desks side to side, Femke and I have an online call with Helen, while looking at the depths of our Virtual Private Server (VPS), provided by Linode, that runs Ubuntu on our laptop screens. Linode is an American hosting provider focusing on ''Linux''-based virtual machines originally. The server is physically located in the UK. TITiPI currently uses the Linode server that Helen set up for hosting her own projects. She has been paying for Linode’s monthly fees so far.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-10-11 14-47-06.png|thumb|Screenshot of Linode Ubuntu server overview and ''terminal'' that shows a moment of figuring out what takes space in the server through ''SSH'' access]]

At the time it seemed a good choice, because it is based in UK, is ''Linux'' friendly and an alternative to Amazon Web Services (AWS), even though it was already identifying as ‘''cloud hosting''’. But in February 2023 it has been acquired by the American company Akamai that aims to scale up for [https://www.linode.com/global-infrastructure/ “computing power, optimizing performance and agility.”]. Akamai is actively changing its server policies into an increasingly intense cloud logic. This pushed forward the desire to move to a new place.

[[Screenshot of Linode website referring to scalability -- copyright issues?]]

At the moment in Linode we run pico, a flat CMS for the website https://titipi.org. There is a Mediawiki (you are reading a Mediawiki page right now) for notes and collective writing. On the wiki, we also publish our statutes, guidelines and other instituting documents. The wiki has a custom extension, called wiki-to-pdf. Each of these services will need a different way to be transferred. One approach is to build the new server space from scratch, copy the data with rsync and transfer only the Mediawiki, which includes installing a new version and copy the database and the media files.

While preparing to transfer the tools we are defining what are the practical needs and desirable priorities; we ended up on these server requirements:
* ''SSH'' access and wish for VPS
* affordable price (around €20/month)
* run a Free Software operating system, preferably Debian
* involves community work - slowing down, resisting to scaling and growth or ‘decloudification’ (small network of partners, less virtualization approach, location of servers nearby etc)
* 25-40GB storage space, 1-2 cores, 2-4GB RAM
* environmental angle
* service support in a language that we all understand (English mostly)

This server transfer happens with an intersectional and feminist approach and the desire to keep questioning. While moving away from Linode we include both the technical and the conceptual thinking in the process. There are a few things that we are looking at:
* Where to be transferred to or what services to transfer to?
* How to be transferred and what to tranfer?
* What terminology, language we use?
* What (other) narratives of server hosting can we construct?
TITiPI seeks to exist with an infrastructure that supports inter-dependent practices and solidarity across struggles. It develops Counter Cloud Actions [ref] as a way to scale down, de-cloudify, articulate, contest and re-imagine the implications of computational infrastructures (‘the cloud’).

<blockquote>TITiPI develop tools from feminisms, queer theory, Free, Libre and Open Source software, intersectionality, anti-coloniality, disability studies, historical materialism and artistic practice to generate currently inexistent vocabularies, imaginaries and methodologies. TITiPI functions as an infrastructure to establish new ways in which socio-technical practices and technologies might support the public interest. <ref>TITiPI, ‘Infrables’, Tangible Cloud Archives, https://docs.tangible-cloud.be/publications-pdf/02_snelting.pdf.</ref></blockquote>

We are looking for servers that aspire some of these values.

=== A relational infrastructure narrative/ infra-mutuality/ inter-infrastructural narrative ===
[[File:Elastic solidarities.png|thumb]]
In June 2023 TITiPI received an email from Gandi to renew the domain titipi.org in 6 days, not realising that at the same time we would need to start paying for our titipi.org email hosting. We had missed reading to the end of another email sent in the middle of June, entitled: 'Pricing update'.

We consider to work with Kate Rich to move our mailboxes to the [http://irational.org/ Irational server], soon to be installed on a Raspberry Pi, hosted at Servus. Currently it is in a rack in the UK. We decide to do this transition slowly and until then renew the emails for 1-2 months through Gandi. Irational server resists virtualization, and as an art community project it makes it an interesting choice.

But why to go through all this effort and not just use one cloud server with mailboxes, file storage and web server together? TITiPI’s response to the question of building institutional digital infrastructure embodies an archipelagic and non-sovereign approach to dependencies. Rather than building a centralised server based on ‘cloud’ from which connections with other institutions and collectives can happen, it conceptualizes inter-infrastructural practices; from the creation of a [https://gitlab.constantvzw.org/titipi/burrow backup script] for saving locally etherpad pads from other servers, hosting emails at an art server (https://irational.org), creating an [https://books.lumbung.space/shelf/26 online bookshelf] on lumbung.space, using the ''XMPP'' chat from Varia to recording conversations with the ''sysadmin'' that maintain the other servers. The institution re-imagines technological dependencies in dialogue with cultural institutions and art collectives.

[[File:Titipi-infra-diagram-JAN-24.png|thumb|none|alt=A diagram of TITiPI’s infrastructure. The diagram categorizes the elements according to tools/software (box), structure/organisational form (circle) and place (dashed line). For example Jitsi is the software, Greenhost is the organisation, meet.greenhost.net is the place.|A diagram of TITiPI’s infrastructure. The diagram categorizes the elements according to tools/software (box), structure/organisational form (circle) and place (dashed line). For example Jitsi is the software, Greenhost is the organisation, meet.greenhost.net is the place.]]

How to give life to the common space of TITiPI’s hosting infrastructures? What about building up social dependencies between the ones that host and the ones who are hosted as opposed to a technical independence? Infrastructural imaginations are often built by the ''Big Tech'' industry and governmental institutions. Instead, TITiPI practices a fluid inter-institutional approach supported by [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Infra_colophon a variety of hosts].

=== Selection of server providers ===
On the 7th of November through a shared screen at the [https://meet.greenhost.net/ video conferencing software Jitsi of Greenhost] we all three check a list of server providers I collected on a spreadsheet hosted in Constant’s cloud storage (built with Nextcloud software) where TITiPI has an account. I looked at associations, companies/businesses, cooperatives, communities coming from commercial context to social struggles, activist, feminist and other. Through a [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/List_server_networks list of networks] I found various servers mostly from Latin America and Europe.

The concept of autonomy, sovereignty, independence or self-managing characterizes most of the servers in the list. Some of them, like [https://www.autistici.org/ Autistici] promote this concept as a way to support anti-capitalist infrastructure and protect the privacy of the users as opposed to the ''Big Tech'' software practices.

<blockquote>The vision is that we - the members of the cooperative - own our own data. This implies and has as a consequence that we will have to own our own infrastructure and have insight and control over the software we use to communicate on the web.<ref>‘Community Servers - Monoskop’, accessed 16 July 2024, https://monoskop.org/Community_servers</ref></blockquote>

Femke had a hunch: "‘technological sovereignty’ and ‘data-sovereignty’ continue to be orientation devices to organise around. ‘Sovereignty’, together with ‘freedom’, ‘independence’ and ‘autonomy’, form an ideological cluster that implicitly and sometimes explicitly foregrounds separation rather than relation."

Servers can act as independent spaces but are also cultural devices and vibrant spaces. They can manifest different aspects of a full life and reach out to a multiplicity of entities.

Servus and Greenhost, seem to be two of our best choices as they cover a lot of the priorities and values of TITiPI. As one can read from their descriptions they both strive for owning their own data servers and data nodes (they have their own ''IP addresses'') and be independent from third parties. The big difference is the scale of the infrastructure and their community and network.

<blockquote>Greenhost fully owns and controls its hardware, infrastructure and uplinks. This ensures independence from third parties and proper access control. On this hardware we run our fully virtualised platform. We stand for an Open Internet, and have always embraced open source software.<ref>‘Greenhost.Net | the Sustainable Web’, accessed 16 July 2024, https://greenhost.net/.</ref></blockquote>

<blockquote>We (Servus) do not pass on any data to third parties. You will not receive commercial advertising from us or third parties. We are easily accessible and answer your questions personally. We and our servers are located at Kirchengasse 4 in Linz, Austria.<ref>‘Book Of Servus’, Book Of Servus, accessed 16 July 2024, https://book.servus.at/en/home/.</ref></blockquote>

Even though Greenhost wants to reduce ecological damage, it does that mainly through hardware reductions and does not address scale. They have plans to expand and are part of a network of partners that want to transform Rotterdam into a big hub of data nodes for the upcoming digital transition. Linode is even bigger, it goes for [[https://www.akamai.com/newsroom/press-release/akamai-takes-cloud-computing-to-the-edge| "(p)lanetary scale"]]. Servus on the other hand has one room of data servers, is closer to the scale of their community and they maintain personal relations with them.

[[Image of the server room at Servus at Linz|Image of the server room at Servus at Linz?]]

=== Community server, feminist server, trans*feminist server, radical server, autonomous server, commercial server, art server, free server, ethical server, solidarity-based server, cooperative server, associative server, independent server, alternative server, non-commercial server, … ===
The spreadsheet starts to grow because of an endless/exhaustive burrow of small and big providers.

Some are outdated. 
Some are messy. 
Some have broken links. 
Some are [https://www.julienth37.fr/vps hard to understand]. 
Some require [https://www.actiu.info/index.en.html a lot of engagement]. 
Some use a language that imitates the narratives of ''Big Tech'' and ''agile'' computing. 
Some promote seamless “promissory logic” and “high hopes for a brighter future” (ref) 
Some are big or are scaling up (in matter of space, data centers, partners, users etc). 
Some support NGO’s or sport clubs.

[[copyright issues? Screenshot from main page of Co-op Web]]

We also looked at their financial model. Many radical servers stay small, are volunteer based, like [https://www.autistici.org/ Autistici]. and go for horizontal organisational structures. Feminist and activist servers provide space in the internet for the ones who don’t have the means to organise otherwise. The resources and ways of organising for these servers are different from the cooperatives or associations whose structure is inherited from the model they are registered with.

[[File:ATNOFS-Varia-insert-ooooo.jpg|thumb|ooooo atnofs insert diagrams from varia, systerserver, servus]]

TITiPI acknowledges and is connected to the history of community, art and feminist servers and wants to support this network. The art servers started as a way to make autonomous self-managed servers that support artists values and practices. They are often financed by cultural or private funds.

<blockquote>I joined (Irational) sometime in 2000s, I can't remember when and originally it was much more a collective of people working together and then since the early 2010's I think, mid 2010's, there was a bit of a reshuffle of personnel and stuff, so the constituency changed to a smaller group and we actually reformed. We were going to disband Irational and then we actually reformed as an art server collective and we decided we are not really working together but what we have in common is that we're using the server and that is actually what the collective is now. It's the collective that uses the server together and wants to use the server together. And another real defining feature of the server the whole time has been resisting virtualization. 

— quote from interview of Kate Rich by TITiPI </blockquote>

The screen seems to become brighter as my eyes get tired. What if we skip the online hosting and create a local physical server at TITiPI’s office next to the desks, in a corner, on a Raspberry Pi? All our data would stay on this machine and we would connect with ''SSH'' from home, but then we will also have to maintain it ourselves. There is something there about the romanticism of a physical toolbox as a sovereign object. If we choose to do that we will need to think of a backup plan as it will be an experimental set up and all our data will stay offline. We won’t have a provider to take care of that.

Our list has been reduced because of our priorities. We need ''SSH'' and we would like to have a VPS. Who has resources for providing VPS? Resources of labour, time, finances, technical knowledge. This made self-defined feminist servers fall out of the selection. How to be financially sustainable, while keeping up with your own values? How to keep up with infrastructural ''maintenance'' if the scale of the users, community, members and data is big?

<blockquote>The services we offer have no defined price, but as you may easily imagine, keeping the whole system working (i.e. hardware and hosting) is very expensive (at the moment it ranges around 13,000 euro every year).<ref>‘Autistici.Org - Services’, accessed 16 July 2024, https://www.autistici.org/services/</ref></blockquote>

Servus and Maadix provide a series of ''free/libre'' tools that can be installed separately through their interface but they also provide a VPS with ''SSH'' access. With Greenhost, Hetzner and Linode there is more flexibility: you can create your own VPS and customize it for your own needs through their interface or the ''terminal'' and install whatever tools you want from scratch without a visual interface.

Technical information and knowledge of digital infrastructure circulate between groups that are tech-oriented with a difficulty to cross with other groups, including feminist servers. The ''sysadmin'' tasks are mostly taken by cis men but feminist servers are radical about that. They find important to have ''sysadmins'' that are not cis men. For example Systerserver and Anarchaserver are learning by themselves together how to do this task.

Many of the servers in the list provide only tools, as a radical way to support small groups, collectives, activists that need privacy and shifting away from Google drive when they want to organise politically and socially. It seems that being limited to tool packages instead of having full access to a server can make things comprehensible and compact for these small groups that have limited ''sysadmin'' knowledge or can’t hire a technician.

[copyrights issue? Screenshot of main page with services by [https://futuretic.fr/ FuturEtic]]

[[copyrights issue? Screenshot of tools from codigosur]]

== Final decision and server transfer ==

We are about to make our decision! Our list ended up to be very small.

On 7th of November in an online call between Helen in Basel, Femke in Brussels and Aggeliki in Rotterdam we limited our list to four options: Constant, Greenhost, Servus, Zaclys. The selection consists of a diversity of scales and positioning that we found interesting to think of. First, we move on with the decision to transfer our mailboxes to Irational hosted at Servus. The rest of the functionalities will be hosted somewhere else.

From our conversations with Femke: “The choice for irational.org opens the possibility for discussions around dependencies, trust and frictions within shared collective servers. Irational.org is an ally art server who uses and maintains its own server for many years. Hosting such a private service at a friend’s environment doesn’t come only with convenience. The closeness to the material of the server makes the dependency more tangible.” [reference/quote from colophon?]

[[copyrights issue? towel design by psaroskalazines|towel design by psaroskalazines]] copyrights?

Femke and I are planning different moments for the server transfer to happen in the office of TITiPI. What it is about to take place comes down into three moments; the backup and save of data from the old server, the installation of the necessary software in the new server and the transfer of the old data in the new server.

Specifically we are following these steps:

* Mail transfer from Gandi to irational
* Create a Virtual Private Server (VPS) in the new server
* Install Apache2 and configure domains
* Install and migrate MediaWiki
** Back up the wiki on the Linode VPS
** Upgrade MediaWiki in Linode
** Install MediaWiki and plugins in the Greenhost VPS
** Transfer database and media files from Linode to Greenhost
* Install Wiki-to-pdf
* Install Pico
* Install and configure Certbot

We find ourselves between two virtual spaces and one office, among other indirectly connected spaces like the rooms of our distant collaborators and the office locations of the servers.

=== Trust relationships ===
By now, 14th of November 2023, the office is warm and cozy. Throughout the time I am writing this report I have been noticing a lot of slow and small efforts to renovate the building and set up the heating, by the artists and organisations who share the space with TITiPI. Another infrastructure that needs care.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 15-06-42.png|thumb|Femke and Aggeliki entering Irational’s server space with Kate]]

On a shared screen together with Femke we get introduced to the mail server of Irational by Kate. We use an audio splitter to share the laptop for the call. Kate described her experience as an amateur ''sysadmin'' that had to spend a lot of time to learn and set up the mail server. After that we start the process that has been documented [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Server_transfer_documentation#Mail_transfer here].

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 14-56-26.png|thumb|Screenshot from the TITiPI’s mail transfer with Kate, Femke and Aggeliki during an online 3 hours call]]

Irational uses the Alpine email client. Kate takes us its depths. That is where we start to set up our new email accounts before we configure them in Thunderbird. Femke gets excited on the fact that she can send emails to other Irational accounts through the ''terminal''.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 15-15-07.png|thumb|Using the email client Alpine]]

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 17-04-20.png|thumb|Screenhost from the moment of looking for the syntax of the TXT records. Finding the right syntax for this value was the biggest challenge. This is part of the ''trust relationships'' between the different providers]]

After some more DNS configurations we test if it is possible to exchange emails with ‘outside’ accounts and especially with Gmail that has many security filters for mail servers other than the commercial ones.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-15 13-59-52.png|thumb|Exchange test emails with a Gmail account]]

After three hours of tryouts we manage to make it work! Very proudly and with enjoyment for sharing a technical task together we say goodbye to each other and arrange a next meeting for a final check up.

=== A choice that comes with discomforts ===
Just one day before the start of TITiPI’s server transfer away from Linode on the 28th of November, Helen found the Swiss server ungleich.ch and it seemed like an interesting choice because of the small scale (in terms of community and servers), their experimental attitude and their choice to reduce energy consumption; they avoid using systems for cooling their servers by spreading the servers at the Swiss mountains in old, abandoned buildings.

Ungleich.ch is one of the good options but it is more expensive than other providers. They offer a cheaper choice by choosing to have only ‘ipv6’. But we had to dig in to understand the difference of ipv4 and ipv6. From wikipedia: “IPv6 is the most recent version of the Internet Protocol, developed to deal with the long-anticipated problem of IPv4 address exhaustion” We found a [https://stats.labs.apnic.net/ipv6 map] that shows which countries have implemented IPv6 and it seems that if we only use this address then many places won’t have access to the website of TITiPI. So we choose to have both addresses.

We also notice that this provider is using Stripe for their payment system. In a [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Frontier parallel universe of TITiPI] we give attention to and critique Stripe because of its connections with the Carbon Removal industry.

[[copyright issues? Ungleich.ch payment system with Stripe]]

Another urgency appears while we are looking at different choices; together with many other organisations, we have been thinking about ways to host and maintain infrastructures in solidarity with communities and networks we are part of. This would mean, for example, hosting digitally a Palestinian video film archive, or research by sex workers. Solidarity is only partially a question of caring for privacy and security because it matters where and how we host our digital infrastructures and whether these spaces do or do not support the flourishing of different lives and struggles. This need make us think again if the server we choose would be suitable for something like that.

Constant and Servus are two accomplice servers that already provide to TITiPI some of their services. Zaclys is a member of Chatons that support open source values and it is located in France. We contacted them to see if they could be an option but they never responded to us.

We wanted to work with a company that provide ‘green’ infrastructure. Greenhost seem to be a good choice. It provides a familiar interface to us, good support and backup option. It has a positioning as an alternative to AWS. So far great, but what about its ‘green’ hosting vision? Is it a solarpunk vision, a green cloud utopia? Is their infrastructure resource ‘hungry’? What are the privacy limits when the material hosted in the servers is political and sensitive?

We choose Greenhost with all the discomforts that this choice entails and with the desire to keep the critique and dialogue alive.

Only by December 2023 we manage to arrange a call with one of Greenhost’s former Managing Directors to get a feeling and more information about their approach and sensitivity. Accordind to him Greenhost exists in the intersection of activism and technology. It provides consultancy, sustainability solutions in tech projects and structured ''maintenance''; they go for best quality with lowest environmental impact; they maintain the same hardware as much as possible and balance that with higher efficiency; they keep backups at an already existing data center in the university of Amsterdam.

<nowiki>[[paragraph for Greenhost include? from interview with manager?]]</nowiki>

=== Installing, tranferring, saving, copying, … ===
On the 28th of November sitting on the sunny corner of the couch next to the radiator, and with warm coffee cups waiting for us on a low table, Femke and I cover our legs with a blanket and open our laptops.

I ask Femke to jumb in a ''tmux'' session for sharing ''terminal'' with this command: <code>''sudo'' ''tmux'' attach -t webserver</code>. We start by cleaning the old server and make backups of the files.

We take a lunch break. Femke finds out that if we eat three recurrent meals every week in the office we can have a nice variety of food; lentiles soup, orecchiette pasta with brocoli, rizzoto with mushrooms and lots of fruits. Sometime ago we decided to make multiple short breaks throughout the day because of computer fatigue. One day I removed all the files from my computer that were older than 90 days because I accidentally run a command on the ''terminal'' instead of a bash script to test the setting up of [https://gitlab.constantvzw.org/titipi/burrow Burrow]. I left this comment in the initial script:

<code># VERY DANGEROUS COMMAND find *txt -mindepth 1 -mtime +$RETAIN -delete</code>
The next day we set up the new server and install all the necessary software including a new version of the MediaWiki. We arrange a meeting with Martino Morandi, member of Constant, who created the wiki-to-pdf to help us installing this software and tranfer the MediaWiki in the new server. On the 1st of December we successfully install the wiki-to-pdf and because of limited time we decided to meet one more time at the end of the month for the rest.

[[File:Virtual-env-debian.png|thumb|Screenshot from the wiki-to-pdf installation to the new server with Martino, Femke, Aggeliki. Debian supports a different way to create virtual environments for installing python packages and libraries. We try it but it failed.]]

On the 28th we meet with Martino online to complete the transfer, which includes copying the old database of MediaWiki, activate the old plugins and fix any issues on the way. We are all located in different countries (Italy, Greece, Belgium) and so we share a ''tmux'' session. We follow the guides but on the way we had to do some research and configure a lot of things to make the MediaWiki work. Martino was hunting a php module. It seemed that php has shifted to free software culture in an attempt to find another business model. It is not surprising it happens in the context of Ubuntu. The issue is recorded [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Server_transfer_documentation#MediaWiki_upgrade_issues here].

[[File:Firefox Screenshot 2024-01-10T13-59-40.398Z.png|thumb|"Is Titipi.org down?" Helen asks after the transfer. It seems that her browser cache was preventing her from seeing the website]]

The process is documented in our diary and then transferred to a [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Server_transfer_documentation wiki page]. By January 2024 the server transfer and the deletion of our Linode account has been completed.

== Glossaries ==

Italicized terms in the report are included in these glossaries:

* [https://varia.zone/ATNOFS/ATNOFS-screen.pdf Glossary of A Traversal Network of Feminist Servers (ATNOFS) publication]
* [[Glossary|TITiPI's glossary]]

== References ==

* Panashe Chigumadzi, ‘Can White South Africa Live up to Ubuntu, the African Philosophy Tutu Globalised?’, The Guardian, 31 December 2021, sec. Opinion, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec/31/white-south-africa-ubuntu-african-tutu
* ‘Community Servers - Monoskop’, accessed 16 July 2024, https://monoskop.org/Community_servers
* David Carroll, ‘How To Open An Outpost In Social Media Exile | TechPolicy.Press’, Tech Policy Press, 26 November 2022, <nowiki>https://techpolicy.press/how-to-open-an-outpost-in-social-media-exile</nowiki>.
* Elizabeth Landau, ‘Tech Confronts Its Use of the Labels “Master” and “Slave”’, ''Wired'', accessed 16 July 2024, <nowiki>https://www.wired.com/story/tech-confronts-use-labels-master-slave/</nowiki>.
* ‘GitHub Abandons “master” Term to Avoid Slavery Row’, 15 June 2020, https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-53050955
* Femke Snelting, ‘Infrastructure Solidarity’, Ardeth. A Magazine on the Power of the Project, no. 8 (1 November 2021): 45–47
* ‘Master-Slave Terminology Alternatives You Can Use Right Now | TheServerSide’, TheServerSide.com, accessed 16 July 2024, https://www.theserverside.com/opinion/Master-slave-terminology-alternatives-you-can-use-right-now
* ‘Racist Computer Engineering Words: “Master,” “Slave” and the Fight Over Offensive Terms - The New York Times’, accessed 16 July 2024, <nowiki>https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/13/technology/racist-computer-engineering-terms-ietf.html</nowiki>.
* ‘Replace “Master” and “Slave” Terms in Redis · Issue #3185 · Redis/Redis’, GitHub, accessed 16 July 2024, https://github.com/redis/redis/issues/3185
* ‘Ubuntu: A Black Radical Demand for Reparations’, THE FUNAMBULIST MAGAZINE, 25 October 2023, https://thefunambulist.net/magazine/redefining-our-terms/ubuntu-a-black-radical-demand-for-reparations.

== Colophon ==

The text was drafted in pad.xpub.nl in Markdown and then transferred in this wiki.

== Footnotes ==

From cloud to crowd: a report on a server transfer

2024-07-16T13:55:10Z

Angeliki:

= From cloud to crowd<ref>The term comes from ... (not sure if it is included in the title)</ref>: A report on a server transfer =

This text is a report on a server migration that took place within the institutional framework of [https://titipi.org/ The Institute for Technology in the Public Interest (TITiPI)], a trans-practice gathering of activists, artists, engineers and theorists. TITiPI convenes communities to articulate, activate and re-imagine together what computational technologies in the 'public interest' might be. This report is an infrastructural ethnography and aims to rethink, through a technical process, what ''hosting'' a server means for a community, institution, cultural organisation dealing with technological discomforts and often inaccessible complex digital infrastructures.

A ''server'' is a computer (or a piece of software/hardware) that provides functionalities via a network (Internet). A ''server migration'' is the process of moving data and transferring software from one server to another with the use of specified tools. Performing such process accommodates a practical and technical solution to fix the problem of an outdated server that is slow or has limited storage. But it also affects the values, the structure and infrastructural imaginations of the organisations it supports. TITiPI desired(s) to go with hosting and maintain its own virtual private server instead of outsourcing these services to external tech companies. In times of server providers’ scaling up ( ‘''cloud hosting''’ ) and digitizing governmental bureaucracies what does it mean to host your own digital space for supporting your communities and work? What does it mean to have an independent infrastructure? What (non-)dependencies are chosen or taken for granted by institutions when using hosting services?

As a researcher at TITiPI I have been caring for the task to investigate this server migration and execute it together with TITiPI’s member Femke Snelting. We meet weekly to keep track and make decisions. We share a ''markdown'' file hosted in the git of the cultural association [https://constantvzw.org/site/ Constant] that includes a diary of the server migration and reflections. Every now and then we meet online with our colleague Helen Pritchard, to discuss and share the process. This report shares extracts from the server diary and stories from the process.

== Migration or … ? ==

In the cold newly installed office of TITiPI located in the Koekelberg district of Brussels, I open Chromium in my computer, that runs the operating system Ubuntu, in order to translate quickly − with the installed Google Translate plugin; later I found out there is a DeepL version − the web pages of the different cooperatives, associations, companies that provide hosting services. While doing that I have this disturbing thought in my head that I try to ignore: the word ‘migration’ as a technical term to describe the movement from one server to the other. It makes me think of an [https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/13/technology/racist-computer-engineering-terms-ietf.html online conversation], happening for a few years now, about replacing computer engineering terminology to stop prevalence of racism in tech. Specifically the conversation [https://www.wired.com/story/tech-confronts-use-labels-master-slave/ evolves around the terms] ‘master/slave’, where one computing process or entity controls another, and ‘blacklists/whitelists’ used for directories of those things that are explicitly banned or allowed. Using metaphors like that for a technical process de-contextualizes a word from its origins and unavoidably perpetuates social injustices. It also shows that the context where such choices of language are made is privileged and untouched or non-triggered by these terms. White male computer engineers have build up this language. Could words like transferring, sharing, moving, copying, re-installing, shifting replace the word ‘migration’? From this point on in the report I decide to use the term ‘transfer’.

‘Ubuntu’ is also a word extracted from its original context. It is coming from the African Ubuntu philosophy. According to the creators of the software:

<blockquote>ubuntu |oǒ’boǒntoō| Ubuntu is an ancient African word meaning ‘humanity to others’. It is often described as reminding us that ‘I am what I am because of who we all are’. We bring the spirit of Ubuntu to the world of computers and software. The Ubuntu distribution represents the best of what the world’s software community has shared with the world. <ref>‘About the Ubuntu Project’, Ubuntu, accessed 16 July 2024, https://ubuntu.com/about</ref>
</blockquote>

Paraphrasing [https://thefunambulist.net/magazine/redefining-our-terms/ubuntu-a-black-radical-demand-for-reparations Panashe Chigumadzi] words: in contrast to the western conception of the human as individual, the African conception of the person is a social being who is always becoming, defined by and being responsible for the personhood of the others. "(T)he African philosophy best understood through the proverb found in Bantu languages across the continent, 'umuntu ngumuntu ngabanye bantu' (a person is a person through other people". <ref>Panashe Chigumadzi, ‘Can White South Africa Live up to Ubuntu, the African Philosophy Tutu Globalised?’, The Guardian, 31 December 2021, sec. Opinion, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec/31/white-south-africa-ubuntu-african-tutu</ref>

<blockquote>(D)espite the flourishing of Ubuntu in post-apartheid discourse, lending its name to software, businesses, books and philanthropic organisations, South Africa is a country in which we have, as Dladla argues, Ubuntu without Abantu. Just as Black people have been dispossessed of their land, Ubuntu has been dispossessed of its deeply radical demands for ethical historical and social relations among people. (...) post apartheid Ubuntu mistranslation 'I am because we are', individualized and interpersonalised Ubuntu, Christianised Ubuntu, mistranslated in order to justify crimes and violence. In Ubuntu violence can be punished even after generations, the misinterpretation of the term allowed individual forgiveness. <ref>‘Ubuntu: A Black Radical Demand for Reparations’, THE FUNAMBULIST MAGAZINE, 25 October 2023, https://thefunambulist.net/magazine/redefining-our-terms/ubuntu-a-black-radical-demand-for-reparations</ref>
</blockquote>

I skip these thoughts and I continue browsing the list of servers. While trying to stay focused something other distracts me; I encounter an [https://www.oziosi.org/ autonomous Italian server] with the title translated with DeepL: “:: a shelter for digital exiles ::” and an image of a woman, a child and a man leaving their home. Also a small introduction: “Exiled from the global village of social networks, we claim an internet that is a simple means of communication: immaterial, anonymous, imaginary, public when it makes sense and secret when we feel the need.”. I am wondering what does this mean for actual exiles having to protect their privacy when communicating back home? [https://techpolicy.press/how-to-open-an-outpost-in-social-media-exile/ ‘Social media exiles’] and ‘Twitter migration’ are terms used often after Twitter became X and users have moved to the Fediverse or other alternatives.

[[Screenshot of the 'digital exiles' image, image not included because of copyrights issues?]]

== TITiPI’s case of server transfer ==
On the 27th of September, sitting at the long desks side to side, Femke and I have an online call with Helen, while looking at the depths of our Virtual Private Server (VPS), provided by Linode, that runs Ubuntu on our laptop screens. Linode is an American hosting provider focusing on ''Linux''-based virtual machines originally. The server is physically located in the UK. TITiPI currently uses the Linode server that Helen set up for hosting her own projects. She has been paying for Linode’s monthly fees so far.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-10-11 14-47-06.png|thumb|Screenshot of Linode Ubuntu server overview and ''terminal'' that shows a moment of figuring out what takes space in the server through ''SSH'' access]]

At the time it seemed a good choice, because it is based in UK, is ''Linux'' friendly and an alternative to Amazon Web Services (AWS), even though it was already identifying as ‘''cloud hosting''’. But in February 2023 it has been acquired by the American company Akamai that aims to scale up for [https://www.linode.com/global-infrastructure/ “computing power, optimizing performance and agility.”]. Akamai is actively changing its server policies into an increasingly intense cloud logic. This pushed forward the desire to move to a new place.

[[Screenshot of Linode website referring to scalability -- copyright issues?]]

At the moment in Linode we run pico, a flat CMS for the website https://titipi.org. There is a Mediawiki (you are reading a Mediawiki page right now) for notes and collective writing. On the wiki, we also publish our statutes, guidelines and other instituting documents. The wiki has a custom extension, called wiki-to-pdf. Each of these services will need a different way to be transferred. One approach is to build the new server space from scratch, copy the data with rsync and transfer only the Mediawiki, which includes installing a new version and copy the database and the media files.

While preparing to transfer the tools we are defining what are the practical needs and desirable priorities; we ended up on these server requirements:
* ''SSH'' access and wish for VPS
* affordable price (around €20/month)
* run a Free Software operating system, preferably Debian
* involves community work - slowing down, resisting to scaling and growth or ‘decloudification’ (small network of partners, less virtualization approach, location of servers nearby etc)
* 25-40GB storage space, 1-2 cores, 2-4GB RAM
* environmental angle
* service support in a language that we all understand (English mostly)

This server transfer happens with an intersectional and feminist approach and the desire to keep questioning. While moving away from Linode we include both the technical and the conceptual thinking in the process. There are a few things that we are looking at: 
* Where to be transferred to or what services to transfer to?
* How to be transferred and what to tranfer?
* What terminology, language we use?
* What (other) narratives of server hosting can we construct?

TITiPI seeks to exist with an infrastructure that supports inter-dependent practices and solidarity across struggles. It develops Counter Cloud Actions [ref] as a way to scale down, de-cloudify, articulate, contest and re-imagine the implications of computational infrastructures (‘the cloud’).

<blockquote>TITiPI develop tools from feminisms, queer theory, Free, Libre and Open Source software, intersectionality, anti-coloniality, disability studies, historical materialism and artistic practice to generate currently inexistent vocabularies, imaginaries and methodologies. TITiPI functions as an infrastructure to establish new ways in which socio-technical practices and technologies might support the public interest. <ref>TITiPI, ‘Infrables’, Tangible Cloud Archives, https://docs.tangible-cloud.be/publications-pdf/02_snelting.pdf.</ref></blockquote>

We are looking for servers that aspire some of these values.

=== A relational infrastructure narrative/ infra-mutuality/ inter-infrastructural narrative ===
[[File:Elastic solidarities.png|thumb]]
In June 2023 TITiPI received an email from Gandi to renew the domain titipi.org in 6 days, not realising that at the same time we would need to start paying for our titipi.org email hosting. We had missed reading to the end of another email sent in the middle of June, entitled: 'Pricing update'.

We consider to work with Kate Rich to move our mailboxes to the [http://irational.org/ Irational server], soon to be installed on a Raspberry Pi, hosted at Servus. Currently it is in a rack in the UK. We decide to do this transition slowly and until then renew the emails for 1-2 months through Gandi. Irational server resists virtualization, and as an art community project it makes it an interesting choice.

But why to go through all this effort and not just use one cloud server with mailboxes, file storage and web server together? TITiPI’s response to the question of building institutional digital infrastructure embodies an archipelagic and non-sovereign approach to dependencies. Rather than building a centralised server based on ‘cloud’ from which connections with other institutions and collectives can happen, it conceptualizes inter-infrastructural practices; from the creation of a [https://gitlab.constantvzw.org/titipi/burrow backup script] for saving locally etherpad pads from other servers, hosting emails at an art server (https://irational.org), creating an [https://books.lumbung.space/shelf/26 online bookshelf] on lumbung.space, using the ''XMPP'' chat from Varia to recording conversations with the ''sysadmin'' that maintain the other servers. The institution re-imagines technological dependencies in dialogue with cultural institutions and art collectives.

[[File:Titipi-infra-diagram-JAN-24.png|thumb|none|alt=A diagram of TITiPI’s infrastructure. The diagram categorizes the elements according to tools/software (box), structure/organisational form (circle) and place (dashed line). For example Jitsi is the software, Greenhost is the organisation, meet.greenhost.net is the place.|A diagram of TITiPI’s infrastructure. The diagram categorizes the elements according to tools/software (box), structure/organisational form (circle) and place (dashed line). For example Jitsi is the software, Greenhost is the organisation, meet.greenhost.net is the place.]]

How to give life to the common space of TITiPI’s hosting infrastructures? What about building up social dependencies between the ones that host and the ones who are hosted as opposed to a technical independence? Infrastructural imaginations are often built by the ''Big Tech'' industry and governmental institutions. Instead, TITiPI practices a fluid inter-institutional approach supported by [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Infra_colophon a variety of hosts].

=== Selection of server providers ===
On the 7th of November through a shared screen at the [https://meet.greenhost.net/ video conferencing software Jitsi of Greenhost] we all three check a list of server providers I collected on a spreadsheet hosted in Constant’s cloud storage (built with Nextcloud software) where TITiPI has an account. I looked at associations, companies/businesses, cooperatives, communities coming from commercial context to social struggles, activist, feminist and other. Through a [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/List_server_networks list of networks] I found various servers mostly from Latin America and Europe.

The concept of autonomy, sovereignty, independence or self-managing characterizes most of the servers in the list. Some of them, like [https://www.autistici.org/ Autistici] promote this concept as a way to support anti-capitalist infrastructure and protect the privacy of the users as opposed to the ''Big Tech'' software practices.

<blockquote>"The vision is that we - the members of the cooperative - own our own data. This implies and has as a consequence that we will have to own our own infrastructure and have insight and control over the software we use to communicate on the web."<ref>‘Community Servers - Monoskop’, accessed 16 July 2024, https://monoskop.org/Community_servers</ref></blockquote>

Femke had a hunch: "‘technological sovereignty’ and ‘data-sovereignty’ continue to be orientation devices to organise around. ‘Sovereignty’, together with ‘freedom’, ‘independence’ and ‘autonomy’, form an ideological cluster that implicitly and sometimes explicitly foregrounds separation rather than relation."

Servers can act as independent spaces but are also cultural devices and vibrant spaces. They can manifest different aspects of a full life and reach out to a multiplicity of entities.

Servus and Greenhost, seem to be two of our best choices as they cover a lot of the priorities and values of TITiPI. As one can read from their descriptions they both strive for owning their own data servers and data nodes (they have their own ''IP addresses'') and be independent from third parties. The big difference is the scale of the infrastructure and their community and network.

<blockquote>Greenhost fully owns and controls its hardware, infrastructure and uplinks. This ensures independence from third parties and proper access control. On this hardware we run our fully virtualised platform. We stand for an Open Internet, and have always embraced open source software.<ref>‘Greenhost.Net | the Sustainable Web’, accessed 16 July 2024, https://greenhost.net/.</ref></blockquote>

<blockquote>We (Servus) do not pass on any data to third parties. You will not receive commercial advertising from us or third parties. We are easily accessible and answer your questions personally. We and our servers are located at Kirchengasse 4 in Linz, Austria.<ref>‘Book Of Servus’, Book Of Servus, accessed 16 July 2024, https://book.servus.at/en/home/.</ref></blockquote>

Even though Greenhost wants to reduce ecological damage, it does that mainly through hardware reductions and does not address scale. They have plans to expand and are part of a network of partners that want to transform Rotterdam into a big hub of data nodes for the upcoming digital transition. Linode is even bigger, it goes for [[https://www.akamai.com/newsroom/press-release/akamai-takes-cloud-computing-to-the-edge| "(p)lanetary scale"]]. Servus on the other hand has one room of data servers, is closer to the scale of their community and they maintain personal relations with them.

[[Image of the server room at Servus at Linz|Image of the server room at Servus at Linz?]]

=== Community server, feminist server, trans*feminist server, radical server, autonomous server, commercial server, art server, free server, ethical server, solidarity-based server, cooperative server, associative server, independent server, alternative server, non-commercial server, … ===
The spreadsheet starts to grow because of an endless/exhaustive burrow of small and big providers.

Some are outdated. 
Some are messy. 
Some have broken links. 
Some are [https://www.julienth37.fr/vps hard to understand]. 
Some require [https://www.actiu.info/index.en.html a lot of engagement]. 
Some use a language that imitates the narratives of ''Big Tech'' and ''agile'' computing. 
Some promote seamless “promissory logic” and “high hopes for a brighter future” (ref) 
Some are big or are scaling up (in matter of space, data centers, partners, users etc). 
Some support NGO’s or sport clubs.

[[copyright issues? Screenshot from main page of Co-op Web]]

We also looked at their financial model. Many radical servers stay small, are volunteer based, like [https://www.autistici.org/ Autistici]. and go for horizontal organisational structures. Feminist and activist servers provide space in the internet for the ones who don’t have the means to organise otherwise. The resources and ways of organising for these servers are different from the cooperatives or associations whose structure is inherited from the model they are registered with.

[[File:ATNOFS-Varia-insert-ooooo.jpg|thumb|ooooo atnofs insert diagrams from varia, systerserver, servus]]

TITiPI acknowledges and is connected to the history of community, art and feminist servers and wants to support this network. The art servers started as a way to make autonomous self-managed servers that support artists values and practices. They are often financed by cultural or private funds.

<blockquote>I joined (Irational) sometime in 2000s, I can't remember when and originally it was much more a collective of people working together and then since the early 2010's I think, mid 2010's, there was a bit of a reshuffle of personnel and stuff, so the constituency changed to a smaller group and we actually reformed. We were going to disband Irational and then we actually reformed as an art server collective and we decided we are not really working together but what we have in common is that we're using the server and that is actually what the collective is now. It's the collective that uses the server together and wants to use the server together. And another real defining feature of the server the whole time has been resisting virtualization. 

— quote from interview with Kate Rich </blockquote>

The screen seems to become brighter as my eyes get tired. What if we skip the online hosting and create a local physical server at TITiPI’s office next to the desks, in a corner, on a Raspberry Pi? All our data would stay on this machine and we would connect with ''SSH'' from home, but then we will also have to maintain it ourselves. There is something there about the romanticism of a physical toolbox as a sovereign object. If we choose to do that we will need to think of a backup plan as it will be an experimental set up and all our data will stay offline. We won’t have a provider to take care of that.

Our list has been reduced because of our priorities. We need ''SSH'' and we would like to have a VPS. Who has resources for providing VPS? Resources of labour, time, finances, technical knowledge. This made self-defined feminist servers fall out of the selection. How to be financially sustainable, while keeping up with your own values? How to keep up with infrastructural ''maintenance'' if the scale of the users, community, members and data is big?

<blockquote>The services we offer have no defined price, but as you may easily imagine, keeping the whole system working (i.e. hardware and hosting) is very expensive (at the moment it ranges around 13,000 euro every year).<ref>‘Autistici.Org - Services’, accessed 16 July 2024, https://www.autistici.org/services/</ref></blockquote>

Servus and Maadix provide a series of ''free/libre'' tools that can be installed separately through their interface but they also provide a VPS with ''SSH'' access. With Greenhost, Hetzner and Linode there is more flexibility: you can create your own VPS and customize it for your own needs through their interface or the ''terminal'' and install whatever tools you want from scratch without a visual interface.

Technical information and knowledge of digital infrastructure circulate between groups that are tech-oriented with a difficulty to cross with other groups, including feminist servers. The ''sysadmin'' tasks are mostly taken by cis men but feminist servers are radical about that. They find important to have ''sysadmins'' that are not cis men. For example Systerserver and Anarchaserver are learning by themselves together how to do this task.

Many of the servers in the list provide only tools, as a radical way to support small groups, collectives, activists that need privacy and shifting away from Google drive when they want to organise politically and socially. It seems that being limited to tool packages instead of having full access to a server can make things comprehensible and compact for these small groups that have limited ''sysadmin'' knowledge or can’t hire a technician.

[[copyrights issue? Screenshot of main page with services by [https://futuretic.fr/ FuturEtic]]]

[[copyrights issue? Screenshot of tools from codigosur]]

== Final decision and server transfer ==

We are about to make our decision! Our list ended up to be very small.

On 7th of November in an online call between Helen in Basel, Femke in Brussels and Aggeliki in Rotterdam we limited our list to four options: Constant, Greenhost, Servus, Zaclys. The selection consists of a diversity of scales and positioning that we found interesting to think of. First, we move on with the decision to transfer our mailboxes to Irational hosted at Servus. The rest of the functionalities will be hosted somewhere else.

From our conversations with Femke: “The choice for irational.org opens the possibility for discussions around dependencies, trust and frictions within shared collective servers. Irational.org is an ally art server who uses and maintains its own server for many years. Hosting such a private service at a friend’s environment doesn’t come only with convenience. The closeness to the material of the server makes the dependency more tangible.” [reference/quote from colophon?]

[[copyrights issue? towel design by psaroskalazines|towel design by psaroskalazines]]

Femke and I are planning different moments for the server transfer to happen in the office of TITiPI. What it is about to take place comes down into three moments; the backup and save of data from the old server, the installation of the necessary software in the new server and the transfer of the old data in the new server.

Specifically we are following these steps:

* Mail transfer from Gandi to irational
* Create a Virtual Private Server (VPS) in the new server
* Install Apache2 and configure domains
* Install and migrate MediaWiki
** Back up the wiki on the Linode VPS
** Upgrade MediaWiki in Linode
** Install MediaWiki and plugins in the Greenhost VPS
** Transfer database and media files from Linode to Greenhost
* Install Wiki-to-pdf
* Install Pico
* Install and configure Certbot

We find ourselves between two virtual spaces and one office, among other indirectly connected spaces like the rooms of our distant collaborators and the office locations of the servers.

=== Trust relationships ===
By now, 14th of November 2023, the office is warm and cozy. Throughout the time I am writing this report I have been noticing a lot of slow and small efforts to renovate the building and set up the heating, by the artists and organisations who share the space with TITiPI. Another infrastructure that needs care.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 15-06-42.png|thumb|Femke and Aggeliki entering Irational’s server space with Kate]]

On a shared screen together with Femke we get introduced to the mail server of Irational by Kate. We use an audio splitter to share the laptop for the call. Kate described her experience as an amateur ''sysadmin'' that had to spend a lot of time to learn and set up the mail server. After that we start the process that has been documented [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Server_transfer_documentation#Mail_transfer here].

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 14-56-26.png|thumb|Screenshot from the TITiPI’s mail transfer with Kate, Femke and Aggeliki during an online 3 hours call]]

Irational uses the Alpine email client. Kate takes us its depths. That is where we start to set up our new email accounts before we configure them in Thunderbird. Femke gets excited on the fact that she can send emails to other Irational accounts through the ''terminal''.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 15-15-07.png|thumb|Using the email client Alpine]]

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 17-04-20.png|thumb|Screenhost from the moment of looking for the syntax of the TXT records. Finding the right syntax for this value was the biggest challenge. This is part of the ''trust relationships'' between the different providers]]

After some more DNS configurations we test if it is possible to exchange emails with ‘outside’ accounts and especially with Gmail that has many security filters for mail servers other than the commercial ones.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-15 13-59-52.png|thumb|Exchange test emails with a Gmail account]]

After three hours of tryouts we manage to make it work! Very proudly and with enjoyment for sharing a technical task together we say goodbye to each other and arrange a next meeting for a final check up.

=== A choice that comes with discomforts ===
Just one day before the start of TITiPI’s server transfer away from Linode on the 28th of November, Helen found the Swiss server ungleich.ch and it seemed like an interesting choice because of the small scale (in terms of community and servers), their experimental attitude and their choice to reduce energy consumption; they avoid using systems for cooling their servers by spreading the servers at the Swiss mountains in old, abandoned buildings.

Ungleich.ch is one of the good options but it is more expensive than other providers. They offer a cheaper choice by choosing to have only ‘ipv6’. But we had to dig in to understand the difference of ipv4 and ipv6. From wikipedia: “IPv6 is the most recent version of the Internet Protocol, developed to deal with the long-anticipated problem of IPv4 address exhaustion” We found a [https://stats.labs.apnic.net/ipv6 map] that shows which countries have implemented IPv6 and it seems that if we only use this address then many places won’t have access to the website of TITiPI. So we choose to have both addresses.

We also notice that this provider is using Stripe for their payment system. In a [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Frontier parallel universe of TITiPI] we give attention to and critique Stripe because of its connections with the Carbon Removal industry.

[[copyright issues? Ungleich.ch payment system with Stripe]]

Another urgency appears while we are looking at different choices; together with many other organisations, we have been thinking about ways to host and maintain infrastructures in solidarity with communities and networks we are part of. This would mean, for example, hosting digitally a Palestinian video film archive, or research by sex workers. Solidarity is only partially a question of caring for privacy and security because it matters where and how we host our digital infrastructures and whether these spaces do or do not support the flourishing of different lives and struggles. This need make us think again if the server we choose would be suitable for something like that.

Constant and Servus are two accomplice servers that already provide to TITiPI some of their services. Zaclys is a member of Chatons that support open source values and it is located in France. We contacted them to see if they could be an option but they never responded to us.

We wanted to work with a company that provide ‘green’ infrastructure. Greenhost seem to be a good choice. It provides a familiar interface to us, good support and backup option. It has a positioning as an alternative to AWS. So far great, but what about its ‘green’ hosting vision? Is it a solarpunk vision, a green cloud utopia? Is their infrastructure resource ‘hungry’? What are the privacy limits when the material hosted in the servers is political and sensitive?

We choose Greenhost with all the discomforts that this choice entails and with the desire to keep the critique and dialogue alive.

Only by December 2023 we manage to arrange a call with one of Greenhost’s former Managing Directors to get a feeling and more information about their approach and sensitivity. Accordind to him Greenhost exists in the intersection of activism and technology. It provides consultancy, sustainability solutions in tech projects and structured ''maintenance''; they go for best quality with lowest environmental impact; they maintain the same hardware as much as possible and balance that with higher efficiency; they keep backups at an already existing data center in the university of Amsterdam.

<nowiki>[[paragraph for Greenhost include? from interview with manager?]]</nowiki>

=== Installing, tranferring, saving, copying, … ===
On the 28th of November sitting on the sunny corner of the couch next to the radiator, and with warm coffee cups waiting for us on a low table, Femke and I cover our legs with a blanket and open our laptops.

I ask Femke to jumb in a ''tmux'' session for sharing ''terminal'' with this command: <code>''sudo'' ''tmux'' attach -t webserver</code>. We start by cleaning the old server and make backups of the files.

We take a lunch break. Femke finds out that if we eat three recurrent meals every week in the office we can have a nice variety of food; lentiles soup, orecchiette pasta with brocoli, rizzoto with mushrooms and lots of fruits. Sometime ago we decided to make multiple short breaks throughout the day because of computer fatigue. One day I removed all the files from my computer that were older than 90 days because I accidentally run a command on the ''terminal'' instead of a bash script to test the setting up of [https://gitlab.constantvzw.org/titipi/burrow Burrow]. I left this comment in the initial script:

<code># VERY DANGEROUS COMMAND find *txt -mindepth 1 -mtime +$RETAIN -delete</code>
The next day we set up the new server and install all the necessary software including a new version of the MediaWiki. We arrange a meeting with Martino Morandi, member of Constant, who created the wiki-to-pdf to help us installing this software and tranfer the MediaWiki in the new server. On the 1st of December we successfully install the wiki-to-pdf and because of limited time we decided to meet one more time at the end of the month for the rest.

[[File:Virtual-env-debian.png|thumb|Screenshot from the wiki-to-pdf installation to the new server with Martino, Femke, Aggeliki. Debian supports a different way to create virtual environments for installing python packages and libraries. We try it but it failed.]]

On the 28th we meet with Martino online to complete the transfer, which includes copying the old database of MediaWiki, activate the old plugins and fix any issues on the way. We are all located in different countries (Italy, Greece, Belgium) and so we share a ''tmux'' session. We follow the guides but on the way we had to do some research and configure a lot of things to make the MediaWiki work. Martino was hunting a php module. It seemed that php has shifted to free software culture in an attempt to find another business model. It is not surprising it happens in the context of Ubuntu. The issue is recorded [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Server_transfer_documentation#MediaWiki_upgrade_issues here].

[[File:Firefox Screenshot 2024-01-10T13-59-40.398Z.png|thumb|"Is Titipi.org down?" Helen asks after the transfer. It seems that her browser cache was preventing her from seeing the website]]

The process is documented in our diary and then transferred to a [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Server_transfer_documentation wiki page]. By January 2024 the server transfer and the deletion of our Linode account has been completed.

== Glossaries ==

Italicized terms in the report are included in these glossaries:

* [https://varia.zone/ATNOFS/ATNOFS-screen.pdf Glossary of A Traversal Network of Feminist Servers (ATNOFS) publication]
* [[Glossary|TITiPI's glossary]]

== References ==

* Panashe Chigumadzi, ‘Can White South Africa Live up to Ubuntu, the African Philosophy Tutu Globalised?’, The Guardian, 31 December 2021, sec. Opinion, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec/31/white-south-africa-ubuntu-african-tutu
* ‘Community Servers - Monoskop’, accessed 16 July 2024, https://monoskop.org/Community_servers
* David Carroll, ‘How To Open An Outpost In Social Media Exile | TechPolicy.Press’, Tech Policy Press, 26 November 2022, <nowiki>https://techpolicy.press/how-to-open-an-outpost-in-social-media-exile</nowiki>.
* Elizabeth Landau, ‘Tech Confronts Its Use of the Labels “Master” and “Slave”’, ''Wired'', accessed 16 July 2024, <nowiki>https://www.wired.com/story/tech-confronts-use-labels-master-slave/</nowiki>.
* ‘GitHub Abandons “master” Term to Avoid Slavery Row’, 15 June 2020, https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-53050955
* Femke Snelting, ‘Infrastructure Solidarity’, Ardeth. A Magazine on the Power of the Project, no. 8 (1 November 2021): 45–47
* ‘Master-Slave Terminology Alternatives You Can Use Right Now | TheServerSide’, TheServerSide.com, accessed 16 July 2024, https://www.theserverside.com/opinion/Master-slave-terminology-alternatives-you-can-use-right-now
* ‘Racist Computer Engineering Words: “Master,” “Slave” and the Fight Over Offensive Terms - The New York Times’, accessed 16 July 2024, <nowiki>https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/13/technology/racist-computer-engineering-terms-ietf.html</nowiki>.
* ‘Replace “Master” and “Slave” Terms in Redis · Issue #3185 · Redis/Redis’, GitHub, accessed 16 July 2024, https://github.com/redis/redis/issues/3185
* ‘Ubuntu: A Black Radical Demand for Reparations’, THE FUNAMBULIST MAGAZINE, 25 October 2023, https://thefunambulist.net/magazine/redefining-our-terms/ubuntu-a-black-radical-demand-for-reparations.

== Colophon ==

The text was drafted in pad.xpub.nl in Markdown and then transferred in this wiki.

== Footnotes ==

From cloud to crowd: a report on a server transfer

2024-07-16T13:52:33Z

Angeliki: /* References */

= From cloud to crowd<ref>The term comes from ... (not sure if it is included in the title)</ref>: A report on a server transfer =

This text is a report on a server migration that took place within the institutional framework of [https://titipi.org/ The Institute for Technology in the Public Interest (TITiPI)], a trans-practice gathering of activists, artists, engineers and theorists. TITiPI convenes communities to articulate, activate and re-imagine together what computational technologies in the 'public interest' might be. This report is an infrastructural ethnography and aims to rethink, through a technical process, what ''hosting'' a server means for a community, institution, cultural organisation dealing with technological discomforts and often inaccessible complex digital infrastructures.

A ''server'' is a computer (or a piece of software/hardware) that provides functionalities via a network (Internet). A ''server migration'' is the process of moving data and transferring software from one server to another with the use of specified tools. Performing such process accommodates a practical and technical solution to fix the problem of an outdated server that is slow or has limited storage. But it also affects the values, the structure and infrastructural imaginations of the organisations it supports. TITiPI desired(s) to go with hosting and maintain its own virtual private server instead of outsourcing these services to external tech companies. In times of server providers’ scaling up ( ‘''cloud hosting''’ ) and digitizing governmental bureaucracies what does it mean to host your own digital space for supporting your communities and work? What does it mean to have an independent infrastructure? What (non-)dependencies are chosen or taken for granted by institutions when using hosting services?

As a researcher at TITiPI I have been caring for the task to investigate this server migration and execute it together with TITiPI’s member Femke Snelting. We meet weekly to keep track and make decisions. We share a ''markdown'' file hosted in the git of the cultural association [https://constantvzw.org/site/ Constant] that includes a diary of the server migration and reflections. Every now and then we meet online with our colleague Helen Pritchard, to discuss and share the process. This report shares extracts from the server diary and stories from the process.

== Migration or … ? ==

In the cold newly installed office of TITiPI located in the Koekelberg district of Brussels, I open Chromium in my computer, that runs the operating system Ubuntu, in order to translate quickly − with the installed Google Translate plugin; later I found out there is a DeepL version − the web pages of the different cooperatives, associations, companies that provide hosting services. While doing that I have this disturbing thought in my head that I try to ignore: the word ‘migration’ as a technical term to describe the movement from one server to the other. It makes me think of an [https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/13/technology/racist-computer-engineering-terms-ietf.html online conversation], happening for a few years now, about replacing computer engineering terminology to stop prevalence of racism in tech. Specifically the conversation [https://www.wired.com/story/tech-confronts-use-labels-master-slave/ evolves around the terms] ‘master/slave’, where one computing process or entity controls another, and ‘blacklists/whitelists’ used for directories of those things that are explicitly banned or allowed. Using metaphors like that for a technical process de-contextualizes a word from its origins and unavoidably perpetuates social injustices. It also shows that the context where such choices of language are made is privileged and untouched or non-triggered by these terms. White male computer engineers have build up this language. Could words like transferring, sharing, moving, copying, re-installing, shifting replace the word ‘migration’? From this point on in the report I decide to use the term ‘transfer’.

‘Ubuntu’ is also a word extracted from its original context. It is coming from the African Ubuntu philosophy. According to the creators of the software:

<blockquote>ubuntu |oǒ’boǒntoō| Ubuntu is an ancient African word meaning ‘humanity to others’. It is often described as reminding us that ‘I am what I am because of who we all are’. We bring the spirit of Ubuntu to the world of computers and software. The Ubuntu distribution represents the best of what the world’s software community has shared with the world. <ref>‘About the Ubuntu Project’, Ubuntu, accessed 16 July 2024, https://ubuntu.com/about</ref>
</blockquote>

Paraphrasing [https://thefunambulist.net/magazine/redefining-our-terms/ubuntu-a-black-radical-demand-for-reparations Panashe Chigumadzi] words: in contrast to the western conception of the human as individual, the African conception of the person is a social being who is always becoming, defined by and being responsible for the personhood of the others. "(T)he African philosophy best understood through the proverb found in Bantu languages across the continent, 'umuntu ngumuntu ngabanye bantu' (a person is a person through other people". <ref>Panashe Chigumadzi, ‘Can White South Africa Live up to Ubuntu, the African Philosophy Tutu Globalised?’, The Guardian, 31 December 2021, sec. Opinion, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec/31/white-south-africa-ubuntu-african-tutu</ref>

<blockquote>(D)espite the flourishing of Ubuntu in post-apartheid discourse, lending its name to software, businesses, books and philanthropic organisations, South Africa is a country in which we have, as Dladla argues, Ubuntu without Abantu. Just as Black people have been dispossessed of their land, Ubuntu has been dispossessed of its deeply radical demands for ethical historical and social relations among people. (...) post apartheid Ubuntu mistranslation 'I am because we are', individualized and interpersonalised Ubuntu, Christianised Ubuntu, mistranslated in order to justify crimes and violence. In Ubuntu violence can be punished even after generations, the misinterpretation of the term allowed individual forgiveness. <ref>‘Ubuntu: A Black Radical Demand for Reparations’, THE FUNAMBULIST MAGAZINE, 25 October 2023, https://thefunambulist.net/magazine/redefining-our-terms/ubuntu-a-black-radical-demand-for-reparations</ref>
</blockquote>

I skip these thoughts and I continue browsing the list of servers. While trying to stay focused something other distracts me; I encounter an [https://www.oziosi.org/ autonomous Italian server] with the title translated with DeepL: “:: a shelter for digital exiles ::” and an image of a woman, a child and a man leaving their home. Also a small introduction: “Exiled from the global village of social networks, we claim an internet that is a simple means of communication: immaterial, anonymous, imaginary, public when it makes sense and secret when we feel the need.”. I am wondering what does this mean for actual exiles having to protect their privacy when communicating back home? [https://techpolicy.press/how-to-open-an-outpost-in-social-media-exile/ ‘Social media exiles’] and ‘Twitter migration’ are terms used often after Twitter became X and users have moved to the Fediverse or other alternatives.

[[Screenshot of the 'digital exiles' image, image not included because of copyrights issues?]]

== TITiPI’s case of server transfer ==
On the 27th of September, sitting at the long desks side to side, Femke and I have an online call with Helen, while looking at the depths of our Virtual Private Server (VPS), provided by Linode, that runs Ubuntu on our laptop screens. Linode is an American hosting provider focusing on ''Linux''-based virtual machines originally. The server is physically located in the UK. TITiPI currently uses the Linode server that Helen set up for hosting her own projects. She has been paying for Linode’s monthly fees so far.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-10-11 14-47-06.png|thumb|Screenshot of Linode Ubuntu server overview and ''terminal'' that shows a moment of figuring out what takes space in the server through ''SSH'' access]]

At the time it seemed a good choice, because it is based in UK, is ''Linux'' friendly and an alternative to Amazon Web Services (AWS), even though it was already identifying as ‘''cloud hosting''’. But in February 2023 it has been acquired by the American company Akamai that aims to scale up for [https://www.linode.com/global-infrastructure/ “computing power, optimizing performance and agility.”]. Akamai is actively changing its server policies into an increasingly intense cloud logic. This pushed forward the desire to move to a new place.

[[Screenshot of Linode website referring to scalability -- copyright issues?]]

At the moment in Linode we run pico, a flat CMS for the website https://titipi.org. There is a Mediawiki (you are reading a Mediawiki page right now) for notes and collective writing. On the wiki, we also publish our statutes, guidelines and other instituting documents. The wiki has a custom extension, called wiki-to-pdf. Each of these services will need a different way to be transferred. One approach is to build the new server space from scratch, copy the data with rsync and transfer only the Mediawiki, which includes installing a new version and copy the database and the media files.

While preparing to transfer the tools we are defining what are the practical needs and desirable priorities; we ended up on these server requirements:
* ''SSH'' access and wish for VPS
* affordable price (around €20/month)
* run a Free Software operating system, preferably Debian
* involves community work - slowing down, resisting to scaling and growth or ‘decloudification’ (small network of partners, less virtualization approach, location of servers nearby etc)
* 25-40GB storage space, 1-2 cores, 2-4GB RAM
* environmental angle
* service support in a language that we all understand (English mostly)

This server transfer happens with an intersectional and feminist approach and the desire to keep questioning. While moving away from Linode we include both the technical and the conceptual thinking in the process. There are a few things that we are looking at: 
* Where to be transferred to or what services to transfer to?
* How to be transferred and what to tranfer?
* What terminology, language we use?
* What (other) narratives of server hosting can we construct?

TITiPI seeks to exist with an infrastructure that supports inter-dependent practices and solidarity across struggles. It develops Counter Cloud Actions [ref] as a way to scale down, de-cloudify, articulate, contest and re-imagine the implications of computational infrastructures (‘the cloud’).

<blockquote>TITiPI develop tools from feminisms, queer theory, Free, Libre and Open Source software, intersectionality, anti-coloniality, disability studies, historical materialism and artistic practice to generate currently inexistent vocabularies, imaginaries and methodologies. TITiPI functions as an infrastructure to establish new ways in which socio-technical practices and technologies might support the public interest. <ref>TITiPI, ‘Infrables’, Tangible Cloud Archives, https://docs.tangible-cloud.be/publications-pdf/02_snelting.pdf.</ref></blockquote>

We are looking for servers that aspire some of these values.

=== A relational infrastructure narrative/ infra-mutuality/ inter-infrastructural narrative ===
[[File:Elastic solidarities.png|thumb]]
In June 2023 TITiPI received an email from Gandi to renew the domain titipi.org in 6 days, not realising that at the same time we would need to start paying for our titipi.org email hosting. We had missed reading to the end of another email sent in the middle of June, entitled: 'Pricing update'.

We consider to work with Kate Rich to move our mailboxes to the [http://irational.org/ Irational server], soon to be installed on a Raspberry Pi, hosted at Servus. Currently it is in a rack in the UK. We decide to do this transition slowly and until then renew the emails for 1-2 months through Gandi. Irational server resists virtualization, and as an art community project it makes it an interesting choice.

But why to go through all this effort and not just use one cloud server with mailboxes, file storage and web server together? TITiPI’s response to the question of building institutional digital infrastructure embodies an archipelagic and non-sovereign approach to dependencies. Rather than building a centralised server based on ‘cloud’ from which connections with other institutions and collectives can happen, it conceptualizes inter-infrastructural practices; from the creation of a [https://gitlab.constantvzw.org/titipi/burrow backup script] for saving locally etherpad pads from other servers, hosting emails at an art server (https://irational.org), creating an [https://books.lumbung.space/shelf/26 online bookshelf] on lumbung.space, using the ''XMPP'' chat from Varia to recording conversations with the ''sysadmin'' that maintain the other servers. The institution re-imagines technological dependencies in dialogue with cultural institutions and art collectives.

[[File:Titipi-infra-diagram-JAN-24.png|thumb|none|alt=A diagram of TITiPI’s infrastructure. The diagram categorizes the elements according to tools/software (box), structure/organisational form (circle) and place (dashed line). For example Jitsi is the software, Greenhost is the organisation, meet.greenhost.net is the place.|A diagram of TITiPI’s infrastructure. The diagram categorizes the elements according to tools/software (box), structure/organisational form (circle) and place (dashed line). For example Jitsi is the software, Greenhost is the organisation, meet.greenhost.net is the place.]]

How to give life to the common space of TITiPI’s hosting infrastructures? What about building up social dependencies between the ones that host and the ones who are hosted as opposed to a technical independence? Infrastructural imaginations are often built by the ''Big Tech'' industry and governmental institutions. Instead, TITiPI practices a fluid inter-institutional approach supported by [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Infra_colophon a variety of hosts].

=== Selection of server providers ===
On the 7th of November through a shared screen at the [https://meet.greenhost.net/ video conferencing software Jitsi of Greenhost] we all three check a list of server providers I collected on a spreadsheet hosted in Constant’s cloud storage (built with Nextcloud software) where TITiPI has an account. I looked at associations, companies/businesses, cooperatives, communities coming from commercial context to social struggles, activist, feminist and other. Through a [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/List_server_networks list of networks] I found various servers mostly from Latin America and Europe.

The concept of autonomy, sovereignty, independence or self-managing characterizes most of the servers in the list. Some of them, like [https://www.autistici.org/ Autistici] promote this concept as a way to support anti-capitalist infrastructure and protect the privacy of the users as opposed to the ''Big Tech'' software practices.

<blockquote>"The vision is that we - the members of the cooperative - own our own data. This implies and has as a consequence that we will have to own our own infrastructure and have insight and control over the software we use to communicate on the web."<ref>‘Community Servers - Monoskop’, accessed 16 July 2024, https://monoskop.org/Community_servers</ref></blockquote>

Femke had a hunch: "‘technological sovereignty’ and ‘data-sovereignty’ continue to be orientation devices to organise around. ‘Sovereignty’, together with ‘freedom’, ‘independence’ and ‘autonomy’, form an ideological cluster that implicitly and sometimes explicitly foregrounds separation rather than relation."

Servers can act as independent spaces but are also cultural devices and vibrant spaces. They can manifest different aspects of a full life and reach out to a multiplicity of entities.

Servus and Greenhost, seem to be two of our best choices as they cover a lot of the priorities and values of TITiPI. As one can read from their descriptions they both strive for owning their own data servers and data nodes (they have their own ''IP addresses'') and be independent from third parties. The big difference is the scale of the infrastructure and their community and network.

<blockquote>Greenhost fully owns and controls its hardware, infrastructure and uplinks. This ensures independence from third parties and proper access control. On this hardware we run our fully virtualised platform. We stand for an Open Internet, and have always embraced open source software.<ref>‘Greenhost.Net | the Sustainable Web’, accessed 16 July 2024, https://greenhost.net/.</ref></blockquote>

<blockquote>We (Servus) do not pass on any data to third parties. You will not receive commercial advertising from us or third parties. We are easily accessible and answer your questions personally. We and our servers are located at Kirchengasse 4 in Linz, Austria.<ref>‘Book Of Servus’, Book Of Servus, accessed 16 July 2024, https://book.servus.at/en/home/.</ref></blockquote>

Even though Greenhost wants to reduce ecological damage, it does that mainly through hardware reductions and does not address scale. They have plans to expand and are part of a network of partners that want to transform Rotterdam into a big hub of data nodes for the upcoming digital transition. Linode is even bigger, it goes for [[https://www.akamai.com/newsroom/press-release/akamai-takes-cloud-computing-to-the-edge|“(p)lanetary scale”]]. Servus on the other hand has one room of data servers, is closer to the scale of their community and they maintain personal relations with them.

[[Image of the server room at Servus at Linz|Image of the server room at Servus at Linz?]]

=== Community server, feminist server, trans*feminist server, radical server, autonomous server, commercial server, art server, free server, ethical server, solidarity-based server, cooperative server, associative server, independent server, alternative server, non-commercial server, … ===
The spreadsheet starts to grow because of an endless/exhaustive burrow of small and big providers.

Some are outdated. 
Some are messy. 
Some have broken links. 
Some are [https://www.julienth37.fr/vps hard to understand]. 
Some require [https://www.actiu.info/index.en.html a lot of engagement]. 
Some use a language that imitates the narratives of ''Big Tech'' and ''agile'' computing. 
Some promote seamless “promissory logic” and “high hopes for a brighter future” (ref) 
Some are big or are scaling up (in matter of space, data centers, partners, users etc). 
Some support NGO’s or sport clubs.

[[copyright issues? Screenshot from main page of Co-op Web]]

We also looked at their financial model. Many radical servers stay small, are volunteer based, like [https://www.autistici.org/ Autistici]. and go for horizontal organisational structures. Feminist and activist servers provide space in the internet for the ones who don’t have the means to organise otherwise. The resources and ways of organising for these servers are different from the cooperatives or associations whose structure is inherited from the model they are registered with.

[[File:ATNOFS-Varia-insert-ooooo.jpg|thumb|ooooo atnofs insert diagrams from varia, systerserver, servus]]

TITiPI acknowledges and is connected to the history of community, art and feminist servers and wants to support this network. The art servers started as a way to make autonomous self-managed servers that support artists values and practices. They are often financed by cultural or private funds.

<blockquote>I joined (Irational) sometime in 2000s, I can't remember when and originally it was much more a collective of people working together and then since the early 2010's I think, mid 2010's, there was a bit of a reshuffle of personnel and stuff, so the constituency changed to a smaller group and we actually reformed. We were going to disband Irational and then we actually reformed as an art server collective and we decided we are not really working together but what we have in common is that we're using the server and that is actually what the collective is now. It's the collective that uses the server together and wants to use the server together. And another real defining feature of the server the whole time has been resisting virtualization. 

— quote from interview with Kate Rich </blockquote>

The screen seems to become brighter as my eyes get tired. What if we skip the online hosting and create a local physical server at TITiPI’s office next to the desks, in a corner, on a Raspberry Pi? All our data would stay on this machine and we would connect with ''SSH'' from home, but then we will also have to maintain it ourselves. There is something there about the romanticism of a physical toolbox as a sovereign object. If we choose to do that we will need to think of a backup plan as it will be an experimental set up and all our data will stay offline. We won’t have a provider to take care of that.

Our list has been reduced because of our priorities. We need ''SSH'' and we would like to have a VPS. Who has resources for providing VPS? Resources of labour, time, finances, technical knowledge. This made self-defined feminist servers fall out of the selection. How to be financially sustainable, while keeping up with your own values? How to keep up with infrastructural ''maintenance'' if the scale of the users, community, members and data is big?

<blockquote>The services we offer have no defined price, but as you may easily imagine, keeping the whole system working (i.e. hardware and hosting) is very expensive (at the moment it ranges around 13,000 euro every year).<ref>‘Autistici.Org - Services’, accessed 16 July 2024, https://www.autistici.org/services/</ref></blockquote>

Servus and Maadix provide a series of ''free/libre'' tools that can be installed separately through their interface but they also provide a VPS with ''SSH'' access. With Greenhost, Hetzner and Linode there is more flexibility: you can create your own VPS and customize it for your own needs through their interface or the ''terminal'' and install whatever tools you want from scratch without a visual interface.

Technical information and knowledge of digital infrastructure circulate between groups that are tech-oriented with a difficulty to cross with other groups, including feminist servers. The ''sysadmin'' tasks are mostly taken by cis men but feminist servers are radical about that. They find important to have ''sysadmins'' that are not cis men. For example Systerserver and Anarchaserver are learning by themselves together how to do this task.

Many of the servers in the list provide only tools, as a radical way to support small groups, collectives, activists that need privacy and shifting away from Google drive when they want to organise politically and socially. It seems that being limited to tool packages instead of having full access to a server can make things comprehensible and compact for these small groups that have limited ''sysadmin'' knowledge or can’t hire a technician.

[[copyrights issue? Screenshot of main page with services by [https://futuretic.fr/ FuturEtic]]]

[[copyrights issue? Screenshot of tools from codigosur]]

== Final decision and server transfer ==

We are about to make our decision! Our list ended up to be very small.

On 7th of November in an online call between Helen in Basel, Femke in Brussels and Aggeliki in Rotterdam we limited our list to four options: Constant, Greenhost, Servus, Zaclys. The selection consists of a diversity of scales and positioning that we found interesting to think of. First, we move on with the decision to transfer our mailboxes to Irational hosted at Servus. The rest of the functionalities will be hosted somewhere else.

From our conversations with Femke: “The choice for irational.org opens the possibility for discussions around dependencies, trust and frictions within shared collective servers. Irational.org is an ally art server who uses and maintains its own server for many years. Hosting such a private service at a friend’s environment doesn’t come only with convenience. The closeness to the material of the server makes the dependency more tangible.” [reference/quote from colophon?]

[[copyrights issue? towel design by psaroskalazines|towel design by psaroskalazines]]

Femke and I are planning different moments for the server transfer to happen in the office of TITiPI. What it is about to take place comes down into three moments; the backup and save of data from the old server, the installation of the necessary software in the new server and the transfer of the old data in the new server.

Specifically we are following these steps:

* Mail transfer from Gandi to irational
* Create a Virtual Private Server (VPS) in the new server
* Install Apache2 and configure domains
* Install and migrate MediaWiki
** Back up the wiki on the Linode VPS
** Upgrade MediaWiki in Linode
** Install MediaWiki and plugins in the Greenhost VPS
** Transfer database and media files from Linode to Greenhost
* Install Wiki-to-pdf
* Install Pico
* Install and configure Certbot

We find ourselves between two virtual spaces and one office, among other indirectly connected spaces like the rooms of our distant collaborators and the office locations of the servers.

=== Trust relationships ===
By now, 14th of November 2023, the office is warm and cozy. Throughout the time I am writing this report I have been noticing a lot of slow and small efforts to renovate the building and set up the heating, by the artists and organisations who share the space with TITiPI. Another infrastructure that needs care.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 15-06-42.png|thumb|Femke and Aggeliki entering Irational’s server space with Kate]]

On a shared screen together with Femke we get introduced to the mail server of Irational by Kate. We use an audio splitter to share the laptop for the call. Kate described her experience as an amateur ''sysadmin'' that had to spend a lot of time to learn and set up the mail server. After that we start the process that has been documented [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Server_transfer_documentation#Mail_transfer here].

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 14-56-26.png|thumb|Screenshot from the TITiPI’s mail transfer with Kate, Femke and Aggeliki during an online 3 hours call]]

Irational uses the Alpine email client. Kate takes us its depths. That is where we start to set up our new email accounts before we configure them in Thunderbird. Femke gets excited on the fact that she can send emails to other Irational accounts through the ''terminal''.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 15-15-07.png|thumb|Using the email client Alpine]]

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 17-04-20.png|thumb|Screenhost from the moment of looking for the syntax of the TXT records. Finding the right syntax for this value was the biggest challenge. This is part of the ''trust relationships'' between the different providers]]

After some more DNS configurations we test if it is possible to exchange emails with ‘outside’ accounts and especially with Gmail that has many security filters for mail servers other than the commercial ones.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-15 13-59-52.png|thumb|Exchange test emails with a Gmail account]]

After three hours of tryouts we manage to make it work! Very proudly and with enjoyment for sharing a technical task together we say goodbye to each other and arrange a next meeting for a final check up.

=== A choice that comes with discomforts ===
Just one day before the start of TITiPI’s server transfer away from Linode on the 28th of November, Helen found the Swiss server ungleich.ch and it seemed like an interesting choice because of the small scale (in terms of community and servers), their experimental attitude and their choice to reduce energy consumption; they avoid using systems for cooling their servers by spreading the servers at the Swiss mountains in old, abandoned buildings.

Ungleich.ch is one of the good options but it is more expensive than other providers. They offer a cheaper choice by choosing to have only ‘ipv6’. But we had to dig in to understand the difference of ipv4 and ipv6. From wikipedia: “IPv6 is the most recent version of the Internet Protocol, developed to deal with the long-anticipated problem of IPv4 address exhaustion” We found a [https://stats.labs.apnic.net/ipv6 map] that shows which countries have implemented IPv6 and it seems that if we only use this address then many places won’t have access to the website of TITiPI. So we choose to have both addresses.

We also notice that this provider is using Stripe for their payment system. In a [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Frontier parallel universe of TITiPI] we give attention to and critique Stripe because of its connections with the Carbon Removal industry.

[[copyright issues? Ungleich.ch payment system with Stripe]]

Another urgency appears while we are looking at different choices; together with many other organisations, we have been thinking about ways to host and maintain infrastructures in solidarity with communities and networks we are part of. This would mean, for example, hosting digitally a Palestinian video film archive, or research by sex workers. Solidarity is only partially a question of caring for privacy and security because it matters where and how we host our digital infrastructures and whether these spaces do or do not support the flourishing of different lives and struggles. This need make us think again if the server we choose would be suitable for something like that.

Constant and Servus are two accomplice servers that already provide to TITiPI some of their services. Zaclys is a member of Chatons that support open source values and it is located in France. We contacted them to see if they could be an option but they never responded to us.

We wanted to work with a company that provide ‘green’ infrastructure. Greenhost seem to be a good choice. It provides a familiar interface to us, good support and backup option. It has a positioning as an alternative to AWS. So far great, but what about its ‘green’ hosting vision? Is it a solarpunk vision, a green cloud utopia? Is their infrastructure resource ‘hungry’? What are the privacy limits when the material hosted in the servers is political and sensitive?

We choose Greenhost with all the discomforts that this choice entails and with the desire to keep the critique and dialogue alive.

Only by December 2023 we manage to arrange a call with one of Greenhost’s former Managing Directors to get a feeling and more information about their approach and sensitivity. Accordind to him Greenhost exists in the intersection of activism and technology. It provides consultancy, sustainability solutions in tech projects and structured ''maintenance''; they go for best quality with lowest environmental impact; they maintain the same hardware as much as possible and balance that with higher efficiency; they keep backups at an already existing data center in the university of Amsterdam.

<nowiki>[[paragraph for Greenhost include? from interview with manager?]]</nowiki>

=== Installing, tranferring, saving, copying, … ===
On the 28th of November sitting on the sunny corner of the couch next to the radiator, and with warm coffee cups waiting for us on a low table, Femke and I cover our legs with a blanket and open our laptops.

I ask Femke to jumb in a ''tmux'' session for sharing ''terminal'' with this command: <code>''sudo'' ''tmux'' attach -t webserver</code>. We start by cleaning the old server and make backups of the files.

We take a lunch break. Femke finds out that if we eat three recurrent meals every week in the office we can have a nice variety of food; lentiles soup, orecchiette pasta with brocoli, rizzoto with mushrooms and lots of fruits. Sometime ago we decided to make multiple short breaks throughout the day because of computer fatigue. One day I removed all the files from my computer that were older than 90 days because I accidentally run a command on the ''terminal'' instead of a bash script to test the setting up of [https://gitlab.constantvzw.org/titipi/burrow Burrow]. I left this comment in the initial script:

<code># VERY DANGEROUS COMMAND find *txt -mindepth 1 -mtime +$RETAIN -delete</code>
The next day we set up the new server and install all the necessary software including a new version of the MediaWiki. We arrange a meeting with Martino Morandi, member of Constant, who created the wiki-to-pdf to help us installing this software and tranfer the MediaWiki in the new server. On the 1st of December we successfully install the wiki-to-pdf and because of limited time we decided to meet one more time at the end of the month for the rest.

[[File:Virtual-env-debian.png|thumb|Screenshot from the wiki-to-pdf installation to the new server with Martino, Femke, Aggeliki. Debian supports a different way to create virtual environments for installing python packages and libraries. We try it but it failed.]]

On the 28th we meet with Martino online to complete the transfer, which includes copying the old database of MediaWiki, activate the old plugins and fix any issues on the way. We are all located in different countries (Italy, Greece, Belgium) and so we share a ''tmux'' session. We follow the guides but on the way we had to do some research and configure a lot of things to make the MediaWiki work. Martino was hunting a php module. It seemed that php has shifted to free software culture in an attempt to find another business model. It is not surprising it happens in the context of Ubuntu. The issue is recorded [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Server_transfer_documentation#MediaWiki_upgrade_issues here].

[[File:Firefox Screenshot 2024-01-10T13-59-40.398Z.png|thumb|"Is Titipi.org down?" Helen asks after the transfer. It seems that her browser cache was preventing her from seeing the website]]

The process is documented in our diary and then transferred to a [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Server_transfer_documentation wiki page]. By January 2024 the server transfer and the deletion of our Linode account has been completed.

== Glossaries ==

Italicized terms in the report are included in these glossaries:

* [https://varia.zone/ATNOFS/ATNOFS-screen.pdf Glossary of A Traversal Network of Feminist Servers (ATNOFS) publication]
* [[Glossary|TITiPI's glossary]]

== References ==

* Panashe Chigumadzi, ‘Can White South Africa Live up to Ubuntu, the African Philosophy Tutu Globalised?’, The Guardian, 31 December 2021, sec. Opinion, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec/31/white-south-africa-ubuntu-african-tutu
* ‘Community Servers - Monoskop’, accessed 16 July 2024, https://monoskop.org/Community_servers
* David Carroll, ‘How To Open An Outpost In Social Media Exile | TechPolicy.Press’, Tech Policy Press, 26 November 2022, <nowiki>https://techpolicy.press/how-to-open-an-outpost-in-social-media-exile</nowiki>.
* Elizabeth Landau, ‘Tech Confronts Its Use of the Labels “Master” and “Slave”’, ''Wired'', accessed 16 July 2024, <nowiki>https://www.wired.com/story/tech-confronts-use-labels-master-slave/</nowiki>.
* ‘GitHub Abandons “master” Term to Avoid Slavery Row’, 15 June 2020, https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-53050955
* Femke Snelting, ‘Infrastructure Solidarity’, Ardeth. A Magazine on the Power of the Project, no. 8 (1 November 2021): 45–47
* ‘Master-Slave Terminology Alternatives You Can Use Right Now | TheServerSide’, TheServerSide.com, accessed 16 July 2024, https://www.theserverside.com/opinion/Master-slave-terminology-alternatives-you-can-use-right-now
* ‘Racist Computer Engineering Words: “Master,” “Slave” and the Fight Over Offensive Terms - The New York Times’, accessed 16 July 2024, <nowiki>https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/13/technology/racist-computer-engineering-terms-ietf.html</nowiki>.
* ‘Replace “Master” and “Slave” Terms in Redis · Issue #3185 · Redis/Redis’, GitHub, accessed 16 July 2024, https://github.com/redis/redis/issues/3185
* ‘Ubuntu: A Black Radical Demand for Reparations’, THE FUNAMBULIST MAGAZINE, 25 October 2023, https://thefunambulist.net/magazine/redefining-our-terms/ubuntu-a-black-radical-demand-for-reparations.

== Colophon ==

The text was drafted in pad.xpub.nl in Markdown and then transferred in this wiki.

== Footnotes ==

From cloud to crowd: a report on a server transfer

2024-07-16T13:48:02Z

Angeliki: /* Colophon */

= From cloud to crowd<ref>The term comes from ... (not sure if it is included in the title)</ref>: A report on a server transfer =

This text is a report on a server migration that took place within the institutional framework of [https://titipi.org/ The Institute for Technology in the Public Interest (TITiPI)], a trans-practice gathering of activists, artists, engineers and theorists. TITiPI convenes communities to articulate, activate and re-imagine together what computational technologies in the 'public interest' might be. This report is an infrastructural ethnography and aims to rethink, through a technical process, what ''hosting'' a server means for a community, institution, cultural organisation dealing with technological discomforts and often inaccessible complex digital infrastructures.

A ''server'' is a computer (or a piece of software/hardware) that provides functionalities via a network (Internet). A ''server migration'' is the process of moving data and transferring software from one server to another with the use of specified tools. Performing such process accommodates a practical and technical solution to fix the problem of an outdated server that is slow or has limited storage. But it also affects the values, the structure and infrastructural imaginations of the organisations it supports. TITiPI desired(s) to go with hosting and maintain its own virtual private server instead of outsourcing these services to external tech companies. In times of server providers’ scaling up ( ‘''cloud hosting''’ ) and digitizing governmental bureaucracies what does it mean to host your own digital space for supporting your communities and work? What does it mean to have an independent infrastructure? What (non-)dependencies are chosen or taken for granted by institutions when using hosting services?

As a researcher at TITiPI I have been caring for the task to investigate this server migration and execute it together with TITiPI’s member Femke Snelting. We meet weekly to keep track and make decisions. We share a ''markdown'' file hosted in the git of the cultural association [https://constantvzw.org/site/ Constant] that includes a diary of the server migration and reflections. Every now and then we meet online with our colleague Helen Pritchard, to discuss and share the process. This report shares extracts from the server diary and stories from the process.

== Migration or … ? ==

In the cold newly installed office of TITiPI located in the Koekelberg district of Brussels, I open Chromium in my computer, that runs the operating system Ubuntu, in order to translate quickly − with the installed Google Translate plugin; later I found out there is a DeepL version − the web pages of the different cooperatives, associations, companies that provide hosting services. While doing that I have this disturbing thought in my head that I try to ignore: the word ‘migration’ as a technical term to describe the movement from one server to the other. It makes me think of an [https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/13/technology/racist-computer-engineering-terms-ietf.html online conversation], happening for a few years now, about replacing computer engineering terminology to stop prevalence of racism in tech. Specifically the conversation [https://www.wired.com/story/tech-confronts-use-labels-master-slave/ evolves around the terms] ‘master/slave’, where one computing process or entity controls another, and ‘blacklists/whitelists’ used for directories of those things that are explicitly banned or allowed. Using metaphors like that for a technical process de-contextualizes a word from its origins and unavoidably perpetuates social injustices. It also shows that the context where such choices of language are made is privileged and untouched or non-triggered by these terms. White male computer engineers have build up this language. Could words like transferring, sharing, moving, copying, re-installing, shifting replace the word ‘migration’? From this point on in the report I decide to use the term ‘transfer’.

‘Ubuntu’ is also a word extracted from its original context. It is coming from the African Ubuntu philosophy. According to the creators of the software:

<blockquote>ubuntu |oǒ’boǒntoō| Ubuntu is an ancient African word meaning ‘humanity to others’. It is often described as reminding us that ‘I am what I am because of who we all are’. We bring the spirit of Ubuntu to the world of computers and software. The Ubuntu distribution represents the best of what the world’s software community has shared with the world. <ref>‘About the Ubuntu Project’, Ubuntu, accessed 16 July 2024, https://ubuntu.com/about</ref>
</blockquote>

Paraphrasing [https://thefunambulist.net/magazine/redefining-our-terms/ubuntu-a-black-radical-demand-for-reparations Panashe Chigumadzi] words: in contrast to the western conception of the human as individual, the African conception of the person is a social being who is always becoming, defined by and being responsible for the personhood of the others. "(T)he African philosophy best understood through the proverb found in Bantu languages across the continent, 'umuntu ngumuntu ngabanye bantu' (a person is a person through other people". <ref>Panashe Chigumadzi, ‘Can White South Africa Live up to Ubuntu, the African Philosophy Tutu Globalised?’, The Guardian, 31 December 2021, sec. Opinion, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec/31/white-south-africa-ubuntu-african-tutu</ref>

<blockquote>(D)espite the flourishing of Ubuntu in post-apartheid discourse, lending its name to software, businesses, books and philanthropic organisations, South Africa is a country in which we have, as Dladla argues, Ubuntu without Abantu. Just as Black people have been dispossessed of their land, Ubuntu has been dispossessed of its deeply radical demands for ethical historical and social relations among people. (...) post apartheid Ubuntu mistranslation 'I am because we are', individualized and interpersonalised Ubuntu, Christianised Ubuntu, mistranslated in order to justify crimes and violence. In Ubuntu violence can be punished even after generations, the misinterpretation of the term allowed individual forgiveness. <ref>‘Ubuntu: A Black Radical Demand for Reparations’, THE FUNAMBULIST MAGAZINE, 25 October 2023, https://thefunambulist.net/magazine/redefining-our-terms/ubuntu-a-black-radical-demand-for-reparations</ref>
</blockquote>

I skip these thoughts and I continue browsing the list of servers. While trying to stay focused something other distracts me; I encounter an [https://www.oziosi.org/ autonomous Italian server] with the title translated with DeepL: “:: a shelter for digital exiles ::” and an image of a woman, a child and a man leaving their home. Also a small introduction: “Exiled from the global village of social networks, we claim an internet that is a simple means of communication: immaterial, anonymous, imaginary, public when it makes sense and secret when we feel the need.”. I am wondering what does this mean for actual exiles having to protect their privacy when communicating back home? [https://techpolicy.press/how-to-open-an-outpost-in-social-media-exile/ ‘Social media exiles’] and ‘Twitter migration’ are terms used often after Twitter became X and users have moved to the Fediverse or other alternatives.

[[Screenshot of the 'digital exiles' image, image not included because of copyrights issues?]]

== TITiPI’s case of server transfer ==
On the 27th of September, sitting at the long desks side to side, Femke and I have an online call with Helen, while looking at the depths of our Virtual Private Server (VPS), provided by Linode, that runs Ubuntu on our laptop screens. Linode is an American hosting provider focusing on ''Linux''-based virtual machines originally. The server is physically located in the UK. TITiPI currently uses the Linode server that Helen set up for hosting her own projects. She has been paying for Linode’s monthly fees so far.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-10-11 14-47-06.png|thumb|Screenshot of Linode Ubuntu server overview and ''terminal'' that shows a moment of figuring out what takes space in the server through ''SSH'' access]]

At the time it seemed a good choice, because it is based in UK, is ''Linux'' friendly and an alternative to Amazon Web Services (AWS), even though it was already identifying as ‘''cloud hosting''’. But in February 2023 it has been acquired by the American company Akamai that aims to scale up for [https://www.linode.com/global-infrastructure/ “computing power, optimizing performance and agility.”]. Akamai is actively changing its server policies into an increasingly intense cloud logic. This pushed forward the desire to move to a new place.

[[Screenshot of Linode website referring to scalability -- copyright issues?]]

At the moment in Linode we run pico, a flat CMS for the website https://titipi.org. There is a Mediawiki (you are reading a Mediawiki page right now) for notes and collective writing. On the wiki, we also publish our statutes, guidelines and other instituting documents. The wiki has a custom extension, called wiki-to-pdf. Each of these services will need a different way to be transferred. One approach is to build the new server space from scratch, copy the data with rsync and transfer only the Mediawiki, which includes installing a new version and copy the database and the media files.

While preparing to transfer the tools we are defining what are the practical needs and desirable priorities; we ended up on these server requirements:
* ''SSH'' access and wish for VPS
* affordable price (around €20/month)
* run a Free Software operating system, preferably Debian
* involves community work - slowing down, resisting to scaling and growth or ‘decloudification’ (small network of partners, less virtualization approach, location of servers nearby etc)
* 25-40GB storage space, 1-2 cores, 2-4GB RAM
* environmental angle
* service support in a language that we all understand (English mostly)

This server transfer happens with an intersectional and feminist approach and the desire to keep questioning. While moving away from Linode we include both the technical and the conceptual thinking in the process. There are a few things that we are looking at: 
* Where to be transferred to or what services to transfer to?
* How to be transferred and what to tranfer?
* What terminology, language we use?
* What (other) narratives of server hosting can we construct?

TITiPI seeks to exist with an infrastructure that supports inter-dependent practices and solidarity across struggles. It develops Counter Cloud Actions [ref] as a way to scale down, de-cloudify, articulate, contest and re-imagine the implications of computational infrastructures (‘the cloud’).

<blockquote>TITiPI develop tools from feminisms, queer theory, Free, Libre and Open Source software, intersectionality, anti-coloniality, disability studies, historical materialism and artistic practice to generate currently inexistent vocabularies, imaginaries and methodologies. TITiPI functions as an infrastructure to establish new ways in which socio-technical practices and technologies might support the public interest. <ref>TITiPI, ‘Infrables’, Tangible Cloud Archives, https://docs.tangible-cloud.be/publications-pdf/02_snelting.pdf.</ref></blockquote>

We are looking for servers that aspire some of these values.

=== A relational infrastructure narrative/ infra-mutuality/ inter-infrastructural narrative ===
[[File:Elastic solidarities.png|thumb]]
In June 2023 TITiPI received an email from Gandi to renew the domain titipi.org in 6 days, not realising that at the same time we would need to start paying for our titipi.org email hosting. We had missed reading to the end of another email sent in the middle of June, entitled: 'Pricing update'.

We consider to work with Kate Rich to move our mailboxes to the [http://irational.org/ Irational server], soon to be installed on a Raspberry Pi, hosted at Servus. Currently it is in a rack in the UK. We decide to do this transition slowly and until then renew the emails for 1-2 months through Gandi. Irational server resists virtualization, and as an art community project it makes it an interesting choice.

But why to go through all this effort and not just use one cloud server with mailboxes, file storage and web server together? TITiPI’s response to the question of building institutional digital infrastructure embodies an archipelagic and non-sovereign approach to dependencies. Rather than building a centralised server based on ‘cloud’ from which connections with other institutions and collectives can happen, it conceptualizes inter-infrastructural practices; from the creation of a [https://gitlab.constantvzw.org/titipi/burrow backup script] for saving locally etherpad pads from other servers, hosting emails at an art server (https://irational.org), creating an [https://books.lumbung.space/shelf/26 online bookshelf] on lumbung.space, using the ''XMPP'' chat from Varia to recording conversations with the ''sysadmin'' that maintain the other servers. The institution re-imagines technological dependencies in dialogue with cultural institutions and art collectives.

[[File:Titipi-infra-diagram-JAN-24.png|thumb|none|alt=A diagram of TITiPI’s infrastructure. The diagram categorizes the elements according to tools/software (box), structure/organisational form (circle) and place (dashed line). For example Jitsi is the software, Greenhost is the organisation, meet.greenhost.net is the place.|A diagram of TITiPI’s infrastructure. The diagram categorizes the elements according to tools/software (box), structure/organisational form (circle) and place (dashed line). For example Jitsi is the software, Greenhost is the organisation, meet.greenhost.net is the place.]]

How to give life to the common space of TITiPI’s hosting infrastructures? What about building up social dependencies between the ones that host and the ones who are hosted as opposed to a technical independence? Infrastructural imaginations are often built by the ''Big Tech'' industry and governmental institutions. Instead, TITiPI practices a fluid inter-institutional approach supported by [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Infra_colophon a variety of hosts].

=== Selection of server providers ===
On the 7th of November through a shared screen at the [https://meet.greenhost.net/ video conferencing software Jitsi of Greenhost] we all three check a list of server providers I collected on a spreadsheet hosted in Constant’s cloud storage (built with Nextcloud software) where TITiPI has an account. I looked at associations, companies/businesses, cooperatives, communities coming from commercial context to social struggles, activist, feminist and other. Through a [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/List_server_networks list of networks] I found various servers mostly from Latin America and Europe.

The concept of autonomy, sovereignty, independence or self-managing characterizes most of the servers in the list. Some of them, like [https://www.autistici.org/ Autistici] promote this concept as a way to support anti-capitalist infrastructure and protect the privacy of the users as opposed to the ''Big Tech'' software practices.

<blockquote>"The vision is that we - the members of the cooperative - own our own data. This implies and has as a consequence that we will have to own our own infrastructure and have insight and control over the software we use to communicate on the web."<ref>‘Community Servers - Monoskop’, accessed 16 July 2024, https://monoskop.org/Community_servers</ref></blockquote>

Femke had a hunch: "‘technological sovereignty’ and ‘data-sovereignty’ continue to be orientation devices to organise around. ‘Sovereignty’, together with ‘freedom’, ‘independence’ and ‘autonomy’, form an ideological cluster that implicitly and sometimes explicitly foregrounds separation rather than relation."

Servers can act as independent spaces but are also cultural devices and vibrant spaces. They can manifest different aspects of a full life and reach out to a multiplicity of entities.

Servus and Greenhost, seem to be two of our best choices as they cover a lot of the priorities and values of TITiPI. As one can read from their descriptions they both strive for owning their own data servers and data nodes (they have their own ''IP addresses'') and be independent from third parties. The big difference is the scale of the infrastructure and their community and network.

<blockquote>Greenhost fully owns and controls its hardware, infrastructure and uplinks. This ensures independence from third parties and proper access control. On this hardware we run our fully virtualised platform. We stand for an Open Internet, and have always embraced open source software.<ref>‘Greenhost.Net | the Sustainable Web’, accessed 16 July 2024, https://greenhost.net/.</ref></blockquote>

<blockquote>We (Servus) do not pass on any data to third parties. You will not receive commercial advertising from us or third parties. We are easily accessible and answer your questions personally. We and our servers are located at Kirchengasse 4 in Linz, Austria.<ref>‘Book Of Servus’, Book Of Servus, accessed 16 July 2024, https://book.servus.at/en/home/.</ref></blockquote>

Even though Greenhost wants to reduce ecological damage, it does that mainly through hardware reductions and does not address scale. They have plans to expand and are part of a network of partners that want to transform Rotterdam into a big hub of data nodes for the upcoming digital transition. Linode is even bigger, it goes for [[https://www.akamai.com/newsroom/press-release/akamai-takes-cloud-computing-to-the-edge|“(p)lanetary scale”]]. Servus on the other hand has one room of data servers, is closer to the scale of their community and they maintain personal relations with them.

[[Image of the server room at Servus at Linz|Image of the server room at Servus at Linz?]]

=== Community server, feminist server, trans*feminist server, radical server, autonomous server, commercial server, art server, free server, ethical server, solidarity-based server, cooperative server, associative server, independent server, alternative server, non-commercial server, … ===
The spreadsheet starts to grow because of an endless/exhaustive burrow of small and big providers.

Some are outdated. 
Some are messy. 
Some have broken links. 
Some are [https://www.julienth37.fr/vps hard to understand]. 
Some require [https://www.actiu.info/index.en.html a lot of engagement]. 
Some use a language that imitates the narratives of ''Big Tech'' and ''agile'' computing. 
Some promote seamless “promissory logic” and “high hopes for a brighter future” (ref) 
Some are big or are scaling up (in matter of space, data centers, partners, users etc). 
Some support NGO’s or sport clubs.

[[copyright issues? Screenshot from main page of Co-op Web]]

We also looked at their financial model. Many radical servers stay small, are volunteer based, like [https://www.autistici.org/ Autistici]. and go for horizontal organisational structures. Feminist and activist servers provide space in the internet for the ones who don’t have the means to organise otherwise. The resources and ways of organising for these servers are different from the cooperatives or associations whose structure is inherited from the model they are registered with.

[[File:ATNOFS-Varia-insert-ooooo.jpg|thumb|ooooo atnofs insert diagrams from varia, systerserver, servus]]

TITiPI acknowledges and is connected to the history of community, art and feminist servers and wants to support this network. The art servers started as a way to make autonomous self-managed servers that support artists values and practices. They are often financed by cultural or private funds.

<blockquote>I joined (Irational) sometime in 2000s, I can't remember when and originally it was much more a collective of people working together and then since the early 2010's I think, mid 2010's, there was a bit of a reshuffle of personnel and stuff, so the constituency changed to a smaller group and we actually reformed. We were going to disband Irational and then we actually reformed as an art server collective and we decided we are not really working together but what we have in common is that we're using the server and that is actually what the collective is now. It's the collective that uses the server together and wants to use the server together. And another real defining feature of the server the whole time has been resisting virtualization. 

— quote from interview with Kate Rich </blockquote>

The screen seems to become brighter as my eyes get tired. What if we skip the online hosting and create a local physical server at TITiPI’s office next to the desks, in a corner, on a Raspberry Pi? All our data would stay on this machine and we would connect with ''SSH'' from home, but then we will also have to maintain it ourselves. There is something there about the romanticism of a physical toolbox as a sovereign object. If we choose to do that we will need to think of a backup plan as it will be an experimental set up and all our data will stay offline. We won’t have a provider to take care of that.

Our list has been reduced because of our priorities. We need ''SSH'' and we would like to have a VPS. Who has resources for providing VPS? Resources of labour, time, finances, technical knowledge. This made self-defined feminist servers fall out of the selection. How to be financially sustainable, while keeping up with your own values? How to keep up with infrastructural ''maintenance'' if the scale of the users, community, members and data is big?

<blockquote>The services we offer have no defined price, but as you may easily imagine, keeping the whole system working (i.e. hardware and hosting) is very expensive (at the moment it ranges around 13,000 euro every year).<ref>‘Autistici.Org - Services’, accessed 16 July 2024, https://www.autistici.org/services/</ref></blockquote>

Servus and Maadix provide a series of ''free/libre'' tools that can be installed separately through their interface but they also provide a VPS with ''SSH'' access. With Greenhost, Hetzner and Linode there is more flexibility: you can create your own VPS and customize it for your own needs through their interface or the ''terminal'' and install whatever tools you want from scratch without a visual interface.

Technical information and knowledge of digital infrastructure circulate between groups that are tech-oriented with a difficulty to cross with other groups, including feminist servers. The ''sysadmin'' tasks are mostly taken by cis men but feminist servers are radical about that. They find important to have ''sysadmins'' that are not cis men. For example Systerserver and Anarchaserver are learning by themselves together how to do this task.

Many of the servers in the list provide only tools, as a radical way to support small groups, collectives, activists that need privacy and shifting away from Google drive when they want to organise politically and socially. It seems that being limited to tool packages instead of having full access to a server can make things comprehensible and compact for these small groups that have limited ''sysadmin'' knowledge or can’t hire a technician.

[[copyrights issue? Screenshot of main page with services by [https://futuretic.fr/ FuturEtic]]]

[[copyrights issue? Screenshot of tools from codigosur]]

== Final decision and server transfer ==

We are about to make our decision! Our list ended up to be very small.

On 7th of November in an online call between Helen in Basel, Femke in Brussels and Aggeliki in Rotterdam we limited our list to four options: Constant, Greenhost, Servus, Zaclys. The selection consists of a diversity of scales and positioning that we found interesting to think of. First, we move on with the decision to transfer our mailboxes to Irational hosted at Servus. The rest of the functionalities will be hosted somewhere else.

From our conversations with Femke: “The choice for irational.org opens the possibility for discussions around dependencies, trust and frictions within shared collective servers. Irational.org is an ally art server who uses and maintains its own server for many years. Hosting such a private service at a friend’s environment doesn’t come only with convenience. The closeness to the material of the server makes the dependency more tangible.” [reference/quote from colophon?]

[[copyrights issue? towel design by psaroskalazines|towel design by psaroskalazines]]

Femke and I are planning different moments for the server transfer to happen in the office of TITiPI. What it is about to take place comes down into three moments; the backup and save of data from the old server, the installation of the necessary software in the new server and the transfer of the old data in the new server.

Specifically we are following these steps:

* Mail transfer from Gandi to irational
* Create a Virtual Private Server (VPS) in the new server
* Install Apache2 and configure domains
* Install and migrate MediaWiki
** Back up the wiki on the Linode VPS
** Upgrade MediaWiki in Linode
** Install MediaWiki and plugins in the Greenhost VPS
** Transfer database and media files from Linode to Greenhost
* Install Wiki-to-pdf
* Install Pico
* Install and configure Certbot

We find ourselves between two virtual spaces and one office, among other indirectly connected spaces like the rooms of our distant collaborators and the office locations of the servers.

=== Trust relationships ===
By now, 14th of November 2023, the office is warm and cozy. Throughout the time I am writing this report I have been noticing a lot of slow and small efforts to renovate the building and set up the heating, by the artists and organisations who share the space with TITiPI. Another infrastructure that needs care.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 15-06-42.png|thumb|Femke and Aggeliki entering Irational’s server space with Kate]]

On a shared screen together with Femke we get introduced to the mail server of Irational by Kate. We use an audio splitter to share the laptop for the call. Kate described her experience as an amateur ''sysadmin'' that had to spend a lot of time to learn and set up the mail server. After that we start the process that has been documented [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Server_transfer_documentation#Mail_transfer here].

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 14-56-26.png|thumb|Screenshot from the TITiPI’s mail transfer with Kate, Femke and Aggeliki during an online 3 hours call]]

Irational uses the Alpine email client. Kate takes us its depths. That is where we start to set up our new email accounts before we configure them in Thunderbird. Femke gets excited on the fact that she can send emails to other Irational accounts through the ''terminal''.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 15-15-07.png|thumb|Using the email client Alpine]]

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 17-04-20.png|thumb|Screenhost from the moment of looking for the syntax of the TXT records. Finding the right syntax for this value was the biggest challenge. This is part of the ''trust relationships'' between the different providers]]

After some more DNS configurations we test if it is possible to exchange emails with ‘outside’ accounts and especially with Gmail that has many security filters for mail servers other than the commercial ones.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-15 13-59-52.png|thumb|Exchange test emails with a Gmail account]]

After three hours of tryouts we manage to make it work! Very proudly and with enjoyment for sharing a technical task together we say goodbye to each other and arrange a next meeting for a final check up.

=== A choice that comes with discomforts ===
Just one day before the start of TITiPI’s server transfer away from Linode on the 28th of November, Helen found the Swiss server ungleich.ch and it seemed like an interesting choice because of the small scale (in terms of community and servers), their experimental attitude and their choice to reduce energy consumption; they avoid using systems for cooling their servers by spreading the servers at the Swiss mountains in old, abandoned buildings.

Ungleich.ch is one of the good options but it is more expensive than other providers. They offer a cheaper choice by choosing to have only ‘ipv6’. But we had to dig in to understand the difference of ipv4 and ipv6. From wikipedia: “IPv6 is the most recent version of the Internet Protocol, developed to deal with the long-anticipated problem of IPv4 address exhaustion” We found a [https://stats.labs.apnic.net/ipv6 map] that shows which countries have implemented IPv6 and it seems that if we only use this address then many places won’t have access to the website of TITiPI. So we choose to have both addresses.

We also notice that this provider is using Stripe for their payment system. In a [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Frontier parallel universe of TITiPI] we give attention to and critique Stripe because of its connections with the Carbon Removal industry.

[[copyright issues? Ungleich.ch payment system with Stripe]]

Another urgency appears while we are looking at different choices; together with many other organisations, we have been thinking about ways to host and maintain infrastructures in solidarity with communities and networks we are part of. This would mean, for example, hosting digitally a Palestinian video film archive, or research by sex workers. Solidarity is only partially a question of caring for privacy and security because it matters where and how we host our digital infrastructures and whether these spaces do or do not support the flourishing of different lives and struggles. This need make us think again if the server we choose would be suitable for something like that.

Constant and Servus are two accomplice servers that already provide to TITiPI some of their services. Zaclys is a member of Chatons that support open source values and it is located in France. We contacted them to see if they could be an option but they never responded to us.

We wanted to work with a company that provide ‘green’ infrastructure. Greenhost seem to be a good choice. It provides a familiar interface to us, good support and backup option. It has a positioning as an alternative to AWS. So far great, but what about its ‘green’ hosting vision? Is it a solarpunk vision, a green cloud utopia? Is their infrastructure resource ‘hungry’? What are the privacy limits when the material hosted in the servers is political and sensitive?

We choose Greenhost with all the discomforts that this choice entails and with the desire to keep the critique and dialogue alive.

Only by December 2023 we manage to arrange a call with one of Greenhost’s former Managing Directors to get a feeling and more information about their approach and sensitivity. Accordind to him Greenhost exists in the intersection of activism and technology. It provides consultancy, sustainability solutions in tech projects and structured ''maintenance''; they go for best quality with lowest environmental impact; they maintain the same hardware as much as possible and balance that with higher efficiency; they keep backups at an already existing data center in the university of Amsterdam.

<nowiki>[[paragraph for Greenhost include? from interview with manager?]]</nowiki>

=== Installing, tranferring, saving, copying, … ===
On the 28th of November sitting on the sunny corner of the couch next to the radiator, and with warm coffee cups waiting for us on a low table, Femke and I cover our legs with a blanket and open our laptops.

I ask Femke to jumb in a ''tmux'' session for sharing ''terminal'' with this command: <code>''sudo'' ''tmux'' attach -t webserver</code>. We start by cleaning the old server and make backups of the files.

We take a lunch break. Femke finds out that if we eat three recurrent meals every week in the office we can have a nice variety of food; lentiles soup, orecchiette pasta with brocoli, rizzoto with mushrooms and lots of fruits. Sometime ago we decided to make multiple short breaks throughout the day because of computer fatigue. One day I removed all the files from my computer that were older than 90 days because I accidentally run a command on the ''terminal'' instead of a bash script to test the setting up of [https://gitlab.constantvzw.org/titipi/burrow Burrow]. I left this comment in the initial script:

<code># VERY DANGEROUS COMMAND find *txt -mindepth 1 -mtime +$RETAIN -delete</code>
The next day we set up the new server and install all the necessary software including a new version of the MediaWiki. We arrange a meeting with Martino Morandi, member of Constant, who created the wiki-to-pdf to help us installing this software and tranfer the MediaWiki in the new server. On the 1st of December we successfully install the wiki-to-pdf and because of limited time we decided to meet one more time at the end of the month for the rest.

[[File:Virtual-env-debian.png|thumb|Screenshot from the wiki-to-pdf installation to the new server with Martino, Femke, Aggeliki. Debian supports a different way to create virtual environments for installing python packages and libraries. We try it but it failed.]]

On the 28th we meet with Martino online to complete the transfer, which includes copying the old database of MediaWiki, activate the old plugins and fix any issues on the way. We are all located in different countries (Italy, Greece, Belgium) and so we share a ''tmux'' session. We follow the guides but on the way we had to do some research and configure a lot of things to make the MediaWiki work. Martino was hunting a php module. It seemed that php has shifted to free software culture in an attempt to find another business model. It is not surprising it happens in the context of Ubuntu. The issue is recorded [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Server_transfer_documentation#MediaWiki_upgrade_issues here].

[[File:Firefox Screenshot 2024-01-10T13-59-40.398Z.png|thumb|"Is Titipi.org down?" Helen asks after the transfer. It seems that her browser cache was preventing her from seeing the website]]

The process is documented in our diary and then transferred to a [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Server_transfer_documentation wiki page]. By January 2024 the server transfer and the deletion of our Linode account has been completed.

== Glossaries ==

Italicized terms in the report are included in these glossaries:

* [https://varia.zone/ATNOFS/ATNOFS-screen.pdf Glossary of A Traversal Network of Feminist Servers (ATNOFS) publication]
* [[Glossary|TITiPI's glossary]]

== References ==

* Panashe Chigumadzi, ‘Can White South Africa Live up to Ubuntu, the African Philosophy Tutu Globalised?’, The Guardian, 31 December 2021, sec. Opinion, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec/31/white-south-africa-ubuntu-african-tutu
* ‘Community Servers - Monoskop’, accessed 16 July 2024, https://monoskop.org/Community_servers
* ‘GitHub Abandons “master” Term to Avoid Slavery Row’, 15 June 2020, https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-53050955
* Femke Snelting, ‘Infrastructure Solidarity’, Ardeth. A Magazine on the Power of the Project, no. 8 (1 November 2021): 45–47
* ‘Master-Slave Terminology Alternatives You Can Use Right Now | TheServerSide’, TheServerSide.com, accessed 16 July 2024, https://www.theserverside.com/opinion/Master-slave-terminology-alternatives-you-can-use-right-now
* ‘Replace “Master” and “Slave” Terms in Redis · Issue #3185 · Redis/Redis’, GitHub, accessed 16 July 2024, https://github.com/redis/redis/issues/3185
* ‘Ubuntu: A Black Radical Demand for Reparations’, THE FUNAMBULIST MAGAZINE, 25 October 2023, https://thefunambulist.net/magazine/redefining-our-terms/ubuntu-a-black-radical-demand-for-reparations.

== Colophon ==

The text was drafted in pad.xpub.nl in Markdown and then transferred in this wiki.

== Footnotes ==

From cloud to crowd: a report on a server transfer

2024-07-16T13:47:01Z

Angeliki:

= From cloud to crowd<ref>The term comes from ... (not sure if it is included in the title)</ref>: A report on a server transfer =

This text is a report on a server migration that took place within the institutional framework of [https://titipi.org/ The Institute for Technology in the Public Interest (TITiPI)], a trans-practice gathering of activists, artists, engineers and theorists. TITiPI convenes communities to articulate, activate and re-imagine together what computational technologies in the 'public interest' might be. This report is an infrastructural ethnography and aims to rethink, through a technical process, what ''hosting'' a server means for a community, institution, cultural organisation dealing with technological discomforts and often inaccessible complex digital infrastructures.

A ''server'' is a computer (or a piece of software/hardware) that provides functionalities via a network (Internet). A ''server migration'' is the process of moving data and transferring software from one server to another with the use of specified tools. Performing such process accommodates a practical and technical solution to fix the problem of an outdated server that is slow or has limited storage. But it also affects the values, the structure and infrastructural imaginations of the organisations it supports. TITiPI desired(s) to go with hosting and maintain its own virtual private server instead of outsourcing these services to external tech companies. In times of server providers’ scaling up ( ‘''cloud hosting''’ ) and digitizing governmental bureaucracies what does it mean to host your own digital space for supporting your communities and work? What does it mean to have an independent infrastructure? What (non-)dependencies are chosen or taken for granted by institutions when using hosting services?

As a researcher at TITiPI I have been caring for the task to investigate this server migration and execute it together with TITiPI’s member Femke Snelting. We meet weekly to keep track and make decisions. We share a ''markdown'' file hosted in the git of the cultural association [https://constantvzw.org/site/ Constant] that includes a diary of the server migration and reflections. Every now and then we meet online with our colleague Helen Pritchard, to discuss and share the process. This report shares extracts from the server diary and stories from the process.

== Migration or … ? ==

In the cold newly installed office of TITiPI located in the Koekelberg district of Brussels, I open Chromium in my computer, that runs the operating system Ubuntu, in order to translate quickly − with the installed Google Translate plugin; later I found out there is a DeepL version − the web pages of the different cooperatives, associations, companies that provide hosting services. While doing that I have this disturbing thought in my head that I try to ignore: the word ‘migration’ as a technical term to describe the movement from one server to the other. It makes me think of an [https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/13/technology/racist-computer-engineering-terms-ietf.html online conversation], happening for a few years now, about replacing computer engineering terminology to stop prevalence of racism in tech. Specifically the conversation [https://www.wired.com/story/tech-confronts-use-labels-master-slave/ evolves around the terms] ‘master/slave’, where one computing process or entity controls another, and ‘blacklists/whitelists’ used for directories of those things that are explicitly banned or allowed. Using metaphors like that for a technical process de-contextualizes a word from its origins and unavoidably perpetuates social injustices. It also shows that the context where such choices of language are made is privileged and untouched or non-triggered by these terms. White male computer engineers have build up this language. Could words like transferring, sharing, moving, copying, re-installing, shifting replace the word ‘migration’? From this point on in the report I decide to use the term ‘transfer’.

‘Ubuntu’ is also a word extracted from its original context. It is coming from the African Ubuntu philosophy. According to the creators of the software:

<blockquote>ubuntu |oǒ’boǒntoō| Ubuntu is an ancient African word meaning ‘humanity to others’. It is often described as reminding us that ‘I am what I am because of who we all are’. We bring the spirit of Ubuntu to the world of computers and software. The Ubuntu distribution represents the best of what the world’s software community has shared with the world. <ref>‘About the Ubuntu Project’, Ubuntu, accessed 16 July 2024, https://ubuntu.com/about</ref>
</blockquote>

Paraphrasing [https://thefunambulist.net/magazine/redefining-our-terms/ubuntu-a-black-radical-demand-for-reparations Panashe Chigumadzi] words: in contrast to the western conception of the human as individual, the African conception of the person is a social being who is always becoming, defined by and being responsible for the personhood of the others. "(T)he African philosophy best understood through the proverb found in Bantu languages across the continent, 'umuntu ngumuntu ngabanye bantu' (a person is a person through other people". <ref>Panashe Chigumadzi, ‘Can White South Africa Live up to Ubuntu, the African Philosophy Tutu Globalised?’, The Guardian, 31 December 2021, sec. Opinion, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec/31/white-south-africa-ubuntu-african-tutu</ref>

<blockquote>(D)espite the flourishing of Ubuntu in post-apartheid discourse, lending its name to software, businesses, books and philanthropic organisations, South Africa is a country in which we have, as Dladla argues, Ubuntu without Abantu. Just as Black people have been dispossessed of their land, Ubuntu has been dispossessed of its deeply radical demands for ethical historical and social relations among people. (...) post apartheid Ubuntu mistranslation 'I am because we are', individualized and interpersonalised Ubuntu, Christianised Ubuntu, mistranslated in order to justify crimes and violence. In Ubuntu violence can be punished even after generations, the misinterpretation of the term allowed individual forgiveness. <ref>‘Ubuntu: A Black Radical Demand for Reparations’, THE FUNAMBULIST MAGAZINE, 25 October 2023, https://thefunambulist.net/magazine/redefining-our-terms/ubuntu-a-black-radical-demand-for-reparations</ref>
</blockquote>

I skip these thoughts and I continue browsing the list of servers. While trying to stay focused something other distracts me; I encounter an [https://www.oziosi.org/ autonomous Italian server] with the title translated with DeepL: “:: a shelter for digital exiles ::” and an image of a woman, a child and a man leaving their home. Also a small introduction: “Exiled from the global village of social networks, we claim an internet that is a simple means of communication: immaterial, anonymous, imaginary, public when it makes sense and secret when we feel the need.”. I am wondering what does this mean for actual exiles having to protect their privacy when communicating back home? [https://techpolicy.press/how-to-open-an-outpost-in-social-media-exile/ ‘Social media exiles’] and ‘Twitter migration’ are terms used often after Twitter became X and users have moved to the Fediverse or other alternatives.

[[Screenshot of the 'digital exiles' image, image not included because of copyrights issues?]]

== TITiPI’s case of server transfer ==
On the 27th of September, sitting at the long desks side to side, Femke and I have an online call with Helen, while looking at the depths of our Virtual Private Server (VPS), provided by Linode, that runs Ubuntu on our laptop screens. Linode is an American hosting provider focusing on ''Linux''-based virtual machines originally. The server is physically located in the UK. TITiPI currently uses the Linode server that Helen set up for hosting her own projects. She has been paying for Linode’s monthly fees so far.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-10-11 14-47-06.png|thumb|Screenshot of Linode Ubuntu server overview and ''terminal'' that shows a moment of figuring out what takes space in the server through ''SSH'' access]]

At the time it seemed a good choice, because it is based in UK, is ''Linux'' friendly and an alternative to Amazon Web Services (AWS), even though it was already identifying as ‘''cloud hosting''’. But in February 2023 it has been acquired by the American company Akamai that aims to scale up for [https://www.linode.com/global-infrastructure/ “computing power, optimizing performance and agility.”]. Akamai is actively changing its server policies into an increasingly intense cloud logic. This pushed forward the desire to move to a new place.

[[Screenshot of Linode website referring to scalability -- copyright issues?]]

At the moment in Linode we run pico, a flat CMS for the website https://titipi.org. There is a Mediawiki (you are reading a Mediawiki page right now) for notes and collective writing. On the wiki, we also publish our statutes, guidelines and other instituting documents. The wiki has a custom extension, called wiki-to-pdf. Each of these services will need a different way to be transferred. One approach is to build the new server space from scratch, copy the data with rsync and transfer only the Mediawiki, which includes installing a new version and copy the database and the media files.

While preparing to transfer the tools we are defining what are the practical needs and desirable priorities; we ended up on these server requirements:
* ''SSH'' access and wish for VPS
* affordable price (around €20/month)
* run a Free Software operating system, preferably Debian
* involves community work - slowing down, resisting to scaling and growth or ‘decloudification’ (small network of partners, less virtualization approach, location of servers nearby etc)
* 25-40GB storage space, 1-2 cores, 2-4GB RAM
* environmental angle
* service support in a language that we all understand (English mostly)

This server transfer happens with an intersectional and feminist approach and the desire to keep questioning. While moving away from Linode we include both the technical and the conceptual thinking in the process. There are a few things that we are looking at: 
* Where to be transferred to or what services to transfer to?
* How to be transferred and what to tranfer?
* What terminology, language we use?
* What (other) narratives of server hosting can we construct?

TITiPI seeks to exist with an infrastructure that supports inter-dependent practices and solidarity across struggles. It develops Counter Cloud Actions [ref] as a way to scale down, de-cloudify, articulate, contest and re-imagine the implications of computational infrastructures (‘the cloud’).

<blockquote>TITiPI develop tools from feminisms, queer theory, Free, Libre and Open Source software, intersectionality, anti-coloniality, disability studies, historical materialism and artistic practice to generate currently inexistent vocabularies, imaginaries and methodologies. TITiPI functions as an infrastructure to establish new ways in which socio-technical practices and technologies might support the public interest. <ref>TITiPI, ‘Infrables’, Tangible Cloud Archives, https://docs.tangible-cloud.be/publications-pdf/02_snelting.pdf.</ref></blockquote>

We are looking for servers that aspire some of these values.

=== A relational infrastructure narrative/ infra-mutuality/ inter-infrastructural narrative ===
[[File:Elastic solidarities.png|thumb]]
In June 2023 TITiPI received an email from Gandi to renew the domain titipi.org in 6 days, not realising that at the same time we would need to start paying for our titipi.org email hosting. We had missed reading to the end of another email sent in the middle of June, entitled: 'Pricing update'.

We consider to work with Kate Rich to move our mailboxes to the [http://irational.org/ Irational server], soon to be installed on a Raspberry Pi, hosted at Servus. Currently it is in a rack in the UK. We decide to do this transition slowly and until then renew the emails for 1-2 months through Gandi. Irational server resists virtualization, and as an art community project it makes it an interesting choice.

But why to go through all this effort and not just use one cloud server with mailboxes, file storage and web server together? TITiPI’s response to the question of building institutional digital infrastructure embodies an archipelagic and non-sovereign approach to dependencies. Rather than building a centralised server based on ‘cloud’ from which connections with other institutions and collectives can happen, it conceptualizes inter-infrastructural practices; from the creation of a [https://gitlab.constantvzw.org/titipi/burrow backup script] for saving locally etherpad pads from other servers, hosting emails at an art server (https://irational.org), creating an [https://books.lumbung.space/shelf/26 online bookshelf] on lumbung.space, using the ''XMPP'' chat from Varia to recording conversations with the ''sysadmin'' that maintain the other servers. The institution re-imagines technological dependencies in dialogue with cultural institutions and art collectives.

[[File:Titipi-infra-diagram-JAN-24.png|thumb|none|alt=A diagram of TITiPI’s infrastructure. The diagram categorizes the elements according to tools/software (box), structure/organisational form (circle) and place (dashed line). For example Jitsi is the software, Greenhost is the organisation, meet.greenhost.net is the place.|A diagram of TITiPI’s infrastructure. The diagram categorizes the elements according to tools/software (box), structure/organisational form (circle) and place (dashed line). For example Jitsi is the software, Greenhost is the organisation, meet.greenhost.net is the place.]]

How to give life to the common space of TITiPI’s hosting infrastructures? What about building up social dependencies between the ones that host and the ones who are hosted as opposed to a technical independence? Infrastructural imaginations are often built by the ''Big Tech'' industry and governmental institutions. Instead, TITiPI practices a fluid inter-institutional approach supported by [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Infra_colophon a variety of hosts].

=== Selection of server providers ===
On the 7th of November through a shared screen at the [https://meet.greenhost.net/ video conferencing software Jitsi of Greenhost] we all three check a list of server providers I collected on a spreadsheet hosted in Constant’s cloud storage (built with Nextcloud software) where TITiPI has an account. I looked at associations, companies/businesses, cooperatives, communities coming from commercial context to social struggles, activist, feminist and other. Through a [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/List_server_networks list of networks] I found various servers mostly from Latin America and Europe.

The concept of autonomy, sovereignty, independence or self-managing characterizes most of the servers in the list. Some of them, like [https://www.autistici.org/ Autistici] promote this concept as a way to support anti-capitalist infrastructure and protect the privacy of the users as opposed to the ''Big Tech'' software practices.

<blockquote>"The vision is that we - the members of the cooperative - own our own data. This implies and has as a consequence that we will have to own our own infrastructure and have insight and control over the software we use to communicate on the web."<ref>‘Community Servers - Monoskop’, accessed 16 July 2024, https://monoskop.org/Community_servers</ref></blockquote>

Femke had a hunch: "‘technological sovereignty’ and ‘data-sovereignty’ continue to be orientation devices to organise around. ‘Sovereignty’, together with ‘freedom’, ‘independence’ and ‘autonomy’, form an ideological cluster that implicitly and sometimes explicitly foregrounds separation rather than relation."

Servers can act as independent spaces but are also cultural devices and vibrant spaces. They can manifest different aspects of a full life and reach out to a multiplicity of entities.

Servus and Greenhost, seem to be two of our best choices as they cover a lot of the priorities and values of TITiPI. As one can read from their descriptions they both strive for owning their own data servers and data nodes (they have their own ''IP addresses'') and be independent from third parties. The big difference is the scale of the infrastructure and their community and network.

<blockquote>Greenhost fully owns and controls its hardware, infrastructure and uplinks. This ensures independence from third parties and proper access control. On this hardware we run our fully virtualised platform. We stand for an Open Internet, and have always embraced open source software.<ref>‘Greenhost.Net | the Sustainable Web’, accessed 16 July 2024, https://greenhost.net/.</ref></blockquote>

<blockquote>We (Servus) do not pass on any data to third parties. You will not receive commercial advertising from us or third parties. We are easily accessible and answer your questions personally. We and our servers are located at Kirchengasse 4 in Linz, Austria.<ref>‘Book Of Servus’, Book Of Servus, accessed 16 July 2024, https://book.servus.at/en/home/.</ref></blockquote>

Even though Greenhost wants to reduce ecological damage, it does that mainly through hardware reductions and does not address scale. They have plans to expand and are part of a network of partners that want to transform Rotterdam into a big hub of data nodes for the upcoming digital transition. Linode is even bigger, it goes for [[https://www.akamai.com/newsroom/press-release/akamai-takes-cloud-computing-to-the-edge|“(p)lanetary scale”]]. Servus on the other hand has one room of data servers, is closer to the scale of their community and they maintain personal relations with them.

[[Image of the server room at Servus at Linz|Image of the server room at Servus at Linz?]]

=== Community server, feminist server, trans*feminist server, radical server, autonomous server, commercial server, art server, free server, ethical server, solidarity-based server, cooperative server, associative server, independent server, alternative server, non-commercial server, … ===
The spreadsheet starts to grow because of an endless/exhaustive burrow of small and big providers.

Some are outdated. 
Some are messy. 
Some have broken links. 
Some are [https://www.julienth37.fr/vps hard to understand]. 
Some require [https://www.actiu.info/index.en.html a lot of engagement]. 
Some use a language that imitates the narratives of ''Big Tech'' and ''agile'' computing. 
Some promote seamless “promissory logic” and “high hopes for a brighter future” (ref) 
Some are big or are scaling up (in matter of space, data centers, partners, users etc). 
Some support NGO’s or sport clubs.

[[copyright issues? Screenshot from main page of Co-op Web]]

We also looked at their financial model. Many radical servers stay small, are volunteer based, like [https://www.autistici.org/ Autistici]. and go for horizontal organisational structures. Feminist and activist servers provide space in the internet for the ones who don’t have the means to organise otherwise. The resources and ways of organising for these servers are different from the cooperatives or associations whose structure is inherited from the model they are registered with.

[[File:ATNOFS-Varia-insert-ooooo.jpg|thumb|ooooo atnofs insert diagrams from varia, systerserver, servus]]

TITiPI acknowledges and is connected to the history of community, art and feminist servers and wants to support this network. The art servers started as a way to make autonomous self-managed servers that support artists values and practices. They are often financed by cultural or private funds.

<blockquote>I joined (Irational) sometime in 2000s, I can't remember when and originally it was much more a collective of people working together and then since the early 2010's I think, mid 2010's, there was a bit of a reshuffle of personnel and stuff, so the constituency changed to a smaller group and we actually reformed. We were going to disband Irational and then we actually reformed as an art server collective and we decided we are not really working together but what we have in common is that we're using the server and that is actually what the collective is now. It's the collective that uses the server together and wants to use the server together. And another real defining feature of the server the whole time has been resisting virtualization. 

— quote from interview with Kate Rich </blockquote>

The screen seems to become brighter as my eyes get tired. What if we skip the online hosting and create a local physical server at TITiPI’s office next to the desks, in a corner, on a Raspberry Pi? All our data would stay on this machine and we would connect with ''SSH'' from home, but then we will also have to maintain it ourselves. There is something there about the romanticism of a physical toolbox as a sovereign object. If we choose to do that we will need to think of a backup plan as it will be an experimental set up and all our data will stay offline. We won’t have a provider to take care of that.

Our list has been reduced because of our priorities. We need ''SSH'' and we would like to have a VPS. Who has resources for providing VPS? Resources of labour, time, finances, technical knowledge. This made self-defined feminist servers fall out of the selection. How to be financially sustainable, while keeping up with your own values? How to keep up with infrastructural ''maintenance'' if the scale of the users, community, members and data is big?

<blockquote>The services we offer have no defined price, but as you may easily imagine, keeping the whole system working (i.e. hardware and hosting) is very expensive (at the moment it ranges around 13,000 euro every year).<ref>‘Autistici.Org - Services’, accessed 16 July 2024, https://www.autistici.org/services/</ref></blockquote>

Servus and Maadix provide a series of ''free/libre'' tools that can be installed separately through their interface but they also provide a VPS with ''SSH'' access. With Greenhost, Hetzner and Linode there is more flexibility: you can create your own VPS and customize it for your own needs through their interface or the ''terminal'' and install whatever tools you want from scratch without a visual interface.

Technical information and knowledge of digital infrastructure circulate between groups that are tech-oriented with a difficulty to cross with other groups, including feminist servers. The ''sysadmin'' tasks are mostly taken by cis men but feminist servers are radical about that. They find important to have ''sysadmins'' that are not cis men. For example Systerserver and Anarchaserver are learning by themselves together how to do this task.

Many of the servers in the list provide only tools, as a radical way to support small groups, collectives, activists that need privacy and shifting away from Google drive when they want to organise politically and socially. It seems that being limited to tool packages instead of having full access to a server can make things comprehensible and compact for these small groups that have limited ''sysadmin'' knowledge or can’t hire a technician.

[[copyrights issue? Screenshot of main page with services by [https://futuretic.fr/ FuturEtic]]]

[[copyrights issue? Screenshot of tools from codigosur]]

== Final decision and server transfer ==

We are about to make our decision! Our list ended up to be very small.

On 7th of November in an online call between Helen in Basel, Femke in Brussels and Aggeliki in Rotterdam we limited our list to four options: Constant, Greenhost, Servus, Zaclys. The selection consists of a diversity of scales and positioning that we found interesting to think of. First, we move on with the decision to transfer our mailboxes to Irational hosted at Servus. The rest of the functionalities will be hosted somewhere else.

From our conversations with Femke: “The choice for irational.org opens the possibility for discussions around dependencies, trust and frictions within shared collective servers. Irational.org is an ally art server who uses and maintains its own server for many years. Hosting such a private service at a friend’s environment doesn’t come only with convenience. The closeness to the material of the server makes the dependency more tangible.” [reference/quote from colophon?]

[[copyrights issue? towel design by psaroskalazines|towel design by psaroskalazines]]

Femke and I are planning different moments for the server transfer to happen in the office of TITiPI. What it is about to take place comes down into three moments; the backup and save of data from the old server, the installation of the necessary software in the new server and the transfer of the old data in the new server.

Specifically we are following these steps:

* Mail transfer from Gandi to irational
* Create a Virtual Private Server (VPS) in the new server
* Install Apache2 and configure domains
* Install and migrate MediaWiki
** Back up the wiki on the Linode VPS
** Upgrade MediaWiki in Linode
** Install MediaWiki and plugins in the Greenhost VPS
** Transfer database and media files from Linode to Greenhost
* Install Wiki-to-pdf
* Install Pico
* Install and configure Certbot

We find ourselves between two virtual spaces and one office, among other indirectly connected spaces like the rooms of our distant collaborators and the office locations of the servers.

=== Trust relationships ===
By now, 14th of November 2023, the office is warm and cozy. Throughout the time I am writing this report I have been noticing a lot of slow and small efforts to renovate the building and set up the heating, by the artists and organisations who share the space with TITiPI. Another infrastructure that needs care.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 15-06-42.png|thumb|Femke and Aggeliki entering Irational’s server space with Kate]]

On a shared screen together with Femke we get introduced to the mail server of Irational by Kate. We use an audio splitter to share the laptop for the call. Kate described her experience as an amateur ''sysadmin'' that had to spend a lot of time to learn and set up the mail server. After that we start the process that has been documented [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Server_transfer_documentation#Mail_transfer here].

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 14-56-26.png|thumb|Screenshot from the TITiPI’s mail transfer with Kate, Femke and Aggeliki during an online 3 hours call]]

Irational uses the Alpine email client. Kate takes us its depths. That is where we start to set up our new email accounts before we configure them in Thunderbird. Femke gets excited on the fact that she can send emails to other Irational accounts through the ''terminal''.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 15-15-07.png|thumb|Using the email client Alpine]]

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 17-04-20.png|thumb|Screenhost from the moment of looking for the syntax of the TXT records. Finding the right syntax for this value was the biggest challenge. This is part of the ''trust relationships'' between the different providers]]

After some more DNS configurations we test if it is possible to exchange emails with ‘outside’ accounts and especially with Gmail that has many security filters for mail servers other than the commercial ones.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-15 13-59-52.png|thumb|Exchange test emails with a Gmail account]]

After three hours of tryouts we manage to make it work! Very proudly and with enjoyment for sharing a technical task together we say goodbye to each other and arrange a next meeting for a final check up.

=== A choice that comes with discomforts ===
Just one day before the start of TITiPI’s server transfer away from Linode on the 28th of November, Helen found the Swiss server ungleich.ch and it seemed like an interesting choice because of the small scale (in terms of community and servers), their experimental attitude and their choice to reduce energy consumption; they avoid using systems for cooling their servers by spreading the servers at the Swiss mountains in old, abandoned buildings.

Ungleich.ch is one of the good options but it is more expensive than other providers. They offer a cheaper choice by choosing to have only ‘ipv6’. But we had to dig in to understand the difference of ipv4 and ipv6. From wikipedia: “IPv6 is the most recent version of the Internet Protocol, developed to deal with the long-anticipated problem of IPv4 address exhaustion” We found a [https://stats.labs.apnic.net/ipv6 map] that shows which countries have implemented IPv6 and it seems that if we only use this address then many places won’t have access to the website of TITiPI. So we choose to have both addresses.

We also notice that this provider is using Stripe for their payment system. In a [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Frontier parallel universe of TITiPI] we give attention to and critique Stripe because of its connections with the Carbon Removal industry.

[[copyright issues? Ungleich.ch payment system with Stripe]]

Another urgency appears while we are looking at different choices; together with many other organisations, we have been thinking about ways to host and maintain infrastructures in solidarity with communities and networks we are part of. This would mean, for example, hosting digitally a Palestinian video film archive, or research by sex workers. Solidarity is only partially a question of caring for privacy and security because it matters where and how we host our digital infrastructures and whether these spaces do or do not support the flourishing of different lives and struggles. This need make us think again if the server we choose would be suitable for something like that.

Constant and Servus are two accomplice servers that already provide to TITiPI some of their services. Zaclys is a member of Chatons that support open source values and it is located in France. We contacted them to see if they could be an option but they never responded to us.

We wanted to work with a company that provide ‘green’ infrastructure. Greenhost seem to be a good choice. It provides a familiar interface to us, good support and backup option. It has a positioning as an alternative to AWS. So far great, but what about its ‘green’ hosting vision? Is it a solarpunk vision, a green cloud utopia? Is their infrastructure resource ‘hungry’? What are the privacy limits when the material hosted in the servers is political and sensitive?

We choose Greenhost with all the discomforts that this choice entails and with the desire to keep the critique and dialogue alive.

Only by December 2023 we manage to arrange a call with one of Greenhost’s former Managing Directors to get a feeling and more information about their approach and sensitivity. Accordind to him Greenhost exists in the intersection of activism and technology. It provides consultancy, sustainability solutions in tech projects and structured ''maintenance''; they go for best quality with lowest environmental impact; they maintain the same hardware as much as possible and balance that with higher efficiency; they keep backups at an already existing data center in the university of Amsterdam.

<nowiki>[[paragraph for Greenhost include? from interview with manager?]]</nowiki>

=== Installing, tranferring, saving, copying, … ===
On the 28th of November sitting on the sunny corner of the couch next to the radiator, and with warm coffee cups waiting for us on a low table, Femke and I cover our legs with a blanket and open our laptops.

I ask Femke to jumb in a ''tmux'' session for sharing ''terminal'' with this command: <code>''sudo'' ''tmux'' attach -t webserver</code>. We start by cleaning the old server and make backups of the files.

We take a lunch break. Femke finds out that if we eat three recurrent meals every week in the office we can have a nice variety of food; lentiles soup, orecchiette pasta with brocoli, rizzoto with mushrooms and lots of fruits. Sometime ago we decided to make multiple short breaks throughout the day because of computer fatigue. One day I removed all the files from my computer that were older than 90 days because I accidentally run a command on the ''terminal'' instead of a bash script to test the setting up of [https://gitlab.constantvzw.org/titipi/burrow Burrow]. I left this comment in the initial script:

<code># VERY DANGEROUS COMMAND find *txt -mindepth 1 -mtime +$RETAIN -delete</code>
The next day we set up the new server and install all the necessary software including a new version of the MediaWiki. We arrange a meeting with Martino Morandi, member of Constant, who created the wiki-to-pdf to help us installing this software and tranfer the MediaWiki in the new server. On the 1st of December we successfully install the wiki-to-pdf and because of limited time we decided to meet one more time at the end of the month for the rest.

[[File:Virtual-env-debian.png|thumb|Screenshot from the wiki-to-pdf installation to the new server with Martino, Femke, Aggeliki. Debian supports a different way to create virtual environments for installing python packages and libraries. We try it but it failed.]]

On the 28th we meet with Martino online to complete the transfer, which includes copying the old database of MediaWiki, activate the old plugins and fix any issues on the way. We are all located in different countries (Italy, Greece, Belgium) and so we share a ''tmux'' session. We follow the guides but on the way we had to do some research and configure a lot of things to make the MediaWiki work. Martino was hunting a php module. It seemed that php has shifted to free software culture in an attempt to find another business model. It is not surprising it happens in the context of Ubuntu. The issue is recorded [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Server_transfer_documentation#MediaWiki_upgrade_issues here].

[[File:Firefox Screenshot 2024-01-10T13-59-40.398Z.png|thumb|"Is Titipi.org down?" Helen asks after the transfer. It seems that her browser cache was preventing her from seeing the website]]

The process is documented in our diary and then transferred to a [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Server_transfer_documentation wiki page]. By January 2024 the server transfer and the deletion of our Linode account has been completed.

== Glossaries ==

Italicized terms in the report are included in these glossaries:

* [https://varia.zone/ATNOFS/ATNOFS-screen.pdf Glossary of A Traversal Network of Feminist Servers (ATNOFS) publication]
* [[Glossary|TITiPI's glossary]]

== References ==

* Panashe Chigumadzi, ‘Can White South Africa Live up to Ubuntu, the African Philosophy Tutu Globalised?’, The Guardian, 31 December 2021, sec. Opinion, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec/31/white-south-africa-ubuntu-african-tutu
* ‘Community Servers - Monoskop’, accessed 16 July 2024, https://monoskop.org/Community_servers
* ‘GitHub Abandons “master” Term to Avoid Slavery Row’, 15 June 2020, https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-53050955
* Femke Snelting, ‘Infrastructure Solidarity’, Ardeth. A Magazine on the Power of the Project, no. 8 (1 November 2021): 45–47
* ‘Master-Slave Terminology Alternatives You Can Use Right Now | TheServerSide’, TheServerSide.com, accessed 16 July 2024, https://www.theserverside.com/opinion/Master-slave-terminology-alternatives-you-can-use-right-now
* ‘Replace “Master” and “Slave” Terms in Redis · Issue #3185 · Redis/Redis’, GitHub, accessed 16 July 2024, https://github.com/redis/redis/issues/3185
* ‘Ubuntu: A Black Radical Demand for Reparations’, THE FUNAMBULIST MAGAZINE, 25 October 2023, https://thefunambulist.net/magazine/redefining-our-terms/ubuntu-a-black-radical-demand-for-reparations.

== Colophon ==

The text was drafted in pad.xpub.nl

== Footnotes ==

From cloud to crowd: a report on a server transfer

2024-07-16T13:35:34Z

Angeliki:

= From cloud to crowd<ref>The term comes from ... (not sure if it is included in the title)</ref>: A report on a server transfer =

This text is a report on a server migration that took place within the institutional framework of [https://titipi.org/ The Institute for Technology in the Public Interest (TITiPI)], a trans-practice gathering of activists, artists, engineers and theorists. TITiPI convenes communities to articulate, activate and re-imagine together what computational technologies in the 'public interest' might be. This report is an infrastructural ethnography and aims to rethink, through a technical process, what ''hosting'' a server means for a community, institution, cultural organisation dealing with technological discomforts and often inaccessible complex digital infrastructures.

A ''server'' is a computer (or a piece of software/hardware) that provides functionalities via a network (Internet). A ''server migration'' is the process of moving data and transferring software from one server to another with the use of specified tools. Performing such process accommodates a practical and technical solution to fix the problem of an outdated server that is slow or has limited storage. But it also affects the values, the structure and infrastructural imaginations of the organisations it supports. TITiPI desired(s) to go with hosting and maintain its own virtual private server instead of outsourcing these services to external tech companies. In times of server providers’ scaling up ( ‘''cloud hosting''’ ) and digitizing governmental bureaucracies what does it mean to host your own digital space for supporting your communities and work? What does it mean to have an independent infrastructure? What (non-)dependencies are chosen or taken for granted by institutions when using hosting services?

As a researcher at TITiPI I have been caring for the task to investigate this server migration and execute it together with TITiPI’s member Femke Snelting. We meet weekly to keep track and make decisions. We share a ''markdown'' file hosted in the git of the cultural association [https://constantvzw.org/site/ Constant] that includes a diary of the server migration and reflections. Every now and then we meet online with our colleague Helen Pritchard, to discuss and share the process. This report shares extracts from the server diary and stories from the process.

== Migration or … ? ==

In the cold newly installed office of TITiPI located in the Koekelberg district of Brussels, I open Chromium in my computer, that runs the operating system Ubuntu, in order to translate quickly − with the installed Google Translate plugin; later I found out there is a DeepL version − the web pages of the different cooperatives, associations, companies that provide hosting services. While doing that I have this disturbing thought in my head that I try to ignore: the word ‘migration’ as a technical term to describe the movement from one server to the other. It makes me think of an [https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/13/technology/racist-computer-engineering-terms-ietf.html online conversation], happening for a few years now, about replacing computer engineering terminology to stop prevalence of racism in tech. Specifically the conversation [https://www.wired.com/story/tech-confronts-use-labels-master-slave/ evolves around the terms] ‘master/slave’, where one computing process or entity controls another, and ‘blacklists/whitelists’ used for directories of those things that are explicitly banned or allowed. Using metaphors like that for a technical process de-contextualizes a word from its origins and unavoidably perpetuates social injustices. It also shows that the context where such choices of language are made is privileged and untouched or non-triggered by these terms. White male computer engineers have build up this language. Could words like transferring, sharing, moving, copying, re-installing, shifting replace the word ‘migration’? From this point on in the report I decide to use the term ‘transfer’.

‘Ubuntu’ is also a word extracted from its original context. It is coming from the African Ubuntu philosophy. According to the creators of the software:

<blockquote>ubuntu |oǒ’boǒntoō| Ubuntu is an ancient African word meaning ‘humanity to others’. It is often described as reminding us that ‘I am what I am because of who we all are’. We bring the spirit of Ubuntu to the world of computers and software. The Ubuntu distribution represents the best of what the world’s software community has shared with the world. <ref>https://ubuntu.com/about</ref>
</blockquote>

Paraphrasing [https://thefunambulist.net/magazine/redefining-our-terms/ubuntu-a-black-radical-demand-for-reparations Panashe Chigumadzi] words: in contrast to the western conception of the human as individual, the African conception of the person is a social being who is always becoming, defined by and being responsible for the personhood of the others. "(T)he African philosophy best understood through the proverb found in Bantu languages across the continent, 'umuntu ngumuntu ngabanye bantu' (a person is a person through other people". <ref>https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec/31/white-south-africa-ubuntu-african-tutu</ref>

<blockquote>(D)espite the flourishing of Ubuntu in post-apartheid discourse, lending its name to software, businesses, books and philanthropic organisations, South Africa is a country in which we have, as Dladla argues, Ubuntu without Abantu. Just as Black people have been dispossessed of their land, Ubuntu has been dispossessed of its deeply radical demands for ethical historical and social relations among people. (...) post apartheid Ubuntu mistranslation 'I am because we are', individualized and interpersonalised Ubuntu, Christianised Ubuntu, mistranslated in order to justify crimes and violence. In Ubuntu violence can be punished even after generations, the misinterpretation of the term allowed individual forgiveness. <ref>https://thefunambulist.net/magazine/redefining-our-terms/ubuntu-a-black-radical-demand-for-reparations</ref>
</blockquote>

I skip these thoughts and I continue browsing the list of servers. While trying to stay focused something other distracts me; I encounter an [https://www.oziosi.org/ autonomous Italian server] with the title translated with DeepL: “:: a shelter for digital exiles ::” and an image of a woman, a child and a man leaving their home. Also a small introduction: “Exiled from the global village of social networks, we claim an internet that is a simple means of communication: immaterial, anonymous, imaginary, public when it makes sense and secret when we feel the need.”. I am wondering what does this mean for actual exiles having to protect their privacy when communicating back home? [https://techpolicy.press/how-to-open-an-outpost-in-social-media-exile/ ‘Social media exiles’] and ‘Twitter migration’ are terms used often after Twitter became X and users have moved to the Fediverse or other alternatives.

[[Screenshot of the 'digital exiles' image, image not included because of copyrights issues?]]

== TITiPI’s case of server transfer ==
On the 27th of September, sitting at the long desks side to side, Femke and I have an online call with Helen, while looking at the depths of our Virtual Private Server (VPS), provided by Linode, that runs Ubuntu on our laptop screens. Linode is an American hosting provider focusing on ''Linux''-based virtual machines originally. The server is physically located in the UK. TITiPI currently uses the Linode server that Helen set up for hosting her own projects. She has been paying for Linode’s monthly fees so far.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-10-11 14-47-06.png|thumb|Screenshot of Linode Ubuntu server overview and ''terminal'' that shows a moment of figuring out what takes space in the server through ''SSH'' access]]

At the time it seemed a good choice, because it is based in UK, is ''Linux'' friendly and an alternative to Amazon Web Services (AWS), even though it was already identifying as ‘''cloud hosting''’. But in February 2023 it has been acquired by the American company Akamai that aims to scale up for [https://www.linode.com/global-infrastructure/ “computing power, optimizing performance and agility.”]. Akamai is actively changing its server policies into an increasingly intense cloud logic. This pushed forward the desire to move to a new place.

[[Screenshot of Linode website referring to scalability -- copyright issues?]]

At the moment in Linode we run pico, a flat CMS for the website https://titipi.org. There is a Mediawiki (you are reading a Mediawiki page right now) for notes and collective writing. On the wiki, we also publish our statutes, guidelines and other instituting documents. The wiki has a custom extension, called wiki-to-pdf. Each of these services will need a different way to be transferred. One approach is to build the new server space from scratch, copy the data with rsync and transfer only the Mediawiki, which includes installing a new version and copy the database and the media files.

While preparing to transfer the tools we are defining what are the practical needs and desirable priorities; we ended up on these server requirements:
* ''SSH'' access and wish for VPS
* affordable price (around €20/month)
* run a Free Software operating system, preferably Debian
* involves community work - slowing down, resisting to scaling and growth or ‘decloudification’ (small network of partners, less virtualization approach, location of servers nearby etc)
* 25-40GB storage space, 1-2 cores, 2-4GB RAM
* environmental angle
* service support in a language that we all understand (English mostly)

This server transfer happens with an intersectional and feminist approach and the desire to keep questioning. While moving away from Linode we include both the technical and the conceptual thinking in the process. There are a few things that we are looking at: 
* Where to be transferred to or what services to transfer to?
* How to be transferred and what to tranfer?
* What terminology, language we use?
* What (other) narratives of server hosting can we construct?

TITiPI seeks to exist with an infrastructure that supports inter-dependent practices and solidarity across struggles. It develops Counter Cloud Actions [ref] as a way to scale down, de-cloudify, articulate, contest and re-imagine the implications of computational infrastructures (‘the cloud’).

<blockquote>TITiPI develop tools from feminisms, queer theory, Free, Libre and Open Source software, intersectionality, anti-coloniality, disability studies, historical materialism and artistic practice to generate currently inexistent vocabularies, imaginaries and methodologies. TITiPI functions as an infrastructure to establish new ways in which socio-technical practices and technologies might support the public interest. <ref>https://docs.tangible-cloud.be/publications-pdf/02_snelting.pdf</ref></blockquote>

We are looking for servers that aspire some of these values.

=== A relational infrastructure narrative/ infra-mutuality/ inter-infrastructural narrative ===
[[File:Elastic solidarities.png|thumb]]
In June 2023 TITiPI received an email from Gandi to renew the domain titipi.org in 6 days, not realising that at the same time we would need to start paying for our titipi.org email hosting. We had missed reading to the end of another email sent in the middle of June, entitled: 'Pricing update'.

We consider to work with Kate Rich to move our mailboxes to the [http://irational.org/ Irational server], soon to be installed on a Raspberry Pi, hosted at Servus. Currently it is in a rack in the UK. We decide to do this transition slowly and until then renew the emails for 1-2 months through Gandi. Irational server resists virtualization, and as an art community project it makes it an interesting choice.

But why to go through all this effort and not just use one cloud server with mailboxes, file storage and web server together? TITiPI’s response to the question of building institutional digital infrastructure embodies an archipelagic and non-sovereign approach to dependencies. Rather than building a centralised server based on ‘cloud’ from which connections with other institutions and collectives can happen, it conceptualizes inter-infrastructural practices; from the creation of a [https://gitlab.constantvzw.org/titipi/burrow backup script] for saving locally etherpad pads from other servers, hosting emails at an art server (https://irational.org), creating an [https://books.lumbung.space/shelf/26 online bookshelf] on lumbung.space, using the ''XMPP'' chat from Varia to recording conversations with the ''sysadmin'' that maintain the other servers. The institution re-imagines technological dependencies in dialogue with cultural institutions and art collectives.

[[File:Titipi-infra-diagram-JAN-24.png|thumb|none|alt=A diagram of TITiPI’s infrastructure. The diagram categorizes the elements according to tools/software (box), structure/organisational form (circle) and place (dashed line). For example Jitsi is the software, Greenhost is the organisation, meet.greenhost.net is the place.|A diagram of TITiPI’s infrastructure. The diagram categorizes the elements according to tools/software (box), structure/organisational form (circle) and place (dashed line). For example Jitsi is the software, Greenhost is the organisation, meet.greenhost.net is the place.]]

How to give life to the common space of TITiPI’s hosting infrastructures? What about building up social dependencies between the ones that host and the ones who are hosted as opposed to a technical independence? Infrastructural imaginations are often built by the ''Big Tech'' industry and governmental institutions. Instead, TITiPI practices a fluid inter-institutional approach supported by [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Infra_colophon a variety of hosts].

=== Selection of server providers ===
On the 7th of November through a shared screen at the [https://meet.greenhost.net/ video conferencing software Jitsi of Greenhost] we all three check a list of server providers I collected on a spreadsheet hosted in Constant’s cloud storage (built with Nextcloud software) where TITiPI has an account. I looked at associations, companies/businesses, cooperatives, communities coming from commercial context to social struggles, activist, feminist and other. Through a [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/List_server_networks list of networks] I found various servers mostly from Latin America and Europe.

The concept of autonomy, sovereignty, independence or self-managing characterizes most of the servers in the list. Some of them, like [https://www.autistici.org/ Autistici] promote this concept as a way to support anti-capitalist infrastructure and protect the privacy of the users as opposed to the ''Big Tech'' software practices.

<blockquote>"The vision is that we - the members of the cooperative - own our own data. This implies and has as a consequence that we will have to own our own infrastructure and have insight and control over the software we use to communicate on the web."<ref>https://monoskop.org/Servers Data Coop</ref></blockquote>

Femke had a hunch: "‘technological sovereignty’ and ‘data-sovereignty’ continue to be orientation devices to organise around. ‘Sovereignty’, together with ‘freedom’, ‘independence’ and ‘autonomy’, form an ideological cluster that implicitly and sometimes explicitly foregrounds separation rather than relation."

Servers can act as independent spaces but are also cultural devices and vibrant spaces. They can manifest different aspects of a full life and reach out to a multiplicity of entities.

Servus and Greenhost, seem to be two of our best choices as they cover a lot of the priorities and values of TITiPI. As one can read from their descriptions they both strive for owning their own data servers and data nodes (they have their own ''IP addresses'') and be independent from third parties. The big difference is the scale of the infrastructure and their community and network.

<blockquote>Greenhost fully owns and controls its hardware, infrastructure and uplinks. This ensures independence from third parties and proper access control. On this hardware we run our fully virtualised platform. We stand for an Open Internet, and have always embraced open source software.<ref>https://greenhost.net/</ref></blockquote>

<blockquote>We (Servus) do not pass on any data to third parties. You will not receive commercial advertising from us or third parties. We are easily accessible and answer your questions personally. We and our servers are located at Kirchengasse 4 in Linz, Austria.<ref>https://book.servus.at/en/home/</ref></blockquote>

Even though Greenhost wants to reduce ecological damage, it does that mainly through hardware reductions and does not address scale. They have plans to expand and are part of a network of partners that want to transform Rotterdam into a big hub of data nodes for the upcoming digital transition. Linode is even bigger, it goes for [[https://www.akamai.com/newsroom/press-release/akamai-takes-cloud-computing-to-the-edge|“(p)lanetary scale”]]. Servus on the other hand has one room of data servers, is closer to the scale of their community and they maintain personal relations with them.

[[Image of the server room at Servus at Linz|Image of the server room at Servus at Linz?]]

=== Community server, feminist server, trans*feminist server, radical server, autonomous server, commercial server, art server, free server, ethical server, solidarity-based server, cooperative server, associative server, independent server, alternative server, non-commercial server, … ===
The spreadsheet starts to grow because of an endless/exhaustive burrow of small and big providers.

Some are outdated. 
Some are messy. 
Some have broken links. 
Some are [https://www.julienth37.fr/vps hard to understand]. 
Some require [https://www.actiu.info/index.en.html a lot of engagement]. 
Some use a language that imitates the narratives of ''Big Tech'' and ''agile'' computing. 
Some promote seamless “promissory logic” and “high hopes for a brighter future” (ref) 
Some are big or are scaling up (in matter of space, data centers, partners, users etc). 
Some support NGO’s or sport clubs.

[[copyright issues? Screenshot from main page of Co-op Web]]

We also looked at their financial model. Many radical servers stay small, are volunteer based, like [https://www.autistici.org/ Autistici]. and go for horizontal organisational structures. Feminist and activist servers provide space in the internet for the ones who don’t have the means to organise otherwise. The resources and ways of organising for these servers are different from the cooperatives or associations whose structure is inherited from the model they are registered with.

[[File:ATNOFS-Varia-insert-ooooo.jpg|thumb|ooooo atnofs insert diagrams from varia, systerserver, servus]]

TITiPI acknowledges and is connected to the history of community, art and feminist servers and wants to support this network. The art servers started as a way to make autonomous self-managed servers that support artists values and practices. They are often financed by cultural or private funds.

<blockquote>I joined (Irational) sometime in 2000s, I can't remember when and originally it was much more a collective of people working together and then since the early 2010's I think, mid 2010's, there was a bit of a reshuffle of personnel and stuff, so the constituency changed to a smaller group and we actually reformed. We were going to disband Irational and then we actually reformed as an art server collective and we decided we are not really working together but what we have in common is that we're using the server and that is actually what the collective is now. It's the collective that uses the server together and wants to use the server together. And another real defining feature of the server the whole time has been resisting virtualization. 

— quote from interview with Kate Rich </blockquote>

The screen seems to become brighter as my eyes get tired. What if we skip the online hosting and create a local physical server at TITiPI’s office next to the desks, in a corner, on a Raspberry Pi? All our data would stay on this machine and we would connect with ''SSH'' from home, but then we will also have to maintain it ourselves. There is something there about the romanticism of a physical toolbox as a sovereign object. If we choose to do that we will need to think of a backup plan as it will be an experimental set up and all our data will stay offline. We won’t have a provider to take care of that.

Our list has been reduced because of our priorities. We need ''SSH'' and we would like to have a VPS. Who has resources for providing VPS? Resources of labour, time, finances, technical knowledge. This made self-defined feminist servers fall out of the selection. How to be financially sustainable, while keeping up with your own values? How to keep up with infrastructural ''maintenance'' if the scale of the users, community, members and data is big?

<blockquote>The services we offer have no defined price, but as you may easily imagine, keeping the whole system working (i.e. hardware and hosting) is very expensive (at the moment it ranges around 13,000 euro every year).<ref>https://www.autistici.org/services/</ref></blockquote>

Servus and Maadix provide a series of ''free/libre'' tools that can be installed separately through their interface but they also provide a VPS with ''SSH'' access. With Greenhost, Hetzner and Linode there is more flexibility: you can create your own VPS and customize it for your own needs through their interface or the ''terminal'' and install whatever tools you want from scratch without a visual interface.

Technical information and knowledge of digital infrastructure circulate between groups that are tech-oriented with a difficulty to cross with other groups, including feminist servers. The ''sysadmin'' tasks are mostly taken by cis men but feminist servers are radical about that. They find important to have ''sysadmins'' that are not cis men. For example Systerserver and Anarchaserver are learning by themselves together how to do this task.

Many of the servers in the list provide only tools, as a radical way to support small groups, collectives, activists that need privacy and shifting away from Google drive when they want to organise politically and socially. It seems that being limited to tool packages instead of having full access to a server can make things comprehensible and compact for these small groups that have limited ''sysadmin'' knowledge or can’t hire a technician.

[[copyrights issue? Screenshot of main page with services by [https://futuretic.fr/ FuturEtic]]]

[[copyrights issue? Screenshot of tools from codigosur]]

== Final decision and server transfer ==

We are about to make our decision! Our list ended up to be very small.

On 7th of November in an online call between Helen in Basel, Femke in Brussels and Aggeliki in Rotterdam we limited our list to four options: Constant, Greenhost, Servus, Zaclys. The selection consists of a diversity of scales and positioning that we found interesting to think of. First, we move on with the decision to transfer our mailboxes to Irational hosted at Servus. The rest of the functionalities will be hosted somewhere else.

From our conversations with Femke: “The choice for irational.org opens the possibility for discussions around dependencies, trust and frictions within shared collective servers. Irational.org is an ally art server who uses and maintains its own server for many years. Hosting such a private service at a friend’s environment doesn’t come only with convenience. The closeness to the material of the server makes the dependency more tangible.” [reference/quote from colophon?]

[[copyrights issue? towel design by psaroskalazines|towel design by psaroskalazines]]

Femke and I are planning different moments for the server transfer to happen in the office of TITiPI. What it is about to take place comes down into three moments; the backup and save of data from the old server, the installation of the necessary software in the new server and the transfer of the old data in the new server.

Specifically we are following these steps:

* Mail transfer from Gandi to irational
* Create a Virtual Private Server (VPS) in the new server
* Install Apache2 and configure domains
* Install and migrate MediaWiki
** Back up the wiki on the Linode VPS
** Upgrade MediaWiki in Linode
** Install MediaWiki and plugins in the Greenhost VPS
** Transfer database and media files from Linode to Greenhost
* Install Wiki-to-pdf
* Install Pico
* Install and configure Certbot

We find ourselves between two virtual spaces and one office, among other indirectly connected spaces like the rooms of our distant collaborators and the office locations of the servers.

=== Trust relationships ===
By now, 14th of November 2023, the office is warm and cozy. Throughout the time I am writing this report I have been noticing a lot of slow and small efforts to renovate the building and set up the heating, by the artists and organisations who share the space with TITiPI. Another infrastructure that needs care.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 15-06-42.png|thumb|Femke and Aggeliki entering Irational’s server space with Kate]]

On a shared screen together with Femke we get introduced to the mail server of Irational by Kate. We use an audio splitter to share the laptop for the call. Kate described her experience as an amateur ''sysadmin'' that had to spend a lot of time to learn and set up the mail server. After that we start the process that has been documented [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Server_transfer_documentation#Mail_transfer here].

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 14-56-26.png|thumb|Screenshot from the TITiPI’s mail transfer with Kate, Femke and Aggeliki during an online 3 hours call]]

Irational uses the Alpine email client. Kate takes us its depths. That is where we start to set up our new email accounts before we configure them in Thunderbird. Femke gets excited on the fact that she can send emails to other Irational accounts through the ''terminal''.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 15-15-07.png|thumb|Using the email client Alpine]]

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 17-04-20.png|thumb|Screenhost from the moment of looking for the syntax of the TXT records. Finding the right syntax for this value was the biggest challenge. This is part of the ''trust relationships'' between the different providers]]

After some more DNS configurations we test if it is possible to exchange emails with ‘outside’ accounts and especially with Gmail that has many security filters for mail servers other than the commercial ones.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-15 13-59-52.png|thumb|Exchange test emails with a Gmail account]]

After three hours of tryouts we manage to make it work! Very proudly and with enjoyment for sharing a technical task together we say goodbye to each other and arrange a next meeting for a final check up.

=== A choice that comes with discomforts ===
Just one day before the start of TITiPI’s server transfer away from Linode on the 28th of November, Helen found the Swiss server ungleich.ch and it seemed like an interesting choice because of the small scale (in terms of community and servers), their experimental attitude and their choice to reduce energy consumption; they avoid using systems for cooling their servers by spreading the servers at the Swiss mountains in old, abandoned buildings.

Ungleich.ch is one of the good options but it is more expensive than other providers. They offer a cheaper choice by choosing to have only ‘ipv6’. But we had to dig in to understand the difference of ipv4 and ipv6. From wikipedia: “IPv6 is the most recent version of the Internet Protocol, developed to deal with the long-anticipated problem of IPv4 address exhaustion” We found a [https://stats.labs.apnic.net/ipv6 map] that shows which countries have implemented IPv6 and it seems that if we only use this address then many places won’t have access to the website of TITiPI. So we choose to have both addresses.

We also notice that this provider is using Stripe for their payment system. In a [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Frontier parallel universe of TITiPI] we give attention to and critique Stripe because of its connections with the Carbon Removal industry.

[[copyright issues? Ungleich.ch payment system with Stripe]]

Another urgency appears while we are looking at different choices; together with many other organisations, we have been thinking about ways to host and maintain infrastructures in solidarity with communities and networks we are part of. This would mean, for example, hosting digitally a Palestinian video film archive, or research by sex workers. Solidarity is only partially a question of caring for privacy and security because it matters where and how we host our digital infrastructures and whether these spaces do or do not support the flourishing of different lives and struggles. This need make us think again if the server we choose would be suitable for something like that.

Constant and Servus are two accomplice servers that already provide to TITiPI some of their services. Zaclys is a member of Chatons that support open source values and it is located in France. We contacted them to see if they could be an option but they never responded to us.

We wanted to work with a company that provide ‘green’ infrastructure. Greenhost seem to be a good choice. It provides a familiar interface to us, good support and backup option. It has a positioning as an alternative to AWS. So far great, but what about its ‘green’ hosting vision? Is it a solarpunk vision, a green cloud utopia? Is their infrastructure resource ‘hungry’? What are the privacy limits when the material hosted in the servers is political and sensitive?

We choose Greenhost with all the discomforts that this choice entails and with the desire to keep the critique and dialogue alive.

Only by December 2023 we manage to arrange a call with one of Greenhost’s former Managing Directors to get a feeling and more information about their approach and sensitivity. Accordind to him Greenhost exists in the intersection of activism and technology. It provides consultancy, sustainability solutions in tech projects and structured ''maintenance''; they go for best quality with lowest environmental impact; they maintain the same hardware as much as possible and balance that with higher efficiency; they keep backups at an already existing data center in the university of Amsterdam.

<nowiki>[[paragraph for Greenhost include? from interview with manager?]]</nowiki>

=== Installing, tranferring, saving, copying, … ===
On the 28th of November sitting on the sunny corner of the couch next to the radiator, and with warm coffee cups waiting for us on a low table, Femke and I cover our legs with a blanket and open our laptops.

I ask Femke to jumb in a ''tmux'' session for sharing ''terminal'' with this command: <code>''sudo'' ''tmux'' attach -t webserver</code>. We start by cleaning the old server and make backups of the files.

We take a lunch break. Femke finds out that if we eat three recurrent meals every week in the office we can have a nice variety of food; lentiles soup, orecchiette pasta with brocoli, rizzoto with mushrooms and lots of fruits. Sometime ago we decided to make multiple short breaks throughout the day because of computer fatigue. One day I removed all the files from my computer that were older than 90 days because I accidentally run a command on the ''terminal'' instead of a bash script to test the setting up of [https://gitlab.constantvzw.org/titipi/burrow Burrow]. I left this comment in the initial script:

<code># VERY DANGEROUS COMMAND find *txt -mindepth 1 -mtime +$RETAIN -delete</code>
The next day we set up the new server and install all the necessary software including a new version of the MediaWiki. We arrange a meeting with Martino Morandi, member of Constant, who created the wiki-to-pdf to help us installing this software and tranfer the MediaWiki in the new server. On the 1st of December we successfully install the wiki-to-pdf and because of limited time we decided to meet one more time at the end of the month for the rest.

[[File:Virtual-env-debian.png|thumb|Screenshot from the wiki-to-pdf installation to the new server with Martino, Femke, Aggeliki. Debian supports a different way to create virtual environments for installing python packages and libraries. We try it but it failed.]]

On the 28th we meet with Martino online to complete the transfer, which includes copying the old database of MediaWiki, activate the old plugins and fix any issues on the way. We are all located in different countries (Italy, Greece, Belgium) and so we share a ''tmux'' session. We follow the guides but on the way we had to do some research and configure a lot of things to make the MediaWiki work. Martino was hunting a php module. It seemed that php has shifted to free software culture in an attempt to find another business model. It is not surprising it happens in the context of Ubuntu. The issue is recorded [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Server_transfer_documentation#MediaWiki_upgrade_issues here].

[[File:Firefox Screenshot 2024-01-10T13-59-40.398Z.png|thumb|"Is Titipi.org down?" Helen asks after the transfer. It seems that her browser cache was preventing her from seeing the website]]

The process is documented in our diary and then transferred to a [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Server_transfer_documentation wiki page]. By January 2024 the server transfer and the deletion of our Linode account has been completed.

== Glossaries ==

Italicized terms in the report are included in these glossaries:

* [https://varia.zone/ATNOFS/ATNOFS-screen.pdf Glossary of A Traversal Network of Feminist Servers (ATNOFS) publication]
* [[Glossary|TITiPI's glossary]]

== References ==

* Panashe Chigumadzi, ‘Can White South Africa Live up to Ubuntu, the African Philosophy Tutu Globalised?’, The Guardian, 31 December 2021, sec. Opinion, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec/31/white-south-africa-ubuntu-african-tutu
* ‘Community Servers - Monoskop’, accessed 16 July 2024, https://monoskop.org/Community_servers
* ‘GitHub Abandons “master” Term to Avoid Slavery Row’, 15 June 2020, https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-53050955
* Femke Snelting, ‘Infrastructure Solidarity’, Ardeth. A Magazine on the Power of the Project, no. 8 (1 November 2021): 45–47
* ‘Master-Slave Terminology Alternatives You Can Use Right Now | TheServerSide’, TheServerSide.com, accessed 16 July 2024, https://www.theserverside.com/opinion/Master-slave-terminology-alternatives-you-can-use-right-now
* ‘Replace “Master” and “Slave” Terms in Redis · Issue #3185 · Redis/Redis’, GitHub, accessed 16 July 2024, https://github.com/redis/redis/issues/3185
* ‘Ubuntu: A Black Radical Demand for Reparations’, THE FUNAMBULIST MAGAZINE, 25 October 2023, https://thefunambulist.net/magazine/redefining-our-terms/ubuntu-a-black-radical-demand-for-reparations.

== Colophon ==

The text was drafted in pad.xpub.nl

== Footnotes ==

From cloud to crowd: a report on a server transfer

2024-07-16T13:32:34Z

Angeliki: /* Community server, feminist server, radical server, autonomous server, commercial server, art server, free server, ethical server, solidarity-based server, cooperative server, associative server, independent server, alternative server, non-comme */

= From cloud to crowd<ref>The term comes from ... (not sure if it is included in the title)</ref>: A report on a server transfer =

This text is a report on a server migration that took place within the institutional framework of [https://titipi.org/ The Institute for Technology in the Public Interest (TITiPI)], a trans-practice gathering of activists, artists, engineers and theorists. TITiPI convenes communities to articulate, activate and re-imagine together what computational technologies in the 'public interest' might be. This report is an infrastructural ethnography and aims to rethink, through a technical process, what ''hosting'' a server means for a community, institution, cultural organisation dealing with technological discomforts and often inaccessible complex digital infrastructures.

A ''server'' is a computer (or a piece of software/hardware) that provides functionalities via a network (Internet). A ''server migration'' is the process of moving data and transferring software from one server to another with the use of specified tools. Performing such process accommodates a practical and technical solution to fix the problem of an outdated server that is slow or has limited storage. But it also affects the values, the structure and infrastructural imaginations of the organisations it supports. TITiPI desired(s) to go with hosting and maintain its own virtual private server instead of outsourcing these services to external tech companies. In times of server providers’ scaling up ( ‘''cloud hosting''’ ) and digitizing governmental bureaucracies what does it mean to host your own digital space for supporting your communities and work? What does it mean to have an independent infrastructure? What (non-)dependencies are chosen or taken for granted by institutions when using hosting services?

As a researcher at TITiPI I have been caring for the task to investigate this server migration and execute it together with TITiPI’s member Femke Snelting. We meet weekly to keep track and make decisions. We share a ''markdown'' file hosted in the git of the cultural association [https://constantvzw.org/site/ Constant] that includes a diary of the server migration and reflections. Every now and then we meet online with our colleague Helen Pritchard, to discuss and share the process. This report shares extracts from the server diary and stories from the process.

== Migration or … ? ==

In the cold newly installed office of TITiPI located in the Koekelberg district of Brussels, I open Chromium in my computer, that runs the operating system Ubuntu, in order to translate quickly − with the installed Google Translate plugin; later I found out there is a DeepL version − the web pages of the different cooperatives, associations, companies that provide hosting services. While doing that I have this disturbing thought in my head that I try to ignore: the word ‘migration’ as a technical term to describe the movement from one server to the other. It makes me think of an [https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/13/technology/racist-computer-engineering-terms-ietf.html online conversation], happening for a few years now, about replacing computer engineering terminology to stop prevalence of racism in tech. Specifically the conversation [https://www.wired.com/story/tech-confronts-use-labels-master-slave/ evolves around the terms] ‘master/slave’, where one computing process or entity controls another, and ‘blacklists/whitelists’ used for directories of those things that are explicitly banned or allowed. Using metaphors like that for a technical process de-contextualizes a word from its origins and unavoidably perpetuates social injustices. It also shows that the context where such choices of language are made is privileged and untouched or non-triggered by these terms. White male computer engineers have build up this language. Could words like transferring, sharing, moving, copying, re-installing, shifting replace the word ‘migration’? From this point on in the report I decide to use the term ‘transfer’.

‘Ubuntu’ is also a word extracted from its original context. It is coming from the African Ubuntu philosophy. According to the creators of the software:

<blockquote>ubuntu |oǒ’boǒntoō| Ubuntu is an ancient African word meaning ‘humanity to others’. It is often described as reminding us that ‘I am what I am because of who we all are’. We bring the spirit of Ubuntu to the world of computers and software. The Ubuntu distribution represents the best of what the world’s software community has shared with the world. <ref>https://ubuntu.com/about</ref>
</blockquote>

Paraphrasing [https://thefunambulist.net/magazine/redefining-our-terms/ubuntu-a-black-radical-demand-for-reparations Panashe Chigumadzi] words: in contrast to the western conception of the human as individual, the African conception of the person is a social being who is always becoming, defined by and being responsible for the personhood of the others. "(T)he African philosophy best understood through the proverb found in Bantu languages across the continent, 'umuntu ngumuntu ngabanye bantu' (a person is a person through other people". <ref>https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec/31/white-south-africa-ubuntu-african-tutu</ref>

<blockquote>(D)espite the flourishing of Ubuntu in post-apartheid discourse, lending its name to software, businesses, books and philanthropic organisations, South Africa is a country in which we have, as Dladla argues, Ubuntu without Abantu. Just as Black people have been dispossessed of their land, Ubuntu has been dispossessed of its deeply radical demands for ethical historical and social relations among people. (...) post apartheid Ubuntu mistranslation 'I am because we are', individualized and interpersonalised Ubuntu, Christianised Ubuntu, mistranslated in order to justify crimes and violence. In Ubuntu violence can be punished even after generations, the misinterpretation of the term allowed individual forgiveness. <ref>https://thefunambulist.net/magazine/redefining-our-terms/ubuntu-a-black-radical-demand-for-reparations</ref>
</blockquote>

I skip these thoughts and I continue browsing the list of servers. While trying to stay focused something other distracts me; I encounter an [https://www.oziosi.org/ autonomous Italian server] with the title translated with DeepL: “:: a shelter for digital exiles ::” and an image of a woman, a child and a man leaving their home. Also a small introduction: “Exiled from the global village of social networks, we claim an internet that is a simple means of communication: immaterial, anonymous, imaginary, public when it makes sense and secret when we feel the need.”. I am wondering what does this mean for actual exiles having to protect their privacy when communicating back home? [https://techpolicy.press/how-to-open-an-outpost-in-social-media-exile/ ‘Social media exiles’] and ‘Twitter migration’ are terms used often after Twitter became X and users have moved to the Fediverse or other alternatives.

[[Screenshot of the 'digital exiles' image, image not included because of copyrights issues?]]

== TITiPI’s case of server transfer ==
On the 27th of September, sitting at the long desks side to side, Femke and I have an online call with Helen, while looking at the depths of our Virtual Private Server (VPS), provided by Linode, that runs Ubuntu on our laptop screens. Linode is an American hosting provider focusing on ''Linux''-based virtual machines originally. The server is physically located in the UK. TITiPI currently uses the Linode server that Helen set up for hosting her own projects. She has been paying for Linode’s monthly fees so far.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-10-11 14-47-06.png|thumb|Screenshot of Linode Ubuntu server overview and ''terminal'' that shows a moment of figuring out what takes space in the server through ''SSH'' access]]

At the time it seemed a good choice, because it is based in UK, is ''Linux'' friendly and an alternative to Amazon Web Services (AWS), even though it was already identifying as ‘''cloud hosting''’. But in February 2023 it has been acquired by the American company Akamai that aims to scale up for [https://www.linode.com/global-infrastructure/ “computing power, optimizing performance and agility.”]. Akamai is actively changing its server policies into an increasingly intense cloud logic. This pushed forward the desire to move to a new place.

[[Screenshot of Linode website referring to scalability -- copyright issues?]]

At the moment in Linode we run pico, a flat CMS for the website https://titipi.org. There is a Mediawiki (you are reading a Mediawiki page right now) for notes and collective writing. On the wiki, we also publish our statutes, guidelines and other instituting documents. The wiki has a custom extension, called wiki-to-pdf. Each of these services will need a different way to be transferred. One approach is to build the new server space from scratch, copy the data with rsync and transfer only the Mediawiki, which includes installing a new version and copy the database and the media files.

While preparing to transfer the tools we are defining what are the practical needs and desirable priorities; we ended up on these server requirements:
* ''SSH'' access and wish for VPS
* affordable price (around €20/month)
* run a Free Software operating system, preferably Debian
* involves community work - slowing down, resisting to scaling and growth or ‘decloudification’ (small network of partners, less virtualization approach, location of servers nearby etc)
* 25-40GB storage space, 1-2 cores, 2-4GB RAM
* environmental angle
* service support in a language that we all understand (English mostly)

This server transfer happens with an intersectional and feminist approach and the desire to keep questioning. While moving away from Linode we include both the technical and the conceptual thinking in the process. There are a few things that we are looking at: 
* Where to be transferred to or what services to transfer to?
* How to be transferred and what to tranfer?
* What terminology, language we use?
* What (other) narratives of server hosting can we construct?

TITiPI seeks to exist with an infrastructure that supports inter-dependent practices and solidarity across struggles. It develops Counter Cloud Actions [ref] as a way to scale down, de-cloudify, articulate, contest and re-imagine the implications of computational infrastructures (‘the cloud’).

<blockquote>TITiPI develop tools from feminisms, queer theory, Free, Libre and Open Source software, intersectionality, anti-coloniality, disability studies, historical materialism and artistic practice to generate currently inexistent vocabularies, imaginaries and methodologies. TITiPI functions as an infrastructure to establish new ways in which socio-technical practices and technologies might support the public interest. <ref>https://docs.tangible-cloud.be/publications-pdf/02_snelting.pdf</ref></blockquote>

We are looking for servers that aspire some of these values.

=== A relational infrastructure narrative/ infra-mutuality/ inter-infrastructural narrative ===
[[File:Elastic solidarities.png|thumb]]
In June 2023 TITiPI received an email from Gandi to renew the domain titipi.org in 6 days, not realising that at the same time we would need to start paying for our titipi.org email hosting. We had missed reading to the end of another email sent in the middle of June, entitled: 'Pricing update'.

We consider to work with Kate Rich to move our mailboxes to the [http://irational.org/ Irational server], soon to be installed on a Raspberry Pi, hosted at Servus. Currently it is in a rack in the UK. We decide to do this transition slowly and until then renew the emails for 1-2 months through Gandi. Irational server resists virtualization, and as an art community project it makes it an interesting choice.

But why to go through all this effort and not just use one cloud server with mailboxes, file storage and web server together? TITiPI’s response to the question of building institutional digital infrastructure embodies an archipelagic and non-sovereign approach to dependencies. Rather than building a centralised server based on ‘cloud’ from which connections with other institutions and collectives can happen, it conceptualizes inter-infrastructural practices; from the creation of a [https://gitlab.constantvzw.org/titipi/burrow backup script] for saving locally etherpad pads from other servers, hosting emails at an art server (https://irational.org), creating an [https://books.lumbung.space/shelf/26 online bookshelf] on lumbung.space, using the ''XMPP'' chat from Varia to recording conversations with the ''sysadmin'' that maintain the other servers. The institution re-imagines technological dependencies in dialogue with cultural institutions and art collectives.

[[File:Titipi-infra-diagram-JAN-24.png|thumb|none|alt=A diagram of TITiPI’s infrastructure. The diagram categorizes the elements according to tools/software (box), structure/organisational form (circle) and place (dashed line). For example Jitsi is the software, Greenhost is the organisation, meet.greenhost.net is the place.|A diagram of TITiPI’s infrastructure. The diagram categorizes the elements according to tools/software (box), structure/organisational form (circle) and place (dashed line). For example Jitsi is the software, Greenhost is the organisation, meet.greenhost.net is the place.]]

How to give life to the common space of TITiPI’s hosting infrastructures? What about building up social dependencies between the ones that host and the ones who are hosted as opposed to a technical independence? Infrastructural imaginations are often built by the ''Big Tech'' industry and governmental institutions. Instead, TITiPI practices a fluid inter-institutional approach supported by [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Infra_colophon a variety of hosts].

=== Selection of server providers ===
On the 7th of November through a shared screen at the [https://meet.greenhost.net/ video conferencing software Jitsi of Greenhost] we all three check a list of server providers I collected on a spreadsheet hosted in Constant’s cloud storage (built with Nextcloud software) where TITiPI has an account. I looked at associations, companies/businesses, cooperatives, communities coming from commercial context to social struggles, activist, feminist and other. Through a [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/List_server_networks list of networks] I found various servers mostly from Latin America and Europe.

The concept of autonomy, sovereignty, independence or self-managing characterizes most of the servers in the list. Some of them, like [https://www.autistici.org/ Autistici] promote this concept as a way to support anti-capitalist infrastructure and protect the privacy of the users as opposed to the ''Big Tech'' software practices.

<blockquote>"The vision is that we - the members of the cooperative - own our own data. This implies and has as a consequence that we will have to own our own infrastructure and have insight and control over the software we use to communicate on the web."<ref>https://monoskop.org/Servers Data Coop</ref></blockquote>

Femke had a hunch: "‘technological sovereignty’ and ‘data-sovereignty’ continue to be orientation devices to organise around. ‘Sovereignty’, together with ‘freedom’, ‘independence’ and ‘autonomy’, form an ideological cluster that implicitly and sometimes explicitly foregrounds separation rather than relation."

Servers can act as independent spaces but are also cultural devices and vibrant spaces. They can manifest different aspects of a full life and reach out to a multiplicity of entities.

Servus and Greenhost, seem to be two of our best choices as they cover a lot of the priorities and values of TITiPI. As one can read from their descriptions they both strive for owning their own data servers and data nodes (they have their own ''IP addresses'') and be independent from third parties. The big difference is the scale of the infrastructure and their community and network.

<blockquote>Greenhost fully owns and controls its hardware, infrastructure and uplinks. This ensures independence from third parties and proper access control. On this hardware we run our fully virtualised platform. We stand for an Open Internet, and have always embraced open source software.<ref>https://greenhost.net/</ref></blockquote>

<blockquote>We (Servus) do not pass on any data to third parties. You will not receive commercial advertising from us or third parties. We are easily accessible and answer your questions personally. We and our servers are located at Kirchengasse 4 in Linz, Austria.<ref>https://book.servus.at/en/home/</ref></blockquote>

Even though Greenhost wants to reduce ecological damage, it does that mainly through hardware reductions and does not address scale. They have plans to expand and are part of a network of partners that want to transform Rotterdam into a big hub of data nodes for the upcoming digital transition. Linode is even bigger, it goes for [[https://www.akamai.com/newsroom/press-release/akamai-takes-cloud-computing-to-the-edge|“(p)lanetary scale”]]. Servus on the other hand has one room of data servers, is closer to the scale of their community and they maintain personal relations with them.

[[Image of the server room at Servus at Linz|Image of the server room at Servus at Linz?]]

=== Community server, feminist server, trans*feminist server, radical server, autonomous server, commercial server, art server, free server, ethical server, solidarity-based server, cooperative server, associative server, independent server, alternative server, non-commercial server, … ===
The spreadsheet starts to grow because of an endless/exhaustive burrow of small and big providers.

Some are outdated. 
Some are messy. 
Some have broken links. 
Some are [https://www.julienth37.fr/vps hard to understand]. 
Some require [https://www.actiu.info/index.en.html a lot of engagement]. 
Some use a language that imitates the narratives of ''Big Tech'' and ''agile'' computing. 
Some promote seamless “promissory logic” and “high hopes for a brighter future” (ref) 
Some are big or are scaling up (in matter of space, data centers, partners, users etc). 
Some support NGO’s or sport clubs.

[[copyright issues? Screenshot from main page of Co-op Web]]

We also looked at their financial model. Many radical servers stay small, are volunteer based, like [https://www.autistici.org/ Autistici]. and go for horizontal organisational structures. Feminist and activist servers provide space in the internet for the ones who don’t have the means to organise otherwise. The resources and ways of organising for these servers are different from the cooperatives or associations whose structure is inherited from the model they are registered with.

[[File:ATNOFS-Varia-insert-ooooo.jpg|thumb|ooooo atnofs insert diagrams from varia, systerserver, servus]]

TITiPI acknowledges and is connected to the history of community, art and feminist servers and wants to support this network. The art servers started as a way to make autonomous self-managed servers that support artists values and practices. They are often financed by cultural or private funds.

<blockquote>I joined (Irational) sometime in 2000s, I can't remember when and originally it was much more a collective of people working together and then since the early 2010's I think, mid 2010's, there was a bit of a reshuffle of personnel and stuff, so the constituency changed to a smaller group and we actually reformed. We were going to disband Irational and then we actually reformed as an art server collective and we decided we are not really working together but what we have in common is that we're using the server and that is actually what the collective is now. It's the collective that uses the server together and wants to use the server together. And another real defining feature of the server the whole time has been resisting virtualization. 

— quote from interview with Kate Rich </blockquote>

The screen seems to become brighter as my eyes get tired. What if we skip the online hosting and create a local physical server at TITiPI’s office next to the desks, in a corner, on a Raspberry Pi? All our data would stay on this machine and we would connect with ''SSH'' from home, but then we will also have to maintain it ourselves. There is something there about the romanticism of a physical toolbox as a sovereign object. If we choose to do that we will need to think of a backup plan as it will be an experimental set up and all our data will stay offline. We won’t have a provider to take care of that.

Our list has been reduced because of our priorities. We need ''SSH'' and we would like to have a VPS. Who has resources for providing VPS? Resources of labour, time, finances, technical knowledge. This made self-defined feminist servers fall out of the selection. How to be financially sustainable, while keeping up with your own values? How to keep up with infrastructural ''maintenance'' if the scale of the users, community, members and data is big?

<blockquote>The services we offer have no defined price, but as you may easily imagine, keeping the whole system working (i.e. hardware and hosting) is very expensive (at the moment it ranges around 13,000 euro every year).<ref>https://www.autistici.org/services/</ref></blockquote>

Servus and Maadix provide a series of ''free/libre'' tools that can be installed separately through their interface but they also provide a VPS with ''SSH'' access. With Greenhost, Hetzner and Linode there is more flexibility: you can create your own VPS and customize it for your own needs through their interface or the ''terminal'' and install whatever tools you want from scratch without a visual interface.

Technical information and knowledge of digital infrastructure circulate between groups that are tech-oriented with a difficulty to cross with other groups, including feminist servers. The ''sysadmin'' tasks are mostly taken by cis men but feminist servers are radical about that. They find important to have ''sysadmins'' that are not cis men. For example Systerserver and Anarchaserver are learning by themselves together how to do this task.

Many of the servers in the list provide only tools, as a radical way to support small groups, collectives, activists that need privacy and shifting away from Google drive when they want to organise politically and socially. It seems that being limited to tool packages instead of having full access to a server can make things comprehensible and compact for these small groups that have limited ''sysadmin'' knowledge or can’t hire a technician.

[[copyrights issue? Screenshot of main page with services by [https://futuretic.fr/ FuturEtic]]]

[[copyrights issue? Screenshot of tools from codigosur]]

== Final decision and server transfer ==

We are about to make our decision! Our list ended up to be very small.

On 7th of November in an online call between Helen in Basel, Femke in Brussels and Aggeliki in Rotterdam we limited our list to four options: Constant, Greenhost, Servus, Zaclys. The selection consists of a diversity of scales and positioning that we found interesting to think of. First, we move on with the decision to transfer our mailboxes to Irational hosted at Servus. The rest of the functionalities will be hosted somewhere else.

From our conversations with Femke: “The choice for irational.org opens the possibility for discussions around dependencies, trust and frictions within shared collective servers. Irational.org is an ally art server who uses and maintains its own server for many years. Hosting such a private service at a friend’s environment doesn’t come only with convenience. The closeness to the material of the server makes the dependency more tangible.” [reference/quote from colophon?]

[[copyrights issue? towel design by psaroskalazines|towel design by psaroskalazines]]

Femke and I are planning different moments for the server transfer to happen in the office of TITiPI. What it is about to take place comes down into three moments; the backup and save of data from the old server, the installation of the necessary software in the new server and the transfer of the old data in the new server.

Specifically we are following these steps:

* Mail transfer from Gandi to irational
* Create a Virtual Private Server (VPS) in the new server
* Install Apache2 and configure domains
* Install and migrate MediaWiki
** Back up the wiki on the Linode VPS
** Upgrade MediaWiki in Linode
** Install MediaWiki and plugins in the Greenhost VPS
** Transfer database and media files from Linode to Greenhost
* Install Wiki-to-pdf
* Install Pico
* Install and configure Certbot

We find ourselves between two virtual spaces and one office, among other indirectly connected spaces like the rooms of our distant collaborators and the office locations of the servers.

=== Trust relationships ===
By now, 14th of November 2023, the office is warm and cozy. Throughout the time I am writing this report I have been noticing a lot of slow and small efforts to renovate the building and set up the heating, by the artists and organisations who share the space with TITiPI. Another infrastructure that needs care.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 15-06-42.png|thumb|Femke and Aggeliki entering Irational’s server space with Kate]]

On a shared screen together with Femke we get introduced to the mail server of Irational by Kate. We use an audio splitter to share the laptop for the call. Kate described her experience as an amateur ''sysadmin'' that had to spend a lot of time to learn and set up the mail server. After that we start the process that has been documented [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Server_transfer_documentation#Mail_transfer here].

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 14-56-26.png|thumb|Screenshot from the TITiPI’s mail transfer with Kate, Femke and Aggeliki during an online 3 hours call]]

Irational uses the Alpine email client. Kate takes us its depths. That is where we start to set up our new email accounts before we configure them in Thunderbird. Femke gets excited on the fact that she can send emails to other Irational accounts through the ''terminal''.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 15-15-07.png|thumb|Using the email client Alpine]]

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 17-04-20.png|thumb|Screenhost from the moment of looking for the syntax of the TXT records. Finding the right syntax for this value was the biggest challenge. This is part of the ''trust relationships'' between the different providers]]

After some more DNS configurations we test if it is possible to exchange emails with ‘outside’ accounts and especially with Gmail that has many security filters for mail servers other than the commercial ones.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-15 13-59-52.png|thumb|Exchange test emails with a Gmail account]]

After three hours of tryouts we manage to make it work! Very proudly and with enjoyment for sharing a technical task together we say goodbye to each other and arrange a next meeting for a final check up.

=== A choice that comes with discomforts ===
Just one day before the start of TITiPI’s server transfer away from Linode on the 28th of November, Helen found the Swiss server ungleich.ch and it seemed like an interesting choice because of the small scale (in terms of community and servers), their experimental attitude and their choice to reduce energy consumption; they avoid using systems for cooling their servers by spreading the servers at the Swiss mountains in old, abandoned buildings.

Ungleich.ch is one of the good options but it is more expensive than other providers. They offer a cheaper choice by choosing to have only ‘ipv6’. But we had to dig in to understand the difference of ipv4 and ipv6. From wikipedia: “IPv6 is the most recent version of the Internet Protocol, developed to deal with the long-anticipated problem of IPv4 address exhaustion” We found a [https://stats.labs.apnic.net/ipv6 map] that shows which countries have implemented IPv6 and it seems that if we only use this address then many places won’t have access to the website of TITiPI. So we choose to have both addresses.

We also notice that this provider is using Stripe for their payment system. In a [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Frontier parallel universe of TITiPI] we give attention to and critique Stripe because of its connections with the Carbon Removal industry.

[[copyright issues? Ungleich.ch payment system with Stripe]]

Another urgency appears while we are looking at different choices; together with many other organisations, we have been thinking about ways to host and maintain infrastructures in solidarity with communities and networks we are part of. This would mean, for example, hosting digitally a Palestinian video film archive, or research by sex workers. Solidarity is only partially a question of caring for privacy and security because it matters where and how we host our digital infrastructures and whether these spaces do or do not support the flourishing of different lives and struggles. This need make us think again if the server we choose would be suitable for something like that.

Constant and Servus are two accomplice servers that already provide to TITiPI some of their services. Zaclys is a member of Chatons that support open source values and it is located in France. We contacted them to see if they could be an option but they never responded to us.

We wanted to work with a company that provide ‘green’ infrastructure. Greenhost seem to be a good choice. It provides a familiar interface to us, good support and backup option. It has a positioning as an alternative to AWS. So far great, but what about its ‘green’ hosting vision? Is it a solarpunk vision, a green cloud utopia? Is their infrastructure resource ‘hungry’? What are the privacy limits when the material hosted in the servers is political and sensitive?

We choose Greenhost with all the discomforts that this choice entails and with the desire to keep the critique and dialogue alive.

Only by December 2023 we manage to arrange a call with one of Greenhost’s former Managing Directors to get a feeling and more information about their approach and sensitivity. Accordind to him Greenhost exists in the intersection of activism and technology. It provides consultancy, sustainability solutions in tech projects and structured ''maintenance''; they go for best quality with lowest environmental impact; they maintain the same hardware as much as possible and balance that with higher efficiency; they keep backups at an already existing data center in the university of Amsterdam.

<nowiki>[[paragraph for Greenhost include? from interview with manager?]]</nowiki>

=== Installing, tranferring, saving, copying, … ===
On the 28th of November sitting on the sunny corner of the couch next to the radiator, and with warm coffee cups waiting for us on a low table, Femke and I cover our legs with a blanket and open our laptops.

I ask Femke to jumb in a ''tmux'' session for sharing ''terminal'' with this command: <code>''sudo'' ''tmux'' attach -t webserver</code>. We start by cleaning the old server and make backups of the files.

We take a lunch break. Femke finds out that if we eat three recurrent meals every week in the office we can have a nice variety of food; lentiles soup, orecchiette pasta with brocoli, rizzoto with mushrooms and lots of fruits. Sometime ago we decided to make multiple short breaks throughout the day because of computer fatigue. One day I removed all the files from my computer that were older than 90 days because I accidentally run a command on the ''terminal'' instead of a bash script to test the setting up of [https://gitlab.constantvzw.org/titipi/burrow Burrow]. I left this comment in the initial script:

<code># VERY DANGEROUS COMMAND find *txt -mindepth 1 -mtime +$RETAIN -delete</code>
The next day we set up the new server and install all the necessary software including a new version of the MediaWiki. We arrange a meeting with Martino Morandi, member of Constant, who created the wiki-to-pdf to help us installing this software and tranfer the MediaWiki in the new server. On the 1st of December we successfully install the wiki-to-pdf and because of limited time we decided to meet one more time at the end of the month for the rest.

[[File:Virtual-env-debian.png|thumb|Screenshot from the wiki-to-pdf installation to the new server with Martino, Femke, Aggeliki. Debian supports a different way to create virtual environments for installing python packages and libraries. We try it but it failed.]]

On the 28th we meet with Martino online to complete the transfer, which includes copying the old database of MediaWiki, activate the old plugins and fix any issues on the way. We are all located in different countries (Italy, Greece, Belgium) and so we share a ''tmux'' session. We follow the guides but on the way we had to do some research and configure a lot of things to make the MediaWiki work. Martino was hunting a php module. It seemed that php has shifted to free software culture in an attempt to find another business model. It is not surprising it happens in the context of Ubuntu. The issue is recorded [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Server_transfer_documentation#MediaWiki_upgrade_issues here].

[[File:Firefox Screenshot 2024-01-10T13-59-40.398Z.png|thumb|"Is Titipi.org down?" Helen asks after the transfer. It seems that her browser cache was preventing her from seeing the website]]

The process is documented in our diary and then transferred to a [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Server_transfer_documentation wiki page]. By January 2024 the server transfer and the deletion of our Linode account has been completed.

== Glossaries ==

Italicized terms in the report are included in these glossaries:

* [https://varia.zone/ATNOFS/ATNOFS-screen.pdf Glossary of A Traversal Network of Feminist Servers (ATNOFS) publication]
* [[Glossary|TITiPI's glossary]]

== References ==

* Panashe Chigumadzi, ‘Can White South Africa Live up to Ubuntu, the African Philosophy Tutu Globalised?’, ''The Guardian'', 31 December 2021, sec. Opinion, <nowiki>https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec/31/white-south-africa-ubuntu-african-tutu</nowiki>; ‘Community Servers - Monoskop’, accessed 16 July 2024, <nowiki>https://monoskop.org/Community_servers</nowiki>; ‘GitHub Abandons “master” Term to Avoid Slavery Row’, 15 June 2020, <nowiki>https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-53050955</nowiki>; Femke Snelting, ‘Infrastructure Solidarity’, ''Ardeth. A Magazine on the Power of the Project'', no. 8 (1 November 2021): 45–47; ‘Master-Slave Terminology Alternatives You Can Use Right Now | TheServerSide’, TheServerSide.com, accessed 16 July 2024, <nowiki>https://www.theserverside.com/opinion/Master-slave-terminology-alternatives-you-can-use-right-now</nowiki>; ‘Replace “Master” and “Slave” Terms in Redis · Issue #3185 · Redis/Redis’, GitHub, accessed 16 July 2024, <nowiki>https://github.com/redis/redis/issues/3185</nowiki>; ‘Ubuntu: A Black Radical Demand for Reparations’, THE FUNAMBULIST MAGAZINE, 25 October 2023, <nowiki>https://thefunambulist.net/magazine/redefining-our-terms/ubuntu-a-black-radical-demand-for-reparations</nowiki>.

== Colophon ==

The text was drafted in pad.xpub.nl

From cloud to crowd: a report on a server transfer

2024-07-16T13:17:12Z

Angeliki: /* Glossaries */

= From cloud to crowd<ref>The term comes from ... (not sure if it is included in the title)</ref>: A report on a server transfer =

This text is a report on a server migration that took place within the institutional framework of [https://titipi.org/ The Institute for Technology in the Public Interest (TITiPI)], a trans-practice gathering of activists, artists, engineers and theorists. TITiPI convenes communities to articulate, activate and re-imagine together what computational technologies in the 'public interest' might be. This report is an infrastructural ethnography and aims to rethink, through a technical process, what ''hosting'' a server means for a community, institution, cultural organisation dealing with technological discomforts and often inaccessible complex digital infrastructures.

A ''server'' is a computer (or a piece of software/hardware) that provides functionalities via a network (Internet). A ''server migration'' is the process of moving data and transferring software from one server to another with the use of specified tools. Performing such process accommodates a practical and technical solution to fix the problem of an outdated server that is slow or has limited storage. But it also affects the values, the structure and infrastructural imaginations of the organisations it supports. TITiPI desired(s) to go with hosting and maintain its own virtual private server instead of outsourcing these services to external tech companies. In times of server providers’ scaling up ( ‘''cloud hosting''’ ) and digitizing governmental bureaucracies what does it mean to host your own digital space for supporting your communities and work? What does it mean to have an independent infrastructure? What (non-)dependencies are chosen or taken for granted by institutions when using hosting services?

As a researcher at TITiPI I have been caring for the task to investigate this server migration and execute it together with TITiPI’s member Femke Snelting. We meet weekly to keep track and make decisions. We share a ''markdown'' file hosted in the git of the cultural association [https://constantvzw.org/site/ Constant] that includes a diary of the server migration and reflections. Every now and then we meet online with our colleague Helen Pritchard, to discuss and share the process. This report shares extracts from the server diary and stories from the process.

== Migration or … ? ==

In the cold newly installed office of TITiPI located in the Koekelberg district of Brussels, I open Chromium in my computer, that runs the operating system Ubuntu, in order to translate quickly − with the installed Google Translate plugin; later I found out there is a DeepL version − the web pages of the different cooperatives, associations, companies that provide hosting services. While doing that I have this disturbing thought in my head that I try to ignore: the word ‘migration’ as a technical term to describe the movement from one server to the other. It makes me think of an [https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/13/technology/racist-computer-engineering-terms-ietf.html online conversation], happening for a few years now, about replacing computer engineering terminology to stop prevalence of racism in tech. Specifically the conversation [https://www.wired.com/story/tech-confronts-use-labels-master-slave/ evolves around the terms] ‘master/slave’, where one computing process or entity controls another, and ‘blacklists/whitelists’ used for directories of those things that are explicitly banned or allowed. Using metaphors like that for a technical process de-contextualizes a word from its origins and unavoidably perpetuates social injustices. It also shows that the context where such choices of language are made is privileged and untouched or non-triggered by these terms. White male computer engineers have build up this language. Could words like transferring, sharing, moving, copying, re-installing, shifting replace the word ‘migration’? From this point on in the report I decide to use the term ‘transfer’.

‘Ubuntu’ is also a word extracted from its original context. It is coming from the African Ubuntu philosophy. According to the creators of the software:

<blockquote>ubuntu |oǒ’boǒntoō| Ubuntu is an ancient African word meaning ‘humanity to others’. It is often described as reminding us that ‘I am what I am because of who we all are’. We bring the spirit of Ubuntu to the world of computers and software. The Ubuntu distribution represents the best of what the world’s software community has shared with the world. <ref>https://ubuntu.com/about</ref>
</blockquote>

Paraphrasing [https://thefunambulist.net/magazine/redefining-our-terms/ubuntu-a-black-radical-demand-for-reparations Panashe Chigumadzi] words: in contrast to the western conception of the human as individual, the African conception of the person is a social being who is always becoming, defined by and being responsible for the personhood of the others. "(T)he African philosophy best understood through the proverb found in Bantu languages across the continent, 'umuntu ngumuntu ngabanye bantu' (a person is a person through other people". <ref>https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec/31/white-south-africa-ubuntu-african-tutu</ref>

<blockquote>(D)espite the flourishing of Ubuntu in post-apartheid discourse, lending its name to software, businesses, books and philanthropic organisations, South Africa is a country in which we have, as Dladla argues, Ubuntu without Abantu. Just as Black people have been dispossessed of their land, Ubuntu has been dispossessed of its deeply radical demands for ethical historical and social relations among people. (...) post apartheid Ubuntu mistranslation 'I am because we are', individualized and interpersonalised Ubuntu, Christianised Ubuntu, mistranslated in order to justify crimes and violence. In Ubuntu violence can be punished even after generations, the misinterpretation of the term allowed individual forgiveness. <ref>https://thefunambulist.net/magazine/redefining-our-terms/ubuntu-a-black-radical-demand-for-reparations</ref>
</blockquote>

I skip these thoughts and I continue browsing the list of servers. While trying to stay focused something other distracts me; I encounter an [https://www.oziosi.org/ autonomous Italian server] with the title translated with DeepL: “:: a shelter for digital exiles ::” and an image of a woman, a child and a man leaving their home. Also a small introduction: “Exiled from the global village of social networks, we claim an internet that is a simple means of communication: immaterial, anonymous, imaginary, public when it makes sense and secret when we feel the need.”. I am wondering what does this mean for actual exiles having to protect their privacy when communicating back home? [https://techpolicy.press/how-to-open-an-outpost-in-social-media-exile/ ‘Social media exiles’] and ‘Twitter migration’ are terms used often after Twitter became X and users have moved to the Fediverse or other alternatives.

[[Screenshot of the 'digital exiles' image, image not included because of copyrights issues?]]

== TITiPI’s case of server transfer ==
On the 27th of September, sitting at the long desks side to side, Femke and I have an online call with Helen, while looking at the depths of our Virtual Private Server (VPS), provided by Linode, that runs Ubuntu on our laptop screens. Linode is an American hosting provider focusing on ''Linux''-based virtual machines originally. The server is physically located in the UK. TITiPI currently uses the Linode server that Helen set up for hosting her own projects. She has been paying for Linode’s monthly fees so far.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-10-11 14-47-06.png|thumb|Screenshot of Linode Ubuntu server overview and ''terminal'' that shows a moment of figuring out what takes space in the server through ''SSH'' access]]

At the time it seemed a good choice, because it is based in UK, is ''Linux'' friendly and an alternative to Amazon Web Services (AWS), even though it was already identifying as ‘''cloud hosting''’. But in February 2023 it has been acquired by the American company Akamai that aims to scale up for [https://www.linode.com/global-infrastructure/ “computing power, optimizing performance and agility.”]. Akamai is actively changing its server policies into an increasingly intense cloud logic. This pushed forward the desire to move to a new place.

[[Screenshot of Linode website referring to scalability -- copyright issues?]]

At the moment in Linode we run pico, a flat CMS for the website https://titipi.org. There is a Mediawiki (you are reading a Mediawiki page right now) for notes and collective writing. On the wiki, we also publish our statutes, guidelines and other instituting documents. The wiki has a custom extension, called wiki-to-pdf. Each of these services will need a different way to be transferred. One approach is to build the new server space from scratch, copy the data with rsync and transfer only the Mediawiki, which includes installing a new version and copy the database and the media files.

While preparing to transfer the tools we are defining what are the practical needs and desirable priorities; we ended up on these server requirements:
* ''SSH'' access and wish for VPS
* affordable price (around €20/month)
* run a Free Software operating system, preferably Debian
* involves community work - slowing down, resisting to scaling and growth or ‘decloudification’ (small network of partners, less virtualization approach, location of servers nearby etc)
* 25-40GB storage space, 1-2 cores, 2-4GB RAM
* environmental angle
* service support in a language that we all understand (English mostly)

This server transfer happens with an intersectional and feminist approach and the desire to keep questioning. While moving away from Linode we include both the technical and the conceptual thinking in the process. There are a few things that we are looking at: 
* Where to be transferred to or what services to transfer to?
* How to be transferred and what to tranfer?
* What terminology, language we use?
* What (other) narratives of server hosting can we construct?

TITiPI seeks to exist with an infrastructure that supports inter-dependent practices and solidarity across struggles. It develops Counter Cloud Actions [ref] as a way to scale down, de-cloudify, articulate, contest and re-imagine the implications of computational infrastructures (‘the cloud’).

<blockquote>TITiPI develop tools from feminisms, queer theory, Free, Libre and Open Source software, intersectionality, anti-coloniality, disability studies, historical materialism and artistic practice to generate currently inexistent vocabularies, imaginaries and methodologies. TITiPI functions as an infrastructure to establish new ways in which socio-technical practices and technologies might support the public interest. <ref>https://docs.tangible-cloud.be/publications-pdf/02_snelting.pdf</ref></blockquote>

We are looking for servers that aspire some of these values.

=== A relational infrastructure narrative/ infra-mutuality/ inter-infrastructural narrative ===
[[File:Elastic solidarities.png|thumb]]
In June 2023 TITiPI received an email from Gandi to renew the domain titipi.org in 6 days, not realising that at the same time we would need to start paying for our titipi.org email hosting. We had missed reading to the end of another email sent in the middle of June, entitled: 'Pricing update'.

We consider to work with Kate Rich to move our mailboxes to the [http://irational.org/ Irational server], soon to be installed on a Raspberry Pi, hosted at Servus. Currently it is in a rack in the UK. We decide to do this transition slowly and until then renew the emails for 1-2 months through Gandi. Irational server resists virtualization, and as an art community project it makes it an interesting choice.

But why to go through all this effort and not just use one cloud server with mailboxes, file storage and web server together? TITiPI’s response to the question of building institutional digital infrastructure embodies an archipelagic and non-sovereign approach to dependencies. Rather than building a centralised server based on ‘cloud’ from which connections with other institutions and collectives can happen, it conceptualizes inter-infrastructural practices; from the creation of a [https://gitlab.constantvzw.org/titipi/burrow backup script] for saving locally etherpad pads from other servers, hosting emails at an art server (https://irational.org), creating an [https://books.lumbung.space/shelf/26 online bookshelf] on lumbung.space, using the ''XMPP'' chat from Varia to recording conversations with the ''sysadmin'' that maintain the other servers. The institution re-imagines technological dependencies in dialogue with cultural institutions and art collectives.

[[File:Titipi-infra-diagram-JAN-24.png|thumb|none|alt=A diagram of TITiPI’s infrastructure. The diagram categorizes the elements according to tools/software (box), structure/organisational form (circle) and place (dashed line). For example Jitsi is the software, Greenhost is the organisation, meet.greenhost.net is the place.|A diagram of TITiPI’s infrastructure. The diagram categorizes the elements according to tools/software (box), structure/organisational form (circle) and place (dashed line). For example Jitsi is the software, Greenhost is the organisation, meet.greenhost.net is the place.]]

How to give life to the common space of TITiPI’s hosting infrastructures? What about building up social dependencies between the ones that host and the ones who are hosted as opposed to a technical independence? Infrastructural imaginations are often built by the ''Big Tech'' industry and governmental institutions. Instead, TITiPI practices a fluid inter-institutional approach supported by [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Infra_colophon a variety of hosts].

=== Selection of server providers ===
On the 7th of November through a shared screen at the [https://meet.greenhost.net/ video conferencing software Jitsi of Greenhost] we all three check a list of server providers I collected on a spreadsheet hosted in Constant’s cloud storage (built with Nextcloud software) where TITiPI has an account. I looked at associations, companies/businesses, cooperatives, communities coming from commercial context to social struggles, activist, feminist and other. Through a [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/List_server_networks list of networks] I found various servers mostly from Latin America and Europe.

The concept of autonomy, sovereignty, independence or self-managing characterizes most of the servers in the list. Some of them, like [https://www.autistici.org/ Autistici] promote this concept as a way to support anti-capitalist infrastructure and protect the privacy of the users as opposed to the ''Big Tech'' software practices.

<blockquote>"The vision is that we - the members of the cooperative - own our own data. This implies and has as a consequence that we will have to own our own infrastructure and have insight and control over the software we use to communicate on the web."<ref>https://monoskop.org/Servers Data Coop</ref></blockquote>

Femke had a hunch: "‘technological sovereignty’ and ‘data-sovereignty’ continue to be orientation devices to organise around. ‘Sovereignty’, together with ‘freedom’, ‘independence’ and ‘autonomy’, form an ideological cluster that implicitly and sometimes explicitly foregrounds separation rather than relation."

Servers can act as independent spaces but are also cultural devices and vibrant spaces. They can manifest different aspects of a full life and reach out to a multiplicity of entities.

Servus and Greenhost, seem to be two of our best choices as they cover a lot of the priorities and values of TITiPI. As one can read from their descriptions they both strive for owning their own data servers and data nodes (they have their own ''IP addresses'') and be independent from third parties. The big difference is the scale of the infrastructure and their community and network.

<blockquote>Greenhost fully owns and controls its hardware, infrastructure and uplinks. This ensures independence from third parties and proper access control. On this hardware we run our fully virtualised platform. We stand for an Open Internet, and have always embraced open source software.<ref>https://greenhost.net/</ref></blockquote>

<blockquote>We (Servus) do not pass on any data to third parties. You will not receive commercial advertising from us or third parties. We are easily accessible and answer your questions personally. We and our servers are located at Kirchengasse 4 in Linz, Austria.<ref>https://book.servus.at/en/home/</ref></blockquote>

Even though Greenhost wants to reduce ecological damage, it does that mainly through hardware reductions and does not address scale. They have plans to expand and are part of a network of partners that want to transform Rotterdam into a big hub of data nodes for the upcoming digital transition. Linode is even bigger, it goes for [[https://www.akamai.com/newsroom/press-release/akamai-takes-cloud-computing-to-the-edge|“(p)lanetary scale”]]. Servus on the other hand has one room of data servers, is closer to the scale of their community and they maintain personal relations with them.

[[Image of the server room at Servus at Linz|Image of the server room at Servus at Linz?]]

=== Community server, feminist server, radical server, autonomous server, commercial server, art server, free server, ethical server, solidarity-based server, cooperative server, associative server, independent server, alternative server, non-commercial server, … ===
The spreadsheet starts to grow because of an endless/exhaustive burrow of small and big providers.

Some are outdated. 
Some are messy. 
Some have broken links. 
Some are [https://www.julienth37.fr/vps hard to understand]. 
Some require [https://www.actiu.info/index.en.html a lot of engagement]. 
Some use a language that imitates the narratives of ''Big Tech'' and ''agile'' computing. 
Some promote seamless “promissory logic” and “high hopes for a brighter future” (ref) 
Some are big or are scaling up (in matter of space, data centers, partners, users etc). 
Some support NGO’s or sport clubs.

[[copyright issues? Screenshot from main page of Co-op Web]]

We also looked at their financial model. Many radical servers stay small, are volunteer based, like [https://www.autistici.org/ Autistici]. and go for horizontal organisational structures. Feminist and activist servers provide space in the internet for the ones who don’t have the means to organise otherwise. The resources and ways of organising for these servers are different from the cooperatives or associations whose structure is inherited from the model they are registered with.

[[File:ATNOFS-Varia-insert-ooooo.jpg|thumb|ooooo atnofs insert diagrams from varia, systerserver, servus]]

TITiPI acknowledges and is connected to the history of community, art and feminist servers and wants to support this network. The art servers started as a way to make autonomous self-managed servers that support artists values and practices. They are often financed by cultural or private funds.

<blockquote>I joined (Irational) sometime in 2000s, I can't remember when and originally it was much more a collective of people working together and then since the early 2010's I think, mid 2010's, there was a bit of a reshuffle of personnel and stuff, so the constituency changed to a smaller group and we actually reformed. We were going to disband Irational and then we actually reformed as an art server collective and we decided we are not really working together but what we have in common is that we're using the server and that is actually what the collective is now. It's the collective that uses the server together and wants to use the server together. And another real defining feature of the server the whole time has been resisting virtualization. 

— quote from interview with Kate Rich </blockquote>

The screen seems to become brighter as my eyes get tired. What if we skip the online hosting and create a local physical server at TITiPI’s office next to the desks, in a corner, on a Raspberry Pi? All our data would stay on this machine and we would connect with ''SSH'' from home, but then we will also have to maintain it ourselves. There is something there about the romanticism of a physical toolbox as a sovereign object. If we choose to do that we will need to think of a backup plan as it will be an experimental set up and all our data will stay offline. We won’t have a provider to take care of that.

Our list has been reduced because of our priorities. We need ''SSH'' and we would like to have a VPS. Who has resources for providing VPS? Resources of labour, time, finances, technical knowledge. This made self-defined feminist servers fall out of the selection. How to be financially sustainable, while keeping up with your own values? How to keep up with infrastructural ''maintenance'' if the scale of the users, community, members and data is big?

<blockquote>The services we offer have no defined price, but as you may easily imagine, keeping the whole system working (i.e. hardware and hosting) is very expensive (at the moment it ranges around 13,000 euro every year).<ref>https://www.autistici.org/services/</ref></blockquote>

Servus and Maadix provide a series of ''free/libre'' tools that can be installed separately through their interface but they also provide a VPS with ''SSH'' access. With Greenhost, Hetzner and Linode there is more flexibility: you can create your own VPS and customize it for your own needs through their interface or the ''terminal'' and install whatever tools you want from scratch without a visual interface.

Technical information and knowledge of digital infrastructure circulate between groups that are tech-oriented with a difficulty to cross with other groups, including feminist servers. The ''sysadmin'' tasks are mostly taken by cis men but feminist servers are radical about that. They find important to have ''sysadmins'' that are not cis men. For example Systerserver and Anarchaserver are learning by themselves together how to do this task.

Many of the servers in the list provide only tools, as a radical way to support small groups, collectives, activists that need privacy and shifting away from Google drive when they want to organise politically and socially. It seems that being limited to tool packages instead of having full access to a server can make things comprehensible and compact for these small groups that have limited ''sysadmin'' knowledge or can’t hire a technician.

[[copyrights issue? Screenshot of main page with services by [https://futuretic.fr/ FuturEtic]]]

[[copyrights issue? Screenshot of tools from codigosur]]

== Final decision and server transfer ==

We are about to make our decision! Our list ended up to be very small.

On 7th of November in an online call between Helen in Basel, Femke in Brussels and Aggeliki in Rotterdam we limited our list to four options: Constant, Greenhost, Servus, Zaclys. The selection consists of a diversity of scales and positioning that we found interesting to think of. First, we move on with the decision to transfer our mailboxes to Irational hosted at Servus. The rest of the functionalities will be hosted somewhere else.

From our conversations with Femke: “The choice for irational.org opens the possibility for discussions around dependencies, trust and frictions within shared collective servers. Irational.org is an ally art server who uses and maintains its own server for many years. Hosting such a private service at a friend’s environment doesn’t come only with convenience. The closeness to the material of the server makes the dependency more tangible.” [reference/quote from colophon?]

[[copyrights issue? towel design by psaroskalazines|towel design by psaroskalazines]]

Femke and I are planning different moments for the server transfer to happen in the office of TITiPI. What it is about to take place comes down into three moments; the backup and save of data from the old server, the installation of the necessary software in the new server and the transfer of the old data in the new server.

Specifically we are following these steps:

* Mail transfer from Gandi to irational
* Create a Virtual Private Server (VPS) in the new server
* Install Apache2 and configure domains
* Install and migrate MediaWiki
** Back up the wiki on the Linode VPS
** Upgrade MediaWiki in Linode
** Install MediaWiki and plugins in the Greenhost VPS
** Transfer database and media files from Linode to Greenhost
* Install Wiki-to-pdf
* Install Pico
* Install and configure Certbot

We find ourselves between two virtual spaces and one office, among other indirectly connected spaces like the rooms of our distant collaborators and the office locations of the servers.

=== Trust relationships ===
By now, 14th of November 2023, the office is warm and cozy. Throughout the time I am writing this report I have been noticing a lot of slow and small efforts to renovate the building and set up the heating, by the artists and organisations who share the space with TITiPI. Another infrastructure that needs care.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 15-06-42.png|thumb|Femke and Aggeliki entering Irational’s server space with Kate]]

On a shared screen together with Femke we get introduced to the mail server of Irational by Kate. We use an audio splitter to share the laptop for the call. Kate described her experience as an amateur ''sysadmin'' that had to spend a lot of time to learn and set up the mail server. After that we start the process that has been documented [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Server_transfer_documentation#Mail_transfer here].

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 14-56-26.png|thumb|Screenshot from the TITiPI’s mail transfer with Kate, Femke and Aggeliki during an online 3 hours call]]

Irational uses the Alpine email client. Kate takes us its depths. That is where we start to set up our new email accounts before we configure them in Thunderbird. Femke gets excited on the fact that she can send emails to other Irational accounts through the ''terminal''.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 15-15-07.png|thumb|Using the email client Alpine]]

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 17-04-20.png|thumb|Screenhost from the moment of looking for the syntax of the TXT records. Finding the right syntax for this value was the biggest challenge. This is part of the ''trust relationships'' between the different providers]]

After some more DNS configurations we test if it is possible to exchange emails with ‘outside’ accounts and especially with Gmail that has many security filters for mail servers other than the commercial ones.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-15 13-59-52.png|thumb|Exchange test emails with a Gmail account]]

After three hours of tryouts we manage to make it work! Very proudly and with enjoyment for sharing a technical task together we say goodbye to each other and arrange a next meeting for a final check up.

=== A choice that comes with discomforts ===
Just one day before the start of TITiPI’s server transfer away from Linode on the 28th of November, Helen found the Swiss server ungleich.ch and it seemed like an interesting choice because of the small scale (in terms of community and servers), their experimental attitude and their choice to reduce energy consumption; they avoid using systems for cooling their servers by spreading the servers at the Swiss mountains in old, abandoned buildings.

Ungleich.ch is one of the good options but it is more expensive than other providers. They offer a cheaper choice by choosing to have only ‘ipv6’. But we had to dig in to understand the difference of ipv4 and ipv6. From wikipedia: “IPv6 is the most recent version of the Internet Protocol, developed to deal with the long-anticipated problem of IPv4 address exhaustion” We found a [https://stats.labs.apnic.net/ipv6 map] that shows which countries have implemented IPv6 and it seems that if we only use this address then many places won’t have access to the website of TITiPI. So we choose to have both addresses.

We also notice that this provider is using Stripe for their payment system. In a [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Frontier parallel universe of TITiPI] we give attention to and critique Stripe because of its connections with the Carbon Removal industry.

[[copyright issues? Ungleich.ch payment system with Stripe]]

Another urgency appears while we are looking at different choices; together with many other organisations, we have been thinking about ways to host and maintain infrastructures in solidarity with communities and networks we are part of. This would mean, for example, hosting digitally a Palestinian video film archive, or research by sex workers. Solidarity is only partially a question of caring for privacy and security because it matters where and how we host our digital infrastructures and whether these spaces do or do not support the flourishing of different lives and struggles. This need make us think again if the server we choose would be suitable for something like that.

Constant and Servus are two accomplice servers that already provide to TITiPI some of their services. Zaclys is a member of Chatons that support open source values and it is located in France. We contacted them to see if they could be an option but they never responded to us.

We wanted to work with a company that provide ‘green’ infrastructure. Greenhost seem to be a good choice. It provides a familiar interface to us, good support and backup option. It has a positioning as an alternative to AWS. So far great, but what about its ‘green’ hosting vision? Is it a solarpunk vision, a green cloud utopia? Is their infrastructure resource ‘hungry’? What are the privacy limits when the material hosted in the servers is political and sensitive?

We choose Greenhost with all the discomforts that this choice entails and with the desire to keep the critique and dialogue alive.

Only by December 2023 we manage to arrange a call with one of Greenhost’s former Managing Directors to get a feeling and more information about their approach and sensitivity. Accordind to him Greenhost exists in the intersection of activism and technology. It provides consultancy, sustainability solutions in tech projects and structured ''maintenance''; they go for best quality with lowest environmental impact; they maintain the same hardware as much as possible and balance that with higher efficiency; they keep backups at an already existing data center in the university of Amsterdam.

<nowiki>[[paragraph for Greenhost include? from interview with manager?]]</nowiki>

=== Installing, tranferring, saving, copying, … ===
On the 28th of November sitting on the sunny corner of the couch next to the radiator, and with warm coffee cups waiting for us on a low table, Femke and I cover our legs with a blanket and open our laptops.

I ask Femke to jumb in a ''tmux'' session for sharing ''terminal'' with this command: <code>''sudo'' ''tmux'' attach -t webserver</code>. We start by cleaning the old server and make backups of the files.

We take a lunch break. Femke finds out that if we eat three recurrent meals every week in the office we can have a nice variety of food; lentiles soup, orecchiette pasta with brocoli, rizzoto with mushrooms and lots of fruits. Sometime ago we decided to make multiple short breaks throughout the day because of computer fatigue. One day I removed all the files from my computer that were older than 90 days because I accidentally run a command on the ''terminal'' instead of a bash script to test the setting up of [https://gitlab.constantvzw.org/titipi/burrow Burrow]. I left this comment in the initial script:

<code># VERY DANGEROUS COMMAND find *txt -mindepth 1 -mtime +$RETAIN -delete</code>
The next day we set up the new server and install all the necessary software including a new version of the MediaWiki. We arrange a meeting with Martino Morandi, member of Constant, who created the wiki-to-pdf to help us installing this software and tranfer the MediaWiki in the new server. On the 1st of December we successfully install the wiki-to-pdf and because of limited time we decided to meet one more time at the end of the month for the rest.

[[File:Virtual-env-debian.png|thumb|Screenshot from the wiki-to-pdf installation to the new server with Martino, Femke, Aggeliki. Debian supports a different way to create virtual environments for installing python packages and libraries. We try it but it failed.]]

On the 28th we meet with Martino online to complete the transfer, which includes copying the old database of MediaWiki, activate the old plugins and fix any issues on the way. We are all located in different countries (Italy, Greece, Belgium) and so we share a ''tmux'' session. We follow the guides but on the way we had to do some research and configure a lot of things to make the MediaWiki work. Martino was hunting a php module. It seemed that php has shifted to free software culture in an attempt to find another business model. It is not surprising it happens in the context of Ubuntu. The issue is recorded [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Server_transfer_documentation#MediaWiki_upgrade_issues here].

[[File:Firefox Screenshot 2024-01-10T13-59-40.398Z.png|thumb|"Is Titipi.org down?" Helen asks after the transfer. It seems that her browser cache was preventing her from seeing the website]]

The process is documented in our diary and then transferred to a [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Server_transfer_documentation wiki page]. By January 2024 the server transfer and the deletion of our Linode account has been completed.

== Glossaries ==

Italicized terms in the report are included in these glossaries:

* [https://varia.zone/ATNOFS/ATNOFS-screen.pdf Glossary of A Traversal Network of Feminist Servers (ATNOFS) publication]
* [[Glossary|TITiPI's glossary]]

== References ==

* https://journals.openedition.org/ardeth/2194?lang=en
* https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec/31/white-south-africa-ubuntu-african-tutu
* https://thefunambulist.net/magazine/redefining-our-terms/ubuntu-a-black-radical-demand-for-reparations
* https://www.bloomsburycollections.com/monograph-detail?docid=b-9781350351042&pdfid=9781350351042.ch-8.pdf&tocid=b-9781350351042-chapter8
* https://thebastion.co.in/politics-and/tech/a-feminist-server-to-help-people-own-their-own-data/
* https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec/31/white-south-africa-ubuntu-african-tutu
* https://thebastion.co.in/politics-and/tech/a-feminist-server-to-help-people-own-their-own-data/ (from eu to india owning data and infrastructure is very powerful for many reasons)
* [https://monoskop.org/Community_servers#Publications Monoskop community servers page]
* https://github.com/redis/redis/issues/3185 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-53050955
* https://www.theserverside.com/opinion/Master-slave-terminology-alternatives-you-can-use-right-now

== Colophon ==

The text was drafted in pad.xpub.nl

From cloud to crowd: a report on a server transfer

2024-07-16T13:13:38Z

Angeliki:

= From cloud to crowd<ref>The term comes from ... (not sure if it is included in the title)</ref>: A report on a server transfer =

This text is a report on a server migration that took place within the institutional framework of [https://titipi.org/ The Institute for Technology in the Public Interest (TITiPI)], a trans-practice gathering of activists, artists, engineers and theorists. TITiPI convenes communities to articulate, activate and re-imagine together what computational technologies in the 'public interest' might be. This report is an infrastructural ethnography and aims to rethink, through a technical process, what ''hosting'' a server means for a community, institution, cultural organisation dealing with technological discomforts and often inaccessible complex digital infrastructures.

A ''server'' is a computer (or a piece of software/hardware) that provides functionalities via a network (Internet). A ''server migration'' is the process of moving data and transferring software from one server to another with the use of specified tools. Performing such process accommodates a practical and technical solution to fix the problem of an outdated server that is slow or has limited storage. But it also affects the values, the structure and infrastructural imaginations of the organisations it supports. TITiPI desired(s) to go with hosting and maintain its own virtual private server instead of outsourcing these services to external tech companies. In times of server providers’ scaling up ( ‘''cloud hosting''’ ) and digitizing governmental bureaucracies what does it mean to host your own digital space for supporting your communities and work? What does it mean to have an independent infrastructure? What (non-)dependencies are chosen or taken for granted by institutions when using hosting services?

As a researcher at TITiPI I have been caring for the task to investigate this server migration and execute it together with TITiPI’s member Femke Snelting. We meet weekly to keep track and make decisions. We share a ''markdown'' file hosted in the git of the cultural association [https://constantvzw.org/site/ Constant] that includes a diary of the server migration and reflections. Every now and then we meet online with our colleague Helen Pritchard, to discuss and share the process. This report shares extracts from the server diary and stories from the process.

== Migration or … ? ==

In the cold newly installed office of TITiPI located in the Koekelberg district of Brussels, I open Chromium in my computer, that runs the operating system Ubuntu, in order to translate quickly − with the installed Google Translate plugin; later I found out there is a DeepL version − the web pages of the different cooperatives, associations, companies that provide hosting services. While doing that I have this disturbing thought in my head that I try to ignore: the word ‘migration’ as a technical term to describe the movement from one server to the other. It makes me think of an [https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/13/technology/racist-computer-engineering-terms-ietf.html online conversation], happening for a few years now, about replacing computer engineering terminology to stop prevalence of racism in tech. Specifically the conversation [https://www.wired.com/story/tech-confronts-use-labels-master-slave/ evolves around the terms] ‘master/slave’, where one computing process or entity controls another, and ‘blacklists/whitelists’ used for directories of those things that are explicitly banned or allowed. Using metaphors like that for a technical process de-contextualizes a word from its origins and unavoidably perpetuates social injustices. It also shows that the context where such choices of language are made is privileged and untouched or non-triggered by these terms. White male computer engineers have build up this language. Could words like transferring, sharing, moving, copying, re-installing, shifting replace the word ‘migration’? From this point on in the report I decide to use the term ‘transfer’.

‘Ubuntu’ is also a word extracted from its original context. It is coming from the African Ubuntu philosophy. According to the creators of the software:

<blockquote>ubuntu |oǒ’boǒntoō| Ubuntu is an ancient African word meaning ‘humanity to others’. It is often described as reminding us that ‘I am what I am because of who we all are’. We bring the spirit of Ubuntu to the world of computers and software. The Ubuntu distribution represents the best of what the world’s software community has shared with the world. <ref>https://ubuntu.com/about</ref>
</blockquote>

Paraphrasing [https://thefunambulist.net/magazine/redefining-our-terms/ubuntu-a-black-radical-demand-for-reparations Panashe Chigumadzi] words: in contrast to the western conception of the human as individual, the African conception of the person is a social being who is always becoming, defined by and being responsible for the personhood of the others. "(T)he African philosophy best understood through the proverb found in Bantu languages across the continent, 'umuntu ngumuntu ngabanye bantu' (a person is a person through other people". <ref>https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec/31/white-south-africa-ubuntu-african-tutu</ref>

<blockquote>(D)espite the flourishing of Ubuntu in post-apartheid discourse, lending its name to software, businesses, books and philanthropic organisations, South Africa is a country in which we have, as Dladla argues, Ubuntu without Abantu. Just as Black people have been dispossessed of their land, Ubuntu has been dispossessed of its deeply radical demands for ethical historical and social relations among people. (...) post apartheid Ubuntu mistranslation 'I am because we are', individualized and interpersonalised Ubuntu, Christianised Ubuntu, mistranslated in order to justify crimes and violence. In Ubuntu violence can be punished even after generations, the misinterpretation of the term allowed individual forgiveness. <ref>https://thefunambulist.net/magazine/redefining-our-terms/ubuntu-a-black-radical-demand-for-reparations</ref>
</blockquote>

I skip these thoughts and I continue browsing the list of servers. While trying to stay focused something other distracts me; I encounter an [https://www.oziosi.org/ autonomous Italian server] with the title translated with DeepL: “:: a shelter for digital exiles ::” and an image of a woman, a child and a man leaving their home. Also a small introduction: “Exiled from the global village of social networks, we claim an internet that is a simple means of communication: immaterial, anonymous, imaginary, public when it makes sense and secret when we feel the need.”. I am wondering what does this mean for actual exiles having to protect their privacy when communicating back home? [https://techpolicy.press/how-to-open-an-outpost-in-social-media-exile/ ‘Social media exiles’] and ‘Twitter migration’ are terms used often after Twitter became X and users have moved to the Fediverse or other alternatives.

[[Screenshot of the 'digital exiles' image, image not included because of copyrights issues?]]

== TITiPI’s case of server transfer ==
On the 27th of September, sitting at the long desks side to side, Femke and I have an online call with Helen, while looking at the depths of our Virtual Private Server (VPS), provided by Linode, that runs Ubuntu on our laptop screens. Linode is an American hosting provider focusing on ''Linux''-based virtual machines originally. The server is physically located in the UK. TITiPI currently uses the Linode server that Helen set up for hosting her own projects. She has been paying for Linode’s monthly fees so far.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-10-11 14-47-06.png|thumb|Screenshot of Linode Ubuntu server overview and ''terminal'' that shows a moment of figuring out what takes space in the server through ''SSH'' access]]

At the time it seemed a good choice, because it is based in UK, is ''Linux'' friendly and an alternative to Amazon Web Services (AWS), even though it was already identifying as ‘''cloud hosting''’. But in February 2023 it has been acquired by the American company Akamai that aims to scale up for [https://www.linode.com/global-infrastructure/ “computing power, optimizing performance and agility.”]. Akamai is actively changing its server policies into an increasingly intense cloud logic. This pushed forward the desire to move to a new place.

[[Screenshot of Linode website referring to scalability -- copyright issues?]]

At the moment in Linode we run pico, a flat CMS for the website https://titipi.org. There is a Mediawiki (you are reading a Mediawiki page right now) for notes and collective writing. On the wiki, we also publish our statutes, guidelines and other instituting documents. The wiki has a custom extension, called wiki-to-pdf. Each of these services will need a different way to be transferred. One approach is to build the new server space from scratch, copy the data with rsync and transfer only the Mediawiki, which includes installing a new version and copy the database and the media files.

While preparing to transfer the tools we are defining what are the practical needs and desirable priorities; we ended up on these server requirements:
* ''SSH'' access and wish for VPS
* affordable price (around €20/month)
* run a Free Software operating system, preferably Debian
* involves community work - slowing down, resisting to scaling and growth or ‘decloudification’ (small network of partners, less virtualization approach, location of servers nearby etc)
* 25-40GB storage space, 1-2 cores, 2-4GB RAM
* environmental angle
* service support in a language that we all understand (English mostly)

This server transfer happens with an intersectional and feminist approach and the desire to keep questioning. While moving away from Linode we include both the technical and the conceptual thinking in the process. There are a few things that we are looking at: 
* Where to be transferred to or what services to transfer to?
* How to be transferred and what to tranfer?
* What terminology, language we use?
* What (other) narratives of server hosting can we construct?

TITiPI seeks to exist with an infrastructure that supports inter-dependent practices and solidarity across struggles. It develops Counter Cloud Actions [ref] as a way to scale down, de-cloudify, articulate, contest and re-imagine the implications of computational infrastructures (‘the cloud’).

<blockquote>TITiPI develop tools from feminisms, queer theory, Free, Libre and Open Source software, intersectionality, anti-coloniality, disability studies, historical materialism and artistic practice to generate currently inexistent vocabularies, imaginaries and methodologies. TITiPI functions as an infrastructure to establish new ways in which socio-technical practices and technologies might support the public interest. <ref>https://docs.tangible-cloud.be/publications-pdf/02_snelting.pdf</ref></blockquote>

We are looking for servers that aspire some of these values.

=== A relational infrastructure narrative/ infra-mutuality/ inter-infrastructural narrative ===
[[File:Elastic solidarities.png|thumb]]
In June 2023 TITiPI received an email from Gandi to renew the domain titipi.org in 6 days, not realising that at the same time we would need to start paying for our titipi.org email hosting. We had missed reading to the end of another email sent in the middle of June, entitled: 'Pricing update'.

We consider to work with Kate Rich to move our mailboxes to the [http://irational.org/ Irational server], soon to be installed on a Raspberry Pi, hosted at Servus. Currently it is in a rack in the UK. We decide to do this transition slowly and until then renew the emails for 1-2 months through Gandi. Irational server resists virtualization, and as an art community project it makes it an interesting choice.

But why to go through all this effort and not just use one cloud server with mailboxes, file storage and web server together? TITiPI’s response to the question of building institutional digital infrastructure embodies an archipelagic and non-sovereign approach to dependencies. Rather than building a centralised server based on ‘cloud’ from which connections with other institutions and collectives can happen, it conceptualizes inter-infrastructural practices; from the creation of a [https://gitlab.constantvzw.org/titipi/burrow backup script] for saving locally etherpad pads from other servers, hosting emails at an art server (https://irational.org), creating an [https://books.lumbung.space/shelf/26 online bookshelf] on lumbung.space, using the ''XMPP'' chat from Varia to recording conversations with the ''sysadmin'' that maintain the other servers. The institution re-imagines technological dependencies in dialogue with cultural institutions and art collectives.

[[File:Titipi-infra-diagram-JAN-24.png|thumb|none|alt=A diagram of TITiPI’s infrastructure. The diagram categorizes the elements according to tools/software (box), structure/organisational form (circle) and place (dashed line). For example Jitsi is the software, Greenhost is the organisation, meet.greenhost.net is the place.|A diagram of TITiPI’s infrastructure. The diagram categorizes the elements according to tools/software (box), structure/organisational form (circle) and place (dashed line). For example Jitsi is the software, Greenhost is the organisation, meet.greenhost.net is the place.]]

How to give life to the common space of TITiPI’s hosting infrastructures? What about building up social dependencies between the ones that host and the ones who are hosted as opposed to a technical independence? Infrastructural imaginations are often built by the ''Big Tech'' industry and governmental institutions. Instead, TITiPI practices a fluid inter-institutional approach supported by [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Infra_colophon a variety of hosts].

=== Selection of server providers ===
On the 7th of November through a shared screen at the [https://meet.greenhost.net/ video conferencing software Jitsi of Greenhost] we all three check a list of server providers I collected on a spreadsheet hosted in Constant’s cloud storage (built with Nextcloud software) where TITiPI has an account. I looked at associations, companies/businesses, cooperatives, communities coming from commercial context to social struggles, activist, feminist and other. Through a [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/List_server_networks list of networks] I found various servers mostly from Latin America and Europe.

The concept of autonomy, sovereignty, independence or self-managing characterizes most of the servers in the list. Some of them, like [https://www.autistici.org/ Autistici] promote this concept as a way to support anti-capitalist infrastructure and protect the privacy of the users as opposed to the ''Big Tech'' software practices.

<blockquote>"The vision is that we - the members of the cooperative - own our own data. This implies and has as a consequence that we will have to own our own infrastructure and have insight and control over the software we use to communicate on the web."<ref>https://monoskop.org/Servers Data Coop</ref></blockquote>

Femke had a hunch: "‘technological sovereignty’ and ‘data-sovereignty’ continue to be orientation devices to organise around. ‘Sovereignty’, together with ‘freedom’, ‘independence’ and ‘autonomy’, form an ideological cluster that implicitly and sometimes explicitly foregrounds separation rather than relation."

Servers can act as independent spaces but are also cultural devices and vibrant spaces. They can manifest different aspects of a full life and reach out to a multiplicity of entities.

Servus and Greenhost, seem to be two of our best choices as they cover a lot of the priorities and values of TITiPI. As one can read from their descriptions they both strive for owning their own data servers and data nodes (they have their own ''IP addresses'') and be independent from third parties. The big difference is the scale of the infrastructure and their community and network.

<blockquote>Greenhost fully owns and controls its hardware, infrastructure and uplinks. This ensures independence from third parties and proper access control. On this hardware we run our fully virtualised platform. We stand for an Open Internet, and have always embraced open source software.<ref>https://greenhost.net/</ref></blockquote>

<blockquote>We (Servus) do not pass on any data to third parties. You will not receive commercial advertising from us or third parties. We are easily accessible and answer your questions personally. We and our servers are located at Kirchengasse 4 in Linz, Austria.<ref>https://book.servus.at/en/home/</ref></blockquote>

Even though Greenhost wants to reduce ecological damage, it does that mainly through hardware reductions and does not address scale. They have plans to expand and are part of a network of partners that want to transform Rotterdam into a big hub of data nodes for the upcoming digital transition. Linode is even bigger, it goes for [[https://www.akamai.com/newsroom/press-release/akamai-takes-cloud-computing-to-the-edge|“(p)lanetary scale”]]. Servus on the other hand has one room of data servers, is closer to the scale of their community and they maintain personal relations with them.

[[Image of the server room at Servus at Linz|Image of the server room at Servus at Linz?]]

=== Community server, feminist server, radical server, autonomous server, commercial server, art server, free server, ethical server, solidarity-based server, cooperative server, associative server, independent server, alternative server, non-commercial server, … ===
The spreadsheet starts to grow because of an endless/exhaustive burrow of small and big providers.

Some are outdated. 
Some are messy. 
Some have broken links. 
Some are [https://www.julienth37.fr/vps hard to understand]. 
Some require [https://www.actiu.info/index.en.html a lot of engagement]. 
Some use a language that imitates the narratives of ''Big Tech'' and ''agile'' computing. 
Some promote seamless “promissory logic” and “high hopes for a brighter future” (ref) 
Some are big or are scaling up (in matter of space, data centers, partners, users etc). 
Some support NGO’s or sport clubs.

[[copyright issues? Screenshot from main page of Co-op Web]]

We also looked at their financial model. Many radical servers stay small, are volunteer based, like [https://www.autistici.org/ Autistici]. and go for horizontal organisational structures. Feminist and activist servers provide space in the internet for the ones who don’t have the means to organise otherwise. The resources and ways of organising for these servers are different from the cooperatives or associations whose structure is inherited from the model they are registered with.

[[File:ATNOFS-Varia-insert-ooooo.jpg|thumb|ooooo atnofs insert diagrams from varia, systerserver, servus]]

TITiPI acknowledges and is connected to the history of community, art and feminist servers and wants to support this network. The art servers started as a way to make autonomous self-managed servers that support artists values and practices. They are often financed by cultural or private funds.

<blockquote>I joined (Irational) sometime in 2000s, I can't remember when and originally it was much more a collective of people working together and then since the early 2010's I think, mid 2010's, there was a bit of a reshuffle of personnel and stuff, so the constituency changed to a smaller group and we actually reformed. We were going to disband Irational and then we actually reformed as an art server collective and we decided we are not really working together but what we have in common is that we're using the server and that is actually what the collective is now. It's the collective that uses the server together and wants to use the server together. And another real defining feature of the server the whole time has been resisting virtualization. 

— quote from interview with Kate Rich </blockquote>

The screen seems to become brighter as my eyes get tired. What if we skip the online hosting and create a local physical server at TITiPI’s office next to the desks, in a corner, on a Raspberry Pi? All our data would stay on this machine and we would connect with ''SSH'' from home, but then we will also have to maintain it ourselves. There is something there about the romanticism of a physical toolbox as a sovereign object. If we choose to do that we will need to think of a backup plan as it will be an experimental set up and all our data will stay offline. We won’t have a provider to take care of that.

Our list has been reduced because of our priorities. We need ''SSH'' and we would like to have a VPS. Who has resources for providing VPS? Resources of labour, time, finances, technical knowledge. This made self-defined feminist servers fall out of the selection. How to be financially sustainable, while keeping up with your own values? How to keep up with infrastructural ''maintenance'' if the scale of the users, community, members and data is big?

<blockquote>The services we offer have no defined price, but as you may easily imagine, keeping the whole system working (i.e. hardware and hosting) is very expensive (at the moment it ranges around 13,000 euro every year).<ref>https://www.autistici.org/services/</ref></blockquote>

Servus and Maadix provide a series of ''free/libre'' tools that can be installed separately through their interface but they also provide a VPS with ''SSH'' access. With Greenhost, Hetzner and Linode there is more flexibility: you can create your own VPS and customize it for your own needs through their interface or the ''terminal'' and install whatever tools you want from scratch without a visual interface.

Technical information and knowledge of digital infrastructure circulate between groups that are tech-oriented with a difficulty to cross with other groups, including feminist servers. The ''sysadmin'' tasks are mostly taken by cis men but feminist servers are radical about that. They find important to have ''sysadmins'' that are not cis men. For example Systerserver and Anarchaserver are learning by themselves together how to do this task.

Many of the servers in the list provide only tools, as a radical way to support small groups, collectives, activists that need privacy and shifting away from Google drive when they want to organise politically and socially. It seems that being limited to tool packages instead of having full access to a server can make things comprehensible and compact for these small groups that have limited ''sysadmin'' knowledge or can’t hire a technician.

[[copyrights issue? Screenshot of main page with services by [https://futuretic.fr/ FuturEtic]]]

[[copyrights issue? Screenshot of tools from codigosur]]

== Final decision and server transfer ==

We are about to make our decision! Our list ended up to be very small.

On 7th of November in an online call between Helen in Basel, Femke in Brussels and Aggeliki in Rotterdam we limited our list to four options: Constant, Greenhost, Servus, Zaclys. The selection consists of a diversity of scales and positioning that we found interesting to think of. First, we move on with the decision to transfer our mailboxes to Irational hosted at Servus. The rest of the functionalities will be hosted somewhere else.

From our conversations with Femke: “The choice for irational.org opens the possibility for discussions around dependencies, trust and frictions within shared collective servers. Irational.org is an ally art server who uses and maintains its own server for many years. Hosting such a private service at a friend’s environment doesn’t come only with convenience. The closeness to the material of the server makes the dependency more tangible.” [reference/quote from colophon?]

[[copyrights issue? towel design by psaroskalazines|towel design by psaroskalazines]]

Femke and I are planning different moments for the server transfer to happen in the office of TITiPI. What it is about to take place comes down into three moments; the backup and save of data from the old server, the installation of the necessary software in the new server and the transfer of the old data in the new server.

Specifically we are following these steps:

* Mail transfer from Gandi to irational
* Create a Virtual Private Server (VPS) in the new server
* Install Apache2 and configure domains
* Install and migrate MediaWiki
** Back up the wiki on the Linode VPS
** Upgrade MediaWiki in Linode
** Install MediaWiki and plugins in the Greenhost VPS
** Transfer database and media files from Linode to Greenhost
* Install Wiki-to-pdf
* Install Pico
* Install and configure Certbot

We find ourselves between two virtual spaces and one office, among other indirectly connected spaces like the rooms of our distant collaborators and the office locations of the servers.

=== Trust relationships ===
By now, 14th of November 2023, the office is warm and cozy. Throughout the time I am writing this report I have been noticing a lot of slow and small efforts to renovate the building and set up the heating, by the artists and organisations who share the space with TITiPI. Another infrastructure that needs care.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 15-06-42.png|thumb|Femke and Aggeliki entering Irational’s server space with Kate]]

On a shared screen together with Femke we get introduced to the mail server of Irational by Kate. We use an audio splitter to share the laptop for the call. Kate described her experience as an amateur ''sysadmin'' that had to spend a lot of time to learn and set up the mail server. After that we start the process that has been documented [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Server_transfer_documentation#Mail_transfer here].

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 14-56-26.png|thumb|Screenshot from the TITiPI’s mail transfer with Kate, Femke and Aggeliki during an online 3 hours call]]

Irational uses the Alpine email client. Kate takes us its depths. That is where we start to set up our new email accounts before we configure them in Thunderbird. Femke gets excited on the fact that she can send emails to other Irational accounts through the ''terminal''.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 15-15-07.png|thumb|Using the email client Alpine]]

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 17-04-20.png|thumb|Screenhost from the moment of looking for the syntax of the TXT records. Finding the right syntax for this value was the biggest challenge. This is part of the ''trust relationships'' between the different providers]]

After some more DNS configurations we test if it is possible to exchange emails with ‘outside’ accounts and especially with Gmail that has many security filters for mail servers other than the commercial ones.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-15 13-59-52.png|thumb|Exchange test emails with a Gmail account]]

After three hours of tryouts we manage to make it work! Very proudly and with enjoyment for sharing a technical task together we say goodbye to each other and arrange a next meeting for a final check up.

=== A choice that comes with discomforts ===
Just one day before the start of TITiPI’s server transfer away from Linode on the 28th of November, Helen found the Swiss server ungleich.ch and it seemed like an interesting choice because of the small scale (in terms of community and servers), their experimental attitude and their choice to reduce energy consumption; they avoid using systems for cooling their servers by spreading the servers at the Swiss mountains in old, abandoned buildings.

Ungleich.ch is one of the good options but it is more expensive than other providers. They offer a cheaper choice by choosing to have only ‘ipv6’. But we had to dig in to understand the difference of ipv4 and ipv6. From wikipedia: “IPv6 is the most recent version of the Internet Protocol, developed to deal with the long-anticipated problem of IPv4 address exhaustion” We found a [https://stats.labs.apnic.net/ipv6 map] that shows which countries have implemented IPv6 and it seems that if we only use this address then many places won’t have access to the website of TITiPI. So we choose to have both addresses.

We also notice that this provider is using Stripe for their payment system. In a [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Frontier parallel universe of TITiPI] we give attention to and critique Stripe because of its connections with the Carbon Removal industry.

[[copyright issues? Ungleich.ch payment system with Stripe]]

Another urgency appears while we are looking at different choices; together with many other organisations, we have been thinking about ways to host and maintain infrastructures in solidarity with communities and networks we are part of. This would mean, for example, hosting digitally a Palestinian video film archive, or research by sex workers. Solidarity is only partially a question of caring for privacy and security because it matters where and how we host our digital infrastructures and whether these spaces do or do not support the flourishing of different lives and struggles. This need make us think again if the server we choose would be suitable for something like that.

Constant and Servus are two accomplice servers that already provide to TITiPI some of their services. Zaclys is a member of Chatons that support open source values and it is located in France. We contacted them to see if they could be an option but they never responded to us.

We wanted to work with a company that provide ‘green’ infrastructure. Greenhost seem to be a good choice. It provides a familiar interface to us, good support and backup option. It has a positioning as an alternative to AWS. So far great, but what about its ‘green’ hosting vision? Is it a solarpunk vision, a green cloud utopia? Is their infrastructure resource ‘hungry’? What are the privacy limits when the material hosted in the servers is political and sensitive?

We choose Greenhost with all the discomforts that this choice entails and with the desire to keep the critique and dialogue alive.

Only by December 2023 we manage to arrange a call with one of Greenhost’s former Managing Directors to get a feeling and more information about their approach and sensitivity. Accordind to him Greenhost exists in the intersection of activism and technology. It provides consultancy, sustainability solutions in tech projects and structured ''maintenance''; they go for best quality with lowest environmental impact; they maintain the same hardware as much as possible and balance that with higher efficiency; they keep backups at an already existing data center in the university of Amsterdam.

<nowiki>[[paragraph for Greenhost include? from interview with manager?]]</nowiki>

=== Installing, tranferring, saving, copying, … ===
On the 28th of November sitting on the sunny corner of the couch next to the radiator, and with warm coffee cups waiting for us on a low table, Femke and I cover our legs with a blanket and open our laptops.

I ask Femke to jumb in a ''tmux'' session for sharing ''terminal'' with this command: <code>''sudo'' ''tmux'' attach -t webserver</code>. We start by cleaning the old server and make backups of the files.

We take a lunch break. Femke finds out that if we eat three recurrent meals every week in the office we can have a nice variety of food; lentiles soup, orecchiette pasta with brocoli, rizzoto with mushrooms and lots of fruits. Sometime ago we decided to make multiple short breaks throughout the day because of computer fatigue. One day I removed all the files from my computer that were older than 90 days because I accidentally run a command on the ''terminal'' instead of a bash script to test the setting up of [https://gitlab.constantvzw.org/titipi/burrow Burrow]. I left this comment in the initial script:

<code># VERY DANGEROUS COMMAND find *txt -mindepth 1 -mtime +$RETAIN -delete</code>
The next day we set up the new server and install all the necessary software including a new version of the MediaWiki. We arrange a meeting with Martino Morandi, member of Constant, who created the wiki-to-pdf to help us installing this software and tranfer the MediaWiki in the new server. On the 1st of December we successfully install the wiki-to-pdf and because of limited time we decided to meet one more time at the end of the month for the rest.

[[File:Virtual-env-debian.png|thumb|Screenshot from the wiki-to-pdf installation to the new server with Martino, Femke, Aggeliki. Debian supports a different way to create virtual environments for installing python packages and libraries. We try it but it failed.]]

On the 28th we meet with Martino online to complete the transfer, which includes copying the old database of MediaWiki, activate the old plugins and fix any issues on the way. We are all located in different countries (Italy, Greece, Belgium) and so we share a ''tmux'' session. We follow the guides but on the way we had to do some research and configure a lot of things to make the MediaWiki work. Martino was hunting a php module. It seemed that php has shifted to free software culture in an attempt to find another business model. It is not surprising it happens in the context of Ubuntu. The issue is recorded [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Server_transfer_documentation#MediaWiki_upgrade_issues here].

[[File:Firefox Screenshot 2024-01-10T13-59-40.398Z.png|thumb|"Is Titipi.org down?" Helen asks after the transfer. It seems that her browser cache was preventing her from seeing the website]]

The process is documented in our diary and then transferred to a [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Server_transfer_documentation wiki page]. By January 2024 the server transfer and the deletion of our Linode account has been completed.

== Glossaries ==

Terms italicized in the report are included in these glossaries:

* [https://varia.zone/ATNOFS/ATNOFS-screen.pdf Glossary of A Traversal Network of Feminist Servers (ATNOFS) publication]
* [[Glossary|TITiPI's glossary]]

== References ==

* https://journals.openedition.org/ardeth/2194?lang=en
* https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec/31/white-south-africa-ubuntu-african-tutu
* https://thefunambulist.net/magazine/redefining-our-terms/ubuntu-a-black-radical-demand-for-reparations
* https://www.bloomsburycollections.com/monograph-detail?docid=b-9781350351042&pdfid=9781350351042.ch-8.pdf&tocid=b-9781350351042-chapter8
* https://thebastion.co.in/politics-and/tech/a-feminist-server-to-help-people-own-their-own-data/
* https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec/31/white-south-africa-ubuntu-african-tutu
* https://thebastion.co.in/politics-and/tech/a-feminist-server-to-help-people-own-their-own-data/ (from eu to india owning data and infrastructure is very powerful for many reasons)
* [https://monoskop.org/Community_servers#Publications Monoskop community servers page]
* https://github.com/redis/redis/issues/3185 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-53050955
* https://www.theserverside.com/opinion/Master-slave-terminology-alternatives-you-can-use-right-now

== Colophon ==

The text was drafted in pad.xpub.nl

From cloud to crowd: a report on a server transfer

2024-07-16T13:04:08Z

Angeliki:

= From cloud to crowd<ref>The term comes from ... (not sure if it is included in the title)</ref>: A report on a server transfer =

This text is a report on a server migration that took place within the institutional framework of [https://titipi.org/ The Institute for Technology in the Public Interest (TITiPI)], a trans-practice gathering of activists, artists, engineers and theorists. TITiPI convenes communities to articulate, activate and re-imagine together what computational technologies in the 'public interest' might be. This report is an infrastructural ethnography and aims to rethink, through a technical process, what ''hosting'' a server means for a community, institution, cultural organisation dealing with technological discomforts and often inaccessible complex digital infrastructures.

A ''server'' is a computer (or a piece of software/hardware) that provides functionalities via a network (Internet). A ''server migration'' is the process of moving data and transferring software from one server to another with the use of specified tools. Performing such process accommodates a practical and technical solution to fix the problem of an outdated server that is slow or has limited storage. But it also affects the values, the structure and infrastructural imaginations of the organisations it supports. TITiPI desired(s) to go with hosting and maintain its own virtual private server instead of outsourcing these services to external tech companies. In times of server providers’ scaling up ( ‘''cloud hosting''’ ) and digitizing governmental bureaucracies what does it mean to host your own digital space for supporting your communities and work? What does it mean to have an independent infrastructure? What (non-)dependencies are chosen or taken for granted by institutions when using hosting services?

As a researcher at TITiPI I have been caring for the task to investigate this server migration and execute it together with TITiPI’s member Femke Snelting. We meet weekly to keep track and make decisions. We share a markdown file hosted in the git of the cultural association [https://constantvzw.org/site/ Constant] that includes a diary of the server migration and reflections. Every now and then we meet online with our colleague Helen Pritchard, to discuss and share the process. This report shares extracts from the server diary and stories from the process.

== Migration or … ? ==

In the cold newly installed office of TITiPI located in the Koekelberg district of Brussels, I open Chromium in my computer, that runs the operating system Ubuntu, in order to translate quickly − with the installed Google Translate plugin; later I found out there is a DeepL version − the web pages of the different cooperatives, associations, companies that provide hosting services. While doing that I have this disturbing thought in my head that I try to ignore: the word ‘migration’ as a technical term to describe the movement from one server to the other. It makes me think of an [https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/13/technology/racist-computer-engineering-terms-ietf.html online conversation], happening for a few years now, about replacing computer engineering terminology to stop prevalence of racism in tech. Specifically the conversation [https://www.wired.com/story/tech-confronts-use-labels-master-slave/ evolves around the terms] ‘master/slave’, where one computing process or entity controls another, and ‘blacklists/whitelists’ used for directories of those things that are explicitly banned or allowed. Using metaphors like that for a technical process de-contextualizes a word from its origins and unavoidably perpetuates social injustices. It also shows that the context where such choices of language are made is privileged and untouched or non-triggered by these terms. White male computer engineers have build up this language. Could words like transferring, sharing, moving, copying, re-installing, shifting replace the word ‘migration’? From this point on in the report I decide to use the term ‘transfer’.

‘Ubuntu’ is also a word extracted from its original context. It is coming from the African Ubuntu philosophy. According to the creators of the software:

<blockquote>ubuntu |oǒ’boǒntoō| Ubuntu is an ancient African word meaning ‘humanity to others’. It is often described as reminding us that ‘I am what I am because of who we all are’. We bring the spirit of Ubuntu to the world of computers and software. The Ubuntu distribution represents the best of what the world’s software community has shared with the world. <ref>https://ubuntu.com/about</ref>
</blockquote>

Paraphrasing [https://thefunambulist.net/magazine/redefining-our-terms/ubuntu-a-black-radical-demand-for-reparations Panashe Chigumadzi] words: in contrast to the western conception of the human as individual, the African conception of the person is a social being who is always becoming, defined by and being responsible for the personhood of the others. "(T)he African philosophy best understood through the proverb found in Bantu languages across the continent, 'umuntu ngumuntu ngabanye bantu' (a person is a person through other people". <ref>https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec/31/white-south-africa-ubuntu-african-tutu</ref>

<blockquote>(D)espite the flourishing of Ubuntu in post-apartheid discourse, lending its name to software, businesses, books and philanthropic organisations, South Africa is a country in which we have, as Dladla argues, Ubuntu without Abantu. Just as Black people have been dispossessed of their land, Ubuntu has been dispossessed of its deeply radical demands for ethical historical and social relations among people. (...) post apartheid Ubuntu mistranslation 'I am because we are', individualized and interpersonalised Ubuntu, Christianised Ubuntu, mistranslated in order to justify crimes and violence. In Ubuntu violence can be punished even after generations, the misinterpretation of the term allowed individual forgiveness. <ref>https://thefunambulist.net/magazine/redefining-our-terms/ubuntu-a-black-radical-demand-for-reparations</ref>
</blockquote>

I skip these thoughts and I continue browsing the list of servers. While trying to stay focused something other distracts me; I encounter an [https://www.oziosi.org/ autonomous Italian server] with the title translated with DeepL: “:: a shelter for digital exiles ::” and an image of a woman, a child and a man leaving their home. Also a small introduction: “Exiled from the global village of social networks, we claim an internet that is a simple means of communication: immaterial, anonymous, imaginary, public when it makes sense and secret when we feel the need.”. I am wondering what does this mean for actual exiles having to protect their privacy when communicating back home? [https://techpolicy.press/how-to-open-an-outpost-in-social-media-exile/ ‘Social media exiles’] and ‘Twitter migration’ are terms used often after Twitter became X and users have moved to the Fediverse or other alternatives.

[[Screenshot of the 'digital exiles' image, image not included because of copyrights issues?]]

== TITiPI’s case of server transfer ==
On the 27th of September, sitting at the long desks side to side, Femke and I have an online call with Helen, while looking at the depths of our Virtual Private Server (VPS), provided by Linode, that runs Ubuntu on our laptop screens. Linode is an American hosting provider focusing on Linux-based virtual machines originally. The server is physically located in the UK. TITiPI currently uses the Linode server that Helen set up for hosting her own projects. She has been paying for Linode’s monthly fees so far.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-10-11 14-47-06.png|thumb|Screenshot of Linode Ubuntu server overview and terminal that shows a moment of figuring out what takes space in the server through SSH access]]

At the time it seemed a good choice, because it is based in UK, is Linux friendly and an alternative to Amazon Web Services (AWS), even though it was already identifying as ‘''cloud hosting''’. But in February 2023 it has been acquired by the American company Akamai that aims to scale up for [https://www.linode.com/global-infrastructure/ “computing power, optimizing performance and agility.”]. Akamai is actively changing its server policies into an increasingly intense cloud logic. This pushed forward the desire to move to a new place.

[[Screenshot of Linode website referring to scalability -- copyright issues?]]

At the moment in Linode we run pico, a flat CMS for the website https://titipi.org. There is a Mediawiki (you are reading a Mediawiki page right now) for notes and collective writing. On the wiki, we also publish our statutes, guidelines and other instituting documents. The wiki has a custom extension, called wiki-to-pdf. Each of these services will need a different way to be transferred. One approach is to build the new server space from scratch, copy the data with rsync and transfer only the Mediawiki, which includes installing a new version and copy the database and the media files.

While preparing to transfer the tools we are defining what are the practical needs and desirable priorities; we ended up on these server requirements:
* SSH access and wish for VPS
* affordable price (around €20/month)
* run a Free Software operating system, preferably Debian
* involves community work - slowing down, resisting to scaling and growth or ‘decloudification’ (small network of partners, less virtualization approach, location of servers nearby etc)
* 25-40GB storage space, 1-2 cores, 2-4GB RAM
* environmental angle
* service support in a language that we all understand (English mostly)

This server transfer happens with an intersectional and feminist approach and the desire to keep questioning. While moving away from Linode we include both the technical and the conceptual thinking in the process. There are a few things that we are looking at: 
* Where to be transferred to or what services to transfer to?
* How to be transferred and what to tranfer?
* What terminology, language we use?
* What (other) narratives of server hosting can we construct?

TITiPI seeks to exist with an infrastructure that supports inter-dependent practices and solidarity across struggles. It develops Counter Cloud Actions [ref] as a way to scale down, de-cloudify, articulate, contest and re-imagine the implications of computational infrastructures (‘the cloud’).

<blockquote>TITiPI develop tools from feminisms, queer theory, Free, Libre and Open Source software, intersectionality, anti-coloniality, disability studies, historical materialism and artistic practice to generate currently inexistent vocabularies, imaginaries and methodologies. TITiPI functions as an infrastructure to establish new ways in which socio-technical practices and technologies might support the public interest. <ref>https://docs.tangible-cloud.be/publications-pdf/02_snelting.pdf</ref></blockquote>

We are looking for servers that aspire some of these values.

=== A relational infrastructure narrative/ infra-mutuality/ inter-infrastructural narrative ===
[[File:Elastic solidarities.png|thumb]]
In June 2023 TITiPI received an email from Gandi to renew the domain titipi.org in 6 days, not realising that at the same time we would need to start paying for our titipi.org email hosting. We had missed reading to the end of another email sent in the middle of June, entitled: 'Pricing update'.

We consider to work with Kate Rich to move our mailboxes to the [http://irational.org/ Irational server], soon to be installed on a Raspberry Pi, hosted at Servus. Currently it is in a rack in the UK. We decide to do this transition slowly and until then renew the emails for 1-2 months through Gandi. Irational server resists virtualization, and as an art community project it makes it an interesting choice.

But why to go through all this effort and not just use one cloud server with mailboxes, file storage and web server together? TITiPI’s response to the question of building institutional digital infrastructure embodies an archipelagic and non-sovereign approach to dependencies. Rather than building a centralised server based on ‘cloud’ from which connections with other institutions and collectives can happen, it conceptualizes inter-infrastructural practices; from the creation of a [https://gitlab.constantvzw.org/titipi/burrow backup script] for saving locally etherpad pads from other servers, hosting emails at an art server (https://irational.org), creating an [https://books.lumbung.space/shelf/26 online bookshelf] on lumbung.space, using the xmpp chat from Varia to recording conversations with the sys admin that maintain the other servers. The institution re-imagines technological dependencies in dialogue with cultural institutions and art collectives.

[[File:Titipi-infra-diagram-JAN-24.png|thumb|none|alt=A diagram of TITiPI’s infrastructure. The diagram categorizes the elements according to tools/software (box), structure/organisational form (circle) and place (dashed line). For example Jitsi is the software, Greenhost is the organisation, meet.greenhost.net is the place.|A diagram of TITiPI’s infrastructure. The diagram categorizes the elements according to tools/software (box), structure/organisational form (circle) and place (dashed line). For example Jitsi is the software, Greenhost is the organisation, meet.greenhost.net is the place.]]

How to give life to the common space of TITiPI’s hosting infrastructures? What about building up social dependencies between the ones that host and the ones who are hosted as opposed to a technical independence? Infrastructural imaginations are often built by the Big Tech industry and governmental institutions. Instead, TITiPI practices a fluid inter-institutional approach supported by [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Infra_colophon a variety of hosts].

=== Selection of server providers ===
On the 7th of November through a shared screen at the [https://meet.greenhost.net/ video conferencing software Jitsi of Greenhost] we all three check a list of server providers I collected on a spreadsheet hosted in Constant’s cloud storage (built with Nextcloud software) where TITiPI has an account. I looked at associations, companies/businesses, cooperatives, communities coming from commercial context to social struggles, activist, feminist and other. Through a [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/List_server_networks list of networks] I found various servers mostly from Latin America and Europe.

The concept of autonomy, sovereignty, independence or self-managing characterizes most of the servers in the list. Some of them, like [https://www.autistici.org/ Autistici] promote this concept as a way to support anti-capitalist infrastructure and protect the privacy of the users as opposed to the Big Tech software practices.

<blockquote>"The vision is that we - the members of the cooperative - own our own data. This implies and has as a consequence that we will have to own our own infrastructure and have insight and control over the software we use to communicate on the web."<ref>https://monoskop.org/Servers Data Coop</ref></blockquote>

Femke had a hunch: "‘technological sovereignty’ and ‘data-sovereignty’ continue to be orientation devices to organise around. ‘Sovereignty’, together with ‘freedom’, ‘independence’ and ‘autonomy’, form an ideological cluster that implicitly and sometimes explicitly foregrounds separation rather than relation."

Servers can act as independent spaces but are also cultural devices and vibrant spaces. They can manifest different aspects of a full life and reach out to a multiplicity of entities.

Servus and Greenhost, seem to be two of our best choices as they cover a lot of the priorities and values of TITiPI. As one can read from their descriptions they both strive for owning their own data servers and data nodes (they have their own IP addresses) and be independent from third parties. The big difference is the scale of the infrastructure and their community and network.

<blockquote>Greenhost fully owns and controls its hardware, infrastructure and uplinks. This ensures independence from third parties and proper access control. On this hardware we run our fully virtualised platform. We stand for an Open Internet, and have always embraced open source software.<ref>https://greenhost.net/</ref></blockquote>

<blockquote>We (Servus) do not pass on any data to third parties. You will not receive commercial advertising from us or third parties. We are easily accessible and answer your questions personally. We and our servers are located at Kirchengasse 4 in Linz, Austria.<ref>https://book.servus.at/en/home/</ref></blockquote>

Even though Greenhost wants to reduce ecological damage, it does that mainly through hardware reductions and does not address scale. They have plans to expand and are part of a network of partners that want to transform Rotterdam into a big hub of data nodes for the upcoming digital transition. Linode is even bigger, it goes for [[https://www.akamai.com/newsroom/press-release/akamai-takes-cloud-computing-to-the-edge|“(p)lanetary scale”]]. Servus on the other hand has one room of data servers, is closer to the scale of their community and they maintain personal relations with them.

[[Image of the server room at Servus at Linz|Image of the server room at Servus at Linz?]]

=== Community server, feminist server, radical server, autonomous server, commercial server, art server, free server, ethical server, solidarity-based server, cooperative server, associative server, independent server, alternative server, non-commercial server, … ===
The spreadsheet starts to grow because of an endless/exhaustive burrow of small and big providers.

Some are outdated. 
Some are messy. 
Some have broken links. 
Some are [https://www.julienth37.fr/vps hard to understand]. 
Some require [https://www.actiu.info/index.en.html a lot of engagement]. 
Some use a language that imitates the narratives of Big Tech and agile computing. 
Some promote seamless “promissory logic” and “high hopes for a brighter future” (ref) 
Some are big or are scaling up (in matter of space, data centers, partners, users etc). 
Some support NGO’s or sport clubs.

[[copyright issues? Screenshot from main page of Co-op Web]]

We also looked at their financial model. Many radical servers stay small, are volunteer based, like [https://www.autistici.org/ Autistici]. and go for horizontal organisational structures. Feminist and activist servers provide space in the internet for the ones who don’t have the means to organise otherwise. The resources and ways of organising for these servers are different from the cooperatives or associations whose structure is inherited from the model they are registered with.

[[File:ATNOFS-Varia-insert-ooooo.jpg|thumb|ooooo atnofs insert diagrams from varia, systerserver, servus]]

TITiPI acknowledges and is connected to the history of community, art and feminist servers and wants to support this network. The art servers started as a way to make autonomous self-managed servers that support artists values and practices. They are often financed by cultural or private funds.

<blockquote>I joined (Irational) sometime in 2000s, I can't remember when and originally it was much more a collective of people working together and then since the early 2010's I think, mid 2010's, there was a bit of a reshuffle of personnel and stuff, so the constituency changed to a smaller group and we actually reformed. We were going to disband Irational and then we actually reformed as an art server collective and we decided we are not really working together but what we have in common is that we're using the server and that is actually what the collective is now. It's the collective that uses the server together and wants to use the server together. And another real defining feature of the server the whole time has been resisting virtualization. 

— ''quote from interview with Kate Rich'' </blockquote>

The screen seems to become brighter as my eyes get tired. What if we skip the online hosting and create a local physical server at TITiPI’s office next to the desks, in a corner, on a Raspberry Pi? All our data would stay on this machine and we would connect with SSH from home, but then we will also have to maintain it ourselves. There is something there about the romanticism of a physical toolbox as a sovereign object. If we choose to do that we will need to think of a backup plan as it will be an experimental set up and all our data will stay offline. We won’t have a provider to take care of that.

Our list has been reduced because of our priorities. We need SSH and we would like to have a VPS. Who has resources for providing VPS? Resources of labour, time, finances, technical knowledge. This made self-defined feminist servers fall out of the selection. How to be financially sustainable, while keeping up with your own values? How to keep up with infrastructural maintenance if the scale of the users, community, members and data is big?

<blockquote>The services we offer have no defined price, but as you may easily imagine, keeping the whole system working (i.e. hardware and hosting) is very expensive (at the moment it ranges around 13,000 euro every year).<ref>https://www.autistici.org/services/</ref></blockquote>

Servus and Maadix provide a series of ''free/libre'' tools that can be installed separately through their interface but they also provide a VPS with SSH access. With Greenhost, Hetzner and Linode there is more flexibility: you can create your own VPS and customize it for your own needs through their interface or the terminal and install whatever tools you want from scratch without a visual interface.

Technical information and knowledge of digital infrastructure circulate between groups that are tech-oriented with a difficulty to cross with other groups, including feminist servers. The sys admin tasks are mostly taken by cis men but feminist servers are radical about that. They find important to have sys admins that are not cis men. For example Systerserver and Anarchaserver are learning by themselves together how to do this task.

Many of the servers in the list provide only tools, as a radical way to support small groups, collectives, activists that need privacy and shifting away from Google drive when they want to organise politically and socially. It seems that being limited to tool packages instead of having full access to a server can make things comprehensible and compact for these small groups that have limited sys admin knowledge or can’t hire a technician.

[[copyrights issue? Screenshot of main page with services by [https://futuretic.fr/ FuturEtic]]]

[[copyrights issue? Screenshot of tools from codigosur]]

== Final decision and server transfer ==

We are about to make our decision! Our list ended up to be very small.

On 7th of November in an online call between Helen in Basel, Femke in Brussels and Aggeliki in Rotterdam we limited our list to four options: Constant, Greenhost, Servus, Zaclys. The selection consists of a diversity of scales and positioning that we found interesting to think of. First, we move on with the decision to transfer our mailboxes to Irational hosted at Servus. The rest of the functionalities will be hosted somewhere else.

From our conversations with Femke: “The choice for irational.org opens the possibility for discussions around dependencies, trust and frictions within shared collective servers. Irational.org is an ally art server who uses and maintains its own server for many years. Hosting such a private service at a friend’s environment doesn’t come only with convenience. The closeness to the material of the server makes the dependency more tangible.” [reference/quote from colophon?]

[[copyrights issue? towel design by psaroskalazines|towel design by psaroskalazines]]

Femke and I are planning different moments for the server transfer to happen in the office of TITiPI. What it is about to take place comes down into three moments; the backup and save of data from the old server, the installation of the necessary software in the new server and the transfer of the old data in the new server.

Specifically we are following these steps:

* Mail transfer from Gandi to irational
* Create a Virtual Private Server (VPS) in the new server
* Install Apache2 and configure domains
* Install and migrate MediaWiki
** Back up the wiki on the Linode VPS
** Upgrade MediaWiki in Linode
** Install MediaWiki and plugins in the Greenhost VPS
** Transfer database and media files from Linode to Greenhost
* Install Wiki-to-pdf
* Install Pico
* Install and configure Certbot

We find ourselves between two virtual spaces and one office, among other indirectly connected spaces like the rooms of our distant collaborators and the office locations of the servers.

=== Trust relationships ===
By now, 14th of November 2023, the office is warm and cozy. Throughout the time I am writing this report I have been noticing a lot of slow and small efforts to renovate the building and set up the heating, by the artists and organisations who share the space with TITiPI. Another infrastructure that needs care.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 15-06-42.png|thumb|Femke and Aggeliki entering Irational’s server space with Kate]]

On a shared screen together with Femke we get introduced to the mail server of Irational by Kate. We use an audio splitter to share the laptop for the call. Kate described her experience as an amateur sys admin that had to spend a lot of time to learn and set up the mail server. After that we start the process that has been documented [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Server_transfer_documentation#Mail_transfer here].

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 14-56-26.png|thumb|Screenshot from the TITiPI’s mail transfer with Kate, Femke and Aggeliki during an online 3 hours call]]

Irational uses the Alpine email client. Kate takes us its depths. That is where we start to set up our new email accounts before we configure them in Thunderbird. Femke gets excited on the fact that she can send emails to other Irational accounts through the terminal.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 15-15-07.png|thumb|Using the email client Alpine]]

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 17-04-20.png|thumb|Screenhost from the moment of looking for the syntax of the TXT records. Finding the right syntax for this value was the biggest challenge. This is part of the ''trust relationships'' between the different providers]]

After some more DNS configurations we test if it is possible to exchange emails with ‘outside’ accounts and especially with Gmail that has many security filters for mail servers other than the commercial ones.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-15 13-59-52.png|thumb|Exchange test emails with a Gmail account]]

After three hours of tryouts we manage to make it work! Very proudly and with enjoyment for sharing a technical task together we say goodbye to each other and arrange a next meeting for a final check up.

=== A choice that comes with discomforts ===
Just one day before the start of TITiPI’s server transfer away from Linode on the 28th of November, Helen found the Swiss server ungleich.ch and it seemed like an interesting choice because of the small scale (in terms of community and servers), their experimental attitude and their choice to reduce energy consumption; they avoid using systems for cooling their servers by spreading the servers at the Swiss mountains in old, abandoned buildings.

Ungleich.ch is one of the good options but it is more expensive than other providers. They offer a cheaper choice by choosing to have only ‘ipv6’. But we had to dig in to understand the difference of ipv4 and ipv6. From wikipedia: “IPv6 is the most recent version of the Internet Protocol, developed to deal with the long-anticipated problem of IPv4 address exhaustion” We found a [https://stats.labs.apnic.net/ipv6 map] that shows which countries have implemented IPv6 and it seems that if we only use this address then many places won’t have access to the website of TITiPI. So we choose to have both addresses.

We also notice that this provider is using Stripe for their payment system. In a [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Frontier parallel universe of TITiPI] we give attention to and critique Stripe because of its connections with the Carbon Removal industry.

[[copyright issues? Ungleich.ch payment system with Stripe]]

Another urgency appears while we are looking at different choices; together with many other organisations, we have been thinking about ways to host and maintain infrastructures in solidarity with communities and networks we are part of. This would mean, for example, hosting digitally a Palestinian video film archive, or research by sex workers. Solidarity is only partially a question of caring for privacy and security because it matters where and how we host our digital infrastructures and whether these spaces do or do not support the flourishing of different lives and struggles. This need make us think again if the server we choose would be suitable for something like that.

Constant and Servus are two accomplice servers that already provide to TITiPI some of their services. Zaclys is a member of Chatons that support open source values and it is located in France. We contacted them to see if they could be an option but they never responded to us.

We wanted to work with a company that provide ‘green’ infrastructure. Greenhost seem to be a good choice. It provides a familiar interface to us, good support and backup option. It has a positioning as an alternative to AWS. So far great, but what about its ‘green’ hosting vision? Is it a solarpunk vision, a green cloud utopia? Is their infrastructure resource ‘hungry’? What are the privacy limits when the material hosted in the servers is political and sensitive?

We choose Greenhost with all the discomforts that this choice entails and with the desire to keep the critique and dialogue alive.

Only by December 2023 we manage to arrange a call with one of Greenhost’s former Managing Directors to get a feeling and more information about their approach and sensitivity. Accordind to him Greenhost exists in the intersection of activism and technology. It provides consultancy, sustainability solutions in tech projects and structured maintenance; they go for best quality with lowest environmental impact; they maintain the same hardware as much as possible and balance that with higher efficiency; they keep backups at an already existing data center in the university of Amsterdam.

[paragraph for Greenhost include?]

=== Installing, tranferring, saving, copying, … ===
On the 28th of November sitting on the sunny corner of the couch next to the radiator, and with warm coffee cups waiting for us on a low table, Femke and I cover our legs with a blanket and open our laptops.

I ask Femke to jumb in a tmux session for sharing terminal with this command: <code>sudo tmux attach -t webserver</code>. We start by cleaning the old server and make backups of the files.

We take a lunch break. Femke finds out that if we eat three recurrent meals every week in the office we can have a nice variety of food; lentiles soup, orecchiette pasta with brocoli, rizzoto with mushrooms and lots of fruits. Sometime ago we decided to make multiple short breaks throughout the day because of computer fatigue. One day I removed all the files from my computer that were older than 90 days because I accidentally run a command on the terminal instead of a bash script to test the setting up of [https://gitlab.constantvzw.org/titipi/burrow Burrow]. I left this comment in the initial script:

<code># VERY DANGEROUS COMMAND find *txt -mindepth 1 -mtime +$RETAIN -delete</code>
The next day we set up the new server and install all the necessary software including a new version of the MediaWiki. We arrange a meeting with Martino Morandi, member of Constant, who created the wiki-to-pdf to help us installing this software and tranfer the MediaWiki in the new server. On the 1st of December we successfully install the wiki-to-pdf and because of limited time we decided to meet one more time at the end of the month for the rest.

[[File:Virtual-env-debian.png|thumb|Screenshot from the wiki-to-pdf installation to the new server with Martino, Femke, Aggeliki. Debian supports a different way to create virtual environments for installing python packages and libraries. We try it but it failed.]]

On the 28th we meet with Martino online to complete the transfer, which includes copying the old database of MediaWiki, activate the old plugins and fix any issues on the way. We are all located in different countries (Italy, Greece, Belgium) and so we share a tmux session. We follow the guides but on the way we had to do some research and configure a lot of things to make the MediaWiki work. Martino was hunting a php module. It seemed that php has shifted to free software culture in an attempt to find another business model. It is not surprising it happens in the context of Ubuntu. The issue is recorded [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Server_transfer_documentation#MediaWiki_upgrade_issues here].

[[File:Firefox Screenshot 2024-01-10T13-59-40.398Z.png|thumb|"Is Titipi.org down?" Helen asks after the transfer. It seems that her browser cache was preventing her from seeing the website]]

The process is documented in our diary and then transferred to a [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Server_transfer_documentation wiki page]. By January 2024 the server transfer and the deletion of our Linode account has been completed.

== Glossaries ==

Terms italized in the report are included in these glossaries:

* [https://varia.zone/ATNOFS/ATNOFS-screen.pdf Glossary of A Traversal Network of Feminist Servers (ATNOFS) publication]
* [[Glossary|TITiPI's glossary]]

== References ==

* https://journals.openedition.org/ardeth/2194?lang=en
* https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec/31/white-south-africa-ubuntu-african-tutu
* https://thefunambulist.net/magazine/redefining-our-terms/ubuntu-a-black-radical-demand-for-reparations
* https://www.bloomsburycollections.com/monograph-detail?docid=b-9781350351042&pdfid=9781350351042.ch-8.pdf&tocid=b-9781350351042-chapter8
* https://thebastion.co.in/politics-and/tech/a-feminist-server-to-help-people-own-their-own-data/
* https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec/31/white-south-africa-ubuntu-african-tutu
* https://thebastion.co.in/politics-and/tech/a-feminist-server-to-help-people-own-their-own-data/ (from eu to india owning data and infrastructure is very powerful for many reasons)
* [https://monoskop.org/Community_servers#Publications Monoskop community servers page]
* https://github.com/redis/redis/issues/3185 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-53050955
* https://www.theserverside.com/opinion/Master-slave-terminology-alternatives-you-can-use-right-now

== Colophon ==

The text was drafted in pad.xpub.nl

From cloud to crowd: a report on a server transfer

2024-07-16T13:00:07Z

Angeliki:

= From cloud to crowd<ref>The term comes from ... (not sure if it is included in the title)</ref>: A report on a server transfer =

This text is a report on a server migration that took place within the institutional framework of [https://titipi.org/ The Institute for Technology in the Public Interest (TITiPI)], a trans-practice gathering of activists, artists, engineers and theorists. TITiPI convenes communities to articulate, activate and re-imagine together what computational technologies in the 'public interest' might be. This report is an infrastructural ethnography and aims to rethink, through a technical process, what ''hosting'' a server means for a community, institution, cultural organisation dealing with technological discomforts and often inaccessible complex digital infrastructures.

A ''server'' is a computer (or a piece of software/hardware) that provides functionalities via a network (Internet). A ''server migration'' is the process of moving data and transferring software from one server to another with the use of specified tools. Performing such process accommodates a practical and technical solution to fix the problem of an outdated server that is slow or has limited storage. But it also affects the values, the structure and infrastructural imaginations of the organisations it supports. TITiPI desired(s) to go with hosting and maintain its own virtual private server instead of outsourcing these services to external tech companies. In times of server providers’ scaling up ( ‘''cloud hosting''’ ) and digitizing governmental bureaucracies what does it mean to host your own digital space for supporting your communities and work? What does it mean to have an independent infrastructure? What (non-)dependencies are chosen or taken for granted by institutions when using hosting services?

As a researcher at TITiPI I have been caring for the task to investigate this server migration and execute it together with TITiPI’s member Femke Snelting. We meet weekly to keep track and make decisions. We share a markdown file hosted in the git of the cultural association [https://constantvzw.org/site/ Constant] that includes a diary of the server migration and reflections. Every now and then we meet online with our colleague Helen Pritchard, to discuss and share the process. This report shares extracts from the server diary and stories from the process.

== Migration or … ? ==

In the cold newly installed office of TITiPI located in the Koekelberg district of Brussels, I open Chromium in my computer, that runs the operating system Ubuntu, in order to translate quickly − with the installed Google Translate plugin; later I found out there is a DeepL version − the web pages of the different cooperatives, associations, companies that provide hosting services. While doing that I have this disturbing thought in my head that I try to ignore: the word ‘migration’ as a technical term to describe the movement from one server to the other. It makes me think of an [https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/13/technology/racist-computer-engineering-terms-ietf.html online conversation], happening for a few years now, about replacing computer engineering terminology to stop prevalence of racism in tech. Specifically the conversation [https://www.wired.com/story/tech-confronts-use-labels-master-slave/ evolves around the terms] ‘master/slave’, where one computing process or entity controls another, and ‘blacklists/whitelists’ used for directories of those things that are explicitly banned or allowed. Using metaphors like that for a technical process de-contextualizes a word from its origins and unavoidably perpetuates social injustices. It also shows that the context where such choices of language are made is privileged and untouched or non-triggered by these terms. White male computer engineers have build up this language. Could words like transferring, sharing, moving, copying, re-installing, shifting replace the word ‘migration’? From this point on in the report I decide to use the term ‘transfer’.

‘Ubuntu’ is also a word extracted from its original context. It is coming from the African Ubuntu philosophy. According to the creators of the software:

<blockquote>ubuntu |oǒ’boǒntoō| Ubuntu is an ancient African word meaning ‘humanity to others’. It is often described as reminding us that ‘I am what I am because of who we all are’. We bring the spirit of Ubuntu to the world of computers and software. The Ubuntu distribution represents the best of what the world’s software community has shared with the world. <ref>https://ubuntu.com/about</ref>
</blockquote>

Paraphrasing [https://thefunambulist.net/magazine/redefining-our-terms/ubuntu-a-black-radical-demand-for-reparations Panashe Chigumadzi] words: in contrast to the western conception of the human as individual, the African conception of the person is a social being who is always becoming, defined by and being responsible for the personhood of the others. "(T)he African philosophy best understood through the proverb found in Bantu languages across the continent, 'umuntu ngumuntu ngabanye bantu' (a person is a person through other people". <ref>https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec/31/white-south-africa-ubuntu-african-tutu</ref>

<blockquote>(D)espite the flourishing of Ubuntu in post-apartheid discourse, lending its name to software, businesses, books and philanthropic organisations, South Africa is a country in which we have, as Dladla argues, Ubuntu without Abantu. Just as Black people have been dispossessed of their land, Ubuntu has been dispossessed of its deeply radical demands for ethical historical and social relations among people. (...) post apartheid Ubuntu mistranslation 'I am because we are', individualized and interpersonalised Ubuntu, Christianised Ubuntu, mistranslated in order to justify crimes and violence. In Ubuntu violence can be punished even after generations, the misinterpretation of the term allowed individual forgiveness. <ref>https://thefunambulist.net/magazine/redefining-our-terms/ubuntu-a-black-radical-demand-for-reparations</ref>
</blockquote>

I skip these thoughts and I continue browsing the list of servers. While trying to stay focused something other distracts me; I encounter an [https://www.oziosi.org/ autonomous Italian server] with the title translated with DeepL: “:: a shelter for digital exiles ::” and an image of a woman, a child and a man leaving their home. Also a small introduction: “Exiled from the global village of social networks, we claim an internet that is a simple means of communication: immaterial, anonymous, imaginary, public when it makes sense and secret when we feel the need.”. I am wondering what does this mean for actual exiles having to protect their privacy when communicating back home? [https://techpolicy.press/how-to-open-an-outpost-in-social-media-exile/ ‘Social media exiles’] and ‘Twitter migration’ are terms used often after Twitter became X and users have moved to the Fediverse or other alternatives.

[[Screenshot of the 'digital exiles' image, image not included because of copyrights issues?]]

== TITiPI’s case of server transfer ==
On the 27th of September, sitting at the long desks side to side, Femke and I have an online call with Helen, while looking at the depths of our Virtual Private Server (VPS), provided by Linode, that runs Ubuntu on our laptop screens. Linode is an American hosting provider focusing on Linux-based virtual machines originally. The server is physically located in the UK. TITiPI currently uses the Linode server that Helen set up for hosting her own projects. She has been paying for Linode’s monthly fees so far.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-10-11 14-47-06.png|thumb|Screenshot of Linode Ubuntu server overview and terminal that shows a moment of figuring out what takes space in the server through SSH access]]

At the time it seemed a good choice, because it is based in UK, is Linux friendly and an alternative to Amazon Web Services (AWS), even though it was already identifying as ‘''cloud hosting''’. But in February 2023 it has been acquired by the American company Akamai that aims to scale up for [https://www.linode.com/global-infrastructure/ “computing power, optimizing performance and agility.”]. Akamai is actively changing its server policies into an increasingly intense cloud logic. This pushed forward the desire to move to a new place.

[[Screenshot of Linode website referring to scalability -- copyright issues?]]

At the moment in Linode we run pico, a flat CMS for the website https://titipi.org. There is a Mediawiki (you are reading a Mediawiki page right now) for notes and collective writing. On the wiki, we also publish our statutes, guidelines and other instituting documents. The wiki has a custom extension, called wiki-to-pdf. Each of these services will need a different way to be transferred. One approach is to build the new server space from scratch, copy the data with rsync and transfer only the Mediawiki, which includes installing a new version and copy the database and the media files.

While preparing to transfer the tools we are defining what are the practical needs and desirable priorities; we ended up on these server requirements:
* SSH access and wish for VPS
* affordable price (around €20/month)
* run a Free Software operating system, preferably Debian
* involves community work - slowing down, resisting to scaling and growth or ‘decloudification’ (small network of partners, less virtualization approach, location of servers nearby etc)
* 25-40GB storage space, 1-2 cores, 2-4GB RAM
* environmental angle
* service support in a language that we all understand (English mostly)

This server transfer happens with an intersectional and feminist approach and the desire to keep questioning. While moving away from Linode we include both the technical and the conceptual thinking in the process. There are a few things that we are looking at: 
* Where to be transferred to or what services to transfer to?
* How to be transferred and what to tranfer?
* What terminology, language we use?
* What (other) narratives of server hosting can we construct?

TITiPI seeks to exist with an infrastructure that supports inter-dependent practices and solidarity across struggles. It develops Counter Cloud Actions [ref] as a way to scale down, de-cloudify, articulate, contest and re-imagine the implications of computational infrastructures (‘the cloud’).

<blockquote>TITiPI develop tools from feminisms, queer theory, Free, Libre and Open Source software, intersectionality, anti-coloniality, disability studies, historical materialism and artistic practice to generate currently inexistent vocabularies, imaginaries and methodologies. TITiPI functions as an infrastructure to establish new ways in which socio-technical practices and technologies might support the public interest. <ref>https://docs.tangible-cloud.be/publications-pdf/02_snelting.pdf</ref></blockquote>

We are looking for servers that aspire some of these values.

=== A relational infrastructure narrative/ infra-mutuality/ inter-infrastructural narrative ===
[[File:Elastic solidarities.png|thumb]]
In June 2023 TITiPI received an email from Gandi to renew the domain titipi.org in 6 days, not realising that at the same time we would need to start paying for our titipi.org email hosting. We had missed reading to the end of another email sent in the middle of June, entitled: 'Pricing update'.

We consider to work with Kate Rich to move our mailboxes to the [http://irational.org/ Irational server], soon to be installed on a Raspberry Pi, hosted at Servus. Currently it is in a rack in the UK. We decide to do this transition slowly and until then renew the emails for 1-2 months through Gandi. Irational server resists virtualization, and as an art community project it makes it an interesting choice.

But why to go through all this effort and not just use one cloud server with mailboxes, file storage and web server together? TITiPI’s response to the question of building institutional digital infrastructure embodies an archipelagic and non-sovereign approach to dependencies. Rather than building a centralised server based on ‘cloud’ from which connections with other institutions and collectives can happen, it conceptualizes inter-infrastructural practices; from the creation of a [https://gitlab.constantvzw.org/titipi/burrow backup script] for saving locally etherpad pads from other servers, hosting emails at an art server (https://irational.org), creating an [https://books.lumbung.space/shelf/26 online bookshelf] on lumbung.space, using the xmpp chat from Varia to recording conversations with the sys admin that maintain the other servers. The institution re-imagines technological dependencies in dialogue with cultural institutions and art collectives.

[[File:Titipi-infra-diagram-JAN-24.png|thumb|none|alt=A diagram of TITiPI’s infrastructure. The diagram categorizes the elements according to tools/software (box), structure/organisational form (circle) and place (dashed line). For example Jitsi is the software, Greenhost is the organisation, meet.greenhost.net is the place.|A diagram of TITiPI’s infrastructure. The diagram categorizes the elements according to tools/software (box), structure/organisational form (circle) and place (dashed line). For example Jitsi is the software, Greenhost is the organisation, meet.greenhost.net is the place.]]

How to give life to the common space of TITiPI’s hosting infrastructures? What about building up social dependencies between the ones that host and the ones who are hosted as opposed to a technical independence? Infrastructural imaginations are often built by the Big Tech industry and governmental institutions. Instead, TITiPI practices a fluid inter-institutional approach supported by [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Infra_colophon a variety of hosts].

=== Selection of server providers ===
On the 7th of November through a shared screen at the [https://meet.greenhost.net/ video conferencing software Jitsi of Greenhost] we all three check a list of server providers I collected on a spreadsheet hosted in Constant’s cloud storage (built with Nextcloud software) where TITiPI has an account. I looked at associations, companies/businesses, cooperatives, communities coming from commercial context to social struggles, activist, feminist and other. Through a [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/List_server_networks list of networks] I found various servers mostly from Latin America and Europe.

The concept of autonomy, sovereignty, independence or self-managing characterizes most of the servers in the list. Some of them, like [https://www.autistici.org/ Autistici] promote this concept as a way to support anti-capitalist infrastructure and protect the privacy of the users as opposed to the Big Tech software practices.

<blockquote>"The vision is that we - the members of the cooperative - own our own data. This implies and has as a consequence that we will have to own our own infrastructure and have insight and control over the software we use to communicate on the web."<ref>https://monoskop.org/Servers Data Coop</ref></blockquote>

Femke had a hunch: "‘technological sovereignty’ and ‘data-sovereignty’ continue to be orientation devices to organise around. ‘Sovereignty’, together with ‘freedom’, ‘independence’ and ‘autonomy’, form an ideological cluster that implicitly and sometimes explicitly foregrounds separation rather than relation."

Servers can act as independent spaces but are also cultural devices and vibrant spaces. They can manifest different aspects of a full life and reach out to a multiplicity of entities.

Servus and Greenhost, seem to be two of our best choices as they cover a lot of the priorities and values of TITiPI. As one can read from their descriptions they both strive for owning their own data servers and data nodes (they have their own IP addresses) and be independent from third parties. The big difference is the scale of the infrastructure and their community and network.

<blockquote>Greenhost fully owns and controls its hardware, infrastructure and uplinks. This ensures independence from third parties and proper access control. On this hardware we run our fully virtualised platform. We stand for an Open Internet, and have always embraced open source software.<ref>https://greenhost.net/</ref></blockquote>

<blockquote>We (Servus) do not pass on any data to third parties. You will not receive commercial advertising from us or third parties. We are easily accessible and answer your questions personally. We and our servers are located at Kirchengasse 4 in Linz, Austria.<ref>https://book.servus.at/en/home/</ref></blockquote>

Even though Greenhost wants to reduce ecological damage, it does that mainly through hardware reductions and does not address scale. They have plans to expand and are part of a network of partners that want to transform Rotterdam into a big hub of data nodes for the upcoming digital transition. Linode is even bigger, it goes for [[https://www.akamai.com/newsroom/press-release/akamai-takes-cloud-computing-to-the-edge|“(p)lanetary scale”]]. Servus on the other hand has one room of data servers, is closer to the scale of their community and they maintain personal relations with them.

[[Image of the server room at Servus at Linz|Image of the server room at Servus at Linz?]]

=== Community server, feminist server, radical server, autonomous server, commercial server, art server, free server, ethical server, solidarity-based server, cooperative server, associative server, independent server, alternative server, non-commercial server, … ===
The spreadsheet starts to grow because of an endless/exhaustive burrow of small and big providers.

Some are outdated. 
Some are messy. 
Some have broken links. 
Some are [https://www.julienth37.fr/vps hard to understand]. 
Some require [https://www.actiu.info/index.en.html a lot of engagement]. 
Some use a language that imitates the narratives of Big Tech and agile computing. 
Some promote seamless “promissory logic” and “high hopes for a brighter future” (ref) 
Some are big or are scaling up (in matter of space, data centers, partners, users etc). 
Some support NGO’s or sport clubs.

[[copyright issues? Screenshot from main page of Co-op Web]]

We also looked at their financial model. Many radical servers stay small, are volunteer based, like [https://www.autistici.org/ Autistici]. and go for horizontal organisational structures. Feminist and activist servers provide space in the internet for the ones who don’t have the means to organise otherwise. The resources and ways of organising for these servers are different from the cooperatives or associations whose structure is inherited from the model they are registered with.

[[File:ATNOFS-Varia-insert-ooooo.jpg|thumb|ooooo atnofs insert diagrams from varia, systerserver, servus]]

TITiPI acknowledges and is connected to the history of community, art and feminist servers and wants to support this network. The art servers started as a way to make autonomous self-managed servers that support artists values and practices. They are often financed by cultural or private funds.

<blockquote>I joined (Irational) sometime in 2000s, I can't remember when and originally it was much more a collective of people working together and then since the early 2010's I think, mid 2010's, there was a bit of a reshuffle of personnel and stuff, so the constituency changed to a smaller group and we actually reformed. We were going to disband Irational and then we actually reformed as an art server collective and we decided we are not really working together but what we have in common is that we're using the server and that is actually what the collective is now. It's the collective that uses the server together and wants to use the server together. And another real defining feature of the server the whole time has been resisting virtualization. 

— ''quote from interview with Kate Rich'' </blockquote>

The screen seems to become brighter as my eyes get tired. What if we skip the online hosting and create a local physical server at TITiPI’s office next to the desks, in a corner, on a Raspberry Pi? All our data would stay on this machine and we would connect with SSH from home, but then we will also have to maintain it ourselves. There is something there about the romanticism of a physical toolbox as a sovereign object. If we choose to do that we will need to think of a backup plan as it will be an experimental set up and all our data will stay offline. We won’t have a provider to take care of that.

Our list has been reduced because of our priorities. We need SSH and we would like to have a VPS. Who has resources for providing VPS? Resources of labour, time, finances, technical knowledge. This made self-defined feminist servers fall out of the selection. How to be financially sustainable, while keeping up with your own values? How to keep up with infrastructural maintenance if the scale of the users, community, members and data is big?

<blockquote>The services we offer have no defined price, but as you may easily imagine, keeping the whole system working (i.e. hardware and hosting) is very expensive (at the moment it ranges around 13,000 euro every year).<ref>https://www.autistici.org/services/</ref></blockquote>

Servus and Maadix provide a series of ''free/libre'' tools that can be installed separately through their interface but they also provide a VPS with SSH access. With Greenhost, Hetzner and Linode there is more flexibility: you can create your own VPS and customize it for your own needs through their interface or the terminal and install whatever tools you want from scratch without a visual interface.

Technical information and knowledge of digital infrastructure circulate between groups that are tech-oriented with a difficulty to cross with other groups, including feminist servers. The sys admin tasks are mostly taken by cis men but feminist servers are radical about that. They find important to have sys admins that are not cis men. For example Systerserver and Anarchaserver are learning by themselves together how to do this task.

Many of the servers in the list provide only tools, as a radical way to support small groups, collectives, activists that need privacy and shifting away from Google drive when they want to organise politically and socially. It seems that being limited to tool packages instead of having full access to a server can make things comprehensible and compact for these small groups that have limited sys admin knowledge or can’t hire a technician.

[[copyrights issue? Screenshot of main page with services by [https://futuretic.fr/ FuturEtic]]]

[[copyrights issue? Screenshot of tools from codigosur]]

== Final decision and server transfer ==

We are about to make our decision! Our list ended up to be very small.

On 7th of November in an online call between Helen in Basel, Femke in Brussels and Aggeliki in Rotterdam we limited our list to four options: Constant, Greenhost, Servus, Zaclys. The selection consists of a diversity of scales and positioning that we found interesting to think of. First, we move on with the decision to transfer our mailboxes to Irational hosted at Servus. The rest of the functionalities will be hosted somewhere else.

From our conversations with Femke: “The choice for irational.org opens the possibility for discussions around dependencies, trust and frictions within shared collective servers. Irational.org is an ally art server who uses and maintains its own server for many years. Hosting such a private service at a friend’s environment doesn’t come only with convenience. The closeness to the material of the server makes the dependency more tangible.” [reference/quote from colophon?]

[[copyrights issue? towel design by psaroskalazines|towel design by psaroskalazines]]

Femke and I are planning different moments for the server transfer to happen in the office of TITiPI. What it is about to take place comes down into three moments; the backup and save of data from the old server, the installation of the necessary software in the new server and the transfer of the old data in the new server.

Specifically we are following these steps:

* Mail transfer from Gandi to irational
* Create a Virtual Private Server (VPS) in the new server
* Install Apache2 and configure domains
* Install and migrate MediaWiki
** Back up the wiki on the Linode VPS
** Upgrade MediaWiki in Linode
** Install MediaWiki and plugins in the Greenhost VPS
** Transfer database and media files from Linode to Greenhost
* Install Wiki-to-pdf
* Install Pico
* Install and configure Certbot

We find ourselves between two virtual spaces and one office, among other indirectly connected spaces like the rooms of our distant collaborators and the office locations of the servers.

=== Trust relationships ===
By now, 14th of November 2023, the office is warm and cozy. Throughout the time I am writing this report I have been noticing a lot of slow and small efforts to renovate the building and set up the heating, by the artists and organisations who share the space with TITiPI. Another infrastructure that needs care.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 15-06-42.png|thumb|Femke and Aggeliki entering Irational’s server space with Kate]]

On a shared screen together with Femke we get introduced to the mail server of Irational by Kate. We use an audio splitter to share the laptop for the call. Kate described her experience as an amateur sys admin that had to spend a lot of time to learn and set up the mail server. After that we start the process that has been documented [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Server_transfer_documentation#Mail_transfer here].

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 14-56-26.png|thumb|Screenshot from the TITiPI’s mail transfer with Kate, Femke and Aggeliki during an online 3 hours call]]

Irational uses the Alpine email client. Kate takes us its depths. That is where we start to set up our new email accounts before we configure them in Thunderbird. Femke gets excited on the fact that she can send emails to other Irational accounts through the terminal.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 15-15-07.png|thumb|Using the email client Alpine]]

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 17-04-20.png|thumb|Screenhost from the moment of looking for the syntax of the TXT records. Finding the right syntax for this value was the biggest challenge. This is part of the ''trust relationships'' between the different providers]]

After some more DNS configurations we test if it is possible to exchange emails with ‘outside’ accounts and especially with Gmail that has many security filters for mail servers other than the commercial ones.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-15 13-59-52.png|thumb|Exchange test emails with a Gmail account]]

After three hours of tryouts we manage to make it work! Very proudly and with enjoyment for sharing a technical task together we say goodbye to each other and arrange a next meeting for a final check up.

=== A choice that comes with discomforts ===
Just one day before the start of TITiPI’s server transfer away from Linode on the 28th of November, Helen found the Swiss server ungleich.ch and it seemed like an interesting choice because of the small scale (in terms of community and servers), their experimental attitude and their choice to reduce energy consumption; they avoid using systems for cooling their servers by spreading the servers at the Swiss mountains in old, abandoned buildings.

Ungleich.ch is one of the good options but it is more expensive than other providers. They offer a cheaper choice by choosing to have only ‘ipv6’. But we had to dig in to understand the difference of ipv4 and ipv6. From wikipedia: “IPv6 is the most recent version of the Internet Protocol, developed to deal with the long-anticipated problem of IPv4 address exhaustion” We found a [https://stats.labs.apnic.net/ipv6 map] that shows which countries have implemented IPv6 and it seems that if we only use this address then many places won’t have access to the website of TITiPI. So we choose to have both addresses.

We also notice that this provider is using Stripe for their payment system. In a [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Frontier parallel universe of TITiPI] we give attention to and critique Stripe because of its connections with the Carbon Removal industry.

[[copyright issues? Ungleich.ch payment system with Stripe]]

Another urgency appears while we are looking at different choices; together with many other organisations, we have been thinking about ways to host and maintain infrastructures in solidarity with communities and networks we are part of. This would mean, for example, hosting digitally a Palestinian video film archive, or research by sex workers. Solidarity is only partially a question of caring for privacy and security because it matters where and how we host our digital infrastructures and whether these spaces do or do not support the flourishing of different lives and struggles. This need make us think again if the server we choose would be suitable for something like that.

Constant and Servus are two accomplice servers that already provide to TITiPI some of their services. Zaclys is a member of Chatons that support open source values and it is located in France. We contacted them to see if they could be an option but they never responded to us.

We wanted to work with a company that provide ‘green’ infrastructure. Greenhost seem to be a good choice. It provides a familiar interface to us, good support and backup option. It has a positioning as an alternative to AWS. So far great, but what about its ‘green’ hosting vision? Is it a solarpunk vision, a green cloud utopia? Is their infrastructure resource ‘hungry’? What are the privacy limits when the material hosted in the servers is political and sensitive?

We choose Greenhost with all the discomforts that this choice entails and with the desire to keep the critique and dialogue alive.

Only by December 2023 we manage to arrange a call with one of Greenhost’s former Managing Directors to get a feeling and more information about their approach and sensitivity. Accordind to him Greenhost exists in the intersection of activism and technology. It provides consultancy, sustainability solutions in tech projects and structured maintenance; they go for best quality with lowest environmental impact; they maintain the same hardware as much as possible and balance that with higher efficiency; they keep backups at an already existing data center in the university of Amsterdam.

[paragraph for Greenhost include?]

=== Installing, tranferring, saving, copying, … ===
On the 28th of November sitting on the sunny corner of the couch next to the radiator, and with warm coffee cups waiting for us on a low table, Femke and I cover our legs with a blanket and open our laptops.

I ask Femke to jumb in a tmux session for sharing terminal with this command: <code>sudo tmux attach -t webserver</code>. We start by cleaning the old server and make backups of the files.

We take a lunch break. Femke finds out that if we eat three recurrent meals every week in the office we can have a nice variety of food; lentiles soup, orecchiette pasta with brocoli, rizzoto with mushrooms and lots of fruits. Sometime ago we decided to make multiple short breaks throughout the day because of computer fatigue. One day I removed all the files from my computer that were older than 90 days because I accidentally run a command on the terminal instead of a bash script to test the setting up of [https://gitlab.constantvzw.org/titipi/burrow Burrow]. I left this comment in the initial script:

<code># VERY DANGEROUS COMMAND find *txt -mindepth 1 -mtime +$RETAIN -delete</code>
The next day we set up the new server and install all the necessary software including a new version of the MediaWiki. We arrange a meeting with Martino Morandi, member of Constant, who created the wiki-to-pdf to help us installing this software and tranfer the MediaWiki in the new server. On the 1st of December we successfully install the wiki-to-pdf and because of limited time we decided to meet one more time at the end of the month for the rest.

[[File:Virtual-env-debian.png|thumb|Screenshot from the wiki-to-pdf installation to the new server with Martino, Femke, Aggeliki. Debian supports a different way to create virtual environments for installing python packages and libraries. We try it but it failed.]]

On the 28th we meet with Martino online to complete the transfer, which includes copying the old database of MediaWiki, activate the old plugins and fix any issues on the way. We are all located in different countries (Italy, Greece, Belgium) and so we share a tmux session. We follow the guides but on the way we had to do some research and configure a lot of things to make the MediaWiki work. Martino was hunting a php module. It seemed that php has shifted to free software culture in an attempt to find another business model. It is not surprising it happens in the context of Ubuntu. The issue is recorded [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Server_transfer_documentation#MediaWiki_upgrade_issues here].

[[File:Firefox Screenshot 2024-01-10T13-59-40.398Z.png|thumb|"Is Titipi.org down?" Helen asks after the transfer. It seems that her browser cache was preventing her from seeing the website]]

The process is documented in our diary and then transferred to a [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Server_transfer_documentation wiki page]. By January 2024 the server transfer and the deletion of our Linode account has been completed.

== Glossaries ==

Terms italized in the report are included in these glossaries:

*https://varia.zone/ATNOFS/ATNOFS-screen.pdf
* https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Glossary

== References ==

* https://journals.openedition.org/ardeth/2194?lang=en
* https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec/31/white-south-africa-ubuntu-african-tutu
* https://thefunambulist.net/magazine/redefining-our-terms/ubuntu-a-black-radical-demand-for-reparations
* https://www.bloomsburycollections.com/monograph-detail?docid=b-9781350351042&pdfid=9781350351042.ch-8.pdf&tocid=b-9781350351042-chapter8
* https://thebastion.co.in/politics-and/tech/a-feminist-server-to-help-people-own-their-own-data/
* https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec/31/white-south-africa-ubuntu-african-tutu
* https://thebastion.co.in/politics-and/tech/a-feminist-server-to-help-people-own-their-own-data/ (from eu to india owning data and infrastructure is very powerful for many reasons)
* [https://monoskop.org/Community_servers#Publications Monoskop community servers page]
* https://github.com/redis/redis/issues/3185 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-53050955
* https://www.theserverside.com/opinion/Master-slave-terminology-alternatives-you-can-use-right-now

== Colophon ==

The text was drafted in pad.xpub.nl

From cloud to crowd: a report on a server transfer

2024-07-16T12:54:25Z

Angeliki:

= From cloud to crowd<ref>The term comes from ... (not sure if it is included in the title)</ref>: A report on a server transfer =

This text is a report on a server migration that took place within the institutional framework of [https://titipi.org/ The Institute for Technology in the Public Interest (TITiPI)], a trans-practice gathering of activists, artists, engineers and theorists. TITiPI convenes communities to articulate, activate and re-imagine together what computational technologies in the 'public interest' might be. This report is an infrastructural ethnography and aims to rethink, through a technical process, what hosting a server means for a community, institution, cultural organisation dealing with technological discomforts and often inaccessible complex digital infrastructures.

A server is a computer (or a piece of software/hardware) that provides functionalities via a network (Internet). A server migration is the process of moving data and transferring software from one server to another with the use of specified tools. Performing such process accommodates a practical and technical solution to fix the problem of an outdated server that is slow or has limited storage. But it also affects the values, the structure and infrastructural imaginations of the organisations it supports. TITiPI desired(s) to go with hosting and maintain its own virtual private server instead of outsourcing these services to external tech companies. In times of server providers’ scaling up ( ‘cloud hosting’ ) and digitizing governmental bureaucracies what does it mean to host your own digital space for supporting your communities and work? What does it mean to have an independent infrastructure? What (non-)dependencies are chosen or taken for granted by institutions when using hosting services?

As a researcher at TITiPI I have been caring for the task to investigate this server migration and execute it together with TITiPI’s member Femke Snelting. We meet weekly to keep track and make decisions. We share a markdown file hosted in the git of the cultural association [https://constantvzw.org/site/ Constant] that includes a diary of the server migration and reflections. Every now and then we meet online with our colleague Helen Pritchard, to discuss and share the process. This report shares extracts from the server diary and stories from the process.

== Migration or … ? ==

In the cold newly installed office of TITiPI located in the Koekelberg district of Brussels, I open Chromium in my computer, that runs the operating system Ubuntu, in order to translate quickly − with the installed Google Translate plugin; later I found out there is a DeepL version − the web pages of the different cooperatives, associations, companies that provide hosting services. While doing that I have this disturbing thought in my head that I try to ignore: the word ‘migration’ as a technical term to describe the movement from one server to the other. It makes me think of an [https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/13/technology/racist-computer-engineering-terms-ietf.html online conversation], happening for a few years now, about replacing computer engineering terminology to stop prevalence of racism in tech. Specifically the conversation [https://www.wired.com/story/tech-confronts-use-labels-master-slave/ evolves around the terms] ‘master/slave’, where one computing process or entity controls another, and ‘blacklists/whitelists’ used for directories of those things that are explicitly banned or allowed. Using metaphors like that for a technical process de-contextualizes a word from its origins and unavoidably perpetuates social injustices. It also shows that the context where such choices of language are made is privileged and untouched or non-triggered by these terms. White male computer engineers have build up this language. Could words like transferring, sharing, moving, copying, re-installing, shifting replace the word ‘migration’? From this point on in the report I decide to use the term ‘transfer’.

‘Ubuntu’ is also a word extracted from its original context. It is coming from the African Ubuntu philosophy. According to the creators of the software:

<blockquote>ubuntu |oǒ’boǒntoō| Ubuntu is an ancient African word meaning ‘humanity to others’. It is often described as reminding us that ‘I am what I am because of who we all are’. We bring the spirit of Ubuntu to the world of computers and software. The Ubuntu distribution represents the best of what the world’s software community has shared with the world. <ref>https://ubuntu.com/about</ref>
</blockquote>

Paraphrasing [https://thefunambulist.net/magazine/redefining-our-terms/ubuntu-a-black-radical-demand-for-reparations Panashe Chigumadzi] words: in contrast to the western conception of the human as individual, the African conception of the person is a social being who is always becoming, defined by and being responsible for the personhood of the others. "(T)he African philosophy best understood through the proverb found in Bantu languages across the continent, 'umuntu ngumuntu ngabanye bantu' (a person is a person through other people". <ref>https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec/31/white-south-africa-ubuntu-african-tutu</ref>

<blockquote>(D)espite the flourishing of Ubuntu in post-apartheid discourse, lending its name to software, businesses, books and philanthropic organisations, South Africa is a country in which we have, as Dladla argues, Ubuntu without Abantu. Just as Black people have been dispossessed of their land, Ubuntu has been dispossessed of its deeply radical demands for ethical historical and social relations among people. (...) post apartheid Ubuntu mistranslation 'I am because we are', individualized and interpersonalised Ubuntu, Christianised Ubuntu, mistranslated in order to justify crimes and violence. In Ubuntu violence can be punished even after generations, the misinterpretation of the term allowed individual forgiveness. <ref>https://thefunambulist.net/magazine/redefining-our-terms/ubuntu-a-black-radical-demand-for-reparations</ref>
</blockquote>

I skip these thoughts and I continue browsing the list of servers. While trying to stay focused something other distracts me; I encounter an [https://www.oziosi.org/ autonomous Italian server] with the title translated with DeepL: “:: a shelter for digital exiles ::” and an image of a woman, a child and a man leaving their home. Also a small introduction: “Exiled from the global village of social networks, we claim an internet that is a simple means of communication: immaterial, anonymous, imaginary, public when it makes sense and secret when we feel the need.”. I am wondering what does this mean for actual exiles having to protect their privacy when communicating back home? [https://techpolicy.press/how-to-open-an-outpost-in-social-media-exile/ ‘Social media exiles’] and ‘Twitter migration’ are terms used often after Twitter became X and users have moved to the Fediverse or other alternatives.

[[Screenshot of the 'digital exiles' image, image not included because of copyrights issues?]]

== TITiPI’s case of server transfer ==
On the 27th of September, sitting at the long desks side to side, Femke and I have an online call with Helen, while looking at the depths of our Virtual Private Server (VPS), provided by Linode, that runs Ubuntu on our laptop screens. Linode is an American hosting provider focusing on Linux-based virtual machines originally. The server is physically located in the UK. TITiPI currently uses the Linode server that Helen set up for hosting her own projects. She has been paying for Linode’s monthly fees so far.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-10-11 14-47-06.png|thumb|Screenshot of Linode Ubuntu server overview and terminal that shows a moment of figuring out what takes space in the server through SSH access]]

At the time it seemed a good choice, because it is based in UK, is Linux friendly and an alternative to Amazon Web Services (AWS), even though it was already identifying as ‘cloud hosting’. But in February 2023 it has been acquired by the American company Akamai that aims to scale up for [https://www.linode.com/global-infrastructure/ “computing power, optimizing performance and agility.”]. Akamai is actively changing its server policies into an increasingly intense cloud logic. This pushed forward the desire to move to a new place.

[[Screenshot of Linode website referring to scalability -- copyright issues?]]

At the moment in Linode we run pico, a flat CMS for the website https://titipi.org. There is a Mediawiki (you are reading a Mediawiki page right now) for notes and collective writing. On the wiki, we also publish our statutes, guidelines and other instituting documents. The wiki has a custom extension, called wiki-to-pdf. Each of these services will need a different way to be transferred. One approach is to build the new server space from scratch, copy the data with rsync and transfer only the Mediawiki, which includes installing a new version and copy the database and the media files.

While preparing to transfer the tools we are defining what are the practical needs and desirable priorities; we ended up on these server requirements:
* SSH access and wish for VPS
* affordable price (around €20/month)
* run a Free Software operating system, preferably Debian
* involves community work - slowing down, resisting to scaling and growth or ‘decloudification’ (small network of partners, less virtualization approach, location of servers nearby etc)
* 25-40GB storage space, 1-2 cores, 2-4GB RAM
* environmental angle
* service support in a language that we all understand (English mostly)

This server transfer happens with an intersectional and feminist approach and the desire to keep questioning. While moving away from Linode we include both the technical and the conceptual thinking in the process. There are a few things that we are looking at: 
* Where to be transferred to or what services to transfer to?
* How to be transferred and what to tranfer?
* What terminology, language we use?
* What (other) narratives of server hosting can we construct?

TITiPI seeks to exist with an infrastructure that supports inter-dependent practices and solidarity across struggles. It develops Counter Cloud Actions [ref] as a way to scale down, de-cloudify, articulate, contest and re-imagine the implications of computational infrastructures (‘the cloud’).

<blockquote>TITiPI develop tools from feminisms, queer theory, Free, Libre and Open Source software, intersectionality, anti-coloniality, disability studies, historical materialism and artistic practice to generate currently inexistent vocabularies, imaginaries and methodologies. TITiPI functions as an infrastructure to establish new ways in which socio-technical practices and technologies might support the public interest. <ref>https://docs.tangible-cloud.be/publications-pdf/02_snelting.pdf</ref></blockquote>

We are looking for servers that aspire some of these values.

=== A relational infrastructure narrative/ infra-mutuality/ inter-infrastructural narrative ===
[[File:Elastic solidarities.png|thumb]]
In June 2023 TITiPI received an email from Gandi to renew the domain titipi.org in 6 days, not realising that at the same time we would need to start paying for our titipi.org email hosting. We had missed reading to the end of another email sent in the middle of June, entitled: 'Pricing update'.

We consider to work with Kate Rich to move our mailboxes to the [http://irational.org/ Irational server], soon to be installed on a Raspberry Pi, hosted at Servus. Currently it is in a rack in the UK. We decide to do this transition slowly and until then renew the emails for 1-2 months through Gandi. Irational server resists virtualization, and as an art community project it makes it an interesting choice.

But why to go through all this effort and not just use one cloud server with mailboxes, file storage and web server together? TITiPI’s response to the question of building institutional digital infrastructure embodies an archipelagic and non-sovereign approach to dependencies. Rather than building a centralised server based on ‘cloud’ from which connections with other institutions and collectives can happen, it conceptualizes inter-infrastructural practices; from the creation of a [https://gitlab.constantvzw.org/titipi/burrow backup script] for saving locally etherpad pads from other servers, hosting emails at an art server (https://irational.org), creating an [https://books.lumbung.space/shelf/26 online bookshelf] on lumbung.space, using the xmpp chat from Varia to recording conversations with the sys admin that maintain the other servers. The institution re-imagines technological dependencies in dialogue with cultural institutions and art collectives.

[[File:Titipi-infra-diagram-JAN-24.png|thumb|none|alt=A diagram of TITiPI’s infrastructure. The diagram categorizes the elements according to tools/software (box), structure/organisational form (circle) and place (dashed line). For example Jitsi is the software, Greenhost is the organisation, meet.greenhost.net is the place.|A diagram of TITiPI’s infrastructure. The diagram categorizes the elements according to tools/software (box), structure/organisational form (circle) and place (dashed line). For example Jitsi is the software, Greenhost is the organisation, meet.greenhost.net is the place.]]

How to give life to the common space of TITiPI’s hosting infrastructures? What about building up social dependencies between the ones that host and the ones who are hosted as opposed to a technical independence? Infrastructural imaginations are often built by the Big Tech industry and governmental institutions. Instead, TITiPI practices a fluid inter-institutional approach supported by [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Infra_colophon a variety of hosts].

=== Selection of server providers ===
On the 7th of November through a shared screen at the [https://meet.greenhost.net/ video conferencing software Jitsi of Greenhost] we all three check a list of server providers I collected on a spreadsheet hosted in Constant’s cloud storage (built with Nextcloud software) where TITiPI has an account. I looked at associations, companies/businesses, cooperatives, communities coming from commercial context to social struggles, activist, feminist and other. Through a [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/List_server_networks list of networks] I found various servers mostly from Latin America and Europe.

The concept of autonomy, sovereignty, independence or self-managing characterizes most of the servers in the list. Some of them, like [https://www.autistici.org/ Autistici] promote this concept as a way to support anti-capitalist infrastructure and protect the privacy of the users as opposed to the Big Tech software practices.

<blockquote>"The vision is that we - the members of the cooperative - own our own data. This implies and has as a consequence that we will have to own our own infrastructure and have insight and control over the software we use to communicate on the web."<ref>https://monoskop.org/Servers Data Coop</ref></blockquote>

Femke had a hunch: "‘technological sovereignty’ and ‘data-sovereignty’ continue to be orientation devices to organise around. ‘Sovereignty’, together with ‘freedom’, ‘independence’ and ‘autonomy’, form an ideological cluster that implicitly and sometimes explicitly foregrounds separation rather than relation."

Servers can act as independent spaces but are also cultural devices and vibrant spaces. They can manifest different aspects of a full life and reach out to a multiplicity of entities.

Servus and Greenhost, seem to be two of our best choices as they cover a lot of the priorities and values of TITiPI. As one can read from their descriptions they both strive for owning their own data servers and data nodes (they have their own IP addresses) and be independent from third parties. The big difference is the scale of the infrastructure and their community and network.

<blockquote>Greenhost fully owns and controls its hardware, infrastructure and uplinks. This ensures independence from third parties and proper access control. On this hardware we run our fully virtualised platform. We stand for an Open Internet, and have always embraced open source software.<ref>https://greenhost.net/</ref></blockquote>

<blockquote>We (Servus) do not pass on any data to third parties. You will not receive commercial advertising from us or third parties. We are easily accessible and answer your questions personally. We and our servers are located at Kirchengasse 4 in Linz, Austria.<ref>https://book.servus.at/en/home/</ref></blockquote>

Even though Greenhost wants to reduce ecological damage, it does that mainly through hardware reductions and does not address scale. They have plans to expand and are part of a network of partners that want to transform Rotterdam into a big hub of data nodes for the upcoming digital transition. Linode is even bigger, it goes for [[https://www.akamai.com/newsroom/press-release/akamai-takes-cloud-computing-to-the-edge|“(p)lanetary scale”]]. Servus on the other hand has one room of data servers, is closer to the scale of their community and they maintain personal relations with them.

[[Image of the server room at Servus at Linz|Image of the server room at Servus at Linz?]]

=== Community server, feminist server, radical server, autonomous server, commercial server, art server, free server, ethical server, solidarity-based server, cooperative server, associative server, independent server, alternative server, non-commercial server, … ===
The spreadsheet starts to grow because of an endless/exhaustive burrow of small and big providers.

Some are outdated. 
Some are messy. 
Some have broken links. 
Some are [https://www.julienth37.fr/vps hard to understand]. 
Some require [https://www.actiu.info/index.en.html a lot of engagement]. 
Some use a language that imitates the narratives of Big Tech and agile computing. 
Some promote seamless “promissory logic” and “high hopes for a brighter future” (ref) 
Some are big or are scaling up (in matter of space, data centers, partners, users etc). 
Some support NGO’s or sport clubs.

[[copyright issues? Screenshot from main page of Co-op Web]]

We also looked at their financial model. Many radical servers stay small, are volunteer based, like [https://www.autistici.org/ Autistici]. and go for horizontal organisational structures. Feminist and activist servers provide space in the internet for the ones who don’t have the means to organise otherwise. The resources and ways of organising for these servers are different from the cooperatives or associations whose structure is inherited from the model they are registered with.

[[File:ATNOFS-Varia-insert-ooooo.jpg|thumb|ooooo atnofs insert diagrams from varia, systerserver, servus]]

TITiPI acknowledges and is connected to the history of community, art and feminist servers and wants to support this network. The art servers started as a way to make autonomous self-managed servers that support artists values and practices. They are often financed by cultural or private funds.

<blockquote>I joined (Irational) sometime in 2000s, I can't remember when and originally it was much more a collective of people working together and then since the early 2010's I think, mid 2010's, there was a bit of a reshuffle of personnel and stuff, so the constituency changed to a smaller group and we actually reformed. We were going to disband Irational and then we actually reformed as an art server collective and we decided we are not really working together but what we have in common is that we're using the server and that is actually what the collective is now. It's the collective that uses the server together and wants to use the server together. And another real defining feature of the server the whole time has been resisting virtualization. 

— ''quote from interview with Kate Rich'' </blockquote>

The screen seems to become brighter as my eyes get tired. What if we skip the online hosting and create a local physical server at TITiPI’s office next to the desks, in a corner, on a Raspberry Pi? All our data would stay on this machine and we would connect with SSH from home, but then we will also have to maintain it ourselves. There is something there about the romanticism of a physical toolbox as a sovereign object. If we choose to do that we will need to think of a backup plan as it will be an experimental set up and all our data will stay offline. We won’t have a provider to take care of that.

Our list has been reduced because of our priorities. We need SSH and we would like to have a VPS. Who has resources for providing VPS? Resources of labour, time, finances, technical knowledge. This made self-defined feminist servers fall out of the selection. How to be financially sustainable, while keeping up with your own values? How to keep up with infrastructural maintenance if the scale of the users, community, members and data is big?

<blockquote>The services we offer have no defined price, but as you may easily imagine, keeping the whole system working (i.e. hardware and hosting) is very expensive (at the moment it ranges around 13,000 euro every year).<ref>https://www.autistici.org/services/</ref></blockquote>

Servus and Maadix provide a series of free/libre tools that can be installed separately through their interface but they also provide a VPS with SSH access. With Greenhost, Hetzner and Linode there is more flexibility: you can create your own VPS and customize it for your own needs through their interface or the terminal and install whatever tools you want from scratch without a visual interface.

Technical information and knowledge of digital infrastructure circulate between groups that are tech-oriented with a difficulty to cross with other groups, including feminist servers. The sys admin tasks are mostly taken by cis men but feminist servers are radical about that. They find important to have sys admins that are not cis men. For example Systerserver and Anarchaserver are learning by themselves together how to do this task.

Many of the servers in the list provide only tools, as a radical way to support small groups, collectives, activists that need privacy and shifting away from Google drive when they want to organise politically and socially. It seems that being limited to tool packages instead of having full access to a server can make things comprehensible and compact for these small groups that have limited sys admin knowledge or can’t hire a technician.

[[copyrights issue? Screenshot of main page with services by [https://futuretic.fr/ FuturEtic]]]

[[copyrights issue? Screenshot of tools from codigosur]]

== Final decision and server transfer ==

We are about to make our decision! Our list ended up to be very small.

On 7th of November in an online call between Helen in Basel, Femke in Brussels and Aggeliki in Rotterdam we limited our list to four options: Constant, Greenhost, Servus, Zaclys. The selection consists of a diversity of scales and positioning that we found interesting to think of. First, we move on with the decision to transfer our mailboxes to Irational hosted at Servus. The rest of the functionalities will be hosted somewhere else.

From our conversations with Femke: “The choice for irational.org opens the possibility for discussions around dependencies, trust and frictions within shared collective servers. Irational.org is an ally art server who uses and maintains its own server for many years. Hosting such a private service at a friend’s environment doesn’t come only with convenience. The closeness to the material of the server makes the dependency more tangible.” [reference/quote from colophon?]

[[copyrights issue? towel design by psaroskalazines|towel design by psaroskalazines]]

Femke and I are planning different moments for the server transfer to happen in the office of TITiPI. What it is about to take place comes down into three moments; the backup and save of data from the old server, the installation of the necessary software in the new server and the transfer of the old data in the new server.

Specifically we are following these steps:

* Mail transfer from Gandi to irational
* Create a Virtual Private Server (VPS) in the new server
* Install Apache2 and configure domains
* Install and migrate MediaWiki
** Back up the wiki on the Linode VPS
** Upgrade MediaWiki in Linode
** Install MediaWiki and plugins in the Greenhost VPS
** Transfer database and media files from Linode to Greenhost
* Install Wiki-to-pdf
* Install Pico
* Install and configure Certbot

We find ourselves between two virtual spaces and one office, among other indirectly connected spaces like the rooms of our distant collaborators and the office locations of the servers.

=== Trust relationships ===
By now, 14th of November 2023, the office is warm and cozy. Throughout the time I am writing this report I have been noticing a lot of slow and small efforts to renovate the building and set up the heating, by the artists and organisations who share the space with TITiPI. Another infrastructure that needs care.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 15-06-42.png|thumb|Femke and Aggeliki entering Irational’s server space with Kate]]

On a shared screen together with Femke we get introduced to the mail server of Irational by Kate. We use an audio splitter to share the laptop for the call. Kate described her experience as an amateur sys admin that had to spend a lot of time to learn and set up the mail server. After that we start the process that has been documented [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Server_transfer_documentation#Mail_transfer here].

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 14-56-26.png|thumb|Screenshot from the TITiPI’s mail transfer with Kate, Femke and Aggeliki during an online 3 hours call]]

Irational uses the Alpine email client. Kate takes us its depths. That is where we start to set up our new email accounts before we configure them in Thunderbird. Femke gets excited on the fact that she can send emails to other Irational accounts through the terminal.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 15-15-07.png|thumb|Using the email client Alpine]]

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 17-04-20.png|thumb|Screenhost from the moment of looking for the syntax of the TXT records. Finding the right syntax for this value was the biggest challenge. This is part of the ''trust relationships'' between the different providers]]

After some more DNS configurations we test if it is possible to exchange emails with ‘outside’ accounts and especially with Gmail that has many security filters for mail servers other than the commercial ones.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-15 13-59-52.png|thumb|Exchange test emails with a Gmail account]]

After three hours of tryouts we manage to make it work! Very proudly and with enjoyment for sharing a technical task together we say goodbye to each other and arrange a next meeting for a final check up.

=== A choice that comes with discomforts ===
Just one day before the start of TITiPI’s server transfer away from Linode on the 28th of November, Helen found the Swiss server ungleich.ch and it seemed like an interesting choice because of the small scale (in terms of community and servers), their experimental attitude and their choice to reduce energy consumption; they avoid using systems for cooling their servers by spreading the servers at the Swiss mountains in old, abandoned buildings.

Ungleich.ch is one of the good options but it is more expensive than other providers. They offer a cheaper choice by choosing to have only ‘ipv6’. But we had to dig in to understand the difference of ipv4 and ipv6. From wikipedia: “IPv6 is the most recent version of the Internet Protocol, developed to deal with the long-anticipated problem of IPv4 address exhaustion” We found a [https://stats.labs.apnic.net/ipv6 map] that shows which countries have implemented IPv6 and it seems that if we only use this address then many places won’t have access to the website of TITiPI. So we choose to have both addresses.

We also notice that this provider is using Stripe for their payment system. In a [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Frontier parallel universe of TITiPI] we give attention to and critique Stripe because of its connections with the Carbon Removal industry.

[[copyright issues? Ungleich.ch payment system with Stripe]]

Another urgency appears while we are looking at different choices; together with many other organisations, we have been thinking about ways to host and maintain infrastructures in solidarity with communities and networks we are part of. This would mean, for example, hosting digitally a Palestinian video film archive, or research by sex workers. Solidarity is only partially a question of caring for privacy and security because it matters where and how we host our digital infrastructures and whether these spaces do or do not support the flourishing of different lives and struggles. This need make us think again if the server we choose would be suitable for something like that.

Constant and Servus are two accomplice servers that already provide to TITiPI some of their services. Zaclys is a member of Chatons that support open source values and it is located in France. We contacted them to see if they could be an option but they never responded to us.

We wanted to work with a company that provide ‘green’ infrastructure. Greenhost seem to be a good choice. It provides a familiar interface to us, good support and backup option. It has a positioning as an alternative to AWS. So far great, but what about its ‘green’ hosting vision? Is it a solarpunk vision, a green cloud utopia? Is their infrastructure resource ‘hungry’? What are the privacy limits when the material hosted in the servers is political and sensitive?

We choose Greenhost with all the discomforts that this choice entails and with the desire to keep the critique and dialogue alive.

Only by December 2023 we manage to arrange a call with one of Greenhost’s former Managing Directors to get a feeling and more information about their approach and sensitivity. Accordind to him Greenhost exists in the intersection of activism and technology. It provides consultancy, sustainability solutions in tech projects and structured maintenance; they go for best quality with lowest environmental impact; they maintain the same hardware as much as possible and balance that with higher efficiency; they keep backups at an already existing data center in the university of Amsterdam.

[paragraph for Greenhost include?]

=== Installing, tranferring, saving, copying, … ===
On the 28th of November sitting on the sunny corner of the couch next to the radiator, and with warm coffee cups waiting for us on a low table, Femke and I cover our legs with a blanket and open our laptops.

I ask Femke to jumb in a tmux session for sharing terminal with this command: <code>sudo tmux attach -t webserver</code>. We start by cleaning the old server and make backups of the files.

We take a lunch break. Femke finds out that if we eat three recurrent meals every week in the office we can have a nice variety of food; lentiles soup, orecchiette pasta with brocoli, rizzoto with mushrooms and lots of fruits. Sometime ago we decided to make multiple short breaks throughout the day because of computer fatigue. One day I removed all the files from my computer that were older than 90 days because I accidentally run a command on the terminal instead of a bash script to test the setting up of [https://gitlab.constantvzw.org/titipi/burrow Burrow]. I left this comment in the initial script:

<code># VERY DANGEROUS COMMAND find *txt -mindepth 1 -mtime +$RETAIN -delete</code>
The next day we set up the new server and install all the necessary software including a new version of the MediaWiki. We arrange a meeting with Martino Morandi, member of Constant, who created the wiki-to-pdf to help us installing this software and tranfer the MediaWiki in the new server. On the 1st of December we successfully install the wiki-to-pdf and because of limited time we decided to meet one more time at the end of the month for the rest.

[[File:Virtual-env-debian.png|thumb|Screenshot from the wiki-to-pdf installation to the new server with Martino, Femke, Aggeliki. Debian supports a different way to create virtual environments for installing python packages and libraries. We try it but it failed.]]

On the 28th we meet with Martino online to complete the transfer, which includes copying the old database of MediaWiki, activate the old plugins and fix any issues on the way. We are all located in different countries (Italy, Greece, Belgium) and so we share a tmux session. We follow the guides but on the way we had to do some research and configure a lot of things to make the MediaWiki work. Martino was hunting a php module. It seemed that php has shifted to free software culture in an attempt to find another business model. It is not surprising it happens in the context of Ubuntu. The issue is recorded [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Server_transfer_documentation#MediaWiki_upgrade_issues here].

[[File:Firefox Screenshot 2024-01-10T13-59-40.398Z.png|thumb|"Is Titipi.org down?" Helen asks after the transfer. It seems that her browser cache was preventing her from seeing the website]]

The process is documented in our diary and then transferred to a [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Server_transfer_documentation wiki page]. By January 2024 the server transfer and the deletion of our Linode account has been completed.

== Glossaries ==

* https://varia.zone/ATNOFS/ATNOFS-screen.pdf
* https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Glossary

Terms italized in the report:
* being hosted
* serving
* server
* server migration
* wiki-to-pdf: a publishing tool developed with Martino Morandi, itself based on work by OSP re-worked by Manetta Berends. Hackers and Designers in turn continued wiki-to-pdf as wiki2print
* free/libre tools

== References ==

* https://journals.openedition.org/ardeth/2194?lang=en
* https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec/31/white-south-africa-ubuntu-african-tutu
* https://thefunambulist.net/magazine/redefining-our-terms/ubuntu-a-black-radical-demand-for-reparations
* https://www.bloomsburycollections.com/monograph-detail?docid=b-9781350351042&pdfid=9781350351042.ch-8.pdf&tocid=b-9781350351042-chapter8
* https://thebastion.co.in/politics-and/tech/a-feminist-server-to-help-people-own-their-own-data/
* https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec/31/white-south-africa-ubuntu-african-tutu
* https://thebastion.co.in/politics-and/tech/a-feminist-server-to-help-people-own-their-own-data/ (from eu to india owning data and infrastructure is very powerful for many reasons)
* [https://monoskop.org/Community_servers#Publications Monoskop community servers page]
* https://github.com/redis/redis/issues/3185 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-53050955
* https://www.theserverside.com/opinion/Master-slave-terminology-alternatives-you-can-use-right-now

== Colophon ==

The text was drafted in pad.xpub.nl

From cloud to crowd: a report on a server transfer

2024-07-16T12:53:51Z

Angeliki:

= From cloud to crowd<ref>The term comes from ... (not sure if it is included in the title)</ref>: A report on a server transfer =

This text is a report on a server migration that took place within the institutional framework of [https://titipi.org/ The Institute for Technology in the Public Interest (TITiPI)], a trans-practice gathering of activists, artists, engineers and theorists. TITiPI convenes communities to articulate, activate and re-imagine together what computational technologies in the 'public interest' might be. This report is an infrastructural ethnography and aims to rethink, through a technical process, what hosting a server means for a community, institution, cultural organisation dealing with technological discomforts and often inaccessible complex digital infrastructures.

A server is a computer (or a piece of software/hardware) that provides functionalities via a network (Internet). A server migration is the process of moving data and transferring software from one server to another with the use of specified tools. Performing such process accommodates a practical and technical solution to fix the problem of an outdated server that is slow or has limited storage. But it also affects the values, the structure and infrastructural imaginations of the organisations it supports. TITiPI desired(s) to go with hosting and maintain its own virtual private server instead of outsourcing these services to external tech companies. In times of server providers’ scaling up ( ‘cloud hosting’ ) and digitizing governmental bureaucracies what does it mean to host your own digital space for supporting your communities and work? What does it mean to have an independent infrastructure? What (non-)dependencies are chosen or taken for granted by institutions when using hosting services?

As a researcher at TITiPI I have been caring for the task to investigate this server migration and execute it together with TITiPI’s member Femke Snelting. We meet weekly to keep track and make decisions. We share a markdown file hosted in the git of the cultural association [https://constantvzw.org/site/ Constant] that includes a diary of the server migration and reflections. Every now and then we meet online with our colleague Helen Pritchard, to discuss and share the process. This report shares extracts from the server diary and stories from the process.

== Migration or … ? ==

In the cold newly installed office of TITiPI located in the Koekelberg district of Brussels, I open Chromium in my computer, that runs the operating system Ubuntu, in order to translate quickly − with the installed Google Translate plugin; later I found out there is a DeepL version − the web pages of the different cooperatives, associations, companies that provide hosting services. While doing that I have this disturbing thought in my head that I try to ignore: the word ‘migration’ as a technical term to describe the movement from one server to the other. It makes me think of an [https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/13/technology/racist-computer-engineering-terms-ietf.html online conversation], happening for a few years now, about replacing computer engineering terminology to stop prevalence of racism in tech. Specifically the conversation [https://www.wired.com/story/tech-confronts-use-labels-master-slave/ evolves around the terms] ‘master/slave’, where one computing process or entity controls another, and ‘blacklists/whitelists’ used for directories of those things that are explicitly banned or allowed. Using metaphors like that for a technical process de-contextualizes a word from its origins and unavoidably perpetuates social injustices. It also shows that the context where such choices of language are made is privileged and untouched or non-triggered by these terms. White male computer engineers have build up this language. Could words like transferring, sharing, moving, copying, re-installing, shifting replace the word ‘migration’? From this point on in the report I decide to use the term ‘transfer’.

‘Ubuntu’ is also a word extracted from its original context. It is coming from the African Ubuntu philosophy. According to the creators of the software:

<blockquote>ubuntu |oǒ’boǒntoō| Ubuntu is an ancient African word meaning ‘humanity to others’. It is often described as reminding us that ‘I am what I am because of who we all are’. We bring the spirit of Ubuntu to the world of computers and software. The Ubuntu distribution represents the best of what the world’s software community has shared with the world. <ref>https://ubuntu.com/about</ref>
</blockquote>

Paraphrasing [https://thefunambulist.net/magazine/redefining-our-terms/ubuntu-a-black-radical-demand-for-reparations Panashe Chigumadzi] words: in contrast to the western conception of the human as individual, the African conception of the person is a social being who is always becoming, defined by and being responsible for the personhood of the others. "(T)he African philosophy best understood through the proverb found in Bantu languages across the continent, 'umuntu ngumuntu ngabanye bantu' (a person is a person through other people". <ref>https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec/31/white-south-africa-ubuntu-african-tutu</ref>

<blockquote>(D)espite the flourishing of Ubuntu in post-apartheid discourse, lending its name to software, businesses, books and philanthropic organisations, South Africa is a country in which we have, as Dladla argues, Ubuntu without Abantu. Just as Black people have been dispossessed of their land, Ubuntu has been dispossessed of its deeply radical demands for ethical historical and social relations among people. (...) post apartheid Ubuntu mistranslation 'I am because we are', individualized and interpersonalised Ubuntu, Christianised Ubuntu, mistranslated in order to justify crimes and violence. In Ubuntu violence can be punished even after generations, the misinterpretation of the term allowed individual forgiveness. <ref>https://thefunambulist.net/magazine/redefining-our-terms/ubuntu-a-black-radical-demand-for-reparations</ref>
</blockquote>

I skip these thoughts and I continue browsing the list of servers. While trying to stay focused something other distracts me; I encounter an [https://www.oziosi.org/ autonomous Italian server] with the title translated with DeepL: “:: a shelter for digital exiles ::” and an image of a woman, a child and a man leaving their home. Also a small introduction: “Exiled from the global village of social networks, we claim an internet that is a simple means of communication: immaterial, anonymous, imaginary, public when it makes sense and secret when we feel the need.”. I am wondering what does this mean for actual exiles having to protect their privacy when communicating back home? [https://techpolicy.press/how-to-open-an-outpost-in-social-media-exile/ ‘Social media exiles’] and ‘Twitter migration’ are terms used often after Twitter became X and users have moved to the Fediverse or other alternatives.

[[Screenshot of the 'digital exiles' image, image not included because of copyrights issues?]]

=== TITiPI’s case of server transfer ===
On the 27th of September, sitting at the long desks side to side, Femke and I have an online call with Helen, while looking at the depths of our Virtual Private Server (VPS), provided by Linode, that runs Ubuntu on our laptop screens. Linode is an American hosting provider focusing on Linux-based virtual machines originally. The server is physically located in the UK. TITiPI currently uses the Linode server that Helen set up for hosting her own projects. She has been paying for Linode’s monthly fees so far.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-10-11 14-47-06.png|thumb|Screenshot of Linode Ubuntu server overview and terminal that shows a moment of figuring out what takes space in the server through SSH access]]

At the time it seemed a good choice, because it is based in UK, is Linux friendly and an alternative to Amazon Web Services (AWS), even though it was already identifying as ‘cloud hosting’. But in February 2023 it has been acquired by the American company Akamai that aims to scale up for [https://www.linode.com/global-infrastructure/ “computing power, optimizing performance and agility.”]. Akamai is actively changing its server policies into an increasingly intense cloud logic. This pushed forward the desire to move to a new place.

[[Screenshot of Linode website referring to scalability -- copyright issues?]]

At the moment in Linode we run pico, a flat CMS for the website https://titipi.org. There is a Mediawiki (you are reading a Mediawiki page right now) for notes and collective writing. On the wiki, we also publish our statutes, guidelines and other instituting documents. The wiki has a custom extension, called wiki-to-pdf. Each of these services will need a different way to be transferred. One approach is to build the new server space from scratch, copy the data with rsync and transfer only the Mediawiki, which includes installing a new version and copy the database and the media files.

While preparing to transfer the tools we are defining what are the practical needs and desirable priorities; we ended up on these server requirements:
* SSH access and wish for VPS
* affordable price (around €20/month)
* run a Free Software operating system, preferably Debian
* involves community work - slowing down, resisting to scaling and growth or ‘decloudification’ (small network of partners, less virtualization approach, location of servers nearby etc)
* 25-40GB storage space, 1-2 cores, 2-4GB RAM
* environmental angle
* service support in a language that we all understand (English mostly)

This server transfer happens with an intersectional and feminist approach and the desire to keep questioning. While moving away from Linode we include both the technical and the conceptual thinking in the process. There are a few things that we are looking at: 
* Where to be transferred to or what services to transfer to?
* How to be transferred and what to tranfer?
* What terminology, language we use?
* What (other) narratives of server hosting can we construct?

TITiPI seeks to exist with an infrastructure that supports inter-dependent practices and solidarity across struggles. It develops Counter Cloud Actions [ref] as a way to scale down, de-cloudify, articulate, contest and re-imagine the implications of computational infrastructures (‘the cloud’).

<blockquote>TITiPI develop tools from feminisms, queer theory, Free, Libre and Open Source software, intersectionality, anti-coloniality, disability studies, historical materialism and artistic practice to generate currently inexistent vocabularies, imaginaries and methodologies. TITiPI functions as an infrastructure to establish new ways in which socio-technical practices and technologies might support the public interest. <ref>https://docs.tangible-cloud.be/publications-pdf/02_snelting.pdf</ref></blockquote>

We are looking for servers that aspire some of these values.

=== A relational infrastructure narrative/ infra-mutuality/ inter-infrastructural narrative ===
[[File:Elastic solidarities.png|thumb]]
In June 2023 TITiPI received an email from Gandi to renew the domain titipi.org in 6 days, not realising that at the same time we would need to start paying for our titipi.org email hosting. We had missed reading to the end of another email sent in the middle of June, entitled: 'Pricing update'.

We consider to work with Kate Rich to move our mailboxes to the [http://irational.org/ Irational server], soon to be installed on a Raspberry Pi, hosted at Servus. Currently it is in a rack in the UK. We decide to do this transition slowly and until then renew the emails for 1-2 months through Gandi. Irational server resists virtualization, and as an art community project it makes it an interesting choice.

But why to go through all this effort and not just use one cloud server with mailboxes, file storage and web server together? TITiPI’s response to the question of building institutional digital infrastructure embodies an archipelagic and non-sovereign approach to dependencies. Rather than building a centralised server based on ‘cloud’ from which connections with other institutions and collectives can happen, it conceptualizes inter-infrastructural practices; from the creation of a [https://gitlab.constantvzw.org/titipi/burrow backup script] for saving locally etherpad pads from other servers, hosting emails at an art server (https://irational.org), creating an [https://books.lumbung.space/shelf/26 online bookshelf] on lumbung.space, using the xmpp chat from Varia to recording conversations with the sys admin that maintain the other servers. The institution re-imagines technological dependencies in dialogue with cultural institutions and art collectives.

[[File:Titipi-infra-diagram-JAN-24.png|thumb|none|alt=A diagram of TITiPI’s infrastructure. The diagram categorizes the elements according to tools/software (box), structure/organisational form (circle) and place (dashed line). For example Jitsi is the software, Greenhost is the organisation, meet.greenhost.net is the place.|A diagram of TITiPI’s infrastructure. The diagram categorizes the elements according to tools/software (box), structure/organisational form (circle) and place (dashed line). For example Jitsi is the software, Greenhost is the organisation, meet.greenhost.net is the place.]]

How to give life to the common space of TITiPI’s hosting infrastructures? What about building up social dependencies between the ones that host and the ones who are hosted as opposed to a technical independence? Infrastructural imaginations are often built by the Big Tech industry and governmental institutions. Instead, TITiPI practices a fluid inter-institutional approach supported by [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Infra_colophon a variety of hosts].

=== Selection of server providers ===
On the 7th of November through a shared screen at the [https://meet.greenhost.net/ video conferencing software Jitsi of Greenhost] we all three check a list of server providers I collected on a spreadsheet hosted in Constant’s cloud storage (built with Nextcloud software) where TITiPI has an account. I looked at associations, companies/businesses, cooperatives, communities coming from commercial context to social struggles, activist, feminist and other. Through a [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/List_server_networks list of networks] I found various servers mostly from Latin America and Europe.

The concept of autonomy, sovereignty, independence or self-managing characterizes most of the servers in the list. Some of them, like [https://www.autistici.org/ Autistici] promote this concept as a way to support anti-capitalist infrastructure and protect the privacy of the users as opposed to the Big Tech software practices.

<blockquote>"The vision is that we - the members of the cooperative - own our own data. This implies and has as a consequence that we will have to own our own infrastructure and have insight and control over the software we use to communicate on the web."<ref>https://monoskop.org/Servers Data Coop</ref></blockquote>

Femke had a hunch: "‘technological sovereignty’ and ‘data-sovereignty’ continue to be orientation devices to organise around. ‘Sovereignty’, together with ‘freedom’, ‘independence’ and ‘autonomy’, form an ideological cluster that implicitly and sometimes explicitly foregrounds separation rather than relation."

Servers can act as independent spaces but are also cultural devices and vibrant spaces. They can manifest different aspects of a full life and reach out to a multiplicity of entities.

Servus and Greenhost, seem to be two of our best choices as they cover a lot of the priorities and values of TITiPI. As one can read from their descriptions they both strive for owning their own data servers and data nodes (they have their own IP addresses) and be independent from third parties. The big difference is the scale of the infrastructure and their community and network.

<blockquote>Greenhost fully owns and controls its hardware, infrastructure and uplinks. This ensures independence from third parties and proper access control. On this hardware we run our fully virtualised platform. We stand for an Open Internet, and have always embraced open source software.<ref>https://greenhost.net/</ref></blockquote>

<blockquote>We (Servus) do not pass on any data to third parties. You will not receive commercial advertising from us or third parties. We are easily accessible and answer your questions personally. We and our servers are located at Kirchengasse 4 in Linz, Austria.<ref>https://book.servus.at/en/home/</ref></blockquote>

Even though Greenhost wants to reduce ecological damage, it does that mainly through hardware reductions and does not address scale. They have plans to expand and are part of a network of partners that want to transform Rotterdam into a big hub of data nodes for the upcoming digital transition. Linode is even bigger, it goes for [[https://www.akamai.com/newsroom/press-release/akamai-takes-cloud-computing-to-the-edge|“(p)lanetary scale”]]. Servus on the other hand has one room of data servers, is closer to the scale of their community and they maintain personal relations with them.

[[Image of the server room at Servus at Linz|Image of the server room at Servus at Linz?]]

=== Community server, feminist server, radical server, autonomous server, commercial server, art server, free server, ethical server, solidarity-based server, cooperative server, associative server, independent server, alternative server, non-commercial server, … ===
The spreadsheet starts to grow because of an endless/exhaustive burrow of small and big providers.

Some are outdated. 
Some are messy. 
Some have broken links. 
Some are [https://www.julienth37.fr/vps hard to understand]. 
Some require [https://www.actiu.info/index.en.html a lot of engagement]. 
Some use a language that imitates the narratives of Big Tech and agile computing. 
Some promote seamless “promissory logic” and “high hopes for a brighter future” (ref) 
Some are big or are scaling up (in matter of space, data centers, partners, users etc). 
Some support NGO’s or sport clubs.

[[copyright issues? Screenshot from main page of Co-op Web]]

We also looked at their financial model. Many radical servers stay small, are volunteer based, like [https://www.autistici.org/ Autistici]. and go for horizontal organisational structures. Feminist and activist servers provide space in the internet for the ones who don’t have the means to organise otherwise. The resources and ways of organising for these servers are different from the cooperatives or associations whose structure is inherited from the model they are registered with.

[[File:ATNOFS-Varia-insert-ooooo.jpg|thumb|ooooo atnofs insert diagrams from varia, systerserver, servus]]

TITiPI acknowledges and is connected to the history of community, art and feminist servers and wants to support this network. The art servers started as a way to make autonomous self-managed servers that support artists values and practices. They are often financed by cultural or private funds.

<blockquote>I joined (Irational) sometime in 2000s, I can't remember when and originally it was much more a collective of people working together and then since the early 2010's I think, mid 2010's, there was a bit of a reshuffle of personnel and stuff, so the constituency changed to a smaller group and we actually reformed. We were going to disband Irational and then we actually reformed as an art server collective and we decided we are not really working together but what we have in common is that we're using the server and that is actually what the collective is now. It's the collective that uses the server together and wants to use the server together. And another real defining feature of the server the whole time has been resisting virtualization. 

— ''quote from interview with Kate Rich'' </blockquote>

The screen seems to become brighter as my eyes get tired. What if we skip the online hosting and create a local physical server at TITiPI’s office next to the desks, in a corner, on a Raspberry Pi? All our data would stay on this machine and we would connect with SSH from home, but then we will also have to maintain it ourselves. There is something there about the romanticism of a physical toolbox as a sovereign object. If we choose to do that we will need to think of a backup plan as it will be an experimental set up and all our data will stay offline. We won’t have a provider to take care of that.

Our list has been reduced because of our priorities. We need SSH and we would like to have a VPS. Who has resources for providing VPS? Resources of labour, time, finances, technical knowledge. This made self-defined feminist servers fall out of the selection. How to be financially sustainable, while keeping up with your own values? How to keep up with infrastructural maintenance if the scale of the users, community, members and data is big?

<blockquote>The services we offer have no defined price, but as you may easily imagine, keeping the whole system working (i.e. hardware and hosting) is very expensive (at the moment it ranges around 13,000 euro every year).<ref>https://www.autistici.org/services/</ref></blockquote>

Servus and Maadix provide a series of free/libre tools that can be installed separately through their interface but they also provide a VPS with SSH access. With Greenhost, Hetzner and Linode there is more flexibility: you can create your own VPS and customize it for your own needs through their interface or the terminal and install whatever tools you want from scratch without a visual interface.

Technical information and knowledge of digital infrastructure circulate between groups that are tech-oriented with a difficulty to cross with other groups, including feminist servers. The sys admin tasks are mostly taken by cis men but feminist servers are radical about that. They find important to have sys admins that are not cis men. For example Systerserver and Anarchaserver are learning by themselves together how to do this task.

Many of the servers in the list provide only tools, as a radical way to support small groups, collectives, activists that need privacy and shifting away from Google drive when they want to organise politically and socially. It seems that being limited to tool packages instead of having full access to a server can make things comprehensible and compact for these small groups that have limited sys admin knowledge or can’t hire a technician.

[[copyrights issue? Screenshot of main page with services by [https://futuretic.fr/ FuturEtic]]]

[[copyrights issue? Screenshot of tools from codigosur]]

== Final decision and server transfer ==

We are about to make our decision! Our list ended up to be very small.

On 7th of November in an online call between Helen in Basel, Femke in Brussels and Aggeliki in Rotterdam we limited our list to four options: Constant, Greenhost, Servus, Zaclys. The selection consists of a diversity of scales and positioning that we found interesting to think of. First, we move on with the decision to transfer our mailboxes to Irational hosted at Servus. The rest of the functionalities will be hosted somewhere else.

From our conversations with Femke: “The choice for irational.org opens the possibility for discussions around dependencies, trust and frictions within shared collective servers. Irational.org is an ally art server who uses and maintains its own server for many years. Hosting such a private service at a friend’s environment doesn’t come only with convenience. The closeness to the material of the server makes the dependency more tangible.” [reference/quote from colophon?]

[[copyrights issue? towel design by psaroskalazines|towel design by psaroskalazines]]

Femke and I are planning different moments for the server transfer to happen in the office of TITiPI. What it is about to take place comes down into three moments; the backup and save of data from the old server, the installation of the necessary software in the new server and the transfer of the old data in the new server.

Specifically we are following these steps:

* Mail transfer from Gandi to irational
* Create a Virtual Private Server (VPS) in the new server
* Install Apache2 and configure domains
* Install and migrate MediaWiki
** Back up the wiki on the Linode VPS
** Upgrade MediaWiki in Linode
** Install MediaWiki and plugins in the Greenhost VPS
** Transfer database and media files from Linode to Greenhost
* Install Wiki-to-pdf
* Install Pico
* Install and configure Certbot

We find ourselves between two virtual spaces and one office, among other indirectly connected spaces like the rooms of our distant collaborators and the office locations of the servers.

=== Trust relationships ===
By now, 14th of November 2023, the office is warm and cozy. Throughout the time I am writing this report I have been noticing a lot of slow and small efforts to renovate the building and set up the heating, by the artists and organisations who share the space with TITiPI. Another infrastructure that needs care.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 15-06-42.png|thumb|Femke and Aggeliki entering Irational’s server space with Kate]]

On a shared screen together with Femke we get introduced to the mail server of Irational by Kate. We use an audio splitter to share the laptop for the call. Kate described her experience as an amateur sys admin that had to spend a lot of time to learn and set up the mail server. After that we start the process that has been documented [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Server_transfer_documentation#Mail_transfer here].

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 14-56-26.png|thumb|Screenshot from the TITiPI’s mail transfer with Kate, Femke and Aggeliki during an online 3 hours call]]

Irational uses the Alpine email client. Kate takes us its depths. That is where we start to set up our new email accounts before we configure them in Thunderbird. Femke gets excited on the fact that she can send emails to other Irational accounts through the terminal.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 15-15-07.png|thumb|Using the email client Alpine]]

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 17-04-20.png|thumb|Screenhost from the moment of looking for the syntax of the TXT records. Finding the right syntax for this value was the biggest challenge. This is part of the ''trust relationships'' between the different providers]]

After some more DNS configurations we test if it is possible to exchange emails with ‘outside’ accounts and especially with Gmail that has many security filters for mail servers other than the commercial ones.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-15 13-59-52.png|thumb|Exchange test emails with a Gmail account]]

After three hours of tryouts we manage to make it work! Very proudly and with enjoyment for sharing a technical task together we say goodbye to each other and arrange a next meeting for a final check up.

=== A choice that comes with discomforts ===
Just one day before the start of TITiPI’s server transfer away from Linode on the 28th of November, Helen found the Swiss server ungleich.ch and it seemed like an interesting choice because of the small scale (in terms of community and servers), their experimental attitude and their choice to reduce energy consumption; they avoid using systems for cooling their servers by spreading the servers at the Swiss mountains in old, abandoned buildings.

Ungleich.ch is one of the good options but it is more expensive than other providers. They offer a cheaper choice by choosing to have only ‘ipv6’. But we had to dig in to understand the difference of ipv4 and ipv6. From wikipedia: “IPv6 is the most recent version of the Internet Protocol, developed to deal with the long-anticipated problem of IPv4 address exhaustion” We found a [https://stats.labs.apnic.net/ipv6 map] that shows which countries have implemented IPv6 and it seems that if we only use this address then many places won’t have access to the website of TITiPI. So we choose to have both addresses.

We also notice that this provider is using Stripe for their payment system. In a [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Frontier parallel universe of TITiPI] we give attention to and critique Stripe because of its connections with the Carbon Removal industry.

[[copyright issues? Ungleich.ch payment system with Stripe]]

Another urgency appears while we are looking at different choices; together with many other organisations, we have been thinking about ways to host and maintain infrastructures in solidarity with communities and networks we are part of. This would mean, for example, hosting digitally a Palestinian video film archive, or research by sex workers. Solidarity is only partially a question of caring for privacy and security because it matters where and how we host our digital infrastructures and whether these spaces do or do not support the flourishing of different lives and struggles. This need make us think again if the server we choose would be suitable for something like that.

Constant and Servus are two accomplice servers that already provide to TITiPI some of their services. Zaclys is a member of Chatons that support open source values and it is located in France. We contacted them to see if they could be an option but they never responded to us.

We wanted to work with a company that provide ‘green’ infrastructure. Greenhost seem to be a good choice. It provides a familiar interface to us, good support and backup option. It has a positioning as an alternative to AWS. So far great, but what about its ‘green’ hosting vision? Is it a solarpunk vision, a green cloud utopia? Is their infrastructure resource ‘hungry’? What are the privacy limits when the material hosted in the servers is political and sensitive?

We choose Greenhost with all the discomforts that this choice entails and with the desire to keep the critique and dialogue alive.

Only by December 2023 we manage to arrange a call with one of Greenhost’s former Managing Directors to get a feeling and more information about their approach and sensitivity. Accordind to him Greenhost exists in the intersection of activism and technology. It provides consultancy, sustainability solutions in tech projects and structured maintenance; they go for best quality with lowest environmental impact; they maintain the same hardware as much as possible and balance that with higher efficiency; they keep backups at an already existing data center in the university of Amsterdam.

[paragraph for Greenhost include?]

=== Installing, tranferring, saving, copying, … ===
On the 28th of November sitting on the sunny corner of the couch next to the radiator, and with warm coffee cups waiting for us on a low table, Femke and I cover our legs with a blanket and open our laptops.

I ask Femke to jumb in a tmux session for sharing terminal with this command: <code>sudo tmux attach -t webserver</code>. We start by cleaning the old server and make backups of the files.

We take a lunch break. Femke finds out that if we eat three recurrent meals every week in the office we can have a nice variety of food; lentiles soup, orecchiette pasta with brocoli, rizzoto with mushrooms and lots of fruits. Sometime ago we decided to make multiple short breaks throughout the day because of computer fatigue. One day I removed all the files from my computer that were older than 90 days because I accidentally run a command on the terminal instead of a bash script to test the setting up of [https://gitlab.constantvzw.org/titipi/burrow Burrow]. I left this comment in the initial script:

<code># VERY DANGEROUS COMMAND find *txt -mindepth 1 -mtime +$RETAIN -delete</code>
The next day we set up the new server and install all the necessary software including a new version of the MediaWiki. We arrange a meeting with Martino Morandi, member of Constant, who created the wiki-to-pdf to help us installing this software and tranfer the MediaWiki in the new server. On the 1st of December we successfully install the wiki-to-pdf and because of limited time we decided to meet one more time at the end of the month for the rest.

[[File:Virtual-env-debian.png|thumb|Screenshot from the wiki-to-pdf installation to the new server with Martino, Femke, Aggeliki. Debian supports a different way to create virtual environments for installing python packages and libraries. We try it but it failed.]]

On the 28th we meet with Martino online to complete the transfer, which includes copying the old database of MediaWiki, activate the old plugins and fix any issues on the way. We are all located in different countries (Italy, Greece, Belgium) and so we share a tmux session. We follow the guides but on the way we had to do some research and configure a lot of things to make the MediaWiki work. Martino was hunting a php module. It seemed that php has shifted to free software culture in an attempt to find another business model. It is not surprising it happens in the context of Ubuntu. The issue is recorded [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Server_transfer_documentation#MediaWiki_upgrade_issues here].

[[File:Firefox Screenshot 2024-01-10T13-59-40.398Z.png|thumb|"Is Titipi.org down?" Helen asks after the transfer. It seems that her browser cache was preventing her from seeing the website]]

The process is documented in our diary and then transferred to a [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Server_transfer_documentation wiki page]. By January 2024 the server transfer and the deletion of our Linode account has been completed.

== Glossaries ==

* https://varia.zone/ATNOFS/ATNOFS-screen.pdf
* https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Glossary

Terms italized in the report:
* being hosted
* serving
* server
* server migration
* wiki-to-pdf: a publishing tool developed with Martino Morandi, itself based on work by OSP re-worked by Manetta Berends. Hackers and Designers in turn continued wiki-to-pdf as wiki2print
* free/libre tools

== References ==

* https://journals.openedition.org/ardeth/2194?lang=en
* https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec/31/white-south-africa-ubuntu-african-tutu
* https://thefunambulist.net/magazine/redefining-our-terms/ubuntu-a-black-radical-demand-for-reparations
* https://www.bloomsburycollections.com/monograph-detail?docid=b-9781350351042&pdfid=9781350351042.ch-8.pdf&tocid=b-9781350351042-chapter8
* https://thebastion.co.in/politics-and/tech/a-feminist-server-to-help-people-own-their-own-data/
* https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec/31/white-south-africa-ubuntu-african-tutu
* https://thebastion.co.in/politics-and/tech/a-feminist-server-to-help-people-own-their-own-data/ (from eu to india owning data and infrastructure is very powerful for many reasons)
* [https://monoskop.org/Community_servers#Publications Monoskop community servers page]
* https://github.com/redis/redis/issues/3185 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-53050955
* https://www.theserverside.com/opinion/Master-slave-terminology-alternatives-you-can-use-right-now

== Colophon ==

The text was drafted in pad.xpub.nl

From cloud to crowd: a report on a server transfer

2024-07-16T12:50:38Z

Angeliki:

= From cloud to crowd<ref>The term comes from ... (not sure if it is included in the title)</ref>: A report on a server transfer =

This text is a report on a server migration that took place within the institutional framework of [https://titipi.org/ The Institute for Technology in the Public Interest (TITiPI)], a trans-practice gathering of activists, artists, engineers and theorists. TITiPI convenes communities to articulate, activate and re-imagine together what computational technologies in the 'public interest' might be. This report is an infrastructural ethnography and aims to rethink, through a technical process, what hosting a server means for a community, institution, cultural organisation dealing with technological discomforts and often inaccessible complex digital infrastructures.

A server is a computer (or a piece of software/hardware) that provides functionalities via a network (Internet). A server migration is the process of moving data and transferring software from one server to another with the use of specified tools. Performing such process accommodates a practical and technical solution to fix the problem of an outdated server that is slow or has limited storage. But it also affects the values, the structure and infrastructural imaginations of the organisations it supports. TITiPI desired(s) to go with hosting and maintain its own virtual private server instead of outsourcing these services to external tech companies. In times of server providers’ scaling up ( ‘cloud hosting’ ) and digitizing governmental bureaucracies what does it mean to host your own digital space for supporting your communities and work? What does it mean to have an independent infrastructure? What (non-)dependencies are chosen or taken for granted by institutions when using hosting services?

As a researcher at TITiPI I have been caring for the task to investigate this server migration and execute it together with TITiPI’s member Femke Snelting. We meet weekly to keep track and make decisions. We share a markdown file hosted in the git of the cultural association [https://constantvzw.org/site/ Constant] that includes a diary of the server migration and reflections. Every now and then we meet online with our colleague Helen Pritchard, to discuss and share the process. This report shares extracts from the server diary and stories from the process.

== Migration or … ? ==

In the cold newly installed office of TITiPI located in the Koekelberg district of Brussels, I open Chromium in my computer, that runs the operating system Ubuntu, in order to translate quickly − with the installed Google Translate plugin; later I found out there is a DeepL version − the web pages of the different cooperatives, associations, companies that provide hosting services. While doing that I have this disturbing thought in my head that I try to ignore: the word ‘migration’ as a technical term to describe the movement from one server to the other. It makes me think of an [https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/13/technology/racist-computer-engineering-terms-ietf.html online conversation], happening for a few years now, about replacing computer engineering terminology to stop prevalence of racism in tech. Specifically the conversation [https://www.wired.com/story/tech-confronts-use-labels-master-slave/ evolves around the terms] ‘master/slave’, where one computing process or entity controls another, and ‘blacklists/whitelists’ used for directories of those things that are explicitly banned or allowed. Using metaphors like that for a technical process de-contextualizes a word from its origins and unavoidably perpetuates social injustices. It also shows that the context where such choices of language are made is privileged and untouched or non-triggered by these terms. White male computer engineers have build up this language. Could words like transferring, sharing, moving, copying, re-installing, shifting replace the word ‘migration’? From this point on in the report I decide to use the term ‘transfer’.

‘Ubuntu’ is also a word extracted from its original context. It is coming from the African Ubuntu philosophy. According to the creators of the software:

<blockquote>ubuntu |oǒ’boǒntoō| Ubuntu is an ancient African word meaning ‘humanity to others’. It is often described as reminding us that ‘I am what I am because of who we all are’. We bring the spirit of Ubuntu to the world of computers and software. The Ubuntu distribution represents the best of what the world’s software community has shared with the world. <ref>https://ubuntu.com/about</ref>
</blockquote>

Paraphrasing [https://thefunambulist.net/magazine/redefining-our-terms/ubuntu-a-black-radical-demand-for-reparations Panashe Chigumadzi] words: in contrast to the western conception of the human as individual, the African conception of the person is a social being who is always becoming, defined by and being responsible for the personhood of the others. "(T)he African philosophy best understood through the proverb found in Bantu languages across the continent, 'umuntu ngumuntu ngabanye bantu' (a person is a person through other people". <ref>https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec/31/white-south-africa-ubuntu-african-tutu</ref>

<blockquote>(D)espite the flourishing of Ubuntu in post-apartheid discourse, lending its name to software, businesses, books and philanthropic organisations, South Africa is a country in which we have, as Dladla argues, Ubuntu without Abantu. Just as Black people have been dispossessed of their land, Ubuntu has been dispossessed of its deeply radical demands for ethical historical and social relations among people. (...) post apartheid Ubuntu mistranslation 'I am because we are', individualized and interpersonalised Ubuntu, Christianised Ubuntu, mistranslated in order to justify crimes and violence. In Ubuntu violence can be punished even after generations, the misinterpretation of the term allowed individual forgiveness. <ref>https://thefunambulist.net/magazine/redefining-our-terms/ubuntu-a-black-radical-demand-for-reparations</ref>
</blockquote>

I skip these thoughts and I continue browsing the list of servers. While trying to stay focused something other distracts me; I encounter an [https://www.oziosi.org/ autonomous Italian server] with the title translated with DeepL: “:: a shelter for digital exiles ::” and an image of a woman, a child and a man leaving their home. Also a small introduction: “Exiled from the global village of social networks, we claim an internet that is a simple means of communication: immaterial, anonymous, imaginary, public when it makes sense and secret when we feel the need.”. I am wondering what does this mean for actual exiles having to protect their privacy when communicating back home? [https://techpolicy.press/how-to-open-an-outpost-in-social-media-exile/ ‘Social media exiles’] and ‘Twitter migration’ are terms used often after Twitter became X and users have moved to the Fediverse or other alternatives.

[[Screenshot of the 'digital exiles' image, image not included because of copyrights issues?]]

== TITiPI’s case of server transfer ==

On the 27th of September, sitting at the long desks side to side, Femke and I have an online call with Helen, while looking at the depths of our Virtual Private Server (VPS), provided by Linode, that runs Ubuntu on our laptop screens. Linode is an American hosting provider focusing on Linux-based virtual machines originally. The server is physically located in the UK. TITiPI currently uses the Linode server that Helen set up for hosting her own projects. She has been paying for Linode’s monthly fees so far.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-10-11 14-47-06.png|thumb|Screenshot of Linode Ubuntu server overview and terminal that shows a moment of figuring out what takes space in the server through SSH access]]

At the time it seemed a good choice, because it is based in UK, is Linux friendly and an alternative to Amazon Web Services (AWS), even though it was already identifying as ‘cloud hosting’. But in February 2023 it has been acquired by the American company Akamai that aims to scale up for [https://www.linode.com/global-infrastructure/ “computing power, optimizing performance and agility.”]. Akamai is actively changing its server policies into an increasingly intense cloud logic. This pushed forward the desire to move to a new place.

[[Screenshot of Linode website referring to scalability -- copyright issues?]]

At the moment in Linode we run pico, a flat CMS for the website https://titipi.org. There is a Mediawiki (you are reading a Mediawiki page right now) for notes and collective writing. On the wiki, we also publish our statutes, guidelines and other instituting documents. The wiki has a custom extension, called wiki-to-pdf. Each of these services will need a different way to be transferred. One approach is to build the new server space from scratch, copy the data with rsync and transfer only the Mediawiki, which includes installing a new version and copy the database and the media files.

While preparing to transfer the tools we are defining what are the practical needs and desirable priorities; we ended up on these server requirements:
* SSH access and wish for VPS
* affordable price (around €20/month)
* run a Free Software operating system, preferably Debian
* involves community work - slowing down, resisting to scaling and growth or ‘decloudification’ (small network of partners, less virtualization approach, location of servers nearby etc)
* 25-40GB storage space, 1-2 cores, 2-4GB RAM
* environmental angle
* service support in a language that we all understand (English mostly)

This server transfer happens with an intersectional and feminist approach and the desire to keep questioning. While moving away from Linode we include both the technical and the conceptual thinking in the process. There are a few things that we are looking at: 
* Where to be transferred to or what services to transfer to?
* How to be transferred and what to tranfer?
* What terminology, language we use?
* What (other) narratives of server hosting can we construct?

TITiPI seeks to exist with an infrastructure that supports inter-dependent practices and solidarity across struggles. It develops Counter Cloud Actions [ref] as a way to scale down, de-cloudify, articulate, contest and re-imagine the implications of computational infrastructures (‘the cloud’).

<blockquote>TITiPI develop tools from feminisms, queer theory, Free, Libre and Open Source software, intersectionality, anti-coloniality, disability studies, historical materialism and artistic practice to generate currently inexistent vocabularies, imaginaries and methodologies. TITiPI functions as an infrastructure to establish new ways in which socio-technical practices and technologies might support the public interest. <ref>https://docs.tangible-cloud.be/publications-pdf/02_snelting.pdf</ref></blockquote>

We are looking for servers that aspire some of these values.

== A relational infrastructure narrative/ infra-mutuality/ inter-infrastructural narrative ==

[[File:Elastic solidarities.png|thumb]]
In June 2023 TITiPI received an email from Gandi to renew the domain titipi.org in 6 days, not realising that at the same time we would need to start paying for our titipi.org email hosting. We had missed reading to the end of another email sent in the middle of June, entitled: 'Pricing update'.

We consider to work with Kate Rich to move our mailboxes to the [http://irational.org/ Irational server], soon to be installed on a Raspberry Pi, hosted at Servus. Currently it is in a rack in the UK. We decide to do this transition slowly and until then renew the emails for 1-2 months through Gandi. Irational server resists virtualization, and as an art community project it makes it an interesting choice.

But why to go through all this effort and not just use one cloud server with mailboxes, file storage and web server together? TITiPI’s response to the question of building institutional digital infrastructure embodies an archipelagic and non-sovereign approach to dependencies. Rather than building a centralised server based on ‘cloud’ from which connections with other institutions and collectives can happen, it conceptualizes inter-infrastructural practices; from the creation of a [https://gitlab.constantvzw.org/titipi/burrow backup script] for saving locally etherpad pads from other servers, hosting emails at an art server (https://irational.org), creating an [https://books.lumbung.space/shelf/26 online bookshelf] on lumbung.space, using the xmpp chat from Varia to recording conversations with the sys admin that maintain the other servers. The institution re-imagines technological dependencies in dialogue with cultural institutions and art collectives.

[[File:Titipi-infra-diagram-JAN-24.png|thumb|none|alt=A diagram of TITiPI’s infrastructure. The diagram categorizes the elements according to tools/software (box), structure/organisational form (circle) and place (dashed line). For example Jitsi is the software, Greenhost is the organisation, meet.greenhost.net is the place.|A diagram of TITiPI’s infrastructure. The diagram categorizes the elements according to tools/software (box), structure/organisational form (circle) and place (dashed line). For example Jitsi is the software, Greenhost is the organisation, meet.greenhost.net is the place.]]

How to give life to the common space of TITiPI’s hosting infrastructures? What about building up social dependencies between the ones that host and the ones who are hosted as opposed to a technical independence? Infrastructural imaginations are often built by the Big Tech industry and governmental institutions. Instead, TITiPI practices a fluid inter-institutional approach supported by [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Infra_colophon a variety of hosts].

== Selection of server providers ==

On the 7th of November through a shared screen at the [https://meet.greenhost.net/ video conferencing software Jitsi of Greenhost] we all three check a list of server providers I collected on a spreadsheet hosted in Constant’s cloud storage (built with Nextcloud software) where TITiPI has an account. I looked at associations, companies/businesses, cooperatives, communities coming from commercial context to social struggles, activist, feminist and other. Through a [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/List_server_networks list of networks] I found various servers mostly from Latin America and Europe.

The concept of autonomy, sovereignty, independence or self-managing characterizes most of the servers in the list. Some of them, like [https://www.autistici.org/ Autistici] promote this concept as a way to support anti-capitalist infrastructure and protect the privacy of the users as opposed to the Big Tech software practices.

<blockquote>"The vision is that we - the members of the cooperative - own our own data. This implies and has as a consequence that we will have to own our own infrastructure and have insight and control over the software we use to communicate on the web."<ref>https://monoskop.org/Servers Data Coop</ref></blockquote>

Femke had a hunch: "‘technological sovereignty’ and ‘data-sovereignty’ continue to be orientation devices to organise around. ‘Sovereignty’, together with ‘freedom’, ‘independence’ and ‘autonomy’, form an ideological cluster that implicitly and sometimes explicitly foregrounds separation rather than relation."

Servers can act as independent spaces but are also cultural devices and vibrant spaces. They can manifest different aspects of a full life and reach out to a multiplicity of entities.

Servus and Greenhost, seem to be two of our best choices as they cover a lot of the priorities and values of TITiPI. As one can read from their descriptions they both strive for owning their own data servers and data nodes (they have their own IP addresses) and be independent from third parties. The big difference is the scale of the infrastructure and their community and network.

<blockquote>Greenhost fully owns and controls its hardware, infrastructure and uplinks. This ensures independence from third parties and proper access control. On this hardware we run our fully virtualised platform. We stand for an Open Internet, and have always embraced open source software.<ref>https://greenhost.net/</ref></blockquote>

<blockquote>We (Servus) do not pass on any data to third parties. You will not receive commercial advertising from us or third parties. We are easily accessible and answer your questions personally. We and our servers are located at Kirchengasse 4 in Linz, Austria.<ref>https://book.servus.at/en/home/</ref></blockquote>

Even though Greenhost wants to reduce ecological damage, it does that mainly through hardware reductions and does not address scale. They have plans to expand and are part of a network of partners that want to transform Rotterdam into a big hub of data nodes for the upcoming digital transition. Linode is even bigger, it goes for [[https://www.akamai.com/newsroom/press-release/akamai-takes-cloud-computing-to-the-edge|“(p)lanetary scale”]]. Servus on the other hand has one room of data servers, is closer to the scale of their community and they maintain personal relations with them.

[[Image of the server room at Servus at Linz|Image of the server room at Servus at Linz?]]

== Community server, feminist server, radical server, autonomous server, commercial server, art server, free server, ethical server, solidarity-based server, cooperative server, associative server, independent server, alternative server, non-commercial server, … ==

The spreadsheet starts to grow because of an endless/exhaustive burrow of small and big providers.

Some are outdated. 
Some are messy. 
Some have broken links. 
Some are [https://www.julienth37.fr/vps hard to understand]. 
Some require [https://www.actiu.info/index.en.html a lot of engagement]. 
Some use a language that imitates the narratives of Big Tech and agile computing. 
Some promote seamless “promissory logic” and “high hopes for a brighter future” (ref) 
Some are big or are scaling up (in matter of space, data centers, partners, users etc). 
Some support NGO’s or sport clubs.

[[copyright issues? Screenshot from main page of Co-op Web]]

We also looked at their financial model. Many radical servers stay small, are volunteer based, like [https://www.autistici.org/ Autistici]. and go for horizontal organisational structures. Feminist and activist servers provide space in the internet for the ones who don’t have the means to organise otherwise. The resources and ways of organising for these servers are different from the cooperatives or associations whose structure is inherited from the model they are registered with.

[[File:ATNOFS-Varia-insert-ooooo.jpg|thumb|ooooo atnofs insert diagrams from varia, systerserver, servus]]

TITiPI acknowledges and is connected to the history of community, art and feminist servers and wants to support this network. The art servers started as a way to make autonomous self-managed servers that support artists values and practices. They are often financed by cultural or private funds.

<blockquote>I joined (Irational) sometime in 2000s, I can't remember when and originally it was much more a collective of people working together and then since the early 2010's I think, mid 2010's, there was a bit of a reshuffle of personnel and stuff, so the constituency changed to a smaller group and we actually reformed. We were going to disband Irational and then we actually reformed as an art server collective and we decided we are not really working together but what we have in common is that we're using the server and that is actually what the collective is now. It's the collective that uses the server together and wants to use the server together. And another real defining feature of the server the whole time has been resisting virtualization. 

— ''quote from interview with Kate Rich'' </blockquote>

The screen seems to become brighter as my eyes get tired. What if we skip the online hosting and create a local physical server at TITiPI’s office next to the desks, in a corner, on a Raspberry Pi? All our data would stay on this machine and we would connect with SSH from home, but then we will also have to maintain it ourselves. There is something there about the romanticism of a physical toolbox as a sovereign object. If we choose to do that we will need to think of a backup plan as it will be an experimental set up and all our data will stay offline. We won’t have a provider to take care of that.

Our list has been reduced because of our priorities. We need SSH and we would like to have a VPS. Who has resources for providing VPS? Resources of labour, time, finances, technical knowledge. This made self-defined feminist servers fall out of the selection. How to be financially sustainable, while keeping up with your own values? How to keep up with infrastructural maintenance if the scale of the users, community, members and data is big?

<blockquote>The services we offer have no defined price, but as you may easily imagine, keeping the whole system working (i.e. hardware and hosting) is very expensive (at the moment it ranges around 13,000 euro every year).<ref>https://www.autistici.org/services/</ref></blockquote>

Servus and Maadix provide a series of free/libre tools that can be installed separately through their interface but they also provide a VPS with SSH access. With Greenhost, Hetzner and Linode there is more flexibility: you can create your own VPS and customize it for your own needs through their interface or the terminal and install whatever tools you want from scratch without a visual interface.

Technical information and knowledge of digital infrastructure circulate between groups that are tech-oriented with a difficulty to cross with other groups, including feminist servers. The sys admin tasks are mostly taken by cis men but feminist servers are radical about that. They find important to have sys admins that are not cis men. For example Systerserver and Anarchaserver are learning by themselves together how to do this task.

Many of the servers in the list provide only tools, as a radical way to support small groups, collectives, activists that need privacy and shifting away from Google drive when they want to organise politically and socially. It seems that being limited to tool packages instead of having full access to a server can make things comprehensible and compact for these small groups that have limited sys admin knowledge or can’t hire a technician.

[[copyrights issue? Screenshot of main page with services by [https://futuretic.fr/ FuturEtic]]]

[[copyrights issue? Screenshot of tools from codigosur]]

== Final decision and server transfer ==

We are about to make our decision! Our list ended up to be very small.

On 7th of November in an online call between Helen in Basel, Femke in Brussels and Aggeliki in Rotterdam we limited our list to four options: Constant, Greenhost, Servus, Zaclys. The selection consists of a diversity of scales and positioning that we found interesting to think of. First, we move on with the decision to transfer our mailboxes to Irational hosted at Servus. The rest of the functionalities will be hosted somewhere else.

From our conversations with Femke: “The choice for irational.org opens the possibility for discussions around dependencies, trust and frictions within shared collective servers. Irational.org is an ally art server who uses and maintains its own server for many years. Hosting such a private service at a friend’s environment doesn’t come only with convenience. The closeness to the material of the server makes the dependency more tangible.” [reference/quote from colophon?]

[[copyrights issue? towel design by psaroskalazines|towel design by psaroskalazines]]

Femke and I are planning different moments for the server transfer to happen in the office of TITiPI. What it is about to take place comes down into three moments; the backup and save of data from the old server, the installation of the necessary software in the new server and the transfer of the old data in the new server.

Specifically we are following these steps:

* Mail transfer from Gandi to irational
* Create a Virtual Private Server (VPS) in the new server
* Install Apache2 and configure domains
* Install and migrate MediaWiki
** Back up the wiki on the Linode VPS
** Upgrade MediaWiki in Linode
** Install MediaWiki and plugins in the Greenhost VPS
** Transfer database and media files from Linode to Greenhost
* Install Wiki-to-pdf
* Install Pico
* Install and configure Certbot

We find ourselves between two virtual spaces and one office, among other indirectly connected spaces like the rooms of our distant collaborators and the office locations of the servers.

== Trust relationships ==

By now, 14th of November 2023, the office is warm and cozy. Throughout the time I am writing this report I have been noticing a lot of slow and small efforts to renovate the building and set up the heating, by the artists and organisations who share the space with TITiPI. Another infrastructure that needs care.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 15-06-42.png|thumb|Femke and Aggeliki entering Irational’s server space with Kate]]

On a shared screen together with Femke we get introduced to the mail server of Irational by Kate. We use an audio splitter to share the laptop for the call. Kate described her experience as an amateur sys admin that had to spend a lot of time to learn and set up the mail server. After that we start the process that has been documented [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Server_transfer_documentation#Mail_transfer here].

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 14-56-26.png|thumb|Screenshot from the TITiPI’s mail transfer with Kate, Femke and Aggeliki during an online 3 hours call]]

Irational uses the Alpine email client. Kate takes us its depths. That is where we start to set up our new email accounts before we configure them in Thunderbird. Femke gets excited on the fact that she can send emails to other Irational accounts through the terminal.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 15-15-07.png|thumb|Using the email client Alpine]]

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-14 17-04-20.png|thumb|Screenhost from the moment of looking for the syntax of the TXT records. Finding the right syntax for this value was the biggest challenge. This is part of the ''trust relationships'' between the different providers]]

After some more DNS configurations we test if it is possible to exchange emails with ‘outside’ accounts and especially with Gmail that has many security filters for mail servers other than the commercial ones.

[[File:Screenshot from 2023-11-15 13-59-52.png|thumb|Exchange test emails with a Gmail account]]

After three hours of tryouts we manage to make it work! Very proudly and with enjoyment for sharing a technical task together we say goodbye to each other and arrange a next meeting for a final check up.

== A choice that comes with discomforts ==

Just one day before the start of TITiPI’s server transfer away from Linode on the 28th of November, Helen found the Swiss server ungleich.ch and it seemed like an interesting choice because of the small scale (in terms of community and servers), their experimental attitude and their choice to reduce energy consumption; they avoid using systems for cooling their servers by spreading the servers at the Swiss mountains in old, abandoned buildings.

Ungleich.ch is one of the good options but it is more expensive than other providers. They offer a cheaper choice by choosing to have only ‘ipv6’. But we had to dig in to understand the difference of ipv4 and ipv6. From wikipedia: “IPv6 is the most recent version of the Internet Protocol, developed to deal with the long-anticipated problem of IPv4 address exhaustion” We found a [https://stats.labs.apnic.net/ipv6 map] that shows which countries have implemented IPv6 and it seems that if we only use this address then many places won’t have access to the website of TITiPI. So we choose to have both addresses.

We also notice that this provider is using Stripe for their payment system. In a [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Frontier parallel universe of TITiPI] we give attention to and critique Stripe because of its connections with the Carbon Removal industry.

[[copyright issues? Ungleich.ch payment system with Stripe]]

Another urgency appears while we are looking at different choices; together with many other organisations, we have been thinking about ways to host and maintain infrastructures in solidarity with communities and networks we are part of. This would mean, for example, hosting digitally a Palestinian video film archive, or research by sex workers. Solidarity is only partially a question of caring for privacy and security because it matters where and how we host our digital infrastructures and whether these spaces do or do not support the flourishing of different lives and struggles. This need make us think again if the server we choose would be suitable for something like that.

Constant and Servus are two accomplice servers that already provide to TITiPI some of their services. Zaclys is a member of Chatons that support open source values and it is located in France. We contacted them to see if they could be an option but they never responded to us.

We wanted to work with a company that provide ‘green’ infrastructure. Greenhost seem to be a good choice. It provides a familiar interface to us, good support and backup option. It has a positioning as an alternative to AWS. So far great, but what about its ‘green’ hosting vision? Is it a solarpunk vision, a green cloud utopia? Is their infrastructure resource ‘hungry’? What are the privacy limits when the material hosted in the servers is political and sensitive?

We choose Greenhost with all the discomforts that this choice entails and with the desire to keep the critique and dialogue alive.

Only by December 2023 we manage to arrange a call with one of Greenhost’s former Managing Directors to get a feeling and more information about their approach and sensitivity. Accordind to him Greenhost exists in the intersection of activism and technology. It provides consultancy, sustainability solutions in tech projects and structured maintenance; they go for best quality with lowest environmental impact; they maintain the same hardware as much as possible and balance that with higher efficiency; they keep backups at an already existing data center in the university of Amsterdam.

[paragraph for Greenhost include?]

== Installing, tranferring, saving, copying, … ==

On the 28th of November sitting on the sunny corner of the couch next to the radiator, and with warm coffee cups waiting for us on a low table, Femke and I cover our legs with a blanket and open our laptops.

I ask Femke to jumb in a tmux session for sharing terminal with this command: <code>sudo tmux attach -t webserver</code>. We start by cleaning the old server and make backups of the files.

We take a lunch break. Femke finds out that if we eat three recurrent meals every week in the office we can have a nice variety of food; lentiles soup, orecchiette pasta with brocoli, rizzoto with mushrooms and lots of fruits. Sometime ago we decided to make multiple short breaks throughout the day because of computer fatigue. One day I removed all the files from my computer that were older than 90 days because I accidentally run a command on the terminal instead of a bash script to test the setting up of [https://gitlab.constantvzw.org/titipi/burrow Burrow]. I left this comment in the initial script:

<code># VERY DANGEROUS COMMAND find *txt -mindepth 1 -mtime +$RETAIN -delete</code>
The next day we set up the new server and install all the necessary software including a new version of the MediaWiki. We arrange a meeting with Martino Morandi, member of Constant, who created the wiki-to-pdf to help us installing this software and tranfer the MediaWiki in the new server. On the 1st of December we successfully install the wiki-to-pdf and because of limited time we decided to meet one more time at the end of the month for the rest.

[[File:Virtual-env-debian.png|thumb|Screenshot from the wiki-to-pdf installation to the new server with Martino, Femke, Aggeliki. Debian supports a different way to create virtual environments for installing python packages and libraries. We try it but it failed.]]

On the 28th we meet with Martino online to complete the transfer, which includes copying the old database of MediaWiki, activate the old plugins and fix any issues on the way. We are all located in different countries (Italy, Greece, Belgium) and so we share a tmux session. We follow the guides but on the way we had to do some research and configure a lot of things to make the MediaWiki work. Martino was hunting a php module. It seemed that php has shifted to free software culture in an attempt to find another business model. It is not surprising it happens in the context of Ubuntu. The issue is recorded [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Server_transfer_documentation#MediaWiki_upgrade_issues here].

[[File:Firefox Screenshot 2024-01-10T13-59-40.398Z.png|thumb|"Is Titipi.org down?" Helen asks after the transfer. It seems that her browser cache was preventing her from seeing the website]]

The process is documented in our diary and then transferred to a [https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Server_transfer_documentation wiki page]. By January 2024 the server transfer and the deletion of our Linode account has been completed.

== Glossaries ==

* https://varia.zone/ATNOFS/ATNOFS-screen.pdf
* https://titipi.org/wiki/index.php/Glossary

terms italized in the report:
* being hosted
* serving
* server
* server migration
* wiki-to-pdf: a publishing tool developed with Martino Morandi, itself based on work by OSP re-worked by Manetta Berends. Hackers and Designers in turn continued wiki-to-pdf as wiki2print
* free/libre tools

== References ==

* https://journals.openedition.org/ardeth/2194?lang=en
* https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec/31/white-south-africa-ubuntu-african-tutu
* https://thefunambulist.net/magazine/redefining-our-terms/ubuntu-a-black-radical-demand-for-reparations
* https://www.bloomsburycollections.com/monograph-detail?docid=b-9781350351042&pdfid=9781350351042.ch-8.pdf&tocid=b-9781350351042-chapter8
* https://thebastion.co.in/politics-and/tech/a-feminist-server-to-help-people-own-their-own-data/
* https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec/31/white-south-africa-ubuntu-african-tutu
* https://thebastion.co.in/politics-and/tech/a-feminist-server-to-help-people-own-their-own-data/ (from eu to india owning data and infrastructure is very powerful for many reasons)
* [https://monoskop.org/Community_servers#Publications Monoskop community servers page]
* https://github.com/redis/redis/issues/3185 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-53050955
* https://www.theserverside.com/opinion/Master-slave-terminology-alternatives-you-can-use-right-now

== Colophon ==

The text was drafted in pad.xpub.nl

File:Firefox Screenshot 2024-01-10T13-59-40.398Z.png

2024-07-16T12:50:05Z

Angeliki:

"Is Titipi.org down?" Helen asks after the transfer. It seems that her browser cache was preventing her from seeing the website