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  • Laurent Bercotska@treehouse.systems
    Apr 30, 2026, 11:17 AM

    skarnet.org will be down until further notice - it may take up to 10 days (!)

    I wanted to reboot the server on a newly tailored kernel to avoid CopyFail shenanigans. The shutdown failed right before rebooting (because of a small oversight in s6-linux-init that is easy to fix and will not impact anyone else). Normally that wouldn't be a problem: log in to the web interface to the VPS administration, press the reboot button, done.

    Except, Gandi added 2FA since I last logged in, and did not notify their users. And they decided that by default, the verification code would be sent to the registered primary e-mail address.

    My registered primary e-mail address is hosted on skarnet.org. Because it was never a possibility that it would be needed for the bootstrap chain. Except that now it is, and I can't access it.

    This is the dumbest catch-22 in the history of catch-22s. And the recovery procedure, when you have to prove your identity when writing to the support outside of a logged in account, can take up to 10 days. And tomorrow is a holiday. Fuck me, I guess.

    I should have paid more attention, but the consequences of my not paying enough attention should definitely not be so vast, and I have choice words for several of the decisions that were made.

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Replies

  • Laurent Bercotska@treehouse.systems
    Apr 30, 2026, 2:35 PM

    That was way faster than expected! Some person read my emergency ticket sent last night (from logged out), and I seem to have been convincing enough because they restarted the server for me, and now everything is working again. 🥳

    Guess I won't have these 10 days of forced vacation. 😔

    Now to take measures so that it doesn't happen again...

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  • navinavi@social.vlhl.dev
    Apr 30, 2026, 11:21 AM
    @ska my first thought for stuff like this would be to quickly setup one of those mail services that allow custom domains for free

    make the MX entries, get the recovery code, and remove the entries

    that is assuming dns access isn't also tied to the email address
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  • navinavi@social.vlhl.dev
    Apr 30, 2026, 11:31 AM
    @ska can't that be temporarily changed w/ the registrar?

    i'm completely unaware of how hosting a dns server works
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  • Laurent Bercotska@treehouse.systems
    Apr 30, 2026, 11:35 AM

    @navi Really, the system is perfectly elegant and self-contained, and has one outside line to bootstrap from: my access to the web interface to control the VPS.

    And they decided to move that access into the closed loop, without notifying me.

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  • navinavi@social.vlhl.dev
    Apr 30, 2026, 11:37 AM
    @ska i would honestly be a bit worried about putting all my eggs in a single basket like that tbh
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  • Laurent Bercotska@treehouse.systems
    Apr 30, 2026, 11:41 AM

    @navi What's the alternative? Paying for a second VPS hosted elsewhere? Having to manage another e-mail address?

    One of the points of skarnet.org is maximum independence. And really, it has worked pretty well so far: I could always recover from mistakes.

    Now my new recovery address will be my gmail one. Lovely. I could change and ask for some hosted address somewhere else, but that defeats the purpose of being self-reliant.

    Really, it all comes down to "don't cut my lifeline without telling me you fucking clowns".

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  • navinavi@social.vlhl.dev
    Apr 30, 2026, 11:49 AM
    @ska honestly having the registrar somewhere else, and a backup mail account

    my registrar is separate from my vps provider, and doesn't have my self hosted email as primary, solely because i was afraid of messing up smth and being locked out of their dns panel with a broken mail setup
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  • Laurent Bercotska@treehouse.systems
    Apr 30, 2026, 12:06 PM

    @navi Spreading your dependencies is clearly a more resilient setup and you're right to do so.

    But the thing is, this incident also confirms me in my belief that it's a good thing for me to have control on as many things as possible, because as soon as I depend on one external entity, they fuck something up. So I want to be self-reliant even more.

    And I guess my external line will now be gmail, for the sole reason that they're too big to fail. Which I don't like, but I'm going to use that property.

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  • Nelsonskyfaller@jawns.club
    Apr 30, 2026, 12:21 PM

    @ska @navi Considering Gmail "too big to fail" is very... optimistic.

    Google can and will destroy anything in their control, up to and including Google Search. Look at the Google Graveyard! Is Google really a company you should trust with anything? killedbygoogle.com/

    I also use Gmail and I'm typing this from Android, but I live in fear of these becoming untenable overnight. I would spend a lot of time, money and effort to achieve stability elsewhere. Google may continue, but will Gmail?

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  • navinavi@social.vlhl.dev
    Apr 30, 2026, 12:27 PM
    @skyfaller @ska considering how much data they get by hosting gmail, yeah -- while both google is alive and email is used by people, gmail will last

    it'll get shittier tho, but that doesn't matter much
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  • Nelsonskyfaller@jawns.club
    Apr 30, 2026, 12:39 PM

    @navi You may be right, but are you saying that Google didn't get data from Google Plus, or Google URL Shortener? Feels like they have killed a lot of useful data sources.

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  • navinavi@social.vlhl.dev
    Apr 30, 2026, 2:36 PM
    @ska i guess "please restart this vps that is hang anyway" is a easier ask to "give me access to this account"
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  • Laurent Bercotska@treehouse.systems
    Apr 30, 2026, 2:42 PM

    @navi Absolutely. I had asked to either send a recovery code to my gmail account, or reboot the server. They rebooted the server. Totally fair. 😅

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  • Laurent Bercotska@treehouse.systems
    Apr 30, 2026, 3:31 PM

    @lanodan @navi I never have problems booting thanks to the static guarantees of s6-rc, whenever I have an issue it is shutting down because after some living, the state may be different from what I assumed it would be.

    But I'm learning, and incrementally fixing assumptions about state, this is only the latest case - and hopefully the last one.

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  • C.cazabon@mindly.social
    Apr 30, 2026, 6:11 PM

    @ska

    Was the procedure to wait for a secret code via postal mail?

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