[harvie]

> How would that even work?

Are you seriously asking how would sharing short text notes over internet work?

If you need to be 100% git-centric, you can have git repo for messages. Client will then remember last commit displayed to user and refuse to continue unless latest message was displayed.

BTW some AUR clients displayed ArchLinux RSS feed before... Too sad the issue is not even mentioned in the RSS feed...

[kpcyrd]

There's no shortage in ideas of how to make the AUR easier to moderate. A "quarantine button", an invite system, a request system for adoption similiar to how orphan requests work, code review attestations similiar to cargo-crev, pacing controls similiar to those in discourse.

There is a shortage however of people skilled enough to implement them (with available time to do so).

What we also don't have a shortage of is angry people in comment sections.

[hypfer]

People have all right to be angry if basic responsible adult things like "quarantine the server spreading large amounts of malware" do not happen within the reasonable timespan that passed.

Not even a news. A hint. Nothing. Radio silence.

___

There is a house. It is currently on fire (since over 24h). So far, people have talked about how, conceptually, house fires are bad.

You can still enter the house just fine.

People saying "hey what about locking the door to not trap more people in it" are being shunned for the crime of breaking someones workflow.

The owner of said house is nowhere to be seen.

Passerbys stating "oh my god that house is on fire! get water!" are either ignored or reminded that there is no problem and they should move along.

___

Idk man. I don't think any of this is real.

And I don't even use arch, lol. And after this thing exposed the institutional rot, neither should you or really anyone.

Unless you like ending up locked inside a house fire. I guess they provide warmth in the cold harsh reality of the 2026 internet.

[kpcyrd]

The server actually hosting the rootkit executable is npmjs.com, run by a for-profit company, and they still take about 24h to act on our reports, while reported AUR packages have been processed in about 1-2h by people that work unrelated dayjobs on top of this, to self-subsidize their open source work.

Sorry you're displeased with us not writing blogposts faster on top of all this. The situation is already exhausting enough without people like you.

[hypfer]

Look, man, I understand all that, but pulling the plug is something that takes at most 90s. Let's say 300s to add the "Warning: There is an attack. We're working on it. Systems are down for now" box

After that, you have all the time in the world to prioritize dayjobs etc.

It's not about dropping everything and fixing the root cause. It's just about taking stuff offline so that the immediate danger is mitigated.

That is not too much to ask. It's not "people like me" having weird opinions there.

Shut it down. Then fix whenever there is time to do so.

___

But hey. Finally a statement from someone with some amount of position in the org I guess?

I wouldn't want to be in your shoes for sure, but that's beside the point. Nothing here is unreasonable other than the ostrich-style incident response lack-of-process.

And I don't mean stupid corporate process. I mean "common sense adults are in the room" process. Throw waterbucket at burning server reflex.

___

I mean I can see that your userbase absolutely sucks and could imagine that one would be scared of getting roasted for "interrupting their workflow", but this is not the way.

Their workflow is irrelevant.

As said, I'm all here for maintainer empathy, but only after the fire is put out first.

___

Anyway, "institutional rot" is not an insult but a diagnosis. I'd love to be proven wrong on that, but I don't see it.

And trust me, I do know first hand how thankless this non-job is and what hell one goes through. I have skin in the game. I just don't have a horse in the arch race.

[Tharre]

"Hey, let's take down all of npm, because there's a package that installs something malicious, and some people may install it without reviewing it first. The thousands of other people relying on this service can wait."

Do you not realize how crazy of an request that is?

[hypfer]

You do realize that the people relying on the service also get served wormable malware, right?

The service is already disrupted. It is not that a disruption could be _avoided_. The discussion makes no sense.

___

Hell, even if I would be completely wrong in that assessment (not sure how, but let's assume that's the case)

You can still put up a banner. "Hey, FYI: We're under attack".

If not right away, then at the very least the moment media reports on it. And if media reported wrong, the banner says "Don't worry people. Media got it wrong."

[Ferret7446]

Why are you still misunderstanding when other replies already explained?

AUR has always been AT YOUR OWN RISK.

To use your analogy, the house is an underwater cave with a big scary sign warning you that you will die, you go in without training, and blame the cave for not being safe.

[hypfer]

My man, this thread has already achieved the intended outcome (or has just temporally coexisted).

There is no need to argue anymore. Enjoy your computers.

[Tharre]

You seem confused about how the AUR works. There is no "client" like you're talking about that can show the user anything.

There are AUR helpers, but these are completely unaffiliated with arch and the people running the AUR. The canonical, recommended way of installing arch packages is cloning a git repo, reading through the sources and then building it with makepkg. There is no client there that could show the user anything.

[harvie]

how comes gitlab shows custom messages to my plain old git client then?

for example when you rename gitlab repository, or push to new branch, gitlab injects custom text that you can see. Eg. with new URL or where you can create merge request on web, etc...

[Tharre]

I assume you're talking about the "remote: " messages? I've only ever seen those on push operations, not sure if they're even available for clone.

Maybe they'd be an option, but then the whole "making sure they've read the message before proceeding" part goes out the window.