backports.org moved to backports.debian.org

After several years of slacking :) by everybody involved it finally happened: backports.org has become backports.debian.org. For that to happen several things had to get changed and streamlined, so please make sure to read this announcement to avoid too many surprises. We are happy to welcome a new ftpmaster, Gerfried Fuchs (rhonda) joined our team. The website [1] and the mirror moved to http://backports.debian.org/ and the archive is now available below debian-backports/. Even though we expect the old entries to continue to work for a while, you might still want to update your sources.list entry to: deb http://backports.debian.org/debian-backports lenny-backports main contrib non-free or one of the mirrors[2] that do carry the backports archive. Moving backports master to a newer version of the debian archive kit (dak) brings support for dpkg version 3 packages, so from now on debian-backports will accept dpkg source 3.0 packages without changes. The backports service still uses its own version of the keyring. Therefore if you want to put packages onto backports you have to coordinate with the backports team to have your uploads accepted. Please follow the procedure outlined in [2]. Support for Debian Maintainers (DM) is expected to follow soon, if you are interested in helping to test this (and get added to the keyring) please contact Jörg Jaspert <joerg@debian.org>. While we were at it, the backports branch for squeeze has been added as a squeeze-backports suite, which enables the installer to add (maybe commented) entries for it on fresh installations. For now uploads to it are disabled however, to be enabled after the release, whenever it'll happen. This will be announced separately. The origin and the label of the Archive changed to "Debian Backports" so if you used them for pinning you will have to modify your apt.preference configuration. Please refer to [3] for more information. Additionally the archive is now signed by the standard ftpmaster signing key, currently the Lenny key. Mirroring is now managed by the debian mirror team[4] so if you want to get an official debian-backports mirror get in touch with <mirrors@debian.org> or use the submit webform[4]. Make sure you use the ftpsync script from [5,6]. The mailinglists moved to lists.debian.org [7,8,9], the subscriptions have been moved to the new lists. Hosting for the equipment that powers backports.debian.org is graciously provided by the Electrical and Computer Engineering department of the University of British Columbia in Canada[10]. Thanks. We also would like to thank team(ix)[11] for providing a good home for this service for all these years. As mentioned above backports.org will continue to remain functional as a mirror of the official repository from debian.org for a while. Thanks for your attention, the debian-backports ftpmasters (ftpmaster@backports.debian.org), Alexander Wirt, Gerfried Fuchs, Jörg Jaspert. [1] http://backports.debian.org/ [2] http://backports-master.debian.org/Mirrors/ [2] http://backports.debian.org/Contribute/ [3] http://backports.debian.org/Instructions/ [3] http://www.debian.org/mirrors/ftpmirror [4] http://www.debian.org/mirrors/submit [5] http://ftp-master.debian.org/ftpsync.tar.gz [6] http://ftp-master.debian.org/git/archvsync.git/ [7] http://lists.debian.org/debian-backports [8] http://lists.debian.org/debian-backports-announce [9] http://lists.debian.org/debian-backports-changes [10] http://www.ece.ubc.ca [11] http://www.teamix.net