Database transition step 1 completed

Dear all,

I am pleased to say that the first step of the RIPE database
transition has been succesfully completed yesterday. Up till now, one
minor and one major bug have been found and fixed and the database
seems stable.

Those who daily ftp the ripe database from ftp.ripe.net may have
found that it was not there this morning. This was a simple typo in
one of my scripts and has been fixed. The ftpable files (the complete
database in ripe/dbase/ripe.db and the split versions in
ripe/dbase/split) are currently generated at around 5:30 (AM for the
US folks ;-) Dutch time, which is currently UTC+1. All database files 
ara available as uncompressed and compressed (both normal compress and
gzip) versions. The generation time can be changed if you think there
is a need (earlier, not later).

Those who run a secondary copy of the database may find that the
latest ftpable database takes much longer to index. This is because
the database now includes large provider blocks, and the old software
is not good at handling large blocks. The current plan is to have a
beta release of the software (with some documentation on the changes)
ready this weekend, so you can pick up this software and use it to
index the RIPE database. This version will have all of the classless
and other features as per the database transition plan (T1).

As far as conflicts/problems in the guardian files are concerned, most
of them have been resolved. There are some 15 guardian files left with
problems. These guardians will be approached to correct these
problems.

If you have questions/comments/bugs, please report to me personally,
or to any of the above lists if you think they are interesting for a
larger audience.

Regards,

-Marten