Grex Coop Conference

Item 284: Grex Town Hall -- How do we move forward? - Fall, 2010

228 new of 334 responses total.

Thanks for fixing it.

  
re 105 .. not validated properly,  ?????????????   what besideds the 
  validate commmaned is requiterred? 
  

It looked like he pre-dated the validate command.  I ran 'validate' on him.

  
ahhhhhh .. good . . tnx
  .

http://m-net.arbornet.org/~veek/flyer/

I'm trying to create a CSS flyer so people can take print outs of it and
 post it up on boards (both IRL and on the net). It appears to render 
nicely in Opera even in print preview, but when I print to a post-script
 file it's all wonky.. 

Could someone test on their computer/printer? I'm on Linux and I checked
 in Konqueror - web rendering seems to be perfect, BUT print-preview
comes  up weird.. could someone check it out and stuff and if someone
knows  css.. clue me in..

resp:111 It looks good when I view it in print preview except that it
doesn't all fit on one page

ugh!

I also need to know what's wrong and what browser/OS.

  
re 109 .... i emailed your info...
  
6Message from yecril71pl on ttyp6 at 4:27 EST ...
Thanks for validating me, I can send e-mail now.
oo
EOF (yecril71pl)
Telegram from yecril71pl on ttyp6 at 4:29 EST ...
Thanks for validating me, I can send e-mail now.
EOF (yecril71pl)
  

In print preview for Firefox 3.6.12 on WinXP it looks okay, but it flows
to a second page in portrait format.  I didn't try to print it.  The
content will require review if we go with this flyer.  We want to be
sure we're accurate in how we describe Grex and that all the links work.

I'm not sure if the web-based newuser is working correctly yet or not.
Last I heard, it failed part way through the account generation process.
Did that get fixed?  Can people use the web newuser page successfully?

1. any chance of getting CGI - SuExec+Apache installed?? It's easy on 
Linux.. simple apt-get. I need it for scripting.
2. tsty: could you activate/validate the volunteers account?
3. What SDF is doing is:
ARPA members have immediate access to:
 600mb total / 20000 files 
 access to multiple subdomains                              (mkhomepg
 -a)

Could we do the same?? "total" 600MB NOT 600MB/user.. instead of stating
 that we give xMB/user fixed, could we give both values..

In Firefox 3.6.12 on Mac OSX it runs over to two pages at 100% scale, 
but is all on 1 page at 95%. Prints OK too, then. However the Sercices" 
box and the graphic coflcit. I'd make the graphic smaller and expand the 
width of the "Services", or even not space them, to reduce the overall 
length.

http://m-net.arbornet.org/~veek/index.cgi

hey, hey check this out :) it's not working perfectly and needs more 
features (also i need to re-edit content) BUT

1. look at that file-dir thing on the right! also, you can click on 
those links and view the contents of the file!

What i'm thinking is EVENTUALLY (that's my home-dir for now) ordinary 
voluntary mice can edit "content" in a browser and submit it. Now! If 
you ran that on the main cyberspace website ANYBODY can edit code and 
fix things :)

And it's rock solid secure (once i do some thingies to it)! What I'm 
saying is lynne can put in her password over https (different from the 
system password - we could prolly make it the same thing too) and act 
as web-mistress!

2. Right now it doesn't do much, 'cept view files.. - it was for the 
volunteers page - for them to view crud.

3. You will also be able to view content umm.. like right now those 
tags aren't being interpreted but in the future volunteers can right 
tiny text files like poetry and have it appear.

(it's basiclly like a crummy MIS.. :p)

anyway.. it was easy to do.. i just bummed some programs :) but i'm 
formally registering this project and the grex-flyers project!! no one 
else should work on this urmm.. (that's a request naturally..)

(it's still in a very elementary stage..) You can do stuff like:
http://m-net.arbornet.org/~veek/index.cgi?
entry=/../../../../../../../../../../../../etc/motd

but it's read only and only has perms what i have

there are these guys on SDF.. whom i'm yet to meet.. who fought with smj
 (the head of SDF) and they got kicked out etc.. would it be in bad
taste  to invite them over? they started their own server or some such
nonsense  - everybody seems to think this place is "dead".. oh Grex it's
dead..  jeeze! what are we, ghosts?

Boo!  :)

Anywho, as I've been ranting about for the last several months, we need
to be more responsive and get things fixed.  Maybe it's a bit of the
broken window theory of community, but when there too many indications
that no one is minding the store, so to speak, it does look like the
place is dead.  The lights are on but no one is home.  It doesn't need
to be that way and there's no time like the present to start fixing
things that are broken or just plain inaccurate.  But it takes effort
and time and cooperation, three quantities that are always in short
supply, it seems.  I'm glad to see ideas such as those veek has entered.
Now if we could get that "Get a Free Account" link to go to Grex...

[rit]      psulliva nope.. i'm just learning stuff and it look like an 
interesting project
[psulliva] ah 
[psulliva] when did you get your account? 
[rit]      dunno a while back
[rit]                                 
<no message sent>
[psulliva] i tried to create one a while back and i could never 
           get verified 
[rit]      heh, yeah they suck at verification
[rit]      arbornet's not too bad at that.. cyberspace is the pits
[psulliva] yeah, thats a great way to get lots of users :/ 
[psulliva] i wanted the free php and sql 

err i;m rit btw

[psulliva] yeah, arbornet's 'newuser' login doesnt work for creating 
           an account 
[psulliva] frustrating trying to get into these services and 
           theres no way in, but theyre both pushing advert like mad 
[psulliva] anycase, gotta run, be back in a bit 
<psulliva@iceland goes AFK>

The web newuser didn't work for me yesterday when I tried it (it thought
that tcsh and vi were invalid choices and that my proposed new userID
already existed although it did not appear to already exist).  I've
notified staff with the specific error message, although I'm sure they
already know there are issues.

For those wishing to get an account on Grex, the command line newuser
program works.  Login in as "newuser".

Unfortunately, the sign says "Open" but the front door is sometimes
jammed.  That's not as welcoming as we need to be to attract new users
and members.

I **really** want to see this web newuser issue fixed ASAP.  

Yes, that's something I've really got to get cracking on.  :-/  I'll 
see if I can look at it tonight.

I'm trying to look at this, but at the moment, it's blocked by the 
government firewall I'm behind (no, really).

I think that encouraging people to come over from SDF is a great 
idea.  We really need to a) fix the web newuser interface, and b) 
streamline the validation/verification process.  Both tasks more or 
less fall on me; both are just a Small Matter of Programming.

Thanks, Dan. I hope you'll have a chance to look into this soon.

re #127 "streamline the validation/verification process"

Or better yet, do *away* with the validation/verification process.  I 
mean Grex survived more than a decade and a half without having to have 
that and there's not that much traffic here anyway that it can really 
be justified.

resp:129 That was a different time and we've seen that it doesn't work
anything.

that was a different time when there were a *lot* more users than there 
are now.  

yeah, but there were a lot more staff to reset the b0x. in the end it
all  b0ils down to the person willing to go to provide and do the button
 pressing :)

+it's no biggie.. the internet's like a jungle :) old trees die and new 
ones will grow.. just differently.. if cyberspace closes.. SDF's there 
and they are pretty good! they'll be the sole survivor :) bound to do 
well once the competition's been killed off

but veek don't you see that usage has gone down since the validation 
patch was put in.  If the validation patch discourages new users, which 
it does, it defeats its own purpose.

resp 134: it is as you say ducky, and I am in complete and whole hearted
 agreement that validation is a pain that does more damage than is
worth!! but.. apparently ppl don't mind paying to forestall their
inevitable  death.. +i'm not the one who has to run to provide.. ergo..
i do not feel  his pain..

i checked and there were 754 odd resh accounts..

-bash-4.0$ cat /etc/passwd|grep resh|wc -l
     745

Login: freefall                         Name: Adam Dlugaszek
Directory: /a/f/r/freefall              Shell: /usr/local/bin/newly-
validated
Last login Thu Oct 21 13:40 (EDT) on ttyp5


this was the latest new-validation... October?


Directory: /a/j/h/jherm                 Shell: /usr/local/bin/newly-
validated
Last login Thu Oct 28 15:40 (EDT) on ttyp1

resp:134 Actually, Richard, do you have any data to back that up?
Because I've been watching the user population, and it's remained
more or less the same size from before the "user validation patch"
was installed.

That said, it declined significantly in the years leading up to
putting the validation policy in place.  I attribute this to three
things:

1. Grex was frequently down for long periods, for two reasons:

   a. The efforts of anti-social types like cdalten and mickeyd to
      find and exploit security problems in OpenBSD (which we chose
      to run for its much vaunted, but ultimately way overblown
      security reputation) and in Grex's configuration, leading
      Grex to either crash or be effectively unusable.

   b. Despite much protestation about things like the necessity of
      ECC RAM during the SPARC vs. x86 debate, when the current
      Grex hardware was purchased, the buyers nickle and dimed on
      important components (like ECC RAM, hardware RAID, and some
      sort of remote console capability).  I think this was a sad
      side-effect of Grex being run by an organization that for
      nearly its entire life operated on a shoestring budget.

2. The environment on the system was so hostile, in party, BBS and
   even just for interactive users working at the command line,
   that many older users left while many newer users didn't see the
   point.

3. Grex, as a service and as a community, is generally less appealing
   than it once was.  If you want to argue endlessly about conservative
   vs liberal, republican vs democrat, atheism vs religion, pro-choice
   vs pro-life, gun control, oil, wars, and all the usual stuff,
   and you want to argue it endlessly with the same five people
   who's positions are known and extraodrinarily unlikely to change,
   then Grex is a great place to do it.  But so are thousands of
   other places.  If you want to do that using either a web interface
   dating from the late 1990s or a command line interface from the
   early 1980s, then Grex is just awesome.  But most people don't
   want to do that.  Also, the scale of problems associated with
   keeping Grex running increased in the mid-2000s to such an extent
   that it became very challenging indeed to keep Grex running.

Note that the validation patch was designed, and largely succeeded,
in addressing points 1(a) and 2.  It really has nothing to do with
1(b) or 3.

Now, Richard, what you will notice, and I will agree with you about,
is that there has been a general decline in participation in the
Grex community, as defined by the BBS and party.  But that's only
one of several communities that exist on Grex; it would be a mistake
to conflate the two or to assume that decline in one implies decline
in the other.

Richard, you've made clear that you don't like the validation policy.
Fine.  But you've also made no proposal for dealing with the problem
of electronic vandalism that, history has shown, will occur if we
get rid of it.  If you have a viable alternative, I'd be very happy
to hear about it.

resp:137 Beats me.  If no one is requesting validation, no one will get
validated.  A lot of people just don't bother requesting.

Somebody, it might have been Dan, suggested validating via a micro-payment 
like through PayPal. Couple that with a manual validation method for 
people who are unable to use PayPal (ie. other country, or under 18), and 
I think that would fit our needs.

Yes, that was me.  I never said the system was perfect.  I'm starting to look
into doing it now.

We're in luck: the Board added PayPal verification as an acceptable form
of identification a few years back (see item 23 in coop).  So, what we
are talking about then is an automated way of verification.  You can
already be verified via PayPal, though it is a manual process of the
treasurer checking the PayPal account to see who has paid via a verified
PayPal account.  If we do implement this, we'd need to make sure that
there are good records kept so that the treasurer and the verifiers are
in the "loop".  The verification policy doesn't say anything about the
amount of money, so there may be micro-payments for verification only,
and payments for memberships to tell apart and handle.  

This response has been erased.

Can't you just do automatic verification.  Say you have to provide a 
valid email address, a link is then automatically sent there that you 
have to click on to validate.  Then the system notes that email and ip 
and in the future automatically rejects any other newuser request that 
ever comes from those details.  No humans or human judgement is 
involved.  You have a valid email, you get in.     

E-mail isn't in the current list of acceptable forms of ID for
verification.  PayPal has pre-validated accounts, where you link a
credit card or bank account to the PayPal account and they make sure
it's real.  So, that gives use more confidence that the person with the
PayPal account is real and gives us a better audit trail if there are
issues.

To allow e-mail verification of the type you suggest would require more
Board actions and potentially a member vote (although it appears that
PayPal verification was added only via a Board vote).  We certainly can
discuss this at an upcoming meeting.

I would be concerned that someone using a fake name could create a
free e-mail account and get verified, cause problems, and we'd have no
recourse to identify them if the govt. came calling.

resp:144 What's the point?  Kent understood exactly what I was getting at
in resp:142.  There's no humans involved there, either (other than the
person getting an account).

As a matter of fact, we talked about doing this at a board meeting in, I
think, 2008.  It just hasn't been done yet.

I'd think email verification is preferable to paypal.  Grex is a non-
profit site and need not be in the business of encouraging or requiring 
prospective new users to use a corporate site, PayPal, that has no 
ownership stake here.  Why solicit hits for PayPal unless Paypal is 
paying Grex to do that?

Grex staff also doesn't need to get into storing personal information 
about users.  Email verification obviously isn't foolproof as kent 
points out, but if it is done with Grex blocking future new user 
requests from both that email address *and* the ip address it came 
from, it at least makes it more difficult.

We already know that the likes of Chad will give fake email addresses; they
did it to get around the *current* validation scheme.  Richard, are you
willing to clean up after another attack from Chad or someone like him?

My suspicion is that your real objection to the validation scheme is that I
put it into place.

Oh, yes, and it's really not about paypal per se.  Any service that did
something similar, but could track a user down to a human being, would do just
as well.

Grex already stores personal information about users.  It has since its
inception.

Trying to block on email address and IP address is a) useless when one
considers something like tor and how trivial it is to create a throw-away
email account, and b) more invasive for legitimate users who want multiple
accounts than what we're currently doing.

No I object to the validation scheme based on what it is, not that you 
came up with it.  And re #150 I think limiting users to one login is 
okay, who needs multiple logins here these days anyway?

The overriding point is that grex does not and should not be in any way 
encouraging or promoting use of outside commercial services.  Doing so 
would just outsiders question grex's mission and whether grex is being 
paid off by these commercial services to encourage its users to sign up 
there in order to validate here.

In fact I believe that Grex encouraging validating via a micro-payment 
through PayPal is essentially promoting use of a for-profit service and 
could be a violation of the rules for a 501(3)(c).  This sort of thing 
could threaten Grex's tax status.    

Oh, God, Richard.  You better get right on the phone to The Red Cross, 
Kiva and a host of other charitable non-profits and let them know about 
this right away.  

resp:151 What if a user *wants* multiple logins?  Why should we restrict
that? Have you *really* thought this through?

Don't all online bbses, forums, etc "argue endlessly about [one or more 
of] conservative vs liberal, republican vs democrat, atheism vs 
religion, pro-choice vs pro-life, gun control, oil, wars, and all the 
usual stuff"?

I can not think of a single other forum I participate in that allows
political or religious arguments. So no, not all. But I'm sure many do.

resp:155 That's my point.  Grex is no longer unique; it's now a small fish
in a very, very big pond.

Last I looked at the Puppy Linux chat area two people were discussing 
marijuana.  Some linux forums have a 'general' area where people talk 
about anything they like.  SDF has a general forum.

If we can get the PayPal verification system working, would we also
credit their micropayment after we've assured ourselves the account
is okay?  Any payment could be considered a donation and stated as
such several times during the verification process, if we cannot do a
credit.  What is the smallest payment you can make via PayPal?

I see where PayPal offers micropayments and that might actually save
some fees as the rates are lower than if you send a small payment via
regular PayPal (the example I saw was that usually a $1 payment would
incur a 33c fee, but with micropayments the fee would be lower, 10c).
The problem with this is it requires a new PayPal account and is geared
more for merchants selling digital downloads.  Plus, somebody in the
transaction (Grex or the user) loses those fees if you give money back
(and the credit transaction might incur a fee as well) unless PayPal
refunds the fees.

Eh, I'd say ask them to donate either two or six dollars.  Then you really
could make them members; if they let the membership lapse, that'd be their
decision.

Okay, then we should make it clear that using PayPal as a verification
method means making a donation for membership.  That's one way to get
members :) I have a feeling that verification is a side benefit of
PayPal anyway, since you usually get there for the purpose of paying for
a membership.

You know what, perhaps we should reconsider the whole paid membership.
Maybe being a verified person is all we should require to be a member.
If we did that, I think people would still donate to the organization.
In fact, some might feel more inclined to donate after receiving "free"
services (principle of reciprocity and all that).

Hmm.  That's interesting.  I kind of like that....

I was wondering, if someone wants to create a conference - what is the 
procedure to do so? (I'm not planning such a thing, but if we have 
newusers from the 'reverse engineering' community, they will need a 
conference - in fact they may need multiple conferences.) Would that be 
okay?? 

Yeah, that's fine.  I think they just request it from the conference admin.

One huge question is will we get enough donations to support the current
cost of running Grex and provide for system maintenance & replacement?
That holds true whether we have membership fees or not.  The main issue,
as I see it, is not that we have dues for membership, as membership
essentially only gives you the right to vote and has not been tied to
user classes, as far as I know.  Nor is membership expensive, so it's
not a matter of dollars ($6 will allow you to vote in the upcoming
election!).

Rather, it is that we need to "provide a system worth supporting" as
several people have said.

While making memberships free would certainly mean more members, would
they be involved in the governance of Grex?  What is their stake in the
system?

Here are some things, in no particular order and not complete, that I
see we need to do beyond the current level of support we give Grex:

   We need to find services to offer that agree with Grex's mission and
   meet people's "worth supporting" criterion (and not worry so much if
   we can compete with large commercial organizations).

   We need to be responsive to users' and members' issues and fix the
   "broken windows" of the system.

   We need to keep our current services up to date and working as
   expected.

   We need to disseminate accurate and helpful information about our
   system.

   We need to add and maintain new services that are useful to users.

   We need to publicize our existence and services and be able to
   provide good service when people come here, including getting an
   account to even try out the system.

   We need to actively recruit new members.

   We need to appreciate the members we currently have.

   We need to actively encourage current members to continue their
   memberships.

   We need to encourage new volunteers to help.

   We need to mentor and encourage new staff and ensure that we will
   have staff members available to maintain the system.

   We need to plan for Grex's future.

We do some of these things currently, just not enough and not fast
enough.  Some of these things we don't do at all.

These are not merely a matter of the Board voting to do things.  Grex
needs the time and effort of knowledgeable, motivated people to do the
work of making these changes.  

We need users to be involved and willing to govern the system by
becoming members (whatever that cost).  That includes coming up with
good ideas and participating in elections and member votes, things that
generally take a small amount of effort and investment--but potentially
have a big impact.

I see some of this occurring, which is a positive sign.  But we need
still more involvement and effort.  

What are you willing to do to help?

If you currently do not support Grex with a donation & membership, what
would make Grex "worth supporting" to you?  If we made those changes, is
that really enough for you to make that donation, get a membership and
be involved in the governance of Grex?  If not, why not?

If you are currently a member (thank you very much!) what will keep you
supporting Grex?

Re resp:165, resp:166 - It's been a long time since anyone requested a
new conference, so I think the procedure has kind of been forgotten.  

The policy has always been that if you want a new conference you ask for
it in Coop, allow a few days for user input into the proposal, and if
you still want it after that, you get it (regardless whether people
thought it was a good idea or not).  In earlier Coops there was a new
conference proposals item for that purpose, but I can't seem to find one
in the current edition - but see item:coop9,18 for an example conference
proposal item.

New conference proposals are pretty rare nowadays.  Maybe the waiting
period no longer serves a useful purpose.

I don't see a problem with that procedure. I somewhat think there should
be a procedure for getting rid of some conferences though.

I think we should at least restart some of the older and cruftier conferences.
For instance, the "micros" conference; really, when was the last time someone
called a desktop computer a "microcomputer"?  Restarting the systems (nee
jellyware) conference resulted in a flurry of new activity for a few months,
though that's tappered off now; I sort of look at doing some selective
conference pruning as a way of repairing some of the more glaringly broken
windows on Grex.

resp:167 I think the thing that's likely to keep me interested is if Grex
remains an interesting place technically.  While the technology has gotten
kind of boring in the last few years, I think the idea of it remains
sufficiently compelling that I stick around to poke at things and see where
it can be taken.  The place definitely needs a facelift.

There are bbses, forums and mailing lists for all kinds of obsolete
technology. I belong to one for pendulum clocks - improving their timekeeping
is its major thrust (they use atomic clocks to measure how well they are
doing). Maybe have a conference for obsolete computers?

Sure.  But don't make that the main source for information about modern PCs.

hmm.. i just checked and Arbornet has no restricted shell. It's pretty 
much took a few seconds to get an account. (and there was very little 
text to read too)

For whatever reason, they don't seem to have the same problems we do 
with people attacking the server as soon as they get an account.  I 
don't know quite why that is, but I suspect that some of it is that 
it's just easier to push people's buttons on Grex, and the 
personalities that have been most disruptive over the past few years 
seem to get a kick out of doing that.

they have a slow fuse but when it gets lit they tend to annihilate - 
like with taking chad to court.. I bet they would have. we need more of 
that and less of validate is what i'm thinking - less pussyfooting 
around and more of aggressive action once it crosses a certain point. 
(also it helps that tonster's got m-net is in his backyard or 
somethin.. so easy to fix) we really need to nuke validate BUT then we 
need someone bullheaded enough that if there's trouble.. lawyers.. mm.. 
what we need is someone with a JD.. 

i read that there are lawyers that sort off dog patients footsteps 
(accident victims).. i was seriously wondering.. is that true? is it 
likely that if i gooled someone and approcached them, they'd be willing 
to help for free? what's the probability of it working out (roughly)

resp:175 The probability of such a thing is roughly zero.

We took action in the form of asking Chad to stop and locking account 
after account.  We talked about talking to law enforcement about him, 
but it didn't happen.  M-Net asked him to leave, and he did for a 
while, but then came back.

What sort of gets me is that the people who are saying we should do 
away with validation and so on are missing several points.

One is that Grex has always done some level of validation; from the 
time this place has been connected to the Internet, there's been an 
identity verification requirement to access more than just basic 
Internet services (e.g., do hostname lookups).  Not only is there 
precedent for this sort of thing, but member votes were taken back in 
the day and so on.  I don't think this is going to change any time 
soon.

The other is that people seem to have forgotten just what a mess Grex 
was for a couple of years prior to putting the current scheme into 
place.  Some people were howling for action (some who are now 
suggesting we get rid of validation).  Grex would be down or unusable 
for weeks or months at a time.  It was a sad situation....  What we 
got out of validation was some modicum of stability.  We put a speed 
bump in the road to getting to an unrestricted shell that set the bar 
high enough that the ankle biters got bored and stopped trying.  Now, 
we're talking about streamlining things further, but I don't think we 
should remove the speed bump: experience has shown us that without it, 
we get taken down.  And it wasn't just Chad: spammers were using Grex 
like it was going out of style and our ISP nearly shut us down several 
times as a result unless we took some action.  People regularly 
uploaded flooders and IRC bouncers and all sorts of stuff.  While the 
latter isn't particularly harmful, I don't think, the number of times 
I saw `udp.pl' in home directories was astounding.  Basically, the 
bottom line is that Grex was regularly being used as a platform to 
either attack, or attempt to attack, other systems elsewhere on the 
Internet.  We slowly narrowed things down further and further until 
brand new users got basically no access to the network at all, then 
they started attacking Grex itself.

Another issue is that of staff time and availability.  Grex's staff is 
much smaller than it used to be, and folks generally have way less 
time than they did previously.  It may be sad, but it's reality, and 
it begs the question, if we let people get on with no road blocks 
again, then who's going to clean up the resulting messes?  The 
spammers and crackers aren't going to pony up a couple of bucks to get 
to the shell when they can pay the same amount of money to rent a 
botnet for a few minutes (and send out an order of magnitude more 
email and/or flood packets).  If it cuts down on the amount of time I 
*have* to spend to keep Grex up and running, that's a good thing and I 
can use the limited time I have to play with Grex to do more 
interesting stuff, like improve software or services.

Finally, I believe that some of the conclusions people have drawn 
about validation are flawed.  It's true that introduction of the 
restricted shell roughly corresponded to a general decline in usage of 
the BBS and party, but correlation is not causation and, as I've 
posted before, the restricted shell came as a result of abuse of Grex, 
the BBS and party: I claim it was largely this abuse that caused the 
decline, not the validation speed bump.  There is less activity on 
Grex now than there was years ago, it's true, but I'd say that the 
level of actual, real discussion hasn't changed that much since the 
restricted shell got put in.  It's easy to mistake turbulent and/or 
destructive activity as just "activity"; when it goes away, things 
seem to slow down a lot (because they do) but what's there instead is 
what people are actually actively engaged in, not just observations 
about damage to the system.

It's easy to point a finger at the restricted shell, but look at what 
else is going on.  I mean, for how many *years* did the web site say 
that Grex was running on a Sun after we had transitioned to the 
OpenBSD machine?  How many dead links are still there?

Arbornet may not have a restricted shell, but SDF does, yet they get 
new users all the time.  Most of what I'm proposing is modelled on 
what they do.  It works there; why can't it work here?  I think it can.

I think that Grex's problems are a combination of technical and 
social, but the validation issue is somewhat separate.  Here are some 
technical things that I think could help out, if people were so 
inclined:

a) Update the web site.  Hey, we need a webmaster!  Anyone want to 
volunteer?  What's there now isn't terrible (I went through and 
converted almost all of the web pages to XHTML and cleaned up a lot of 
cruft a few years ago, but it's actually quite a large job).  
Specifically, if someone were so inclined, they could check out the 
web site from the Subversion repository (svn co /var/svn/trunk/grex) 
and make updates to the XHTML and CSS and send a patch.  A consistent 
look and feel across all pages would be great.  Making the CSS more 
generic would also be great (e.g., using relative percentages for 
things like widths instead of hardcoded numbers of pixels).  Pruning 
and/or updating dead links.  Making more of the content correspond to 
reality (e.g., the FAQs and so on).  Just proof-read the pages and 
look for grammar and spelling mistakes.

b) There are a lot of scripts in grexsoft that date from the Suns.  
Update these and make them reflect reality.  A lot of shell scripts 
are legitimately better written as Perl scripts.  Remove SunOS-isms 
(no, really).  A lot of scripts can just be straight-up deleted.

c) I think most of the C programs are good to go at this point, but 
verify this and clean things up as needed.  Someone who could write 
regression and/or unit tests for some of this stuff would be awesome.

d) Grex runs a few non-trivial software packages that need serious 
cleanups.  At this point, the big three are backtalk, fronttalk and 
party.  The former two need some serious work: backtalk needs some 
serious updates to make it compliant with web standards and make sure 
the HTML it generates is valid, etc.  The user interface(s) probably 
needs an overhaul.  Fronttalk is written in a pretty clean style, but 
is basically Perl 4, uses a lot of global variables, etc.  Cleaning 
that up would probably make it faster and fix some latent bugs.  Party 
has lots of legacy cruft that could be stripped out, again making it 
cleaner and probably a little faster.

Anyone who wants to work on this stuff is welcome; pretty much 
everything is in the subversion repository.  Anyone who wants can 
check it out and start making changes.  Send me diffs.

I didn't have much interest in that when sending money meant -- solely
-- that Grex would have the money and I wouldn't.  Grex had six thousand
dollars in the bank at one point, and no intention to use any of it for
anything.  Why would anyone send money under those circumstances?

If Grex needs money to pay the bills, I can send some.  If it needs to
purchase something, I will help.  (I did when it bought the current
computer.)

If it needs money because the bales are settling and getting
uncomfortable to sit on, though, I'm just not interested.

This response has been erased.

Dan, 
1. I'm not for a milli-second blaming you for implementing validation. 
It was, in an absolute sense, the only thing that could have been done 
at that point of time!
2. I don't see a correspondence between validation and a decline in 
Grex. Grex was already in decline long before validation!

(I'm NOT! blaming you for 'validate' - just get that out of your head -
at least as far as i'm concerned! Chad was a bit too much! also, agree 
with almost all of the above - mail spammers, bots - arbornet has some 
ass running udp.pl)
----------

What I'm asking is this:
1. could we bring back no-validation AND if trouble returns, put it 
back in place quickly? Far as I know, it should be fairly simple to 
switch between the two? 
2. What is the worst that would happen if we reinstated no-validation - 
Grex goes down? Would the person running to provide (that would be TS i 
think, but remmers also does that) be willing to do so? 

Try to see it from my point of view.. I abuse my Linux box doing all 
sorts of crazy things.. i don't think twice about powering off whenever 
i feel like etc.. and nothing ever goes wrong.. so i'm wondering wth?? 
We have like 5 users..

3. The web thing and scripts I think i can handle and I'll do so :) <g>
Anyway 1,2 can wait me thinks till we finish with the web-site.. (and 
till we get CGI/MySQL for shrimp users)

But what I don't get is, what's the point of turning it off?  It's not 
like there are hordes of new users clamouring to get accounts on Grex; 
until Grex has something to offer those people, they're not going to 
come here, regardless of whether they have to go through validation.

You could argue that what they come for is the shell, but I haven't 
seen any evidence of that.

Especially since there are fewer people trying to get accounts, we
should be as welcoming as we can be, including making it as easy to
get an account as possible, without forgetting the issues we've seen
recently.  We need a higher percentage of the people trying us out to
become regular users.  This wasn't always so in the past, when there
were thousands of people trying Grex and a few hanging around to use it.
Locking people in a maze of twisty passages is not my idea of a good
welcome, even though it may be seen as necessary.

One way to entice new users is to upgrade Backtalk or move to other 
conferencing software.  These days people don't want to participate in 
conferencing/bbs's unless they can upload graphics and show pictures 
and video in their messages.  

Could also re-open the Grex store and start selling those Grex logo 
boxer shorts again.  After all what better publicity can you get than 
your logo on boxer shorts  :)  (and no I'm not making this up, Grex 
once had a store and in fact sold boxer shorts)

Ha!  That's a neat idea.  Unfortunately, I'm told our last inventory
of products ended up being disposed of after traveling to Europe where
they wouldn't sell, either.  Maybe times are different and if we limited
ourselves to very few items we'd do okay?  But we probably don't want to
repeat history if things won't sell.  What do others think?

I'd consider buying a Grex t-shirt and/or a mug or something.

resp:180 1. from what I've seen on SDF, people are always asking for 
MySQL and CGI. One guy I spoke to suggested it might be for testing 
purposes since he was completely clueless. But he did pay for arpa or 
whatever..
2. People need a friendly push when it comes to such things.. like
sample  scripts tailor made for Grex (a sample home-page with some
random cute  girl/or guys, pic and a wall and crud like that). Then they
get ideas  like Oo let me try that.. a decent home page is something no
one offers..  which is weird because look at Facebook :) 3. We have so
far never tried getting things going in a well organised  manner.. ads,
and features together.

I haven't used newuser for a very long time, but it occurs to me that it 
would be easier to use if it didn't ask questions but instead set up a 
"standard" account, and then offer the user to make other choices by 
checking boxes on a choice page (like Setup in Alpine).

Oo! yup! good idea! Actually i was thinking a cool cgi form or a shell 
script.. and it could build his home-page and .plan simultaneously. I 
could template that so it looks very nice (the home-page). The home-page
 could also double as a resume so ppl looking for jobs. .. you know,
free- email.. resume on the web.. cool-domain-name.. some
work-experience with  cyberspace.. it would be pretty useful to ppl!

Great minds think alike.  Yes, this has already been suggested in the
previous town hall item, but it bears repeating.  I've also brought it
up with the Board in the last couple months.  It might make the most
sense to have the web newuser be the simple, straightforward one and the
command line new user be the one with all the questions.  Presumably,
most people won't use the command line if they are coming in through the
web.  And if they do use a command line, they can probably change their
settings.  Do those sound like reasonable assumptions?

Another thing that we could do is provide opportunities (links) for web
users to verify or validate and/or become members at the end of the
newuser session.  Then they wouldn't need to search for information on
what to do later.  The web newuser may do this already, but I haven't
been able to get through a complete session with it recently to see if
it does.

I've streamlined newuser and it only asks a few basic questions now; 
it no longer asks about things like backspace characters or terminal 
types.  It now only asks questions about the person itself.  We can 
reduce those further.  For instance, do we really need people's phone 
numbers and addresses?  Probably not.  I'm not sure that's a huge 
hurdle, though.

It strikes me that newuser has to ask some questions just to set up 
the account: desired login name, the user's real name, an email 
address.  I'm not sure what the set of reasonable questions is, 
however.

The long web newuser says phone number and/or e-mail address is in case
there are problems and for checking that the person is who they say they
are when they want a password changed (or similar).  It's optional and
can be set up so only root can see the information.  So, it's probably
okay to continue to collect that information if people want to enter it,
with the usual notes about how it will be used.

We obviously need a valid login name that does not conflict with one
already used on the system and a password.  The real name field on the
long web newuser page says it's not required to be a real name.  So,
people can give themselves a descriptive name if they want.  That's
fairly traditional on unix systems.  Changing it from the web, however,
may be something we want to set up so people who enter something they
don't like can modify it.  But that would likely not be on a set up an
account page. If we don't have a "manage my account" page we probably
should.

We don't have an account management page and we definitely should.

I'm not so sure about asking for phone number, though.  Email address, 
definitely, but I think it is extraordinarily unlikely that someone 
would get a phone call, at least from me.  That said, I don't think it 
hurts anything to ask for it, but I think realistically it's not going 
to be used.

I suppose it depends on the urgency of the problem as to whether we need
a phone number.  I agree that an e-mail address would be less intrusive.
Unfortunately some people change their e-mail address frequently. Since
a phone number is optional, those who do not want to be contacted that
way can leave it out.

I'm wondering if it would help us be a better system if we did an
annual survey of users and members and see if there are issues or ideas
they want fixed or implemented?  Of course, nothing prevents anyone
from sending in ideas and issues at any time, including here in the
agora or coop conferences or in an e-mail to staff and board.

Being something of a minimalist, I'd personally prefer a newuser that's
short and sweet.  I'll think about what I'd like to see newuser say/ask
and post it.

Maybe discussion of newuser deserves its own item, particularly if we're
going to have go-rounds about what it should say and ask, to avoid
swamping the Grex Town Hall.  I'm glad we actually have a new newuser
to discuss, that does some sensible things that bring it more into line
with current practices on the web - specifically the email verification
and the captcha thing.

 I'd personally prefer a newuser that's
 short and sweet

Shirley Temple hasn't logged into this system but remmers is holding out

Well, short then.  It doesn't have to be "sweet", although it should
exude an aura of friendliness.

Do we still give out those "Wizard in Training" docs?  It's on our
web page (on the newuser page).  If not, then we should probably
fix that page (though it is a nice touch if we give out something
tangible to new members).  If we do, then we're okay.

  
as  soon as the web-newuer problem is fixed i wiell start a campaign on the
web wehre i travel. 
 
as of this moemnt... only (!!) ssh/telnet  newuser works right.
  

The "Wizard in Training" documents do still exist, I believe, but are
ridiculously out of date.  A good project would be for someone to update them
to reflect the state of Grex post 1999.

Okay, then, we need a volunteer to update the "Wizard in Training" docs.
Is anyone interested in helping with this?

I got to do website and home-dir-web-templates; flyer is complete 
(unless anyone thinks differently :p)

Hey Dan, I suppose you'll be wanting all the web-patches in one go? Or 
do you want them trickled.. I finished the CSS template(tables has to 
be added).. it's much cleaner and err.. bigger than the current 
template..

here's a sample page (it looks exactly like the original):
http://m-net.arbornet.org/~veek/confs.xhtml
http://m-net.arbornet.org/~veek/style/services.css
Is this okay?? the text is black BUT it's so much easier to read! Also, 
light orange links - i like color sprinkled about.. just a teensy bit.. 
+while reading long docs it provides visual checkpoints.. vs having 
everything swimmming in a green sea..

I'll add a cheat-sheet and new-stuff later.. (i'll do corrections once 
the color thingy and css is okayed)

http://cyberspace.org/confs.xhtml
this is the original..

Veek, the easiest is to put a patch in your directory on Grex and then send
an email to staff@grex.org.

regarding home-page CGI/web-images/bandwidth-limits - shall I say this
is  waived for members (web-images/BW)? And that CGI is temporarily not 
available - pending installation??

Personally, I don't understand why any of that stuff is restricted.  
CGI, maybe (just because it puts a burden on Grex, and could be an 
attack vector for outside users) but the rest seems pretty legit.

"Attack Vector" is, I think, the key concept.  If it's no longer a
problem, then we should be able to open up scripting.

Images have been under discussion for a while.  It's probably time to
open that up, as well.

Oo! super! now we are talking <g> :) thanks :)

resp:206 Right.  We should look into suEXEC and suPHP for user access to
creating server-side dynamic content.  M-Net does it; I don't see why we
can't, too.

Thanks for getting this figured out!  I'm hopeful, as veek points out,
that people looking for CGI and PHP services will come here and
support us.  If we get this set up, we'll need to set up an example
account that we can show off--maybe the volunteers account :)
 
Another idea is to get our web page set up to show announcements.  While
we can put announcements in the MOTD and in the conferences, having them
on the main Grex web page would show people we are here minding the
store.  

That's a good idea.  Btw: someone needs to start recording these tasks.
We're going to start forgetting soon; I am, anyway.

Maybe a central document or database would work?  The trouble is, items
like the Town Hall item can generate a lot of ideas, but not all of
them make it to the status of a "task" to be done.  Do we have an issue
tracker db?  If so, we could enter tasks like these there.  Or we could
enter a coop item with a to-do list.

A frozen item in coop would work best.  From my point of view, any way.
:)

Okay, the next question then is who should control it?

Another option would be to use the (existing) RT database. 
https://grex.org/helpdesk/

All staff *should* have accounts on it, I think.

I'd volunteer, but I've recently gotten a new "hearing aid."  Every
fifteen to thirty seconds, it makes a loud and obnoxious noise, never
the same one twice.  So every time I start to form a coherent thought,
it goes off, and I forget what I was thinking about.

Gack, Joe, that sounds annoying. I hope you are able to get it resolved.
Maybe they need to adjust them or something.

RT won't work for me due to not being staff, but if staff can enter the
tasks when they get to the point of needing doing, we should be okay.
Will RT message people once an issue gets so old?

I believe you can configure it to do that, but I've never tried.
I can create you an RT account, if you like.

I looked at their web page and they say something about guest accounts
or similar, but if you want to give me a regular account I'll take a
look at how we've got it set up.  At least, if we enter issues as
issues and staff members have a chance to look at them and comment
(like I've seen in most helpdesk software) maybe that will take care
of some of the back and forth.

Here's something that looks interesting, if we were thinking of doing
some sort of training or providing tutorials:

  http://moodle.org/

It also has forum facilities in addition to other facilities for
education.  It's free software, and there is commercial support
available.

Of course, we probably don't need anything quite so complex to provide
a tutorial.  And things like slideshows can be produced other ways and
presented in other ways.

Just something to think about if we want to add some educational
materials to Grex, such as Unix skills or programming languages
instruction.

resp:216 I've created accounts for you and Denise (the only two board
members who didn't have RT accounts).  Pending the results of the current
election, I'll add anyone else as needed.

I've created queues for "grex-staff-tasks" and "cyberspace-board-tasks". 
Board and Grex staff are members of the former; board along is members of the
latter.

Thank you, Dan!

Here's another idea.  It's just getting started so no idea of how viable
it is in the longer term, but for those who like text-based applications:
 
 http://www.flatpress.org/home/
 
(A text file-based blogging system that does not require a database)

that's neat!

we might also want to look into HTTP compression for apache.. browsers 
can request compressed data if the server supports it. Apache does: 
mod_deflate and mod_gzip.

Okay, so several of us were talking about getting users access to
MySQL and PostgreSQL, both of which are installed here on Grex.  I had
mentioned that the Board discussed such access months back and the
comment I heard from staff members was that any such usage needed to
be part of the quota system, potenially necessitating a complex setup
to make sure the size of db files got counted under the right quotas.
One way to implement this sort of setup is to run multiple db servers,
each pointing to a db in a single user's home directory.  It sounds
complicated and potentially resource intensive.

Dan asked who said that, and at this point I don't recall, only that a
couple staff appeared to agree that was the way to go. I never heard
anything more about it after that.

Personally, I think it would probably work just fine if we had one
central db and allowed users to have accounts on that and to create
tables there under their user ids.  That would certainly make the setup
much easier.

As to the potential for abuse, I don't see it as any different from any
other application that uses disk space.  It's something to manage.  And
if we made it by request and for validated users, we'd in theory know
who was causing issues, if any occurred.  And probably we'd have less
abuse type of issues in a requested service, as well.  There are no
guarantees, but I'm fairly tired of seeing the potential threat of abuse
holding the rest of the users back from getting the apps they'd like.
So, why don't we try this and see how it goes?

I think it would be a wonderful situation to be in where we outgrow
our current computer due to more people using the system in more ways,
rather than watch the current system die of old age.

So, anyway, what do we plan to do about database access for users?
And how about CGI access?

CGI can be given without too many complications. For MySQL, how about 
we create a separate partition of 1GB and stick everything on that 
(it's automatically quota limited to whatever the mysql-user has access 
to which should be 1GB and mysql-homedir). We could create a bunch of 
test mysql-accounts/databases for people to experiment with.. that way 
we could: 
1. allot something really quick if a newuser wants it.
2. we could start advertising it as a service.

so if a newuser arrives, he can start work straight away on a 
pre-created account. By the time his script his ready, we'll prolly 
have come to some decision on how to handle MySQL properly (in terms of 
automated scripts to create db with a "proper" name, and some kind of 
disk quota measuring mechanism and validation/whitelist)

initially, i see the test mysql-accounts as being shared by a bunch of 
users each working with his bunch of tables. eg: database name: test1, 
table veek, table cross, table foo etc.. 1GB shared by everyone..

more importantly, what Sindi pointed out, we need a duplicate rootFS 
with suitable network-config! That's an absolute priority.. if the 
server goes down, someone in 'provide' just resets the box and we boot 
up via the 2nd FS so staff can login and fix FS1. Why didn't we go with 
something like this earlier on.. any idea?? 

basically it's a normal bsd install on hda1 and dd if=/dev/hda1 
of=/dev/hda2, and then suitable grub(or whatever bootloader entries) 
entries for both hda1 and hda2..

We could have a script that runs on some interval that checks the size
of users' databases, and if the size exceeds some quota, it revokes
INSERT and CREATE permissions until the size is back under quota.

Or perhaps write a stored procedure do it instead.

Both of those ideas sound good to me, Nathan.  It's just a matter
of someone writing some code.

Seems this is a popular problem to solve:
http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/linux-unix-setting-up-mysql-database-quotas.h
tml

This response has been erased.

#!/usr/local/bin/bash
#
# Assumes each user has 1 database, named the same as their username.

MYSQLUSER="root"                            # MySQL username
MYSQLPASS="changetherootpasswordyo"         # MySQL password
MYSQLHOST="localhost"                       # MySQL hostname or IP
EXCLUDEDB="test mysql information_schema"   # Databases to be excluded

DBQUOTA=1                                   # Database quota in MB

MYSQL="$(which mysql)"
DBS="$($MYSQL -u $MYSQLUSER -h $MYSQLHOST -p$MYSQLPASS -Bse 'show 
databases')"

for DB in $DBS
do
   if [ "$EXCLUDEDB" != "" ];
   then
      for i in $EXCLUDEDB
      do
         [ "$DB" == "$i" ] && ( continue 2; )
      done
   fi

   DBSIZE=$($MYSQL -u $MYSQLUSER -h $MYSQLHOST -p$MYSQLPASS -Bse 'SELECT 
sum(data_length+index_length)/1024/1024 FROM information_schema.TABLES 
WHERE table_schema=\"$DB\" GROUP BY table_schema')

   if [ $DBSIZE > $DBQUOTA ];
   then
      $MYSQL -u $MYSQLUSER -h $MYSQLHOST -p$MYSQLPASS -Be 'REVOKE 
INSERT, CREATE ON $DB FROM \'$DB\'@'localhost'
   fi
done

The above will check the size of every database not specifically excluded, 
and revoke the user's ability to insert rows, or create tables. It's 
pretty rough, and I had some problems with the command substitutions 
toward the end. But it might lead to something useful.

Does that process look like it could be automated safely along with
account setup in MySQL?  I assume each user needs to have their own
account set up, so any tables they create would remain separate from
other users' tables.  Since each user gets a link back to the main MySQL
db, the user should be able to add tables to their own acccount without
a problem and the quota system will control how much data they can save.
Is that your understanding?

Anyway, this is what was discussed in a prior Board meeting in terms of
keeping a quota for the DB files in addition to the regular data under a
user's home directory.

I assume postgreSQL could be set up in a similar fashion.

Nate slipped a couple responses in there (and thanks for that!).  I
was referring to #233 in my response #237.

resp:237 I don't think it would be such a great idea to symlink from 
the sqlarea into the userHomeDir.. what if the userdeletes his dbDir 
and creates another symlink? There's a whole can of worms we are 
opening up.. i think.. the moment you have a system process writing to 
a user area. I'm not saying it's a bad idea.. it's a nice solution 
because it looks cleaner..

There will always be issues. What percent of users are likely to do
something like this?

If we aren't worried about getting the DB files under the quota system,
then we could go with the monitoring solution. But I have a feeling,
running reports, reviewing them, sending messages to people, etc. will
take up just as much time as the occasional person who deletes a symlink
and then wants a link somewhere else.

This response has been erased.

I don't think we should fool around with trying to put mysql files in
home directories and such. I think we should simply put /var/db/mysql
(or wherever you want to store the files) on it's own filesystem,
readable/writable only to the mysql process user, and allow people
access to it through the mysql-client and extensions.

Just tell everyone who gets a database knows that databases are for
experimental purposes and they may become unusable from time to time due
to disk constraints. That we ask they keep their databases under a
certain size, with voluntary compliance.

If voluntary compliance ends up not working, we can try something else.

resp:242 I'm inclined to agree, though I don't think there's
necessarily anything wrong with symlinking the files to some directory
under the users's home.  I was thinking about it, and mysql itself
runs as an unprivileged user; if the user deleted his or her database,
they would only mess themselves up.  If they tried to point the
symlink elsewhere, they'd be subject to the constraints of that
other database with respect to access.  I suppose they could point
it at a random user file, but 1. few of those are writeable by the
mysql user, and 2. that wouldn't really do anything, anyway; mysql
is smart enough that it could detect that it's not one of its own
files.

But I agree with Nate.  I think we can just create databases for
users who want them, and if space becomes a problem, we address it
then.  I don't think we need to create a new database for everyone
as soon as they create an account; we could let them request it and
do it on a one-off basis, or write a tool so that a user could
request one for him or her self and get it automatically created.

I think MySQL and CGI access are both pretty good ideas, and this
discussion about quotas brings up a concern of mine: there's this
knee-jerk reaction to change on Grex, to installing new software
and services, and it's starting to get really old.  Grex is not
presently a high-demand service, and I don't know that it ever will
be again.  We need to stop worrying about things that aren't problems,
and start concentrating on things that are: users using all of our
disk space on mysql databases is not a problem at the moment.  Let's
not overthink it.  Let's also not be afraid to change software
configurations around, or install new stuff.

That said, I also don't think we should go overboard putting new
services and things into place if there's no demonstrated demand
for them.  I also think we really need to fix up what we have before
we start worrying about hordes of new services.  There hasn't been
a lot of demand on Grex for MySQL and PHP; those things are cheaply
and easily available elsewhere, and Grex just isn't that interesting
for them.  Even on M-Net, which does provide access to CGI programs
and MySQL, I can probably count on my fingers the number of requests
that have come in for one or the other or both in the past few
years.  I think we *should* do them, but they're not top priority,
and other things can and should take precedence over them: things
like web newuser, and getting the content of the main grex website
updated and cleaned up.

Also, let's not light our hair on fire trying providing everything
under the sun.  Most users who want access to a database probably
want to use MySQL: I think we can get away with giving out MySQL
database access, and not worry about PostgreSQL (even though, in
my opinion, the latter is a much better piece of software).  I think
that's also useful in another context, in that we can use PostgreSQL
for our own internal production uses and give user access to MySQL
and SQLite.  Even MySQL seems like kind of a stretch to me: any
validated user on Grex can get access to SQLite if all they want
to do is play around with an SQL database.  Full-blown MySQL access
isn't necessary for, well, anything really.  At least, anything
that can be done on Grex.

This may sound somewhat contradictory, in that on one hand I'm
saying we shouldn't just say "no" and on the other, I'm sounding
like I'm saying "no," but that's not really it.  What I'm saying
is, let's not waste our most precious resources in terms of people's
time on things that may not have a substantial return on investment,
and let's prioritize and get the house in order before we move on
to grander projects.

Let's build the foundation that we're going to layer the rest on,
before we start putting the finishing touches on the molding.

http://www.grex.org/~veek/faq.xhtml
http://www.grex.org/~veek/confs.xhtml
http://www.grex.org/~veek/member.xhtml
etc..
(compare against the existing pages - erase ~veek)

They are minor alterations but important none the less. Let me know if
you like the modifications.. fonts too small, too big, list not okay

If it's overall "slightly better", ill diff it and send patches..

A lot of changes were made to the content of the FAQ in the last few days;
most of those conflict with these.  The CSS looks pretty good.  If you update
what you have with respect what's in the FAQ content-wise now, that would be
good.

I'm only pushing changes to web pages if they come packaged as svn diff's
against whatever the HEAD commit in grex/web.

And I'd like to thank Dan for keeping up with all those changes to the
web site.  It has seen quite a few corrections in the past week or so.
There's more to do, and we'd like to make it look better (it's based
on CSS so maybe that won't be too difficult).

PostgreSQL as an internal DB is fine with me.  It is a pretty darn nice
database, I think, and has gotten faster in the last couple releases.
For a long time, it's been a database that has a lot of features and has
only improved lately.

Let's try MySQL first and see how it goes.  If we go with a single DB
and let people have accounts on it by request, that should satisfy
current demand pretty well.  We can always revisit how we have it set up
later if the current setup becomes an issue.

The thing, though, about there not being much demand is that for almost
20 years now we've been saying no to things like MySQL and that pretty
much drives away the people that want it, especially if they can get
it somewhere else.  At the very least, it teaches people to stay quiet
about what they want.  So, I wouldn't use current demand as a solid
indicator.  You may find that once you start offering a service, that
more people request it, especially if we do a good job of publicizing
that we have such services (which is something we not done very well
about lately).  Some people don't even know they need a service yet, but
they might if it becomes available.

Again, I'd consider it a rousing success if we had more users than the
staff or our computer can handle.  And it will probably take multiple
services and people from multiple areas of interest to build such a
user base. We know that conferencing is getting to be a lost art, for
example, so we need to consider other options for communication and
learning.

I agree with Dan about the knee-jerk kind of reaction that often
accompanies any suggestion of something new.  Almost everyone wants
things to improve on Grex, but few want to see anything change.  It
seems a contradiction to me.  Yes, we can work on doing the things we
already do to make them better, but even that is change.  There are so
many things that need to be improved that we can't afford to focus on
just one thing, especially with a time limit staring us in the face.
But we do need to be careful how we expend our resources.  As I see it,
these are reasons why we need more involvement from our users and more
enthusiasm from our volunteers.  In the meantime, we can focus on
getting our house in order, but very soon, we need to do more.  This
will be easier if we have help.

I'd like to think that if others see an enthusiastic group of volunteers
getting things fixed, they'll be more likely to want to help rather than
be a free rider and let others pay the cost (time, effort) of getting
things to work better.  We can achieve a lot in a short period of time
if we stop saying 'no' and start asking 'why not try?' and 'what can
I do to help?'.

Nicely stated.

(Side bar:  Picospan was based on Confer II, which was based on MTS line
files.  MTS Line Files were indexed databases; the line numbers were
indexes into the database.  This arrangement allowed for some
interesting things.  Would it be possible/advisable/useful to re-write
the current conferencing software to use the sql database?)

The main page has grexergallery link which is broken. Would it be okay
to point this to the Grex Facebook page?

and i have 2 diffs and a pages.css in my homedir and i've sent mail to
staff.. could someone patch :p

Not all the links in the grexer gallery are broken.  But the vast
majority are.  I don't know about pointing to Facebook.  It's
generally not a good idea to direct people to another site since
it hurts your own in terms of viewership/readership.

resp:249 Possible yes, advisable would be dubious, and useful I don't 
really think so.  Bear in mind that most indexed files are somewhat 
different than relational databases: indexed files just give you some 
datum given a key.  The relational model is a conceptually different way
 to organize data.

resp:250 Sure.

resp:251 I'll look at it shortly.

resp:252 I think that Veek's talking about the old "grexergallery.net" 
that munkey ran; it contained pictures of grexers, but the site is long 
gone.  I believe you're referring to the Grex users' pages page, which 
lists personal web sites of Grex users.  The latter should be cleaned up
 with the dead links removed and new web sites added.  The former I
think  we have two options for: either move it to Grex, or point to
somewhere  else, like facebook.

resp:251 Veek, I don't see any mail from you to staff; where are these
patch files?

~/veek/FreeGrexServices.diff and pages.css (put in style/)

Came from 'squeak'

Ah, that picture site's been out of service for quite a while, I think.
The other day I went through all the links in the list of grexer's web
pages and that page is mostly not working. I agree, cleaning out the
broken links would work there even though it might result in not many
links remaining.  We can start over...

I'd rather see the pictures moved to grex if they are still available 
and the people who posted them still want them displayed.

Me too.

resp:255 Pushed.  Note that most of the diffs had a chunk that failed to
apply properly; all were at the end of the file, in the footer.  See
~cross/*.rej for the details.

I'm not really feeling the font, and a lot of the content still needs to be
updated.  Specifically, we need to be recommending SSH, not telnet.  And when
we talk about membership for accessing external services, we need to talk
about verification; the two really are distinct.

resp:256 By the way, one of the difficulties with just pulling the data
onto Grex is that it was backed by some custom PHP and database code.  We'll
have to get that, too; as I recall, users could upload their own files and
things. Does anyone have any ability to get in touch with munkey?  I sent her
an email about this a few years ago, but never got a response.

resp:42 about having the phantasia game available.  It is.
  > which phantasia
  /suid/games/phantasia

resp:258 ah nm, i'll do it in perl.
resp:257 the font's the same one used by the main page.. Trebuchet. You 
mean font-size? Also, I'm still working on layout (css, color, size, 
look).. the content's easy to fix but things like browser-compatibility 
are troublesome because it's relative sizes(em %) so Konq has a 
different idea of "normal" than FF. chunks, no newline at eof - will 
fix.
resp:255 'squeak' oops had to change that for IRC.. i was picking up 
flak
resp:252 it's utility that should matter.. i dislike FB but.. everyone 
else seems to like it.. broken links.. yeah, it would be best to script 
that to homedir creation/deletion..

patch plz. ~veek/latest.diff (mail sent)

resp:261 It doesn't quite pass my code review.  Please:

Rename "pgfooter" to "pagefooter" and change the CSS document accordingly.
In general, please spell out words instead of using abbreviations unless it
really is too long.

fixed. new mail sent. can i update to svn directly and save on the
mail/notify overhead? there is rollback afterall.

Not yet.  In things like, "users.xhtml", why do we have constructions
like this:

    <h2><a id="T">T</a></h2>

The "<h2>" tag can have an "id" attribute; this is better written as:

    <h2 id="T">T</h2>

There's a lot of that that needs to be cleaned up.

Also, I see a lot of tags like <u> in there; I'd rather we replaced
those with either <em> or <strong> or CSS; <u> tags are on their way
out.

1. 'cause I didn't add that :p
2. i did clean it up elsewhere (i think).
3. that page is filled with broken links and is best autogenerated by 
script.. so, if i clean up the whole thing, i'll just have to junk it 
later.
4. will fix the u - it's been depreciated in 4 and will be obsolete in 
5 but it's okay for now. none of the lists on that page render in FF so 
could we patch and i'll fix it in the next pass (day or two). tomorrow 
is monday and i'm not a CS grad. if you update something in that time, 
i don't want to spend time looking for changes.

Fix the <u>'s and let me know and I'll patch in what you've got.

cool! i am for less horrible not perfect <g>

s/am/aim

While it's true that steady incremental progress is better than perfection
that never comes, I also think that attention to detail is extremely
important.  What we're doing right now, for lack of a better term, is
refactoring the web site.  A lot of what's wrong with it is that it tried to
do too much, and in that, lots of little details are wrong.  The web site is
basically dead right now, and we're trying to bring it back to life.  But it
died the death of a thousand paper cuts through neglect and lack of updates.
We have an opportunity now to start fixing those little things, and making
the details right.

So pay attention to stuff like what's deprecated, and what's not, and also
to the little things: proper spacing, making sure that lines don't get too
long (try to keep them around 72 characters or less, so they'll look good in
a diff in a standard terminal window).  Keep things professional: no extra
blank spaces at the ends of lines and things like that.  Spell words out. 
Use proper grammar.  Don't overuse punctuation!!!  Keep things short, succinct
and correct.

Ow! Those papercuts hurt!
 
Thanks to both of you for working on the site.  As Dan has pointed out
to me at least once or twice, we have xmlwf installed to check the xml
code for issues.  Also, it's a good idea to run 'spell' or 'aspell' on
the files to look for misspelled words (and correct them).  

resp:269 i think i am following (spacing, indentation etc). 

The U tag are depreciated in HTML4, which means that when browsers 
switch to html5 we'll have a problem BUT it also means that many of the 
HTML5 tags don't work now! I know that what you are saying about not 
using depreciated tags is technically correct.. but tell me something..

faq.xhtml was patched recently but blockquotes was left as is.. when it 
encloses Unix shell commands. Strictly speaking we should be using 
code, pre, samp.. also, the list tags don't render in FF on linux..

(and i'm not blaming you and shit like that) 

My point is: 
1. the browser world is all about making compromises! U tags if left as 
is for the time being, won't kill anyone and can be fixed once we have 
a handle on the rest of the layout!
2. You yourself work in increments! (the blockquotes). It looks good in 
lynx but code/samp should be used or styles. You didn't fix it 
overnight now did you?? But somehow you expect me to fix everything in 
one go?? 

And I AM WILLING TO DO THAT! Problem is, while i spend a month fixing 
stuff in my local copy (on my home PC), you will continue to push your 
incremental patches SO when I try to sync with Grex the document will 
have changed by then, and I'll have to spend quality time staring at 
diff's.. wondering what has changed and where, and try to retype your 
work into my "old" code.. (this has happened when you made changes to 
faq.xhtml pine->Alpine. I had the whole thing ready to sync and I had 
to look at diffs to see what had changed. Finally i just redid my work 
with the "new" page.)

It makes far more sense to just patch it quickly once a substantial amt 
of work is done - and bug fix quickly. Maybe an expert in reading diffs 
will have no problem, and when you get someone like that who actually 
does some work.. then we can follow a slower patch policy..

'course i could be missing some sekret svn command to solve all this :p

or let me put it in a much simpler way.. you didn't ask for volunteers
at  a CS PhD program at Harvard. I know what you are saying about U tags
is  correct, but I think I would find it easier to work with quick
patches  and rollbacks. It's way more satisfying/gratifying in any case!
:) unless  it's a root hole.. in which case feel free to point it out
strenuously..

Hi veek.  What we've been doing is working on HTML code that has been
in place since the dawn of time.  Dan fixed it up for formatting and
made it work for xhtml a few years back. But there are still a ton of
old-style/version tags and ways of doing things in there.  And bear
in mind, too, that way back, probably a dozen people worked on the
site off and on over the years, so that probably introduced some other
inconsistencies.  Do the best you can and if you run into issues let us
all know as you have been, and maybe something can be done (or ignored).
I appreciate what you are doing to make it better!

  
w0w .. veek/squeak is a asset ... tnx
  

This response has been erased.

*tackles tsty and sits on his head* :p thanks. hey kent, those old 
pages.. are they some place i can dl?? I'll send the latest patch soon.

Since the grex web site is in SVN, I suspect you an get the really old
stuff from the repository.  Just pull an older revision of a file.

However, what I was referring to was the state of the current site.
Just about any directory off the root is likely to have seen less work
and be in an older state of development.

Note that some pages should remain with old content, such as the
original bylaws and other historical documents (e.g. lawsuit and
incorporation documents).  But that's not to say we shouldn't fix the
HTML code for those if it's out of date or out of compliance.

In terms of downloading the files, I've been tar.gz'ing a local copy of
the repository and downloading that for testing with other browsers.

patch is uploaded (~veek/latest.diff), will send mail now. (no u tag 
and other updates)

thanks kent, will do. Ah! tar.gz yeah me too! I was pondering that, but 
it's best vs rsync at least for now.
--
http://www.cyberspace.org/~veek/ if there's a problem with da patch. 

also, what kind of mail quotas do we have??

resp:271 Whoa, simmer down there, veek.  What you are describing is just
the reality of working in a shared development environment.  That's one reason
it's often easier to submit patches rapidly, with small changes in them.  When
you talk about integrating changes out of the head branch, use the tools to
help you do that automatically; svn update is a handy thing.  If there's a
conflict between something in the trunk and what you've done, then it will tell
you and you can fix the conflict.  Otherwise, it'll just merge it in
automatically.

As far as deprecated tags, it's incremental improvement.  Nothing happens over
night, but if you're digging into it, maybe it's good to fix those at the same
time.

This web stuff is not that hard; certainly, nothing one would find in the CS
PhD program at Harvard or any decent school.

resp:281 I think the max mailbox size is like 50 megs or so.

resp:280 Looking now.

resp:280 Hmm, a lot of chunks got rejected; I put most of them in
~cross/*.rej.

Veek, and Kent, I'd recommend using subversion to download a copy of the
repository directly to the machine you are doing the work on.  This could look
something like:

% svn co svn+ssh://you@grex.org/var/svn/trunk/grex/web

Then, you can do an "svn update" in your local copy and automatically pick
up changes that have been synced to the mainline repository.

This response has been erased.

resp:285 [re: svn] Yeah, basically; it will merge whatever you have done
with whatever is in the repository.  So, suppose I make a change at the top of
a file and you make a change at the bottom.  The changes don't conflict.  Then,
I submit my change; you do an "svn update" and pull in my latest changes.  Then
my change is automatically patched into the file, and your change is
unaffected.

Suppose that the changes do conflict, though; then Subversion will tell you
there's a conflict and let you resolve it.

So it won't clobber your changes.

I think we shouldn't be underlining text at all.  <u>'s should just go away
and be replaced with emphasized or strong text.

resp:286 hmm.. well, maybe the diff will work now.. i did an update to 
the latest 1017 and then did svn diff.. it's copied: 'latest.diff' 
could you check?

it ought to work now! it gave me no errors when i did the update..

Yeah, give me a sec.

there could be a problem with the revision tags? I removed them from my 
html because svn was inserting span revision tags.. maybe if it's 
pattern matching.. it might fail

Yeah, it was the "$Id:$" tags screwing things up.  I patched in your changes
and pushed them to production.

Thanks, Dan. I was able to checkout the current web files and now can
update them easily, I think.  That will make this whole exercise much
easier!

Huzzah!

Yup, svn up works on my end.  So, we're good to go, I think.

I was wondering, what was the reason for 'validate' in the sense that.. 
when Grex was hit by Chad, what used to happen.. the box would hang 
with cpu at 98%, then someone had to go to reset the box? or call 
provide to have it rest?? So what's wrong with that..?? Provide didn't 
want to rest the box?? Or did the File-system conk-out after the 
reset?? What was the actual task that was sucking up staff time and 
causing so much inconvenience.. could someone clarify.. 

I took a look at the FS:
/dev/wd0a     1008M    115M    843M    12%    /
/dev/wd0d      492M    9.6M    458M     2%    /suid
/dev/wd0f     31.5G   15.7G   14.3G    52%    /usr
/dev/wd0g     39.4G   13.2G   24.2G    35%    /var
/dev/wd0j      9.8G    5.5G    3.9G    58%    /a
/dev/wd0k      9.8G    2.8G    6.6G    30%    /c
/dev/wd0m     15.7G    5.8M   15.0G     0%    /tmp
/dev/wd0o     19.7G    845M   17.9G     4%    /cyberspace
/dev/nnpfs0   10.6G      0B   10.6G     0%    /afs

/dev/wd0a is what is critical to getting the box to boot right?? It's 
the rootFS so if the box is not shutdown cleanly it gets corrupted and  
fsck will bitch. It's also the smallest FS at 115MB on a 1GB partition.

IF disk corruption and having to run to provide was the problem, why 
not install 2 root filesystems (mirror/duplicate - using dump/dd, /dev/
wd0a). Obviously you can only boot off one rootFS! But, lets say we 
bootup from wd0a because that's the default. Once Grex is running, 
point the bootloader to /dev/wd0b (our backup rootFS). Now chad comes 
along and crashes the box. You call provide, tell them reset please. 
They reset, and BECAUSE you've changed the boot order when Grex was 
running, it will load via the secondFS and come online.

Presto! someone remote logsin, run fsck on the broken partition and you 
are up and running!! (it works on linux, and i could try downloading 
OBSD.. and checking.. but, is that the problem?)
----------------

Or, switch to using a journal?? Right now we are using OBSD's Fast file 
system..
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/geom-gjournal.html (but that would 
take time me thinks since we are on OpenBSD right now)

also if i upload patches, could someone patch?? Or do I have to wait
till  cross gets back.. 1 month he said.. worst case scenario..

I don't remember the details of what the vandals were doing, but the
result was several days of downtime.  We've some pretty capable
sysadmins around here, and they could not find a way to keep the box or
get it back up quickly, as motivated as they were to find a solution. 
If something as simple as you've suggested would have worked, it would
have been implemented.

I've uploaded: ~veek/latest.diff could someone patch? Just to remind
you,  you should also know how to rollback :p

resp:295 What's the relative benefit of running a system that a user can
take down at will while other users are using it but that can be rebooted
easily, versus what we have now?

resp:298 It seems that much has already been applied.  Did you sync your
workspace after the last push before uploading this?

  
about  rt   here is a nearly typcial pos:
  
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------=_NextPart_000_00AB_01CADB5F.DB09D070--


===========================================================================

--
Sincerely, the Minimalist
  
minimalist my rosy red ....

That was not necessary to make the point, TS.

  
i went bac to rt just to see stuff ... some chagnes seem to be impelmaented.
  
more needed. 
  

TS!! grrr! (and re the mail, it's not necessary that I do the duplicate 
FS thingy - anyone could)

resp:299 ah! okay:
1. xyz hoses Grex - right now we got to go to provide because FFS 
doesn't journal. That's one task saved given that xyz could lie and 
sneak past validation in any case. Validation doesn't solve the lying 
problem.. (unless we insist on paypal for everyone!) I mean, nothing 
stops Chad from getting in right now! He just chooses not to!

2. Sure he could take the box down again and again, but now we can 
start banning his ips! and temporarily lock tor out! In fact we could 
nuke his whole subnet temporarily (1 month ban). With minimal downtime, 
he's not getting any reward in terms of squealing users and sysadmins 
having to run to provide.net.

3. It's easy to implement right? We need to resize a partition and 
extract 1Gb and then just dump to it. we could use diffs for stuff like 
password/shadow/group syncing. Or put in another hard disk.. 

4. Validation can now be temporary. When under attack, Grex just locks 
things up without going to provide. Then we leisurely repair the mainFS 
and unlock(remove validate) at leisure..
---

I feel it's worth a shot, but like i said, if ppl don't like it.. (i'm 
not overly optimistic about our chances without validation.. i always 
thought validation would be a temporary thing..)

+another suggestion (which i don't like), could we use fsck with the YES
 (-y) option?? and md5sum to restore files that are corrupted??

We tried all that, veek.  Banning IP addresses, tor end points,
etc.  None of it worked.

Constantly rebooting the box just for people like Chad doesn't buy
us much, and hurt us a lot (users who were doing things got denied
the service of Grex; that's not cool).  The present system raises
the bar high enough that the Chads of the world are much less
interested in bothering to attack Grex.

I really don't see why you keep bringing this up.  "Reboot when
someone crashes us" is just not an acceptable strategy.  Extra
partitions don't really help with that.  And seriously, WHY do
you want to make this change?  What's the point?  Just to get rid
of validation and resh?

resp:301 So, since RT works by people sending email to it, it can
get spam.  What's your point, exactly?

resp:306 *sigh* because perma validation will kill us.. at least that's 
what I believe. Thing is, on IRC and places like that.. it's hard enough
 getting ppl to move to a Unix shell and unless they can quickly log on.
 anyway, i won't bring this up again (ever). 

I checked out to 1019 and svn diff'd, should work now.

resp:307 I've seen no evidence that validation will kill us, and lots of
evidence that it won't.  Like, the fact that almost all other similar services
do some form of validation.

resp:307 Same errors.  Do you have the <div id="pagefooter"> stuff in your
client?

yeah! pagefooter is okay right??? i thought it was the revision tags.. 
but yeah rev tags are there as well in some of those docs.. let me 
check.. i got to sleep, tomorrow!

resp:308 yeah, but SDF is already established with a decent user-base.. 
oh well, try and see.. and you have smj constantly adding new features..
 but really it's the regulars in com(party) that keep that place running
 (chicks).

resp:311 We add a lot of new features, too; just that no one pays much
attention and we don't advertise them.  And Grex used to have a
well-established, large userbase as well: we lost that over time through
neglect.

Really, we need to fix the advertising and neglect thing before the restricted
shell.  And note that SDF has a restricted shell as well.

resp:310 Yeah, pagefooter should be there.  I don't see the Id stuff in the
rejection chunks.  I do see that it wants to change "pagefooter" back to
"footer", which is clearly wrong.

resp:312 yeah.. that's true.. Grex is way better than SDF (imo)! I like the
crowd on SDF but I dislike SDF itself.. i'd be pretty happy if they all
moved here and left smj where he is. Adverts is fixed! flyer is ready for
printing.. only the hacker.gif image may be copy-protected.. i just bummed
that from somewhere.. maybe i'll ask my younger sib to draw it..

hmm.. well i'll try and install svn-server and try to replicate stuff..

I'm working on a web page that lists the software we have installed.
Unfortunately, I can't work on it right now (later, yes) and of course,
it'll be an on-going maintenance issue if we put in which version we
have, so I'm thinking it might be best to leave that out for now.  I've
looked at a couple sites that list what we have and I didn't have time
look into what it takes to make an update (that is, it isn't always
obvious or easy to update some of those sites for our information, so
would probably call for an e-mail to the admin on those sites.  And of
course, since year's Board is not in our web site, it's hard to prove I
have the right to change things.).

s/since year's/since this year's/

(I *really* miss command-line access.)

What sort of commands are you missing on the web here?

Updating text files, like the one that contains the history of board
membership.

And if I could use svn or the like, I would have command-line access to
grex, and so wouldn't need them.

As I recall, your situation is not the easiest to fix, though if we had
a java-based SSH client on the Grex web page, you'd probably be pretty
close (though I'm still not sure if that would meet your requirements).

I suppose we could put in a web-based svn clent, too, for that matter.
If it would work to edit files, it'd be okay, again, though I'm not sure
that any allow that without downloading a file to your local machine.
The ones I've seen just let you browse/view.  If you had a secure
command line, though, you could just use svn that way.

Sounds like we might need a staff site that has the tools needed for
this kind work (or an area of our main site that is only open to staff).
This would be handy for staff who don't have their own computer handy,
as long as they can find a web-browser.  ...just some ideas.

arbornet has a java client.. you could bunny-hop??

Yeah, I was just thinking the same thing.  

Yup, hopping worked for me.  

The mindterm client is installed on Grex.

patch please ~veek/latest.diff [ i hope it works ] 

I stripped the $Id stuff out; couldn't create my own private repo to 
fool around with and verify for sure.. need more time to do that.

http://grex.org/mindterm/applet.html works, with some license accepting,
to give a commandline on grex.  There are quite a few options for this
terminal, too.

  
re 325 .. retty neat but tehereare is a starnge situation. 
  
somehow, 'it' deciceded who i was --- in advance!
  
and it was wroing
  
also it capitalized the first letter of the loginid , which of cours is not
correct.   i was able to change the logoind to muself and login though.
  
yeh, the licensing/security cert (whatever) needs to be 'accepted' but that;s
not biggie. 
  
  

So, basicaly, it works just fine and all these gripes are minor.  I
don't see where most people would be confused at all.

could someone try that patch? ~veek/latest.diff

resp:326 What kind of computer are you using at home?  It probably picked
up your login ID from that.

resp:328 I'm not going to do that while I'm in India.  Sorry.

(Though someone else can if they like.  Updating web pages is fairly easy;
sync your web client,

1. cd <wherever>/grex/web/htdocs
2. svn update
3. patch --posix < ~veek/latest.diff
   [Make sure nothing gets rejected]
4. svn status | awk '{print $2}' | xargs xmlwf
5. [look at the changes to make sure they are okay]
6. svn commit
7. ../tools/syncweb

And that's it.)

Thanks for the list of things that need to be done to make it work, Dan.

As for the Mindterm, yes, it picks up your userid from your computer
where you're running the term.  It's not a big deal.

It actually is a pretty decent terminal with a lot of options.  We
should consider putting it on the web page where more people can try
it out (hopefully without all the licensing questions).

How about S/MIME validation?  Like the new user is considered valid when they
can sign a message to Grex?

FTR, my primary purpose here is shell, especially emacs, not BBS.  I do have
a regular shell account at my alma mater but they require SSH whereas Grex
still accepts telnet, which is a great thing when all you have is some random
M$ crapware.  (Yes, I know what putty is, so save yourself that explanation.)
The rules against fiddling with open source projects are a little upsetting,
but it is still a great place to test your raw ideas :-)

Note that telnet access at Grex is in deprecated status and may go away
at any moment if staff feel the time is right.  SSH is the preferred way
to connect to Grex if you want terminal access.

If telnet goes away I will have to telnet some place else from the library
to ssh to grex.

You have several choices:

• Redisplay, showing the previous 10 responses, or the entire item
• Go to the menu of items for the Coop conference
• Go to the list of conferences
• Go to the opening screen