Grex General Conference

Item 21: What happened to Grex's Gopher server?

Entered by mijk on Tue Apr 4 12:44:09 2017:

57 new of 79 responses total.


#23 of 79 by mijk on Sun May 28 18:42:15 2017:

excuse my ignorance, but how do we access the gopher server? I fire up the
gopher client and i get 'The gopher Project' server as the home server. How
do we go about adding content to the grex server? :)


#24 of 79 by papa on Mon May 29 00:34:44 2017:

I've written a quick-and-dirty introduction to Gopher for grexers:
 
~papa/public_gopher/README.1st
 
That should get you started. Feedback on the document is welcome.


#25 of 79 by papa on Mon May 29 00:36:37 2017:

P.S. Although the above file is accessible via Gopher, you can also read it
with cat, more, less, or your preferred file viewer.


#26 of 79 by papa on Mon May 29 01:45:04 2017:

Argh! I accidentally tossed my guide down the memory hole. 

The contents now are an earlier version. I will recreate the completed guide
over my lnch break.


#27 of 79 by papa on Mon May 29 03:54:39 2017:

The file is partially restored and now provides a hint for starting your
exploration of Gopherspace. More later.


#28 of 79 by mijk on Mon May 29 09:27:47 2017:

Your a dancer Papa! :) I'm just off to have a look now. Thanks! :)


#29 of 79 by mijk on Mon May 29 09:43:35 2017:

Nice gopherhole papa! I see the server now at: gopher://grex.org/  which
has no links to other servers as yet, but i am so happy to see an new gopher
server on the net \o/. It won't be long untill a few gopher sites link to grex,
for sure. Just one thing: it would be nice if we could start say the default
gopher client with gopher://grex.org/ and have links on there to the
other main servers etc... and maybe we could have a tutorial, for the complete
newcomer, on the grex server's main menu: great work!! :) 


#30 of 79 by papa on Mon May 29 14:10:20 2017:

A simple tutorial is my aim with the document linked above. It was nearly done
before my tragic encounter with the bit bucket. Let me know what you think
when I get it done.

I know cross doesn't want to invest a lot of time in the gopher server, but
it would be nice if gopher://grex.org pointed to a menu of at least
grexer gopherholes, like my file ~papa/public_gopher/grex-gs/gophermap

I don't know how to set the default site for the gopher client, but on an
individual basis you can set a bookmark in either gopher or lynx, or define
a shell alias like `alias gopher='gopher gopher://grex.org'`.

I sent a question to the Gopher Project mailing list to see if there's
anything we need to do to attract a visit from the Veronica indexing robot.


#31 of 79 by papa on Mon May 29 17:16:28 2017:

I've rebuilt and completed my tutorial for accessing Gopherspace. View the
file:

  ~papa/public_gopher/README.1st

You can also access the file with Gopher at the address:

  gopher://grex.org/0/~papa/README.1st

  (use your favorite Gopher client)

I've also created a tutorial for starting your own Grex gopherhole:

  gopher://grex.org/0/~papa/README.2nd

You can also access these files and other Gopherspace phenomena from my
gopherhole's main menu:

  gopher://grex.org/1/~papa

I've tried to make both tutorials as simple as possible for fellow grexers.
Please try them out and let me know how I did.


#32 of 79 by papa on Tue May 30 00:08:03 2017:

Tutorial for gophermap custom menus:

gopher://grex.org/1/~papa/gmap.txt


#33 of 79 by cross on Tue May 30 01:37:55 2017:

Let me be clear what I mean:

I *personally* don't want to put a lot of time and effort into
supporting  Gopher, but I'm certainly willing to take content and
marshal it over into the  gopher area, make changes to the server, etc.
If folks use gopher, and most  importantly if it becomes a draw that
pulls people into Grex then I'm fine  with it. If it doesn't, then I'll
take it down (it is, after all, yet another  unencrypted service running
on Grex that could become a security issue). But  if no one is using it,
then no one will notice. :-)

I'd be slightly more enthusiastic about a low-markup set of static blog
web  sites, to be totally honest. Gopher as a protocol is a lot less
interesting. A  gopher-style thing via HTTP, with minimalist content (a
la Markdown) that's  directly interpreted in lieu of HTML is a lot more
interesting.


#34 of 79 by papa on Tue May 30 14:51:34 2017:

I've created a script to open your own Grex gopherhole:

  ~papa/share/bin/mygh

The script uses the gopher client, or you can set you $GOPHER_CLIENT
environment variable if you prefer lynx.


#35 of 79 by cross on Tue May 30 14:56:29 2017:

Cool. Drop it into /cyberspace/contrib/bin ?


#36 of 79 by papa on Tue May 30 14:59:06 2017:

This response has been erased.



#37 of 79 by papa on Tue May 30 15:15:20 2017:

I didn't know about /cyberspace/contrib/bin. mygh is in there now. Are there
any guidelines on what's appropriate to put in there?

cross, could you add the following two lines at the bottom of
/var/gopher/gophermap ?
=== Start ...  ==========
Grexer gopherholes ...
~
=== ... End    ==========

That will put a list of links to Grex user ~/public_gopher directories at the
end of the Grex Gopher main page.


#38 of 79 by cross on Tue May 30 15:19:56 2017:

Done. Take a look.

But does that imply that the gopher server will try to stat(2) a subdirectory
of *every* user home directory on Grex each time someone fetches that page?


#39 of 79 by cross on Tue May 30 15:25:49 2017:

I looked at the source code and that's exactly what it does.

However, at the moment it doesn't appear to be an issue in terms of either
performance or resource consumption. Let's leave it for now. If it becomes
an issue later on down the road, we can revisit.


#40 of 79 by papa on Tue May 30 17:48:32 2017:

Looks good. Thanks, cross.

I've contacted Cameron Kaiser about adding grex.org to his list of Gopher
servers for spidering by the Veronica-2 search engine.


#41 of 79 by papa on Tue May 30 22:33:59 2017:

Grex is now on the Floodgap New Gopher Servers list:

  gopher://gopher.floodgap.com/1/new

This will trigger a visit from the Veronica-2 indexing robot within a couple
of days. After that, Grex gopherspace content will show up in Veronica
searches:

  gopher://gopher.floodgap.com:70/7/v2/vs


#42 of 79 by papa on Wed May 31 06:25:33 2017:

resp:33

> I'd be slightly more enthusiastic about a low-markup set of static
> blog web  sites, to be totally honest. Gopher as a protocol is a lot
> less interesting. A  gopher-style thing via HTTP, with minimalist
> content (a la Markdown) that's  directly interpreted in lieu of HTML
> is a lot more interesting.

I try to envision what you're imagining and keep seeing something a lot 
like the original WikiWikiWeb (http://wiki.c2.com/?WikiWikiWeb). The 
only Gopher-like things the original wiki doesn't do is a subdirectory 
tree and automatically-generated navigation pages.


#43 of 79 by papa on Wed May 31 10:50:36 2017:

resp:41

It looks like we have been visited. Grex Gopherspace content is now 
searchable with Veronica-2!


#44 of 79 by cross on Wed May 31 13:57:46 2017:

Actually, I'm thinking more like markdown documents, where the various
formatting metacharacters get translated into bolding or highlighting,
and hyperlinks work. That's it. Think Jekyll but without the jekyll part.


#45 of 79 by tod on Wed May 31 21:22:47 2017:

I'm changing my font to amber with black background and modem sound
effects


#46 of 79 by papa on Thu Jun 1 01:20:44 2017:

A good choice, though I've always been partial to phosphor green.


#47 of 79 by walkman on Sun Jun 4 02:03:20 2017:

#18 that's really cool!


#48 of 79 by tonster on Mon Jun 5 02:00:35 2017:

I think the question on everyone's mind is "Does the <blink> tag work
again?"


#49 of 79 by cross on Mon Jun 5 02:26:10 2017:

One can only hope not.


#50 of 79 by papa on Mon Jun 5 22:45:39 2017:

It's between you and your browser.


#51 of 79 by nydel on Tue Jun 6 13:39:53 2017:

thanks @cross for humoring us, we'll impress you yet! also thanks papa,
jandal, others for the tutorials. i've only ever really used gopher for easy
phlogging, it's really cool to see what's possible. and - what with us having
done so many things to the web etc - i'm sure we'll come up with some
interesting as-yet-undone or at least -uncommon things that are possible with
gopher! so far ~nydel/public_gopher just contains an empty phlog (entitled
"let's all flog thing!" in esperanto - as the log will be - about to figure
out whether i can use my esperanto keyboard or if i will need to use the
still-fine x-system. really excited about this (and about us just doing new
stuff on the system in general)


#52 of 79 by papa on Sat Jun 10 16:18:32 2017:

Check out the latest developments in Grex Gopherspace:

        ~papa/public_gopher/pgphlog/20170611-the_daily_batch.txt

Check it out!

Gophermeisters, update your gopherholes ever day!


#53 of 79 by nydel on Fri Jun 23 06:52:11 2017:

my apologies to misfile this, but i cannot seem to figure out how to create
an original topic in agora!

i use commonlisp (sbcl) a lot and want to do some small scripting things in
the language here locally. emacs and sbcl are already installed, would it be
much trouble to install slime (superior lisp mode for emacs) here systemwide?

again apologies to put this in wrong thread (although some of the things i
plan to try with commonlisp here involve gopher!) & i will follow any advice
on agorabbs protocol given. thanking you kindly!


#54 of 79 by papa on Fri Jun 23 11:37:25 2017:

nydel, the bbs command to start a new item is 'enter'.


#55 of 79 by cross on Fri Jun 23 14:18:15 2017:

resp:53 in this day and age, there's not much point to installing emacs
packages globally. Just use package.el and melpa/elpa/whatever the kids
are using these days and install SLIME that way. You'll probably also
want paredit while you're at it...


#56 of 79 by tod on Sat Jun 24 07:34:54 2017:

e for short


#57 of 79 by papa on Thu Aug 10 15:08:51 2017:

For those of you who do not follow the Gopher mailing list (joining which is
currently problematic), a discussion has started on the list's future,
including choosing a new moderator, a new host for the list, or changing the
list to a different medium like Usenet group, IRC, ...

If you are concerned, it might be worth your while to read up on the
discussion in the ML archive, then e-mail one of the participants if you want
to make a comment.


#58 of 79 by tod on Sat Aug 12 11:38:52 2017:

Is Usenet still around?


#59 of 79 by kentn on Sat Aug 12 20:59:45 2017:

It is.


#60 of 79 by papa on Sun Aug 13 00:42:07 2017:

resp:57

The Gopher Project mailing list information page is here:
http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/gopher-project

... and the list archive is supposed to be here:
http://dir.gmane.org/gmane.network.gopher.general

... but getting to the archived messages seems to be problematic, too. :(

Is anyone not already on the list interested in the referenced discussion on
the list's future? I could cut-and-paste and post a log of the discussion so
far.


#61 of 79 by tod on Sun Aug 13 05:06:38 2017:

Sure, I'd enjoy a read


#62 of 79 by papa on Sun Aug 13 08:34:41 2017:

resp:61
OK --> gopher://grex.org/1/~papa/gopherml

Diverging into three threads, this discussion has generated more ML traffic
in three days than the ML has seen on all subjects in a year.

I have just dumped the raw e-mail files so you will have to page through
headers, quoted text, and sometimes HTML, but the whole story is in there if
you're interested.

If you want to add to the discussion, I suggest you send e-mail directly 
to one of the members already participating and ask them to post to the 
list on your behalf. (Unfortunately, though I am registered on the list 
with two e-mail addresses, I cannot post to the list from either of 
them.)


#63 of 79 by papa on Sun Aug 13 14:18:45 2017:

resp:60
The mailing list archive is available from gmain.org after all, but only in
the form of a Usenet news group: 
nntp://news.gmane.org/gmane.network.gopher.general

You can access it with your favorite news reader or some web browsers like
lynx or elinks.


#64 of 79 by papa on Sun Aug 13 16:00:41 2017:

resp:62
Regarding posting to the Gopher Project mailing list, I have heard it is 
possible via news.gmane.org using a news reader client.

Also, I can post on your behalf if you send me e-mail. I thought I had 
lost permission to post, but found a way I can still do it.



#65 of 79 by papa on Fri Aug 25 03:42:12 2017:

For those of you interested in my antichronological date codes, I have written
scripts for converting dates to antichron codes and vice versa, dt2ach and
ach2dt. There are still some needed tweaks and maybe some bugs, but for anyone
who wants an early peak, they're available in ~papa/share/bin .


#66 of 79 by tfurrows on Fri Aug 25 23:29:09 2017:

A few users here are active in the gopher space on grex, thanks for keeping
it running cross. 

quick question: in our html folders we're not supposed to upload images, as
far as I understand. What about our gopher folders? I put a few images in mine
of an electronics project. Is it a common-sense-don't-overdo-it approach, or
are images simply not allowed period? Thanks.


#67 of 79 by papa on Sat Aug 26 00:06:52 2017:

It's cross's call, but that's probably a rule made long ago to deal with abuse
of a very different Grex and a very different Internet from what we have now.


#68 of 79 by cross on Sat Aug 26 13:47:10 2017:

Try either and see whether it works. :-)


#69 of 79 by tod on Tue Aug 29 10:10:41 2017:

re #66
Depends if your modem is set for 7 or 8 bit? ;)


#70 of 79 by nydel on Sun Feb 25 04:19:53 2018:

there is a bit of a security problem with the current version of gophernicus
we run. please do this to see:

$lynx gopher://grex.org:70/1/server-status

forgive me, i'm not in a multiplex, that /1/ may be a /0/

the page displays the ip address and content viewed from all open sessions.

is it possible to upgrade or otherwise disable this feature?

tildetown and sdf have been able to disable it. would other grexers agree with
or disagree with the suggestion that this is a potential security issue that
should be patched if possible?

thank you kindly grex for serving our gopherspaces. oh the fun we're having!


#71 of 79 by papa on Sun Feb 25 05:58:13 2018:

I think the odds of it being exploited are low due to the obscurity of
gopherspace and grex, but publishing IP addresses is not a good idea. I have
no problem with this feature being disabled.


#72 of 79 by tfurrows on Mon Feb 26 02:20:52 2018:

I'd love to see it disabled, even if it's never seen by anyone.


#73 of 79 by tfurrows on Thu Oct 25 16:03:15 2018:

The gopher server at grex is behaving oddly. Visiting user's links directly
works fine, as does browsing their content, but attempting to visit grex.org
fails. Any idea what might be wrong?


#74 of 79 by cunnings on Fri Oct 26 01:58:23 2018:

Visiting grex.org's gopher server works, if you wait a very long time.
At least that's what I've been seeing here. I wonder if it's because
the main menu is generated by script that runs very slowly (the last
time I tried it took 14 minutes!). But as you pointed out, there's no
delay when visiting a user's gopher directly.


#75 of 79 by tfurrows on Mon Oct 29 02:46:19 2018:

14 min! eek, that's a long wait...


#76 of 79 by walkman on Mon Dec 10 22:36:03 2018:

One can mail packages out of China but one cannot access the Grex Gopher
server behind the great wall. 

(2) Social Credit Score points deducted.
New occupation: Groom of stool


#77 of 79 by tod on Wed Dec 12 15:23:20 2018:

I'm holding out for Veronica


#78 of 79 by tfurrows on Fri Jan 4 21:12:28 2019:

Any thoughts on the gopher server slowness? User pages seem to load quickly,
but the home/root does not. Anything in the logs that would indicate why?
Time to switch gopher servers?


#79 of 79 by cunnings on Sat Jan 5 05:56:14 2019:

The main menu is a list of gopherholes at grex - how is that built??
I suspect that a script is searching all the home directories for
public_gopher subdirs to build the list dynamically. If that's true
then it would certainly take a while - just a theory though.


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