[theforum] We've got a serious problem here at evolt.org

[Martin Paul Burns]

theforum-bounces at lists.evolt.org wrote on 13/05/2004 20:27:01:

> On Thu, May 13, 2004 at 08:00:47PM +0200, s t e f wrote:
>
> > Here is the problem: I don't know who runs evolt.org, like :
> > - who's got admin privileges on what machine
> > - who's got file upload privileges on what machine
> > - (insert here any question of the same type)
> > And I'm sure I'm not the only one to wonder.
>
> evolt.org is hosted on two different servers currently.  www.evolt.org
> and all images are hosted on .jeff's machine.

> Everything else (l.e.o, b.e.o, d.e.o) is hosted on what is commonly
> called "the rack".  This server is owned by a group of 5(?) people in
> the UK, namely, Martin, neuro, genghis, garrett, and Mike.  This is
> the server that I would like to replace with a ServerMatrix server
> since it is not really "owned" by evolt.org.  There are about 3-4
> people that have root access to this machine.

A very big +1 on that from me. We bought the raq primarily to be a beo
mirror, and took on the other services on an interim (and very short
notice) basis last year when we lost our CSI hosting.

It's not A Good Thing that so much of evolt's hosting is provided on a
'mates' basis on a box that evolt.org doesn't directly control,
particularly when we (evolt.org) have cash at hand and pledges to more than
cover a much better box for a year or more without much worry.
http://lists.evolt.org/sysadminarchive/2003-August/000765.html
http://lists.evolt.org/sysadminarchive/2003-August/000767.html

> DNS is handled by EasyDNS, I believe, and David is the primary contact
> for that service but evolt.org as a whole does not have any direct
> ownership of those machines.
>
> > So, what do we do? I know that assests.evolt.org is coming, and
> > that, if all goes as I was told, content members will have upload
> > rights, but the problem remains: How many admins will there be to
> > open and manage the FTP accounts? Moving a problem doesn't solve it,
> > I'm afraid.


> This service would be on the rack which means that 3-4 people would
> have access to create FTP accounts.  (I'm not sure if we would want to
> do that rather than coming up with a different access method though
> which would allow for an easier way to create access accounts, i.e.,
> not having to be root.)

Without wanting to get into it too deeply, a Zope instance (there's one on
the raq, but we have a disk allocation issue that we've not solved) would
provide FTP/WebDAV, authentication and version control out of the box. Oh,
and wouldn't require root access to the box...

Cheers
Martin