Re: [Server-devel] What's cooking in the XS pot this week (2008-10--01)
On Fri, 2008-10-03 at 18:57 +1300, Martin Langhoff wrote: On Fri, Oct 3, 2008 at 6:52 PM, Bryan Berry [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Dans can use a good bit of memory but I haven't really calculated how much. Top shows me a lot dansguardian processes, each using about 10K of RES memory, 980 of SHR, and 0.5% of Mem. What I understand about top and memory is that it doesn't really tell much at all b/c the processes are using shared memory. yeah - top is not that useful. can you try ps_mem.py? http://www.pixelbeat.org/scripts/ps_mem.py great tool! DG is using 30.4 MB under a very light load. I will have to check later when school is back in session but that isn't for another 2 weeks. Is is holiday season ;) Am I right in thinking that DG is actually a custom apache or an apache with a custom config + a DG module? Umm, don't know ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] What's cooking in the XS pot this week (2008-10--01)
On Fri, 2008-10-03 at 18:57 +1300, Martin Langhoff wrote: Am I right in thinking that DG is actually a custom apache or an apache with a custom config + a DG module? Hi Martin, I don't think that's correct... As I understand it, Dansguardian is a layer that sits in front of squid. The client connects on port X and then if DG wants to it passes the request on to Squid on port Y. The webserver needs to be there as well in order to have somewhere to redirect the requests that are denied. Cheers, Andrew. andrew (AT) morphoss (DOT) com+64(272)DEBIAN Learn to pause -- or nothing worthwhile can catch up to you. ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] What's cooking in the XS pot this week (2008-10--01)
Greg, We will be setting up two labs here in Nepal, one in the next couple weeks and likely one in the first week of November at Nepal's Dept of Education. Depending on our experiences in those labs, we want to roll out a new version of the XS in November to our two pilot schools and possibly a new pilot school. This mirrors our priorities A stable and scalable eJabber is critical as are basic XS features like: - Caching - Filtering (is DanGuardian built in and shipped with the XS ?) - NAT w/ two exceptions. We still find it a bear to install the XS from scratch. That could be our fault but it needs to be easier to set up ejabberd properly. It also needs to be easier to get dansguardian up and running. As far as I can tell dansguardian is not pre-installed on the XS in XS 0.4. Our volunteer Tony Anderson has been working on this and has a better understanding of the problems we are having. I strongly agree that, while Moodle is important, a lot of work needs to be done on ejabberd and dansguardian. Message: 1 Date: Wed, 01 Oct 2008 12:42:19 -0400 From: Greg Smith [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [Server-devel] What's cooking in the XS pot this week (2008-10--01) To: Martin Langhoff [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: XS Devel server-devel@lists.laptop.org Message-ID: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Hi Martin, Thanks for the update! Its great to see all the items planned for or in 0.5: http://dev.laptop.org/query?status=assignedstatus=closedstatus=newstatus=reopenedorder=prioritycol=idcol=summarycol=statuscol=typecol=prioritycol=componentmilestone=xs-0.5 On your question of who is waiting for XS 0.5, I know of at least two deployments that are building labs and testing configurations with XS software: Paraguay Birmingham Both will need a stable XS that they can use ASAP. Whether they will go with XS 0.5 or not depends on what 0.5 includes, when 0.6 will be available and what it includes. AFAIK Moodle is not a must have item for either deployment. A stable and scalable eJabber is critical as are basic XS features like: - Caching - Filtering (is DanGuardian built in and shipped with the XS ?) - NAT Birmingham may start using XOs and an XS in schools in mid-Novemeber. Paraguay will probably start later but we should lock down their version ASAP as they want lead time to really flush out all issue in the lab. They may both use the backup and restore feature if they have enough disk on the server (of course they will use it whether they like it or not as you can't turn it off :-). I think there other deployments that will want to use a school server before the end of 2008. Two other features which may tip the balance for deployments are upgrade of XO images and activities via school server cache (Peru). Spending a little more time to make sure that XS 0.5 is very stable and well documented is a good idea. However, we should start to be more precise about the features and dates for each release we plan to deliver before the end of CY 08. Thanks, Greg S ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] What's cooking in the XS pot this week (2008-10--01)
Wad, you're right that Dansguardian is a can of worms but it is a very important can of worms that needs to work w/ minimal configuration, at least initially. I would say that the initial install should set a medium level of restriction and then leave it to the local deployment teams to tweak it to cultural norms. On Fri, 2008-10-03 at 00:17 -0400, John Watlington wrote: On Oct 2, 2008, at 11:51 PM, Bryan Berry wrote: Greg, We will be setting up two labs here in Nepal, one in the next couple weeks and likely one in the first week of November at Nepal's Dept of Education. Depending on our experiences in those labs, we want to roll out a new version of the XS in November to our two pilot schools and possibly a new pilot school. This mirrors our priorities A stable and scalable eJabber is critical as are basic XS features like: - Caching - Filtering (is DanGuardian built in and shipped with the XS ?) - NAT w/ two exceptions. We still find it a bear to install the XS from scratch. That could be our fault but it needs to be easier to set up ejabberd properly. It also needs to be easier to get dansguardian up and running. As far as I can tell dansguardian is not pre-installed on the XS in XS 0.4. What default permissions should be provided for DansGuardian ? What list of banned sites and keywords ? No real disagreement. But one of the issues with DansGuardian is that the configuration reflects local mores, and it is difficult to provide a default. How do we ensure that a deployment provides the configuration files ? Cheers, wad ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] What's cooking in the XS pot this week (2008-10--01)
On Thu, Oct 2, 2008 at 5:42 AM, Greg Smith [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On your question of who is waiting for XS 0.5, I know of at least two deployments that are building labs and testing configurations with XS software: Paraguay Birmingham Those two appear to be a bit later. We can probably get 0.6 out the door for them mid-november-ish, with a few more end-user features :-) Actually, this is good so we now know the target date for xs-0.6 should be early-to-mid Nov. AFAIK Moodle is not a must have item for either deployment. Well, a UI for the XS will be a must-have for them, and that is based on Moodle, so... A stable and scalable eJabber is critical as are basic XS features like: - Caching - NAT those are in - Filtering (is DanGuardian built in and shipped with the XS ?) that's not in 0.5 - we can prioritise for 0.6. Spending a little more time to make sure that XS 0.5 is very stable and well documented is a good idea. Just a little time... 0.5 is base frameworks, some basic features, 0.6 is the now we add useful features release. However, we should start to be more precise about the features and dates for each release we plan to deliver before the end of CY 08. so far I'm hoping to keep my cards close to my chest for 0.7 :-) cheers, m -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- School Server Architect - ask interesting questions - don't get distracted with shiny stuff - working code first - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] What's cooking in the XS pot this week (2008-10--01)
I don't have time currently to work on this but I will ask Tony and our interns Avash and Aakash to work on this. On Fri, 2008-10-03 at 00:37 -0400, John Watlington wrote: Perhaps you want to suggest a specific set of configuration files that provides what you consider a medium level of restriction, including blacklists ? wad On Oct 3, 2008, at 12:31 AM, Bryan Berry wrote: Wad, you're right that Dansguardian is a can of worms but it is a very important can of worms that needs to work w/ minimal configuration, at least initially. I would say that the initial install should set a medium level of restriction and then leave it to the local deployment teams to tweak it to cultural norms. On Fri, 2008-10-03 at 00:17 -0400, John Watlington wrote: On Oct 2, 2008, at 11:51 PM, Bryan Berry wrote: Greg, We will be setting up two labs here in Nepal, one in the next couple weeks and likely one in the first week of November at Nepal's Dept of Education. Depending on our experiences in those labs, we want to roll out a new version of the XS in November to our two pilot schools and possibly a new pilot school. This mirrors our priorities A stable and scalable eJabber is critical as are basic XS features like: - Caching - Filtering (is DanGuardian built in and shipped with the XS ?) - NAT w/ two exceptions. We still find it a bear to install the XS from scratch. That could be our fault but it needs to be easier to set up ejabberd properly. It also needs to be easier to get dansguardian up and running. As far as I can tell dansguardian is not pre-installed on the XS in XS 0.4. What default permissions should be provided for DansGuardian ? What list of banned sites and keywords ? No real disagreement. But one of the issues with DansGuardian is that the configuration reflects local mores, and it is difficult to provide a default. How do we ensure that a deployment provides the configuration files ? Cheers, wad ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] What's cooking in the XS pot this week (2008-10--01)
On Fri, 2008-10-03 at 18:09 +1300, Martin Langhoff wrote: On Fri, Oct 3, 2008 at 4:51 PM, Bryan Berry [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: We will be setting up two labs here in Nepal, one in the next couple weeks and likely one in the first week of November at Nepal's Dept of Education. Depending on our experiences in those labs, we want to roll out a new version of the XS in November to our two pilot schools and possibly a new pilot school. I'm very interested in hearing about those experiences. this depends on how much progress Tony can make. Unfortunately, too much management crap and talking w/ donors keeps me from spending enough time on the XS w/ two exceptions. We still find it a bear to install the XS from scratch. That could be our fault but it needs to be easier to set up ejabberd properly. It also needs to be easier to get dansguardian up and running. As far as I can tell dansguardian is not pre-installed on the XS in XS 0.4. How happy are you with DanGuardian? Is it a useful filter? We use it internally w/in our office and we are happy w/ it. We use it locally to eat our own dog food. By default it blocks a lot if not most content on the Internet, including stuff that doesn't seem objectionable at all. I think dans is essential because it will keep the adults from using up all the bandwidth to look at porn. the secondary reason, to protect kids is also important ;) In terms of install we have some proposed patches to the ejabberd config issues, so it's likely to be sorted in 0.5 or 0.6. Our volunteer Tony Anderson has been working on this and has a better understanding of the problems we are having. Right - keen on hearing your notes Tony :-) Also - as discussed with Wad, I'll be interested in suggestions on how to handle the local rulemaking both for small pilots and large deployments. cheers. m ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] What's cooking in the XS pot this week (2008-10--01)
On Fri, Oct 3, 2008 at 6:22 PM, Bryan Berry [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: How happy are you with DanGuardian? Is it a useful filter? We use it internally w/in our office and we are happy w/ it. We use it locally to eat our own dog food. By default it blocks a lot if not most content on the Internet, including stuff that doesn't seem objectionable at all. Yeah, that's one of my concerns. I looked a little bit at DG documentation a few days ago, as I was fighting with Squid's memory usage, to understand how resource intensive it is, and how it works. And in the back of my mind the question was - is this the right tool? When you mention it blocks most content, I'm less than thrilled. A filter that is too blunt will actually backfire -- will be too easy to false-match and also easy to workaround. Users will learn something but perhaps not what we want. A smarter filter, one that does not give all/most users an incentive to find workarounds, is a much healthier solution. But I'll get deep into it later, more likely in the 0.6 cycle. Now that you mention you're using it in a real life setup, what does top tell you about its memory usage? I think dans is essential because it will keep the adults from using up all the bandwidth to look at porn. the secondary reason, to protect kids is also important ;) Noble causes indeed! cheers,, m -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- School Server Architect - ask interesting questions - don't get distracted with shiny stuff - working code first - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] What's cooking in the XS pot this week (2008-10--01)
Hi Martin, Thanks for the update! Its great to see all the items planned for or in 0.5: http://dev.laptop.org/query?status=assignedstatus=closedstatus=newstatus=reopenedorder=prioritycol=idcol=summarycol=statuscol=typecol=prioritycol=componentmilestone=xs-0.5 On your question of who is waiting for XS 0.5, I know of at least two deployments that are building labs and testing configurations with XS software: Paraguay Birmingham Both will need a stable XS that they can use ASAP. Whether they will go with XS 0.5 or not depends on what 0.5 includes, when 0.6 will be available and what it includes. AFAIK Moodle is not a must have item for either deployment. A stable and scalable eJabber is critical as are basic XS features like: - Caching - Filtering (is DanGuardian built in and shipped with the XS ?) - NAT Birmingham may start using XOs and an XS in schools in mid-Novemeber. Paraguay will probably start later but we should lock down their version ASAP as they want lead time to really flush out all issue in the lab. They may both use the backup and restore feature if they have enough disk on the server (of course they will use it whether they like it or not as you can't turn it off :-). I think there other deployments that will want to use a school server before the end of 2008. Two other features which may tip the balance for deployments are upgrade of XO images and activities via school server cache (Peru). Spending a little more time to make sure that XS 0.5 is very stable and well documented is a good idea. However, we should start to be more precise about the features and dates for each release we plan to deliver before the end of CY 08. Thanks, Greg S Martin Langhoff wrote: Overall, XS 0.5 is looking shaping up nicely... and late. The F9 port took quite a bit more time to get finished off, perhaps because I tried too hard to get it work relatively well, and uncovered a whole lot of problems with it -- it was a good thing to do as we now have fixes for all of them (mostly thanks to an very responsive Fedora community), but it sure took time. Luckily, nobody is waiting for 0.5 -- not that we know of! do mention it if a delay of 0.5 impacts on your deployment -- so we'll take a bit more time to finish off the Moodle bits, SOTP and mapping out the ejabberd configuration. The idea is that XS-0.5 and later XS-0.6 should be the preferred pairing for XO-8.2, still uses the same interfaces as 0.4, but it does a whole lot more. Good nice features built on top of what we have will come with XS-0.6. This week and next I am working on Moodle from various a Moodle conferences -- my email traffic moves a bit to the moodle.org forums, unfortunately I can't CC those easily here. I might post a summary with links to interesting threads - but I'd recommend that people subscribe to 'Using Moodle' 'General Developer Forum', which is effectively 'moodle-dev' :-) Some notes from last week: - My week was focused on getting Moodle on the XS. Some progress around installation, configuration and themes, still a lot to go. (Was a short week anyway, I ran away for a long weekend sailing :-) ) - Douglas Bagnall spent quite a bit of the week trying to work out what resources ejabberd uses in various circumstances. Things did not always go his way, but he is getting there. At other times he fixed some remaining issues related to the leap from Fedoras 7 to 9, and in spare moments he worked on bug #8610 (Theme music for the XS) which might be opened as a competition once 8.2 is out of the way. On Friday he helped the Wellington testers update the XO pool to build 764, which had handily been announced just a few minutes before. cheers, martin ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
[Server-devel] What's cooking in the XS pot this week (2008-10--01)
Overall, XS 0.5 is looking shaping up nicely... and late. The F9 port took quite a bit more time to get finished off, perhaps because I tried too hard to get it work relatively well, and uncovered a whole lot of problems with it -- it was a good thing to do as we now have fixes for all of them (mostly thanks to an very responsive Fedora community), but it sure took time. Luckily, nobody is waiting for 0.5 -- not that we know of! do mention it if a delay of 0.5 impacts on your deployment -- so we'll take a bit more time to finish off the Moodle bits, SOTP and mapping out the ejabberd configuration. The idea is that XS-0.5 and later XS-0.6 should be the preferred pairing for XO-8.2, still uses the same interfaces as 0.4, but it does a whole lot more. Good nice features built on top of what we have will come with XS-0.6. This week and next I am working on Moodle from various a Moodle conferences -- my email traffic moves a bit to the moodle.org forums, unfortunately I can't CC those easily here. I might post a summary with links to interesting threads - but I'd recommend that people subscribe to 'Using Moodle' 'General Developer Forum', which is effectively 'moodle-dev' :-) Some notes from last week: - My week was focused on getting Moodle on the XS. Some progress around installation, configuration and themes, still a lot to go. (Was a short week anyway, I ran away for a long weekend sailing :-) ) - Douglas Bagnall spent quite a bit of the week trying to work out what resources ejabberd uses in various circumstances. Things did not always go his way, but he is getting there. At other times he fixed some remaining issues related to the leap from Fedoras 7 to 9, and in spare moments he worked on bug #8610 (Theme music for the XS) which might be opened as a competition once 8.2 is out of the way. On Friday he helped the Wellington testers update the XO pool to build 764, which had handily been announced just a few minutes before. cheers, martin -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- School Server Architect - ask interesting questions - don't get distracted with shiny stuff - working code first - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
