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Hello everyone,

Having some time to do stuff for CentOS here at LinuxTag I've also
being building FreeIPA packages for CentOS. The idea that this will be
core part of a central authentication system. Meaning that you will
only need 1 account that you can use to login into the website, forum,
wiki, bugtracker, systems, ...

IMHO the most important system that needs to be attached to the
central auth database are the forums. There are a lot of users there
(and a lot of content). So I was thinking, why not fix 2 things at the
same time. Migrate from the old forum to the new forum that is linked
to the central auth system. And then later on couple the other
existing apps to it.

My feeling is that the most productive way to get forward with the
website/forum update is to split the forum from the website. In my
experience the forum present in CMS tools aren't made for the amount
of traffic we are having. So something dedicated sound like a better
option. So I have been looking around for open source forum software
that link to ldap without to much effort. I've looked at 3 projects
(Phorum, phpBB and SMF). They all 3 are good looking, well featured
and maintained. Though, only phpBB has a decent built-in LDAP
integration (FreeIPA is built on top of LDAP).

So my proposal is to setup a FreeIPA instance, link it with phpBB and
try to migrate a part of the current forums and see how all that
works. And if it looks good migrate to that.

So what do people think, did I miss stuff, other suggestions, ...

Regards,
Tim

--
Tim Verhoeven - tim.verhoeven.be@gmail.com - 0479 / 88 11 83

Hoping the problem magically goes away by ignoring it is the
"microsoft approach to programming" and should never be allowed.
(Linus Torvalds)
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Tim Verhoeven wrote:

Hello everyone,

Having some time to do stuff for CentOS here at LinuxTag I've also
being building FreeIPA packages for CentOS. The idea that this will be
core part of a central authentication system. Meaning that you will
only need 1 account that you can use to login into the website, forum,
wiki, bugtracker, systems, ...

IMHO the most important system that needs to be attached to the
central auth database are the forums. There are a lot of users there
(and a lot of content). So I was thinking, why not fix 2 things at the
same time. Migrate from the old forum to the new forum that is linked
to the central auth system. And then later on couple the other
existing apps to it.

My feeling is that the most productive way to get forward with the
website/forum update is to split the forum from the website. In my
experience the forum present in CMS tools aren't made for the amount
of traffic we are having. So something dedicated sound like a better
option. So I have been looking around for open source forum software
that link to ldap without to much effort. I've looked at 3 projects
(Phorum, phpBB and SMF). They all 3 are good looking, well featured
and maintained. Though, only phpBB has a decent built-in LDAP
integration (FreeIPA is built on top of LDAP).

So my proposal is to setup a FreeIPA instance, link it with phpBB and
try to migrate a part of the current forums and see how all that
works. And if it looks good migrate to that.

So what do people think, did I miss stuff, other suggestions, ...

Regards,
Tim


is phpBB the only alternative ? i remember we've already discussed about
phpBB and it seems not a lot of people were phpBB 'lovers' ... due also
to the fact that because it's the most known forum, it's more than the
others subject to php attacks ...
When there was a request to host a forum for the centos french community
, a decision was taken to use punBB (now call fluxBB -
http://www.fluxbb.org) and put a portal on top (5 minutes install) .. i
don't know punBB more than than (i've just installed it once for
fr.centos.org) but Guillaume (he's in CC) did the hooks on the punBB
setup ...
Guillaume : do you know if the next release (1.3 iirc) will handle
external authentication mechanisms, like ldap ?


On the other hand, having a SSO solution will be easier for everybody,
including giving rights faster to people in the wiki for example. But on
the other hand, it will reduce the number of people able/allowed to do
modifications (see the RPMRepo story using ldap for the wiki ...)


--
-
Fabian Arrotin <fabian.arrotin@arrfab.net>

"Internet network currently down, TCP/IP packets delivered now by UPS/Fedex ..."




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On Sun, Jun 1, 2008 at 2:33 PM, Fabian Arrotin
<fabian.arrotin@arrfab.net> wrote:
...snip
>
> is phpBB the only alternative ? i remember we've already discussed about
> phpBB and it seems not a lot of people were phpBB 'lovers' ... due also to
> the fact that because it's the most known forum, it's more than the others
> subject to php attacks ...

Probably not, but the 3 I mention seemed to be the 3 most popular. I
probably mist some so that why I'm asking it here : -)

> When there was a request to host a forum for the centos french community , a
> decision was taken to use punBB (now call fluxBB - http://www.fluxbb.org)
> and put a portal on top (5 minutes install) .. i don't know punBB more than
> than (i've just installed it once for fr.centos.org) but Guillaume (he's in
> CC) did the hooks on the punBB setup ...

Thanks for the pointer, I've had a look and the fr.centos.org site
looks nice. I've also checked the fluxBB project itself and it look
like the 1.3 version will have hooks that allow you to write some sort
of plugin that allows you to link it with LDAP. So it is a option,
although phpBB has that feature built-in which makes getting support
for it somewhat easier :-)

> Guillaume : do you know if the next release (1.3 iirc) will handle external
> authentication mechanisms, like ldap ?
>
> On the other hand, having a SSO solution will be easier for everybody,
> including giving rights faster to people in the wiki for example. But on the
> other hand, it will reduce the number of people able/allowed to do
> modifications (see the RPMRepo story using ldap for the wiki ...)

I'm not really following the RPMRepo story, so I'm not aware on what
is going one there. Bu the idea is that FreeIPA will allow us to work
with groups and ACL's so that we control per user what he or she can
do.

Anyway, more feedback, suggestions or comments welcome !

Regards,
Tim

--
Tim Verhoeven - tim.verhoeven.be@gmail.com - 0479 / 88 11 83

Hoping the problem magically goes away by ignoring it is the
"microsoft approach to programming" and should never be allowed.
(Linus Torvalds)
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On May 31, 2008, at 7:39 AM, Tim Verhoeven wrote:


So my proposal is to setup a FreeIPA instance, link it with phpBB and
try to migrate a part of the current forums and see how all that
works. And if it looks good migrate to that.


+1 for this, sounds like a good idea to me. We recently setup a new
phpbb forum here with mod_security enabled, which seems to be working
well after a few small tweaks and takes off some of the worry of zero-
day-type exploits.


-Jeff
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Tim Verhoeven wrote:

IMHO the most important system that needs to be attached to the
central auth database are the forums. There are a lot of users there
(and a lot of content). So I was thinking, why not fix 2 things at the



Does this cover all the issues that were raised as requirements for a
new forums system ? There should be a page on the wiki for website V2
that covers most of these issues.


- KB
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On Tue, Jun 3, 2008 at 3:58 PM, Karanbir Singh <mail-lists@karan.org> wrote:
> Tim Verhoeven wrote:
>>
>> IMHO the most important system that needs to be attached to the
>> central auth database are the forums. There are a lot of users there
>> (and a lot of content). So I was thinking, why not fix 2 things at the
>
>
> Does this cover all the issues that were raised as requirements for a new
> forums system ? There should be a page on the wiki for website V2 that
> covers most of these issues.

As far as I can see requirements for the forum, it looks ok. Only the
email gateway to a mailinglist is not really there, but there is a
nice forum to RSS gateway which the none-forum lovers may a usable
alternative.

Regards,
Tim

--
Tim Verhoeven - tim.verhoeven.be@gmail.com - 0479 / 88 11 83

Hoping the problem magically goes away by ignoring it is the
"microsoft approach to programming" and should never be allowed.
(Linus Torvalds)
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Tim Verhoeven wrote:
> As far as I can see requirements for the forum, it looks ok. Only the
> email gateway to a mailinglist is not really there, but there is a
> nice forum to RSS gateway which the none-forum lovers may a usable
> alternative.

After doing lots of thinking on that topic, I don't even think that
gating forum and mailing lists is such a good idea anymore, as you
really are catering to two completely different mindsets of people.

Cheers,

Ralph
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On Tue, Jun 3, 2008 at 6:53 PM, Ralph Angenendt <ra+centos@br-online.de> wrote:
> Tim Verhoeven wrote:
>> As far as I can see requirements for the forum, it looks ok. Only the
>> email gateway to a mailinglist is not really there, but there is a
>> nice forum to RSS gateway which the none-forum lovers may a usable
>> alternative.
>
> After doing lots of thinking on that topic, I don't even think that
> gating forum and mailing lists is such a good idea anymore, as you
> really are catering to two completely different mindsets of people.

Indeed, that is way I like the idea of setting up the RSS gateway
instead of a email gateway. Those people not into forums but that
still like to follow it a bit can use the RSS feeds.

Regards,
Tim

--
Tim Verhoeven - tim.verhoeven.be@gmail.com - 0479 / 88 11 83

Hoping the problem magically goes away by ignoring it is the
"microsoft approach to programming" and should never be allowed.
(Linus Torvalds)
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Ralph Angenendt wrote:

Tim Verhoeven wrote:

As far as I can see requirements for the forum, it looks ok. Only the
email gateway to a mailinglist is not really there, but there is a
nice forum to RSS gateway which the none-forum lovers may a usable
alternative.


After doing lots of thinking on that topic, I don't even think that
gating forum and mailing lists is such a good idea anymore, as you
really are catering to two completely different mindsets of people.



But the differences are in how/when they access, not so much the content
of the questions or answers. These guys seem to do a pretty good job at
running forums with gateways to existing mailling lists with threads
mostly staying together: http://www.backupcentral.com/phpBB2/. I'm on
the backuppc mail list and don't see any difference if someone posts on
the forum instead.


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Les Mikesell wrote:
> But the differences are in how/when they access, not so much the content of
> the questions or answers. These guys seem to do a pretty good job at
> running forums with gateways to existing mailling lists with threads mostly
> staying together: http://www.backupcentral.com/phpBB2/. I'm on the
> backuppc mail list and don't see any difference if someone posts on the
> forum instead.

Hmmmm.

How high is the traffic in the mailing lists? How high is the traffic on
the forums?

Ralph
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