Technical To-do List

Jack Waugh

As an experiment, I will try using the present thread to list tasks that the technical "team" should do or might want to consider doing at some time.

Jack Waugh

Thu Dec 31 19:14:05 UTC 2020

Approximate one of the proposed looks in an active prototype.
Redirects.
The current program for backups probably doesn't include uploaded images. Repair that defect.
Back up TLS keys
Archive -- search.
Archive -- ability to follow back-references from quotations.
Archive -- breadcrumbs.
Check that mail to "postmaster" comes to Jack.
Arrange auto renewal of TLS cert (it expires every 3 mo.).
Arrange auto restart of the database server and the website applications, to happen whenever the system is rebooted (sometimes the Linode firm will stop a system for maintenance and then reboot it).
Firewall off all ports except those we need to allow (in both IP versions).
See whether, besides the firewall, any other steps would help secure the databases.
On the domain registrar, add the rest of the name servers.

Toby Pereira

I was looking at this thread from the archive and it's lost all the nice images from the original. Do you think it's likely the archive will be able to get the images?

Jack Waugh

@Toby-Pereira Maybe I can get them with a limited form of screen scraping.

Or maybe @SaraWolk can prevail upon CES to give us the images. I have no sway to even get CES to acknowledge receipt of a message. While she is at it, she could also ask them for an updated dump of the other data, or just the items added or changed since they sent us the dump they sent.

The first image in that post, on the original site (implemented with Discourse) is rendered with a document element as the following HTML would specify:

<img src="https://forum.electionscience.org/uploads/default/optimized/1X/cf86b73999447d4ed4ca89c8029dac48835e5a33_2_577x499.png" alt="Voters" data-base62-sha1="tBRsJE42NBx6MHq3EKBgNtMIsHp" class="d-lazyload" srcset="https://forum.electionscience.org/uploads/default/optimized/1X/cf86b73999447d4ed4ca89c8029dac48835e5a33_2_577x499.png, https://forum.electionscience.org/uploads/default/optimized/1X/cf86b73999447d4ed4ca89c8029dac48835e5a33_2_865x748.png 1.5x, https://forum.electionscience.org/uploads/default/original/1X/cf86b73999447d4ed4ca89c8029dac48835e5a33.png 2x" width="577" height="499">

The reference to it in the data dump that we received from CES and on which I base the archive, looks like this:

<img src="upload://tBRsJE42NBx6MHq3EKBgNtMIsHp.png" alt="Voters|577x499">

upload: is not a legal scheme for use in a URI. Discourse is parsing it and substituting the long version as above.

Maybe in exchange for an annual monetary tribute, CES would be willing to keep the original site up.

SaraWolk

CES leadership does not reply to my emails either, but I hope to talk with Felix again soon and will ask if possible. I'll also ask them if and when they plan to shut it down. Ideally those two tasks would happen at the same time.

Jack Waugh

@SaraWolk If one of them gives her SSH public key, I can set up her access to put the images directly on our server.

Jack Waugh

@sarawolk said in Technical To-do List:

Ideally those two tasks would happen at the same time.

If we can get the images sooner rather than later, I might be able to get them to show up in the archive sooner, which would be useful for readers.

If we can get the updates to the posts sooner, that will also make the archive more valuable. I doubt whether anyone will be posting anything interesting to the old forum. I think just about everyone who might think to post there has had it drilled into them that that forum is supposed to be shut down and that we offer the present one as its replacement.