ORG-tech-vols IRC meeting log 2014 03 21

(19:31:42) graphiclunarkid: Hey all
(19:31:44) vasilis: Hi graphiclunarkid
(19:31:58) ***graphiclunarkid looks at topic
(19:32:00) graphiclunarkid: Oops!
(19:32:26) graphiclunarkid: I'll fix that later...
(19:32:29) graphiclunarkid: Hi vasilis
(19:33:33) graphiclunarkid: Given that it's Friday night I'm not expecting many people or for us to spend too long.
(19:33:44) graphiclunarkid: vasilis: Have you got anything you want to talk about?
(19:34:38) vasilis: We could continue our last discussion, in the meantime what is the actual status of your talks and ORG?
(19:35:07) graphiclunarkid: I gave a talk at ORG Manchester on Tuesday night and ORG Edinburgh on Wednesday night.
(19:35:25) graphiclunarkid: I re-used some content from your slides, vasilis, so thanks for that!
(19:35:45) graphiclunarkid: I will upload the slides to github just as soon as I get a minute.
(19:36:19) graphiclunarkid: (I only had slides for the Edinburgh talk - the Manchester one was more informal.)
(19:40:26) vasilis: Did ORG applied for the mini-grant?
(19:42:38) graphiclunarkid: I had a look at but the grants seemed to be available for rapid actions in response to current events. I think they're aimed at e.g. Turkey blocking Twitter rather than established projects. Good suggestion though.
(19:43:32) graphiclunarkid: OK here are my slides: https://github.com/openrightsgroup/cmp-spec/blob/master/Presentations/2014-03%20CMP%20introduction.odp
(19:45:26) vasilis: I think that the situation with the blocked and censored websites in UK is more current than ever!
(19:51:01) graphiclunarkid: Sorry - was distracted by an email. Yes, it's current, but it's not urgent or an emergency, which is how I read the requirements.
(19:52:00) graphiclunarkid: BTW vasilis I'm going to have to take down my Raspberry Pi running Leipidopter over the weekend.
(19:52:33) graphiclunarkid: I've mentioned before that I'm relocating to Norway. The removals are happening on Monday and I'm flying out there on Wednesday.
(19:52:57) graphiclunarkid: After that I won't have a UK connection for you to test!
(19:54:02) vasilis: I see..
(19:54:48) vasilis: So you can bring your Pi to ORG offices..
(19:55:06) graphiclunarkid: I'll still be working on the project though. ORG are funding me one day a week for the next five months.
(19:56:04) graphiclunarkid: I can't take my pi to the ORG office I'm afraid. That's in London and I'm in Sheffield. We can ask the staff on the mailing list if they can host one for testing purposes until the lines at A&A are up and running though.
(19:57:57) graphiclunarkid: Dantheta also keeps threatening to set up one on a VodaFone connection. We can remind him.
(19:58:18) vasilis: Yes we are in contact it seems that he has very scarse time...
(19:59:13) vasilis: I have already asked on the mailing list but I no one really replied.
(19:59:47) vasilis: I find it a bit weird thought.. in my area I could have given 10 Pis to friends of mine.
(19:59:58) graphiclunarkid: I'll ask the staff again - they might not pay lots of attention to the dev mailing list but I can email them direectly.
(20:00:13) vasilis: Unfortunately I don't reside in UK.
(20:00:49) graphiclunarkid: If there were a generic image people could download then we could email out a link. It would be a lower barrier to entry.
(20:01:03) vasilis: and you know that without report data we cannot do much.
(20:01:21) vasilis: At the moment this is not possible with OONI.
(20:01:40) vasilis: A generic image will just wait for people to do things..
(20:01:51) graphiclunarkid: I mentioned running the probes at both the talks. I can send out a mail to those individual lists asking for volunteers.
(20:03:02) vasilis: In any case no one ever asked of a generic image other than you ;)
(20:04:03) vasilis: Please consider mailing your Pi at ORG or give to a friend..
(20:04:43) graphiclunarkid: That's because I don't see a process where people have to ask for individual images scaling very well. It needs to know how to pick up URLs from the middleware and report them back to the middleware out of the box. For that I suspect we'll need to write some code on the image itself.
(20:04:58) graphiclunarkid: If we make it too difficult for people we won't get many participants.
(20:05:38) vasilis: The power of Pi is that it can run un-interrupted..
(20:06:03) vasilis: So testing millions of websites wouldn't be a problem.
(20:06:27) vasilis: This will not need "much" manual circumvention.
(20:08:30) graphiclunarkid: Yeah, but the probes need to test the URLs people are submitting via blocked.org.uk, so they need to talk to the middleware (or our middleware needs to talk to the existing OONI middleware), and if people need to apply for an image and then wait for you to provide them one they might not bother. Downloading something they can use there and then is more effective, but if that's not possible, then I think we have to accept there will be a limit to how many Pis we have in our botnet.
(20:09:32) vasilis: This is the 2nd step.. we could achieve some reports now, let's say with Alexa top 1m websites on all UK DSLs.
(20:09:55) vasilis: Small steps...
(20:11:15) graphiclunarkid: Sure
(20:11:58) graphiclunarkid: Well we can keep asking around. I will try to write up a more detailed request explaining exactly what we need and why. I'll send it to the groups where I talked as well as ORG staff.
(20:12:17) graphiclunarkid: I'll also see whether the ORG staff think it's a good idea to send out a more general email to the supporter base.
(20:13:07) vasilis: OK in the meantime think of a good friend that you can leave your Pi.
(20:14:15) graphiclunarkid: OK - I'll give it some thought. I'm not promising though as I was planning to take it with me!
(20:14:22) graphiclunarkid: I can always get another one though I guess.
(20:18:52) dantheta [~Thunderbi@dsl-217-155-42-217.zen.co.uk] entered the room.
(20:18:54) graphiclunarkid: It's probably not doing very much good on my connection at the moment anyway - since my ISP doesn't censor!
(20:19:02) graphiclunarkid: Hi dantheta :)
(20:19:14) dantheta: Hi - sorry I'm late!
(20:19:39) dantheta: Althought fridays are sometimes kinda quiet!
(20:19:57) graphiclunarkid: No worries. Yeah, just vasilis and I until you turned up!
(20:20:00) graphiclunarkid: vasilis and I were just discussing how to get more Pis running OONI available for testing
(20:21:29) dantheta: Indeed - I was going to give the image a try this evening
(20:21:49) graphiclunarkid: Cool!
(20:22:56) graphiclunarkid: dantheta: Anything you want to raise from your end?
(20:23:25) dantheta: Only a quick bit - I haven't received any details from Lee about access to the server.
(20:23:39) vasilis: dantheta: Nice
(20:23:51) graphiclunarkid: dantheta: OK, sorry about that. I found out on Wednesday that I have sudo access on the server so I could have added your account. D'oh!
(20:23:59) dantheta: Ah!
(20:24:00) graphiclunarkid: I will get on and do that as soon as I get a minute.
(20:24:19) dantheta: That's cool, thanks!
(20:26:12) dantheta: So yeah, everything just ticking along.
(20:27:44) graphiclunarkid: Awesome.
(20:28:36) dantheta: I guess Kori is still out of action. How were the roadshows?
(20:29:09) graphiclunarkid: dantheta: Just trying to add you an account now... if I can find your message with your SSH key that is!
(20:29:19) dantheta: I can resend if needed
(20:29:24) graphiclunarkid: The talks were good thanks. I've posted the slides to the cmp-spec repo on github.
(20:29:31) graphiclunarkid: That would be handy, thanks.
(20:30:10) dantheta: graphiclunarkid: On it's way
(20:35:44) graphiclunarkid: dantheta: Right, you should have an account set up now.
(20:35:51) graphiclunarkid: I've emailed you the details.
(20:36:31) graphiclunarkid has changed the topic to: Get involved with the Censorship Monitoring Project: <a href="http://www.blocked.org.uk/help">http://www.blocked.org.uk/help</a>
(20:36:54) graphiclunarkid: OK, if there's nothing else, I'm going to have to call it a night I'm afraid. vasilis dantheta
(20:37:19) vasilis: OK then have a nice weekend ppl.
(20:37:47) graphiclunarkid: Don't think there will be a meeting next week. In any case I'll be busy moving countries so will be unlikely to be able to join in!
(20:37:59) dantheta: graphiclunarkid: Just before you go, I'm afraid I'm getting prompted for a password on the server (it doesn't seem to accept the key)
(20:37:59) graphiclunarkid: If you think of a good reason to have a meeting shout up on the list.
(20:38:10) graphiclunarkid: dantheta: OK, hang on and I'll look into it.
(20:38:18) dantheta: Cheers - sorry about that!
(20:44:26) graphiclunarkid: dantheta: Try again?
(20:44:39) dantheta: Yep, I'm on. Thanks for that!
(20:44:47) graphiclunarkid: No worries :)
(20:44:54) graphiclunarkid: Do you think you might need sudo access?
(20:45:04) graphiclunarkid: Or can you get away without it?
(20:45:12) dantheta: Not just yet - I'm looking around for the mo.
(20:45:26) graphiclunarkid: OK - yell if you find you can't do something you need to.
(20:45:41) dantheta: No problem. Thanks!
(20:45:41) graphiclunarkid: It looks like a redhat system to me.
(20:45:48) graphiclunarkid: (Haven't played around with it much).
(20:46:01) dantheta: Yep, 6.3. I know my way around there pretty well,
(20:46:07) graphiclunarkid: Jolly good :)
(20:46:20) graphiclunarkid: I'm a Debian person myself,
(20:46:41) graphiclunarkid: Or Ubuntu occasionally. Depending on what they've done in each release!
(20:47:07) dantheta: I know the feeling!
(20:47:52) dantheta: I generally lean towards debian-based systems, but various workplaces have tended to be Redhat/Centos.
(20:48:51) graphiclunarkid: I find it doesn't matter except when I want to (a) find where something is kept or (b) use some debian-specific script that isn't present.
(20:49:37) dantheta: I've been reading a lot about systemd being adopted by Debian & co. I'm going to miss the old sysv-style init.
(20:50:31) graphiclunarkid: Talking of things I can't find: where does redhat install apache site-config files?
(20:50:58) dantheta: Redhat doesn't have an equivalent for that. The whole sites-available and sites-enabled thing doesn't exist.
(20:51:08) dantheta: People can drop config files for vhosts into /etc/httpd/conf.d
(20:51:37) dantheta: So is this host currently running version 1.1 of the api, or is that running somewhere else?
(20:51:42) graphiclunarkid: Ah, that's it, thanks.
(20:51:59) graphiclunarkid: I believe it's running on this host.
(20:52:44) dantheta: Interesting - the 1.1 code doesn't appear to be checked out on here.
(20:53:32) dantheta: There's a bowdlerize database, but the connection details in the PHP script aren't working (they're still the defaults)
(20:55:05) graphiclunarkid: You should probably drop Gareth a line to find out how he's configured it.
(20:55:20) dantheta: All good - I'll look at that over the weekend.
(20:55:47) graphiclunarkid: Cool. Just fixing a problem with the staging server friendly-links 404ing. I think!
(20:55:55) graphiclunarkid: Since I'm on the server anyway.
(20:55:57) dantheta: vasilis: I'll let you know how I get on with the Raspberry Pi image.
(20:56:04) graphiclunarkid: Then I really must go!
(20:56:24) dantheta: 'Tis all good. Have a very good weekend!
(20:56:32) vasilis: dantheta: Have you downloaded already the image?
(20:56:40) dantheta: Yep - nice fast link
(20:56:47) vasilis: graphiclunarkid: Bye!
(20:57:01) dantheta: vasilis: Takes longer to write it to the SD card than to pull it across the internet!
(20:57:06) dantheta: graphiclunarkid: Seeya!
(20:57:23) graphiclunarkid: Cheers all :)
(20:58:21) vasilis: dantheta: Heh ;)
(20:58:23) dantheta: The image boots properly.
(20:58:27) dantheta: yay!
(20:58:54) dantheta: I'll take more of a look into that tomorrow morning, if that's OK. I'll mail you if I run into any problems.
(20:59:07) vasilis: Nice!
(21:00:44) dantheta: Yep, that's cool.
(21:01:05) dantheta: Well, I'm going to head off pretty soon too. Have a very good weekend!
(21:01:19) vasilis: You too!
(21:01:22) vasilis: ciao
(21:01:27) dantheta: Cya
(21:01:40) dantheta left the room (quit: Quit: dantheta).
(21:03:08) vasilis left the room (quit: Quit: quit).