history of work done

Lots of work is in our TODO list : ImcDocsTodo.

Important Note

Starting August 2005, this document will no longer be maintained. Instead, changes arenow tracked directly on the server. If you are looking for specific information, please contact indy-docs@riseup.net

2009

June

docs finally goes live again, with data from 2008-09-24, using Foswiki instead of TWiki, and SSL-only site access. The new server is called amanita.

2008

December's Big crash

Disk failures in Kompost server took the server down in December 2008, and the latest backups were from 2008-09-24.

2005

August

Fixed TWikiUsers

• fixed TWikiUsers (a how-to to repeat this is in ImcDocsAdminTips)

July

Moved to Humus following downtime on Boum

• basically, the equivelant directories of twiki/bin, twiki/data, twiki/templates, twiki/pub got transferred from lombric to humus (backup ==> live server). the directory structure was altered a bit, and the apache configuration file had already been set up to work for http://humus.indymedia.org and short urls (although not as short as the ones that might have been desired).
• also patched was the new TWiki.cfg file with code from the lombric (backup) setup. this did not seem to work, however, so part of it was commented out [the problem was that revisions were not being logged as separate, so there was no revision control at all. this worked when the lines were changed about rcs]. some symlinks were introduced into the directory twiki/ from the server root.

mtopper given sudo access on humus.

• this was cos i have met him and worked together on other projects: he knows a lot more than me, including perl, so was helpful and interested to learn more. as it turns out, mike was a big help.

April

Manage moved/renamed pages

• hacked TWiki.pm so that METASEARCH works: fix_metasearch-20040902.diff -- IntRigeri - 18 Apr 2005

Global Translations

• German
• including the GlobalNavBarEn
  • Spanish

improve the look of Global

• done -- GarconDuMonde - 16 Apr 2005
  • nb: pina has offered to translate into portuguese
  • have sent the page to http://translations.indymedia.org asking for other translations to go to indy-docs@riseup.net
  • old page is archived at WebHomeOld1

Created 'Help' web

• Help - needs to be worked on and populated still. -- GarconDuMonde - 14 Apr 2005

Naming conventions

• expanding and finding an agreement on the ImcDocsNamingConventions .

WebStatistics

• created a cronjob ( /etc/cron.d/docs_indymedia_org-statistics) that updates daily the stats used by WebStatistics topics -- IntRigeri - 11 Apr 2005

Plugins (documentation and requirements)

• DefaultPlugin - this is required for backwards compatibility
• CommentPlugin: now documented on HowTo#include_a_comments_box
• EditTablePlugin: now documented on HowTo#include_a_comments_box
• InterwikiPlugin: i think this is required -- GarconDuMonde
• SpreadSheetPlugin: REQUIRED for the search engine in the WebTopBar
• SmiliesPlugin: kept as people liked it!

Plugins disabled

These plugins have been disabled on the TWikiPreferences page :

• RenderListPlugin: REMOVE: i think this one is too complicated, never used etc.
• SlideShowPlugin: REMOVE

Indydocs topics moved to where they should be!

• all imc data now moved or deleted (if duplicated elsewhere) from http://docs.indymedia.org/view/Indydocs/" -- GarconDuMonde - 09 Apr 2005
• Indydocs web deleted.

Main translations

• french - done
• spanish (castillian) - done
• german - done
• portuguese - done

improve the look of Main

• done -- GarconDuMonde - 09 Apr 2005
  • nb: pina has offered to translate into portuguese
  • will send the page to http://translations.indymedia.org asking for other translations to go to indy-docs@riseup.net
  • old page is archived at WebHomeOld

remove "Comment" field in TWikiRegistration

• • done - -- GarconDuMonde - 07 Apr 2005

this was really easy: i just went to TWikiRegistration and edited the page. there, i found the following comment:

<!-- IMPORTANT NOTE if you want to customize this form: You can delete or add new input variables in this form. Use the topic TWikiRegistration in case this installation is on a public server (just copy the content over to the TWikiRegistration topic). The name="" parameter of the input tags must start with: "Twk0..." (if this is an optional entry), "Twk1..." (if this is a required entry). This will ensure that the fields are processed correctly. -->

so, i just removed the comment line. the code i removed was:

<tr>
  <td valign="top" align="right"> Comments:</td>
  <td><textarea name="Twk0Comment" wrap="virtual" rows="4" cols="38"></textarea> </td>
</tr><tr>
  <td colspan="2">%I% *Note:* Comments you add here will be publically displayed on your personal WikiTopic.</td>
</tr>

then, i've done it also for the other, translated languages (TWikiRegistrationPl, TWikiRegistrationEs, TWikiRegistrationDe, TWiki.TWikiRegistrationPt)

i'm also moving the different language pages to TWikiRegistrationXX where XX is the language code. - DONE

ignore "Comment" field in register script

• just a simple patch so that the Comment field is not written in a topic : register_nocomment.diff -- IntRigeri - 10 Apr 2005

Put in production a new password reset system

• everything is explained here: https://wiki.boum.org/TechStdOut/TWikiPasswordResetPatch

Cleaned a bit the notification email sent to newly registered users

• the patch : registernotify_cleanup.diff -- IntRigeri - 08 Apr 2005

Setup access statistics

• here they are : https://boum.org/cgi-bin/awstats.pl?config=docs.indymedia.org ; NB: you need to use your https://wiki.boum.org/ account to login

March

Activated TablePlugin

• tons of warnings in Apache's error.log but seems to work

February

Started quick links page

• UsefulLinks

Fixed "some users can not edit their hometopic"

• the users registered between october and december 2004 had %TOPIC% in their ALLOWTOPICCHANGE variable, which is not expanded by TWiki's access control system
• fixed with a script called fix_ALLOWTOPICCHANGE, a bit of Perl regexp -- IntRigeri - 16 Feb 2005

namespace

• prepended IMC abbreviations to a couple of topics in the Local web to keep the IMC seperation intact, still lots of work remaining on this sector... -- Alster

redirected /twiki/$ to /

• one rewrite rule -- IntRigeri - 17 Feb 2005

Disallow: /*?* to robots.txt

• cf ImcDocsRobots to see why

Removed write access of common users to certain webs

• To reduce maintenance work, editing and renaming topics in the Indydocs and TWiki webs was restricted to TWikiAdminGroup -- AlsteR - 19 Feb 2005

Removed the Test web

It was the old name of Sandbox web. -- IntRigeri - 18 Feb 2005

Fixed TWiki:Codev/RawParamLeaksEmailAddresses

• added a rewrite rule that denies access to raw= URLs
• removed the "Raw text" link at the bottom of the pages : patches/20041030beta/remove_raw_text_link.diff

-- IntRigeri - 18 Feb 2005

Fixed TWiki:Codev/RawParamLeaksEmailAddresses the soft way

• added a rewrite rule that redirects the raw= URLs to viewauth so that you have to be authentificated to view them
• re-added the "Raw text" link by unapplying the previous patch

-- IntRigeri - 23 Feb 2005

Security: applied twiki-robustness-r3342.diff

• should fix "all" shell commands injections -- IntRigeri - 23 Feb 2005
• this implied lots of "whitespace in filename" errors, so I patched TWiki.pm with fix_whitespace-20040901.diff -- IntRigeri - 25 Feb 2005
• added quotes in TWiki.cfg in ciCmd : -m'%COMMENT|U%' to workaround the new bug "when I try to upload an attachment and leave the Comment field empty I get an error". -- IntRigeri - 25 Feb 2005

Performance optimizations

• forbid access to skin= URLs to authentificated users (no need that the robots index our wiki twice) -- IntRigeri - 24 Feb 2005

January

Repaired WebNotify & WebRss

• WebNotify : Only a matter to change some settings in TWikiPreferences... -- IntRigeri - 18 Jan 2005
• WebRss : replaced all our WebRss topics with the upstream one, it works. -- IntRigeri - 18 Jan 2005

2004

December

ChangePassword now works

It was only a matter of adding the twiki/bin/manage script to the Apache RewriteRule... -- IntRigeri - 07 Dec 2004

Changed TWikiGuest password to imcguest in order to annoy spambots

Updated twiki-templates/oopsauth.tmpl, TWikiRegistration and its translations accordingly to this. -- IntRigeri - 07 Dec 2004

Upgraded to 20041130beta & moved to another box

• desactivated GnuSkin & TablePlugin that causes errors in Apache error.log
• patched Prefs.pm to get rid of "Use of uninitialized value in hash element at ../lib/TWiki/Prefs.pm line 413" in Apache error.log
• patched Store.pm so that TWiki does not log IPs
• patched view.pattern.tmpl to add breadcrumbs (parentbars) on top as well
• patched View.pm so that an access to a non-existant topic does not request user authentification : View.pm-non_existant_topic_required_auth.diff

-- IntRigeri & DjRom - 12 Dec 2004

Rollback'd "home topic protection"

Putting this in a home topic does not work :

Set ALLOWTOPICCHANGE = Main.%TOPIC%

Indeed, the TOPIC variable is not expanded, and thus not taken into account by the TWiki authentification ; I thus removed this from NewUserTemplate.

IntRigeri - 13 Dec 2004

November

Parentbar at top as well.

• diff:

diff view.pattern.tmpl view.pattern.tmpl.orig 33a34 > 35d35 < You are here: [[Sysadmin.WebHome][Sysadmin]]  > [[Sysadmin.ImcDocs][ImcDocs]] > ImcDocsLog 

 71c71 <  --- >  \ No newline at end of file 

-- PseudoPunk - 02 Dec 2004

Hotfix applied for the "search security hole"

-- IntRigeri - 16 Nov 2004

October

Users' homepages protection

Modified NewUserTemplate so that new users' homepage is only editable by itself. -- IntRigeri - 10 Oct 2004

robots.txt : disallow bots to crawl

... in order to lower che's load ; allowed ia_archiver, otherwise archive.org deletes old archives (cf http://www.archive.org/about/exclude.php) -- IntRigeri + DjRom - 09 Oct 2004

migration to PatternSkin version 1.0.10 2004

-- IntRigeri - 05 Oct 2004

September

installed PatternSkin version 1.0.10 on Sandbox web

• GnuSkin is unmaintained and does not support some new TWiki features, we'll soon have to switch to a new skin, let's test this one in the Sandbox web ; see http://lists.indymedia.org/pipermail/imc-tech/2004-September/0927-p7.html -- IntRigeri - 26 Sep 2004

installed new banners

-- IntRigeri - 28 Sep 2004

July

Denied access to Trash web for unauthenticated users

-- IntRigeri - 26 Sep 2004

• to prevent google from indexing our trash
• added access control to

Half-fixed the verbatim bug

-- IntRigeri - 30 Jul 2004

• cf http://archives.lists.indymedia.org/imc-tech-coord/2004-June/000778.html for description
• not really fixed verbatim tags parsing, but at least it doesn't hide text anymore : TWiki.pm-verbatim-hack.patch

Obfuscated admin mail (anti-spam)

-- IntRigeri - 29 Jul 2004

• modified WEBCOPYRIGHT variable in TWikiPreferences, since WIKIWEBMASTER mail, while automatically obfuscated everywhere else, isn't when used in WEBCOPYRIGHT

Disabled BlackListPlugin which causes problems

-- IntRigeri - 08 Jul 2004

June

Setup another TWiki for UTF-8 testing purpose

-- IntRigeri - 08 Jun 2004

• living here: http://docs.devel.indymedia.org
• described here: ImcDocsTestTwiki

Secured WebMenu

i.e. had it editable only by the TWikiAdminGroup members, tt had been asked by somebody -- IntRigeri - 06 Jun 2004

Installed BlackListPlugin v.20040405

Upgraded to TWiki beta release v. 07 05 2004 [ IntRigeri 4-6 Jun 2004 ]

NB: the so-called Beta releases are in fact told to be stable enough in a production environment.

Here is the procedure:

• followed TWiki:TWiki.TWikiUpgradeGuide (on a copy of the twiki directories of course) without upgrading data yet (will be done globaly later)
• Applied patch: TWiki-bad_pathinfo_cleanup.patch-20040507beta
• Applied patch: Render.pm-format_time_bug.patch-20040507beta
• Added viewauth and viewfile scripts to the Apache rewrite rules
• added viewauth to the list of authentificated scripts in bin/.htaccess
• no need to upgrade manually TablePlugin since it is now included in the main TWiki distribution
• hacked TWiki/Store.pm so that it doesn't log IPs (in function writeLog)
• hacked TWiki.pm so that METASEARCH works: TWiki.pm-metasearch-bugfix.patch-20040507beta
• upgraded the twiki-templates dir (easy: overwrite old files with new ones)
• adapted my script to upgrade data and pub dirs : update-twiki-data_and_pub.sh
• done the real upgrade (launched my script, switched to the new twiki, merged TWikiPreferences)
• GnuSkin doesn't work any more... the problem is its gnusave script; so I took the lask savemulti script (gnusave is, in fact, savemulti - from TWiki:Plugins.KoalaSkin - renamed) and adapted it so that it works : gnusave-to20040507beta.patch ; hacked, too, bin/gnusearch to make it work with this release : gnusearch-to20040507beta.patch
• patched lib/TWiki/UI/Save.pm to remove a recurrent error in Apache logs, as explained on TWiki:Codev.TWikiBetaRelease2004x05x07 : Save.pm-apache_error_fix.patch-20040507
• removed the -w switch in twiki/bin/rdiff in order to get rid of some silly lines in Apache errors.log
• disabled IrcLogPlugin (it doesn't work anymore with this release, and I'm quite sure nobody uses it in fact)

May

Manage moved/renamed pages

• hacked TWiki.pm so that METASEARCH works: metasearch-bugfix.patch [Main.IntRigeri - 30 May 2004]
• added a METASEARCH in WebTopicViewTemplate and WebTopicNonWikiTemplate that will show if a topic has been moved/renamed [Main.IntRigeri - 30 May 2004]

Migrated the old Test web to Sandbox, used in newer TWiki versions

• migrated almost all pages [Main.IntRigeri - 30 May 2004]
• adapted the links in every WebMenu (the left toolbar) [Main.IntRigeri - 30 May 2004]
• NB: there are still some files attached to Test ; I didn't bother

Cosmetic stuff

• hacked twiki.gnu.tmpl and search.gnu.tmpl to fix the "meta parents" bug: search.gnu.tmpl-meta_parents_bugfix.patch and twiki.gnu.tmpl-meta_parents_bugfix.patch -- IntRigeri - 31 May 2004

March

Setup IrcLogPlugin

• installed IrcLogPlugin v.20031109... don't know yet if it works -- IntRigeri - 18 Mar 2004

Work on the mailnotify (WebNotify) function

• created a daily cronjob to launch twiki/bin/mailnotify ... seems to work [Main.IntRigeri - 11 Mar 2004 ]

Work on the search fonction

• added a link to "Advanced search" in twiki.gnu.tmpl [ IntRigeri - 09 Mar 2004 ]

Work on the spell checker

• renamed spell.pl to spell, modified its code to work in that way [ IntRigeri - 06 Mar 2004 ]
• added 'spell' to the scripts list in Apache rewrite rules and bin/.htaccess [ IntRigeri - 06 Mar 2004 ]
• modified GnuSkin to integrate a "spell check" button ; patch applied: gnuskin-with-spellcheck.patch [ IntRigeri - 06 Mar 2004 ]
• updated spell script to upstream (WBOSS) 2.5i, and modified to work with TWiki... still problems with accentuated words [ IntRigeri - 06 Mar 2004 ]
• seems we won't solve problems with spellchek in a multilingual environment, cf. TWikiInternationalization

Upgraded to TWiki production release v. 01 Feb 2003 [ IntRigeri 4 Mar 2004 ]

Here is the procedure:

• followed TWiki:TWiki.TWikiUpgradeGuide (on a copy of the twiki directories of course) without upgrading data yet (will be done globaly later)
• any try to access a Topic used to give "Web does't exist", because of "$thePathInfo cleanup" in TWiki.pm::initialize ; since we have some Apache rewriting, our $scriptUrlPath is empty, and it makes this "cleanup" destroy the good PathInfo ; as a workaround, I had this code check, before modifying $thePathInfo, if $scriptUrlPath is empty; it works ! Patch applied: TWiki-bad_pathinfo_cleanup.patch
• corrected known issues (found on TWiki:Codev.KnownIssuesOfTWiki01Feb2003)
  • TWiki:Codev.SecurityAlertGainAdminRightWithTWikiUsersMapping : secured TwikiUsers topic
  • TWiki:Codev.NoShellCharacterEscapingInFileAttachComment : patch applied : RcsWrap-NoShellCharacterEscapingInFileAttachComment.patch
  • TWiki:Codev.InsecureViewWithFailedAuthentication : not for us in fact
  • TWiki:Codev.ExtraneousLineInHttpHeader : patch applied : TWiki-ExtraneousLineInHttpHeader.patch
• upgraded GnuSkin to version 1.2 (homepage is TWiki:Plugins.GnuSkin)
  • without upgrading data yet (will be done globaly later)
  • added gnusave and gnusearch to twiki/bin/.htaccess
  • corrected strange highlighting of headers : patch applied : GnuSkinStrangeHighlighting.patch
  • added gnusave and gnusearch to the scripts list in Apache rewrite rules; warning: /etc/apache/docs.indymedia.org is managed by RCS ! the correct procedure to modify it is:
    • sudo co -l /etc/apache/docs.indymedia.org
    • sudo vi /etc/apache/docs.indymedia.org
    • sudo ci /etc/apache/docs.indymedia.org
    • sudo co /etc/apache/docs.indymedia.org
• no need to upgrade manually InterwikiPlugin since it is now included in the main TWiki distribution
• upgraded TablePlugin to version 20040101 (not the data files yet, will be done globally later)
• upgraded all templates (including GnuSkin ones):
  • Replaced %WIKIHOMEURL% with %WIKILOGOURL%
  • Replaced meta tag's charset=iso-8859-1" with charset=utf-8"
  • for internationalization (URL encoding):

            perl -pi~ -e 's/%SCRIPTSUFFIX%\/%WEB%\/%TOPIC%/%SCRIPTSUFFIX%\/%INTURLENCODE{\"%WEB%\/%TOPIC%\"}%/' *
            

• wrote a script to upgrade twiki-data : update-twiki-data.sh
• put old twiki offline (with a Apache Rewrite rule that redirects to tryagain.html)
• upgraded twiki-data.old to twiki-data.new with the script update-twiki-data.sh
• put new twiki online
• set %WIKITOOLNAME% preferences variable to Indymedia in TWikiPreferences
• added the SiteMap related parameters to each web's WebPreferences topic, so that SiteMap gets automatically generated; then had Main use SiteMap instead of TWikiWebsTable ; NB: translations of this table have still to be done/updated manually ; e.g.: TWikiWebsTableFr
• hacked TWiki.pm so that it doesn't log IPs
• added STOPSPAM as $noSpamPadding
• added an Apache Redirect so that people going to http://docs.indymedia.org/bin/SOMESCRIPT don't see the source

February

• moved logs to /var/www/docs.indymedia.org/twiki-logs and had the logrotated [ IntRigeri 28 Feb 2004 ]

---

2003

January

• stallman: jb blocked large scanning load (Webclipping.com 'fast http bot' - indexing and email harvesting) by moving the port squid talks to apache from the un-firewalled 8081 to the firewalled 8080 [ BrandF 09 Jan 2003 ]

---

2002

December

• docs.indymedia.org moved to /var/www/docs.indymedia.org because /home (where it used to live previously) run out of space - ImcDocsTWikiSetup. separate virtual host entry made for it, lives in apache dir conf/hosts/ (toni)

November:

• this page established, TechCoordWorkingGroup reorganized, old page at TechCoordOld (toni)

October:

• user's perspective short howto doc (rovin) - EasyTWikiIntro
• added mod-rewrite rules to get rid of/twiki/bin/ in URL (toni)

May:

• docs.indymedia.org moved to twiki

February:

• moin moin wiki started, to share information better, to improve