How the GRASS Webserver and related infrastructure works

written by M. Neteler, $Date$


Related Wiki documents:
* http://grass.osgeo.org/wiki/GRASS_Migration_to_OSGeo

== GRASS Web server ==

Maintainer: M. Neteler

* http://grass.osgeo.org
** X Ghz X CPU, sponsored by Telascience.org at San Diego Supercomputer Center (USA).
** OSGeo SAC page: http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/SAC_Service_Status#Telascience_Blades
** Hardware: Blade xblade14-2
   (http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/SAC_Service_Status#Telascience_Blades
    http://wiki.osgeo.org/index.php/SAC)
** Software:
*** OS: Fedora Core release 4 (Stentz)
*** Apache Server with PHP
** Further addresses: http://www.grass-gis.org
*** Apache rewrite engine to http://grass.osgeo.org
** Notes: Since OSGeo-SAC doesn't want to hand out too many ssh accesses to the osgeo1 and osgeo2 machines, we moved grass.osgeo.org as
virtual host onto Telascience.org infrastructure (sharing with other OSGeo services there)

* Backup:
** grass.osgeo.org is backup'ed via rsync to osgeo2: http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/SAC:Backups#download.osgeo.org
** Wiki backup, via rsync to http://josef.fsv.cvut.cz/WIKI/grass-osgeo/index.php/Main_Page

* Web pages:
** hosted in SVN server (developers can modify, see
   http://trac.osgeo.org/grass/wiki/WebPagesManagement),
   downloaded to Web server via cronjob hourly
** written in simple PHP/HTML (just include() statement for menus)
** mirrored to selected tier-1 sites via rsync (hardcoded IPs to avoid
   that too many sites connect at grass.osgeo.org)
** tier-1 sites are mirrored via rsync to tier-2 mirrors (no hardcoded IPs)
** RSS feed: rss.xml file stored in SVN-Web
** TODO: To be migrated to OSGeo Drupal (http://grass-dev.osgeo.net)

* i18N translation statistics (http://grass.osgeo.org/devel/i18n.php#statistics)
** based in Linux weekly snapshot
** GRASS version is coded in devel/i18n_stats.inc

* Weekly snapshots (generated Saturday morning California time):
** Source code tarball of SVN HEAD
** Linux binary snapshot is compiled
*** GRASS is compiled with GDAL, PROJ, SQLite, MySQL, PostgreSQL, FFTW, C++ support
*** binary tar.gz is moved into Web space

* GRASS user manual HTML:
** generated during compilation of weekly Linux binary snapshot

* GRASS programmer's manual (http://download.osgeo.org/grass/grass6_progman/):
** HTML: cronjob run Saturday morning California time
** PDF: cronjob run Saturday morning California time

* i18N translation statistics:
** generated during compilation of Linux binary snapshot, stats of
   (cd locale; make) are extracted into text file
** text file parsed by PHP page and shown as table

* GRASS user map
** GDF server is creating PNG output via Mapserver
** fetched every three hours via cronjob from http://mapserver.gdf-hannover.de/tmp/

* GRASS-Mapserver demo
** currently broken after grass.osgeo.org update

* Search engine (TODO!!)
** htdig runs once a week
** searchgrass.inc contains selective entries (SVN-Web)
** TODO: To be migrated to OSGeo server 12/2007

* FTP server
** no longer available due to security risk

* Mailman mailing lists + greylisting (at lists.osgeo.org since 11/2007)
** Mailman is doing the job, only registered users can post
** messages from unsubscribed people is auto-discarded without notification
** the open "weblist" operates instead like this:
    User -> grass-web at lists osgeo.org -> greylisting -> Mailman

* Backup of mailing lists (mbox files) (TODO!!)
** manually done by MN and Intevation (into freegis.org FTP space)
** nightly backup at OSGeo.org
** TODO: Establish solution via local cp on lists.osgeo.org (SAC ticket todo)

* Web statistics
** See URL at http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Project_Stats
** OSGeo: awstats (http://grass.osgeo.org/logs-bin/awstats.pl?config=grass.osgeo.org)
*** configuration at: /etc/awstats/awstats.grass.osgeo.org.conf
***                   /etc/httpd/conf.d/sites/grass.osgeo.org.conf
*** httpd logs: /var/log/httpd/grass_*
*** awstats processed log files: /osgeo/download/logs
*** cronjob script: /osgeo/scripts/update_logs.sh
** FBK Mirror: Webalizer (http://grass.fbk.eu/webalizer/) runs daily as cronjob
** Sitemeter: http://www.sitemeter.com/?a=stats&s=s24grassgis

Summary: The system should run almost autonomously.

== GRASS Mailing lists ==

Maintainer: Markus Neteler


Available lists:

* at OSGeo.org (http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo):
   grass-abm 	 	Integration of GRASS with JAVA based agent based modeling (ABM)
   grass-announce 	GRASS announcements
   grass-commit 	Mailing list to distribute GRASS-CVS commits
   grass-dev 		GRASS GIS Development mailing list
   grass-es 		La lista de correo de GRASS GIS en espaņol
   grass-gui 		GRASSGUI mailing list
   grass-psc 		GRASS-PSC: GRASS Project Steering Committee
   grass-qa 		GRASS Quality Assessment and monitoring list
   grass-stats 		GRASS and statistical software
   grass-translations 	Translation of GRASS (i18N)
   grass-user 		GRASS user list
   grass-web 		GRASS website mailing list
   grass-windows 	winGRASS - Using GRASS on MS-Windows systems mailing list

* UNUSED: at FBK-irst (http://grass.fbk.eu/mailman/admin/):
   grass-commit-addons          Mailing list to distribute GRASS Addons-SVN commits

Notes:
* grass-announce:
  * moderated by M. Neteler
  * has monthly password reminder disabled to avoid leakage into publicly archived lists
* grass-qa is receiving posts from the GRASS Quality Control System at
  Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal, Canada. Not open for other postings.
* grass-commit is receiving posts from the GRASS SVN at osgeo.org.
  Not open for other postings.
* grass-web is an open list (posting without subscription possible) with (Google) spam filter


== GRASS Wiki ==

Maintainer: Markus Neteler

* http://grass.osgeo.org
* Mediawiki, sponsored by Telascience.org (San Diego)
* requires registration to keep spammers out

Summary: The system should run almost autonomous. An eye must be
         be kept on people trying to spam the site

== GRASS IRC ==

Channel: irc://irc.freenode.net/grass
Web based client: http://irc.telascience.org/

* channel owner: Alessandro Frigeri <afrigeri unipg.it> ("geoalf")
* quasi guru: Markus Neteler ("markusN")
* further operators:
   - Jachym ("jachym")
   - Luca ("doktoreas")
   - Soeren ("huhabla")
   - Brad ("bdouglas")


== GRASS Source code repository ==

Maintainer: OSGeo-SAC, http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/SAC

* http://trac.osgeo.org/grass/browser
* SVN


== GRASS Bugtracker ==

Very old bugtracker (Dec 2000 - Dec 2006):
  * https://intevation.de/rt/webrt?q_queue=grass
  * webRT, sponsored by Intevation GmbH, Germany
  * spamassasin spamfilter locally, bogofilter at grass-dev list
  * reports are directly sent to GRASS Developers mailing list for notification
  * TODO: migrate to trac

Old bugtracker (Jan 2007 - Dec 2008):
  * http://wald.intevation.org/tracker/?group_id=21
  * gforce, sponsored by Intevation GmbH, Germany
  * spamassasin spamfilter locally, bogofilter at grass-dev list
  * needs 'noreply*wald.intevation.org' to be enabled as alias in Mailman
  * TODO: migrate to trac

New bugtracker (Jan 2008 - today):
  * http://trac.osgeo.org/grass/report
  * Trac
  * posts new bugs and comments to grass-dev list

== GRASS Quality Control ==

Maintainer: Prof. Giulio Antoniol

* http://web.soccerlab.polymtl.ca/grass-evolution/grass-browsers/grass-index-en.html
  implemented and sponsored by Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal, Canada
* Realtime analysis is sent to: http://grass.fbk.eu/mailman/listinfo/grass-qa

Further notification/functionality test systems:
* http://cia.vc/stats/project/GRASS
** posts into #grass IRC channel
** posts into #osgeo-commits IRC channel
* http://www-pool.math.tu-berlin.de/~soeren/grass/GRASS_TestSuite/?C=M;O=D