[Smaug] Call for Web site proposals (was: Our web site scruz.org is offline)

[Rick Moen]

Quoting peterbe at sdf.org (peterbe at sdf.org):
> On Sat, Mar 17, 2012 at 07:26:19PM -0700, Jeremiah Daniels wrote:
> > Got.Net says the site was taken down because something about it was
> > a security vulnerability, that it was compromised somehow. They
> > tarred it all up.
> > 
> > They don't want to put it back up without it being cleaned first.
> > 
> > How to proceed?
>   
>  I have no idea. I don't know anything about Drupal, I don't have a
>  password for making any significant modifications except what the
>  user interface can do from my account. I'd rather have a basic php
>  page which I know how to deal with, actually.

Gosh, what a fscking surprise.  Please see point #4, 'Security
nightmares'.  http://lists.svlug.org/archives/smaug/2005q4/001372.html

  4. Security nightmares.  PHP-based[1] CMSs' security histories, in
  particular, have generally been a bad joke, and ones that rely on the 
  PHPXMLRPC daemon more so.  Drupal is both written in PHP _and_ relies
  on PHPXMLRPC.  [...]

How come _nobody ever listens_ to Unix sysadmins when they speak
squarely within their area of expertise?


You know, Smaug _had_ a perfect serviceable page that David Gatwood
created at SourceForge, which was maintained via ssh / text editor and
svn checkins, but suddenly someone swooped in and said 'Simple, modular
HTML sucks; let's go with Teh Shiny', pronounced that simple maintence
regime as 'all that rubbish' (French cherry person 'Phil/CERisE', link
#3 below), and suddenly y'all asked in 2005 to repoint the DNS at the Drupal
thing Jay Campbell created over at Got.net.

http://lists.svlug.org/archives/smaug/2005q4/001455.html
http://lists.svlug.org/archives/smaug/2006q4/001729.html
http://lists.svlug.org/archives/smaug/2006q4/001728.html

The 'smaug-web' project Jacob Hunter and David Gatwood created at
SourceForge still exists:  http://sourceforge.net/projects/smaug-web/ 

We therefore could repoint the DNS back to that (now long unmaintained)
SF.net-based set of Web pages in a heartbeat.  (Well, as soon as I
re-research what frelling IP to point to.)

Of course, the problem with that was that literally nobody but me ever
bothered to ssh in, use a text editor to update Web pages, and check
changes into svn:
http://lists.svlug.org/archives/smaug/2005q4/001273.html

And _then_, after I repeatedly asked the alleged members to participate
in site maintenance, deliberately stopped for a bit to see of there were
any takers, and the only result was that one Peter Belew saw fit to
complain that the site was 'way out of date':
http://lists.svlug.org/archives/smaug/2005q4/001270.html

So, hey, if someone wants to get off his ass and create something that 
y'all want to at least pretend you want to maintain, let me know when
it's up, and we'll point the DNS at it.  If, as I expect, nobody lifts a
finger after about a week, I'll see if I can figure out how to
reactivate the site hosted at SourceForge.

I'm more than a little cynical on the subject at this point, because 
I'm getting the vibes that if it isn't maximally pointy-clicky a la
Drupal, i.e., if you're aren't able to avoid the need for that nasty
basic competence with standard Unix tools, you're going to sit on your
hands, not help, and whine a lot and demand Web-mediated editing.


CALLING ALL WEB FOLK:

This is your chance to create a new Smaug Web site.  You have a week.
Tell me what IP to point www.scruz.org to.

A static mirror of the (SourceForge-based) site Smaug used in 2005 is here:
http://linuxmafia.com/smaug/htdocs/
It uses SSIs (server-side includes), and could be fairly trivially
converted over to PHP.  You are most welcome to borrow liberally from 
what Smaug used through 2005.  Or, if you prefer, not.

Tarball:
http://linuxamafia.com/smaug/smaug.tar.gz