How the GRASS Webserver and related infrastructure works

written by M. Neteler, $Date: 2010-07-28 16:32:36 -0700 (Wed, 28 Jul 2010) $

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

== GRASS Web server ==

Maintainer: M. Neteler

* http://grass.osgeo.org
** Shared virtual OSGeo machine hosted at Oregon State University Open Source Lab
   (server: projects.osgeo.osuosl.org)
** OSGeo SAC page: http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/SAC_Service_Status
    http://wiki.osgeo.org/index.php/SAC
** Login: via OSGeo LDAP, there is a "grass" LDAP group
** Software:
*** OS: Debian Lenny
*** Apache Server with PHP
** Further addresses: http://www.grass-gis.org
*** points through Apache rewrite engine to http://grass.osgeo.org

* Backup:
** VERIFY 2010: grass.osgeo.org is backup'ed via rsync to XXXX: 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 CMS or whatever: http://grass.osgeo.org/wiki/Web_site

* 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://grass.osgeo.org/programming6/)
** 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 español
   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://lists.osgeo.org/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

== Previous hosting sponsors ==

Numerous institutions have sponsored the GRASS Project with Hardware/Bandwidth (list of master site hosting):
* 1997-1999: Institut fuer Landschaftspflege und Naturschutz (ILN), Universitaet Hannover, Germany
* 1999-2001: Institut fuer Physische Geographie und Landschaftsoekologie, Universitaet Hannover, Germany
* 2001-2008: ITC-irst, Trento, Italy
* 2009-2010: Telascience.org at San Diego Supercomputer Center, California, USA
* Since 2010: Oregon State University Open Source Lab (OSUOSL), Oregon, USA

