Re: [Tails-dev] Some research about mirror infrastructure

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Autor: intrigeri
Datum:  
To: The Tails public development discussion list
Betreff: Re: [Tails-dev] Some research about mirror infrastructure
Hi,

foob@??? wrote (04 Jun 2014 07:26:31 GMT) :
> Any input on this proposal ?


I agree yet another layer of indirection, with HTTP, is the best.

Your latest preferred idea (with dynamic code picking a mirror among
the full list, running on a few "super-mirrors"), is not mentioned on
the blueprint yet, right?

I like it too, but its feasibility is conditioned by the availability
of enough (stable, strong) mirrors that either already have a setup
able to more or less securely run whatever PHP (or similar) we feed
them, with whatever input data (the list of (IP, weight) pairs) we
feed them, or are willing to set it up and keep it running.

I think this requires to do a quick survey. If someone writes a draft
email that we could send to the admins of our current fastest and most
stable mirrors, then I'm happy to send it and report the results back.

Technical details follow:

* I suggest that the super-mirrors use Git over SSH, run via cron, to
keep the code and configuration up-to-date. This requires the mirrors
to have Git, SSH client with pubkey authentication capability, and
cron. Add this to the survey?

* Maybe we want the super-mirrors to properly check integrity,
authenticity and up-to-date-ness of what they get. Maybe trusting
the server that hosts this stuff *and* HTTPS or SSH crypto is good
enough. The latter is at least as good as what we have now, so let's
not over-engineer it for a first iteration.

* Whatever we think of it, PHP is the most readily available language
for these admins to run. Maybe I'm wrong, and it might be a good
idea to ask in the survey if the admins can run stuff written in
Python, Perl or Ruby.

* Do we require minimal isolation of how our dynamic code runs, e.g.
at least having it run under a dedicated UID, as opposed to mod_php
+ one single shared UID for all websites + deprecated crap such as
open_basedir?

Cheers,
--
intrigeri
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