Opened 5 years ago

Closed 4 months ago

Last modified 4 months ago

#2306 closed enhancement (fixed)

Forum service - Discourse

Reported by: jive Owned by: sac@…
Priority: normal Milestone: Sysadmin Contract 2024-I
Component: SysAdmin/Discourse Keywords:
Cc:

Description

Question coming out of GeoServer meeting, our community is considered "hard to access", in part due to the use of mailing lists and different logins.

Q: Would it be possible to setup forum software (discuss.org or NextCloud) using "GitHub" credentials or some other standard login rather than asking people to sign up for a new id?

Change History (59)

comment:1 by wildintellect, 5 years ago

I'm -1 on hosting forums in general as they are hard to keep secure, not to mention comment moderation issues. I would suggest Geoserver consider https://gis.stackexchange.com/ and having community members become moderators there.

QGIS actually got rid of their forums a few years back, relying instead on mailing list+nabble (for forum like interaction), and GIS stackexchange as the official forum (less silo'd). They also bridge their IRC to gitter.

As for github logins, I hope someday many of our platforms with support multiple auth methods. It's on the wishlist.

comment:2 by jive, 5 years ago

This is just a technical question - what is possible / available. This is a response to our user community request.

  • We currently do stack exchange but that is a Q&A site not a forum (thanks to Ian and Andrea for maintaining)
  • We have do not enjoy the email bridge to nabble (any html / xml / image content comes out garbled to mailing lists)

We have an offer from a frustrated community member is who is offering to set up discourse.

Q: For QGIS is there anyone fielding nabble reqests that do not hit the mailing list (from those who do not subscribe).

Last edited 5 years ago by jive (previous) (diff)

comment:3 by wildintellect, 5 years ago

We do have the machine capacity to run Discourse https://github.com/discourse/discourse/blob/master/docs/INSTALL.md , seeing as how the official install method is to use a container. Seems there is a Wordpress extension to create forums bbPress, and some other ideas https://alternativeto.net/software/discourse/

comment:4 by aaime, 5 years ago

The idea is to have something that can be used as a forum but that has an option to be fully accessed via mail like a mailing list, nobody in the group that may answer questions wants to have to go and periodically check a web site. We've been told that Discourse offers this capability, but open to other options as well.

Ability to login with common credentials (e.g., github, google) would also be critical, getting OSGeo credentials is too hard (one still have to go fetch a mantra somewhere, or did that change?).

comment:5 by strk, 5 years ago

Please if you'll setup Discourse consider enabling OpenID login capabilities too, in addition to OSGeo LDAP: https://meta.discourse.org/t/openid-connect-authentication-plugin/103632

comment:6 by wildintellect, 5 years ago

Can the community member willing to setup the solution please join SAC, so we can officially grant permission to setup? Also, can anyone recall if we setup Docker on OSGeo6, or should we put Docker inside and LXD for this?

+1 use the official openid plugin for it. +1 the Geoserver community should have a list of moderators ready to take on that role (fyi we can also add some of them to the osgeo Mantra checking if that helps speed up registration for OSGeo accounts).

comment:7 by strk, 5 years ago

My hope for the OpenID plugin is that it accept self-declared identity trough arbitrary URL (like QGIS Redmine used to do, support now lost on the road to GitHub "history burner" silos)

in reply to:  7 comment:8 by jef, 5 years ago

Replying to strk:

(like QGIS Redmine used to do, support now lost on the road to GitHub "history burner" silos)

sometimes it's hard to feel comfortable on the right side - just because you're on the same side ;)

Is there an actual problem logging in to QGIS redmine using openid? I just meant to disable creation of new accounts…

Last edited 5 years ago by jef (previous) (diff)

comment:9 by strk, 5 years ago

jef: no problem logging into Redmine with OpenID, I was referring to having lost this possibility after the move to GitHub (people won't be able to login into GitHub with either an OSGeo Username or with an OpenID)

comment:10 by kthujvu, 5 years ago

Thank you for considering this!

Can the community member willing to setup the solution please join SAC, so we can officially grant permission to setup?

That would probably be me. Hi!

What is SAC?

Requirements for the setup would be a domain name, a mail address for outgoing mail with SMTP access, also POP access (and support for + in the address) for using the forum by mail. For LDAP and OpenID of course also the details for that would be needed.

Discourse runs well on a 3€ per month virtual server, if necessary I would gladly sponsor a year or two of hosting that.

comment:11 by wildintellect, 5 years ago

System Administration Committee (SAC) https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/SAC

Please join the mailing list to discuss how we should implement this ticket. http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/sac

And we'll get it on the next meeting agenda.

comment:12 by strk, 5 years ago

For LDAP and OpenID of course also the details for that would be needed.

LDAP: https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/SAC:LDAP OpenID there's no specific service setup for OSGeo users, the idea is just to support the "Internet Identity Layer" as they call it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenID (and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenID_Connect, although the former is currently more deployed by individuals)

comment:13 by robe, 6 months ago

Hmm this is 4 years old and no traction..

I think we had this discussion on osgeo general (matrix/libera chat) or perhaps SAC.

There are two approaches to this

  1. is to upgrade our lists.osgeo.org to newest 3 series. I think that has some discourse like offerings. I need to upgrade osgeo6 anyway or reset lists.osgeo.org in a container. So I'll probably explore this first and see if the features are good enough to not need discourse
  1. As far as discourse, I think the community was split, many enjoy the mailing list approach and admittedly, I'm on that side of the fence. Some people said they were worried about the community being torn between mailing lists and discourse and having two places to check for conversation. Kind of the same reason why when I proposed a PostGIS (Q&A on github), I was met with "Why the heck would we want to do that"

Personally I like the mailing list model a bit better, probably cause I'm a dinosaur.

in reply to:  13 comment:14 by gsteinmon, 6 months ago

Hey folks,

at the FOSS4GNA event last week, I was approached about this topic. I can't remember the person who approached me, but this mailing list issue really stuck with me.

The issue as it was presented to me:

  • We are using an old version of Mailman that relies on Python 2 which is no longer supported.
  • We used to use Nabble to help organize our mailing lists into searchable forums
  • We can get both the mailing list and forum experience by moving to discourse
  • Other OSS projects have made the move and there is tooling around porting existing mailing lists to discourse

Based on this explanation and my own googling I think this makes a lot of sense.

Is there anything I can do to help?

-Guido

Replying to robe:

Hmm this is 4 years old and no traction..

I think we had this discussion on osgeo general (matrix/libera chat) or perhaps SAC.

There are two approaches to this

  1. is to upgrade our lists.osgeo.org to newest 3 series. I think that has some discourse like offerings. I need to upgrade osgeo6 anyway or reset lists.osgeo.org in a container. So I'll probably explore this first and see if the features are good enough to not need discourse
  1. As far as discourse, I think the community was split, many enjoy the mailing list approach and admittedly, I'm on that side of the fence. Some people said they were worried about the community being torn between mailing lists and discourse and having two places to check for conversation. Kind of the same reason why when I proposed a PostGIS (Q&A on github), I was met with "Why the heck would we want to do that"

Personally I like the mailing list model a bit better, probably cause I'm a dinosaur.

comment:15 by strk, 6 months ago

Hi Guido, could you join SAC and take responsibility over the new service ? We're in #sac:osgeo.org to discuss proceeding if you are willing to do so.

comment:16 by strk, 6 months ago

Summary: forum software with GitHub login questionForum service
Type: taskenhancement

comment:17 by jsanz, 6 months ago

Summary: Forum serviceforum software with GitHub login question
Type: enhancementtask

Gnome migrated from mailman to discourse in part because it offers a mail interface for those that prefer to stay on there.

From the FAQ post

Is it possible to use Discourse over email?

It definitely is, if anyone wants to use their mail client to interact with Discourse, they can. That’s exactly one of the features we looked into when we originally deployed Discourse back then...

The main issue were this migration (still in progress, apparently) is here

Another example is OpenStreetMap, but in this case they migrated from an old forum to a new discourse instance and at least in the Spanish community, the mailing list is now just mirroring the new threads from the forum. Operations team ticket about the migration here.

Finally, speaking as someone that interacts with many of the Spanish micro-chapters (geoinquietos.org geoinquietos at OSGeo wiki), a shared forum would be a great tool to help coordinating and doing outreach of our activities.

comment:18 by jsanz, 6 months ago

Summary: forum software with GitHub login questionForum service
Type: taskenhancement

comment:19 by whynottrycalmer, 5 months ago

Hi all,

I would like to volunteer to set up a running instance of Discourse, which I hold to be the best forum software currently on offer for open source communities.

I've been involved in the past with 1-2 Linux distros for doing precisely the same kind of setup (modulo the "Ansible Playbook", which is new to me but don't look too complicated). In my experience what works best is to completely ditch any discussion of the +/- and to provide a fully functional instance configured so as to take care of most workflows (both mailing-list based and more forum-oriented).

This way people can vote with their feet, that is, try things out and stick to what they prefer.

Of course this presupposes that the out of the box user experience has a good baseline; fortunately I think Discourse needs to further evidence that it's able to provide that.

Things that usually create trouble:

  • TLS termination (depends on how the instance is wired-up to the Internet)
  • who maintains what? how do we backup/rollback
  • which plugins (Discourse is, not unlike QGIS, much more user-friendly with a handful of plugins) do we use from the start, and more generally, who calls the shots if we move forward with this initiative?

Looking forward to doing this, please let me know who else is!

(I see from the above that some people are, so please don't take this as an attempt to steal / hijack their idea or work. I am confident we can build on what has been done already to move forward.)

Last edited 5 months ago by whynottrycalmer (previous) (diff)

comment:20 by strk, 5 months ago

I suppose the at the bare minimum posting messages/replies to forums will need authentication so the first plugins to consider should be those dealing with authentication. Right now mailing lists allow anyone to basically register an account associated to their email address. Would it be possible to do the following ?

  1. Allow people to authenticate via existing OSGeo UserID
  2. Allow people to self-register with just email (in par with Mailman)
  3. Allow people to authenticate via OpenID-2.0 ? (optional, but I'd find it to be the most federative way to deal with authentication)

What options are there to prevent spam ? Should someone start posting spam, how to block and cleanup ?

in reply to:  20 comment:21 by whynottrycalmer, 5 months ago

Replying to strk:

Would it be possible to do the following ?

  1. Allow people to authenticate via existing OSGeo UserID
  2. Allow people to self-register with just email (in par with Mailman)
  3. Allow people to authenticate via OpenID-2.0 ? (optional, but I'd find it to be the most federative way to deal with authentication)

What options are there to prevent spam ? Should someone start posting spam, how to block and cleanup ?

Will update this ticket with my findings.

comment:22 by whynottrycalmer, 5 months ago

@strk Authentication methods (2) and (3) confirmed. We could also use GitHub or GitLab, there are plugins for that too. Imagination is the limit...

As for OSGeo UserID is it plain LDAP? There is this nice little plugin there: https://github.com/jonmbake/discourse-ldap-auth.

Last edited 5 months ago by whynottrycalmer (previous) (diff)

comment:23 by robe, 5 months ago

Summary: Forum serviceForum service - Discourse

Seems everyone wants to go the discourse route. I'm not sure I care much about migrating e.g PostGIS to discourse, but I respect others like discourse, so probably worth a try for others.

I'm willing to do the backend setup and administration as long as someone steps up to do the day to day front end user administration of it once it's up and running. How much that entails I don't know since I've never tried to administer discourse. I'll try to set this up just going the podman or docker route as the discourse project supports. I'm not doing ansible strk. If you want ansible in this mix, you are going to have to do it or get someone who is interested and skilled in doing this in ansible.

in reply to:  23 comment:24 by whynottrycalmer, 5 months ago

Replying to robe:

Seems everyone wants to go the discourse route. I'm not sure I care much about migrating e.g PostGIS to discourse, but I respect others like discourse, so probably worth a try for others.

Wholehearted thanks!

I'm willing to do the backend setup and administration as long as someone steps up to do the day to day front end user administration of it once it's up and running. How much that entails I don't know since I've never tried to administer discourse. I'll try to set this up just going the podman or docker route as the discourse project supports. I'm not doing ansible strk. If you want ansible in this mix, you are going to have to do it or get someone who is interested and skilled in doing this in ansible.

Here are the things I agree to do:

  • help set up Discourse (I am familiar with Docker / Docker Compose, beginner with Ansible)
  • help configure Discourse once its deployed (I know which plugins we need thanks to user strk (LDAP+OAuth2+email authentication+antispam countermeasures), and I have a rough idea on the plugins we might need to make things pleasant for users
  • show the ropes to anyone interested in becoming a Discourse admin / mod, so that this initiative has 0 dependence on me

Let me / us know how you want to proceed, while the motivation is high!

Last edited 5 months ago by whynottrycalmer (previous) (diff)

comment:25 by jsanz, 5 months ago

This is exciting. Thanks @robe @whynottrycalmer for stepping up.

I have experience as a Discourse user and very limited as an instance moderator. At Elastic we run a pretty busy instance where I participate regularly answering questions, reassigning posts to proper categories, tagging, etc.

I volunteer to join the admin team. My short-term availability is a bit unknown at this moment, but in a couple of weeks I'll know better (family matters).

comment:26 by robe, 5 months ago

@jsanz - just curious you know how much elastic pays for their hosted instance.

Checking both https://forum.ansible.com and https://discuss.elastic.co/ I see these are both hosted instances by discourse (hosted-by-discourse.com).

comment:27 by jsanz, 5 months ago

Can´t share specific numbers, sorry. The community team pointed me to the pricing page.

Migration and authentication seem to be the main drivers that would force us to go to the Business plan, which feels like a lot of money without being certain about the usage of this service at this point. Maybe something to consider on a later phase after trying this in-house?

comment:28 by whynottrycalmer, 5 months ago

I think this initiative will have failed if it forces you to Business plan. Since the beginning I have been thinking of doing everything on your premise. Is there any blocker to that? Or am I wrong in my presupposition that hosting on premise would sidestep the Business plan while also offering us the auth + other features?

comment:29 by strk, 5 months ago

Just a note: you can use ansible to deploy and run the docker-compose file with something like this: https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/collections/community/docker/docker_compose_module.html

The advantage of using ansible is that it makes it easy to deploy to different environments with possibly different variables (hostname for the LDAP server, for example). This means dev/staging/production in an easy way.

in reply to:  29 comment:30 by robe, 5 months ago

Replying to strk:

Just a note: you can use ansible to deploy and run the docker-compose file with something like this: https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/collections/community/docker/docker_compose_module.html

The advantage of using ansible is that it makes it easy to deploy to different environments with possibly different variables (hostname for the LDAP server, for example). This means dev/staging/production in an easy way.

More pressing problem which we CAN use ansible for. Need to make separate partition for docker that doesn't use zfs. Others have worked fine with zfs so I haven't bothered but discourse is incredibly slow to start up. But if you can fit that in ansible, that would be a first start since we need to do that anyway and probably should do that for future docker projects.

BTW discourse does not use docker-compose, so I think that module is pretty useless here.

We need to first add a separate lvm volume and instead of doing zfs in it, set it aside for something else. Maybe experiment with your dev server for that :)

I imagine the process would fit what I already did for osgeo8 and osgeo9 creating zfs volumes.

comment:31 by strk, 5 months ago

There is also https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/collections/community/docker/docker_container_module.html and other docker related modules, but anyway if ZFS is a problem which machines do we have that don't use ZFS ? Aren't all LXD containers using ZFS as the underlying filesystem ? Also, why insisting in docker if performance is a problem ? Nested containers will surely not help ...

comment:32 by whynottrycalmer, 5 months ago

Here https://meta.discourse.org/t/install-with-docker-compose/27386/7 they seem to say that https://github.com/libresh/compose-discourse is the best Compose example. But it's not officially supported. What it does not provide is an easy way to perform version upgrades on things like Postgres.

Call is yours folks, but I doubt that using a non-supported method is wise, no matter if nowadays nobody stitches containers like it's 2015. 'Supported' trumps 'standardized' for me by a large margin, mostly because going the non-supported route might actually break plugins on which this initiative crucially depends.

So how is this shaping up? At which stage in the process do you want outsiders to step in?

in reply to:  32 comment:33 by robe, 5 months ago

Replying to whynottrycalmer:

Here https://meta.discourse.org/t/install-with-docker-compose/27386/7 they seem to say that https://github.com/libresh/compose-discourse is the best Compose example. But it's not officially supported. What it does not provide is an easy way to perform version upgrades on things like Postgres.

Yah the fact it's 8years old, I'd rather go with the officially supported way.

Call is yours folks, but I doubt that using a non-supported method is wise, no matter if nowadays nobody stitches containers like it's 2015. 'Supported' trumps 'standardized' for me by a large margin, mostly because going the non-supported route might actually break plugins on which this initiative crucially depends.

Agree

So how is this shaping up? At which stage in the process do you want outsiders to step in?

It's looking okay it is working on zfs (thought that's not supported), had to run everything with the

--skip-prereqs

e.g.

./launcher build --skip-prereqs

the smtp I finally got working, I guess I had run

./launcher rebuild --skip-prereqs

To get it to take my app.yml changes. It's the rebuild I'm finding extremely painful. The actual running seems to do fine.

I'm going to attempt next to install all those plugins, ldap etc. and see if I run into any stumbling blocks. I've just been writing my instructions locally cause I figure I'd have to tear the thing apart and start from scratch anyway and don't want to bother anyone with my ramblings. I know how strk hates journals. strk I have one question for you.

I haven't figured out what up, but sometimes using lists.osgeo.org port 587 doesn't work and sometimes it does. I ended up having to use port 25 starttls for this. I recall having similar issue with I think video.osgeo.org though weblate seemed to work fine with 587

Replying to strk:

Aren't all LXD containers using ZFS as the underlying filesystem ? Also, why insisting in docker if performance is a problem ? Nested containers will surely not help ...

Because generally the performance has been fine running with ZFS, though I have read this is bad and would be much faster if we put at /var/lib/docker in a non-ZFS partition. weblate.osgeo.org for example seems to work just fine and seems good enough running in docker on ZFS. So does repo.osgeo.org. So is talks.osgeo.org. All those are containers running docker and seem performance wise fine to me. I think the performance hit is mostly pulling docker images and such. So woodie whatever we might consider putting the /var/lib/docker partition in a btfs or whatever since we pull images all the time. Would probably fix the disk cleanup issues too.

I had purposely only used like only half of disk space on osgeo8 and osgeo9 with the mindset that we'd probably have to run other kinds of file systems. If I ever rebuild osgeo7 I'd probably do the same, but we had already made the mistake of allocating all osgeo7 to zfs (except for that small ssd drive). My thought was to

a) put the whole container that is running docker in a non-zfs volume

or

b) only put the /var/lib/docker in a non-zfs volume

The good thing with a is that well I think we don't need to do anything special with backup and restore

Option b) I think we'd have two volumes being backed up and need to remember to pull those. i haven't researched what's involved there.

As far as discourse goes. I think postgresql tends to run better on zfs. I'd also like to run postgresql not in docker for discourse cause trying to upgrade a postgresql database running in docker pretty much requires a dump and restore, which could get really painful if they grows to a non-trivial size.

comment:34 by strk, 5 months ago

Please file a separate ticket for the mail issues you are having

comment:35 by whynottrycalmer, 5 months ago

Hey folks,

From what I've read here and on #sac:osgeo.org it's unclear whether you expect or would like me or other folks to do concrete work for this initiative. Not a big deal -- things look under control and you don't need much help.

Am I reading this correctly? I am not to complain about having *less* or *no* work for this, but the offer to help is still on the table from my side.

Otherwise, cool, looking forward to QGIS Discourse!

Last edited 5 months ago by whynottrycalmer (previous) (diff)

comment:36 by kthujvu, 5 months ago

Thank you so much for picking this up! For me all the technical setup and requirements were too much so much kudos for diving into all the dirty details. :)

A Discourse forum for OSGeo projects would be incredibly useful.

in reply to:  35 ; comment:37 by robe, 5 months ago

Replying to whynottrycalmer:

Hey folks,

From what I've read here and on #sac:osgeo.org it's unclear whether you expect or would like me or other folks to do concrete work for this initiative. Not a big deal -- things look under control and you don't need much help.

Am I reading this correctly? I am not to complain about having *less* or *no* work for this, but the offer to help is still on the table from my side.

Otherwise, cool, looking forward to QGIS Discourse!

Sorry didn't reply. Yes things are under control. I'm in the middle of end of year obligations. But yes I do plan to get this going after I am done with that. No help needed at the moment. I'll let you know when I need it.

in reply to:  37 comment:38 by whynottrycalmer, 5 months ago

Replying to robe:

Replying to whynottrycalmer:

Hey folks,

From what I've read here and on #sac:osgeo.org it's unclear whether you expect or would like me or other folks to do concrete work for this initiative. Not a big deal -- things look under control and you don't need much help.

Am I reading this correctly? I am not to complain about having *less* or *no* work for this, but the offer to help is still on the table from my side.

Otherwise, cool, looking forward to QGIS Discourse!

Sorry didn't reply. Yes things are under control. I'm in the middle of end of year obligations. But yes I do plan to get this going after I am done with that. No help needed at the moment. I'll let you know when I need it.

Great to hear, let me know when / if I can do anything to help. Wholehearted thanks for doing this!

comment:39 by robe, 4 months ago

I have it setup now at https://discourse.osgeo.org

use the Login -> with LDAP if you want to use your OSGeo account.

I also have sign up option enabled.

comment:40 by robe, 4 months ago

Milestone: Sysadmin Contract 2023-I

comment:41 by robe, 4 months ago

I'm planning to install the activitypub plugin so folks on fediverse (like mastodon) can follow a topic - https://github.com/discourse/discourse-activity-pub

Any other plugins people are interested in?

comment:42 by robe, 4 months ago

I have enabled the activity-pub plugin

comment:43 by robe, 4 months ago

If per chance some mailing lists decide to migrate to discourse, this script looks like it will allow us to import mailman mboxes into discourse - https://meta.discourse.org/t/migrate-a-mailing-list-to-discourse-mbox-listserv-google-groups-etc/79773

comment:44 by robe, 4 months ago

I also enabled github authentication and put the oauth app under the OSGeo organization.

in reply to:  43 comment:45 by jsanz, 4 months ago

Replying to robe:

If per chance some mailing lists decide to migrate to discourse, this script looks like it will allow us to import mailman mboxes into discourse - https://meta.discourse.org/t/migrate-a-mailing-list-to-discourse-mbox-listserv-google-groups-etc/79773

I'd like to test this maybe with some of the Spanish language microchapter lists (geoinquietos-xxx) that are mostly dormant and probably good candidates to migrate to Discourse.

This week and the next I'm super busy but if the end of the year is quiet I can try to work on this migration tests.

Thanks for putting this together @robe, looking forward to see the community adoption of this more modern alternative to mailing lists, which usage out from pure development teams has decayed quite a lot over the recent years.

in reply to:  41 ; comment:46 by whynottrycalmer, 4 months ago

Replying to robe:

I'm planning to install the activitypub plugin so folks on fediverse (like mastodon) can follow a topic - https://github.com/discourse/discourse-activity-pub

Any other plugins people are interested in?

My go to are usually:

Sometimes:

Last edited 4 months ago by whynottrycalmer (previous) (diff)

in reply to:  46 ; comment:47 by robe, 4 months ago

Replying to whynottrycalmer:

Replying to robe:

I'm planning to install the activitypub plugin so folks on fediverse (like mastodon) can follow a topic - https://github.com/discourse/discourse-activity-pub

Any other plugins people are interested in?

My go to are usually:

Sometimes:

Those look like good ones. I'll try to install later tonight. What I hate about discourse is to install plugins I got to take down the site and wait for the image to rebuild. You have any thoughts on that or is that just the way it is.

in reply to:  47 comment:48 by robe, 4 months ago

Replying to robe:

Replying to whynottrycalmer:

I have the following plugins now installed and enabled

These are installed open id and oauth2, but not enabled Sandro we need to configure a bunch of stuff here to make them useful and I'm not sure what those things are, so I have disabled for now

comment:49 by robe, 4 months ago

To support mail receipt I'm going to set up a mail-receiving container as discussed here https://meta.discourse.org/t/configure-direct-delivery-incoming-email-for-self-hosted-sites/49487 Hope to get that done before the end of weekend.

in reply to:  49 comment:50 by robe, 4 months ago

Replying to robe:

To support mail receipt I'm going to set up a mail-receiving container as discussed here https://meta.discourse.org/t/configure-direct-delivery-incoming-email-for-self-hosted-sites/49487 Hope to get that done before the end of weekend.

I have incoming email working now and I've moved discourse to osgeo9. I had to use the port forwarding I did with jitsti to get it to work so they are sharing the same ip, but different ports on that. I'll log all these changes in ansible soon.

To test the mail, I had set up a testing category and added myself as a member, and gave it email address testing@….

The thing I can't figure out is how to set the reply to in emails that go thru. So I can write an email to testing@…, and it see it create a new topic in the testing category with the email I sent and shows me as the author. But the email I receive has noreply@… as the from. Anyway will figure it out later.

I'm also not sure if you absolutely have to specify the email address of the category, or if it just defaults to the category name.

comment:51 by robe, 4 months ago

Vicky just implemented mirroring of SAC. We are going to see how the email looks. This is a test to see if trac email flows cleanly into discourse.

comment:52 by robe, 4 months ago

Just a note that Vicky has been writing up a script to import all the mboxes from mailman, and is testing it out now.

We have qgis-fr-user now in production - with all the lists.osgeo.org email loaded into production. Check it out here - https://discourse.osgeo.org/c/qgis-fr-user/5

comment:53 by robe, 4 months ago

Milestone: Sysadmin Contract 2023-ISysadmin Contract 2024-I

Moving my prior still open items to the next proposed Milestone

comment:54 by strk, 4 months ago

MX record for discourse.osgeo.org is not being found by ovh.net:

# nslookup
> server cdns.ovh.net
Default server: cdns.ovh.net
Address: 2001:41d0:3:163::1#53
Default server: cdns.ovh.net
Address: 213.186.33.99#53
> set type=mx
> gmail.com
Server:         cdns.ovh.net
Address:        2001:41d0:3:163::1#53

Non-authoritative answer:
gmail.com       mail exchanger = 20 alt2.gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com.
gmail.com       mail exchanger = 30 alt3.gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com.
gmail.com       mail exchanger = 5 gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com.
gmail.com       mail exchanger = 40 alt4.gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com.
gmail.com       mail exchanger = 10 alt1.gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com.

Authoritative answers can be found from:
> discourse.osgeo.org
Server:         cdns.ovh.net
Address:        2001:41d0:3:163::1#53

Non-authoritative answer:
discourse.osgeo.org     canonical name = web.osgeo9.osgeo.org.

Authoritative answers can be found from:
osgeo.org
        origin = dora.ns.cloudflare.com
        mail addr = dns.cloudflare.com
        serial = 2328194777
        refresh = 10000
        retry = 2400
        expire = 604800
        minimum = 1800
> 

comment:55 by strk, 4 months ago

As of this morning my DSL provider's DNS still is unable to find the MX record for discourse.osgeo.org:

$ nslookup 
> server 93.188.96.2
Default server: 93.188.96.2
Address: 93.188.96.2#53
> set type=mx
> discourse.osgeo.org
Server:         93.188.96.2
Address:        93.188.96.2#53

Non-authoritative answer:
discourse.osgeo.org     canonical name = web.osgeo9.osgeo.org.

Authoritative answers can be found from:
osgeo.org
        origin = dora.ns.cloudflare.com
        mail addr = dns.cloudflare.com
        serial = 2329097002
        refresh = 10000
        retry = 2400
        expire = 604800
        minimum = 1800

comment:56 by strk, 4 months ago

Component: SysAdminSysAdmin/Discourse

comment:57 by strk, 4 months ago

Resolution: fixed
Status: newclosed

I guess we can close this ticket as done and refer to the SysAdmin/Discourse compomnent for further issues:

https://trac.osgeo.org/osgeo/query?status=!closed&component=SysAdmin%2FDiscourse

I will create one for the MX record

comment:58 by strk, 4 months ago

I've filed #3068 for the MX record issue, but used SysAdmin/DNS as component (discourse I've put in keywords)

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