XSF Discussion - 2021-01-25

@iteam: I'm using the xmpp.org servers as an example for a TLS verification script in https://github.com/ge0rg/certwatch - please complain if you think that somebody might copy-pasta it and DoS the xmpp.org infra

why not use your own server? :)

I needed a config example with non-default ports?

ah

TBH, I somehow thought that my infra isn't as reliable and as objective as xmpp.org

I don’t care much, if someone wants to DoS xmpp.org, they can do it with and without certwatch.sh :)

Uh, you don't want to know what we've been dealing with on prosody.im recently

I do, actually.

Now I wanna know

I’m always interested in stories from the trenches.

One slice of the fun: it seems some internet censorship avoidance app got popular in Turkmenistan ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_in_Turkmenistan#Censorship ). It uses DNS over HTTP to bypass DNS-based blocks by the ISP.

A public XMPP service also runs a DoH resolver. On the same page where they mention this, they also discuss their Prosody installation and link to a commit in our repo.

oh my

and then someone thought that was a DoH resolver?

Somehow the link to that commit has ended up being distributed in the list of DoH resolvers, and our hgweb processes are being flooded with DNS requests

from Turkmenistan

Endlessly

sounds like an easy fix though

return 499 Reported To State Police and see what happens.

There are bug reports on the app asking it to back off on error responses, we're hoping that it will calm down

Meanwhile we have numerous IPs connecting to our websocket endpoint on prosody.im and trying to repeatedly do legacy auth (yes, the iq based one)

Haven't figured that one out yet

that also is a strange combination

Some badly configured spam bot?

MattJ: are those IPs on Tor RBL? ✏

Damn, editing a MUC message that's in flight causes duplicates in yaxim. I thought my code is bullet proof

Lol

Laughing with you, not at you, because I know that pain all too well

Since we still haven't fixed MUC over the last decades, I am a little concerned about MIX

MUC has improved quite a bit I think

Nowhere near perfect of course, but that's unattainable.

I am certainly not saying it hasn't, but the last 10% seems to be dragging out forever

since the remaining 10% are a lot related to inherent flaws in the MUC design

(presence based, no way to identify different resources of a single occupant on the stanza level)

Sure certainly, but I feel they are all issues we should have fixed long ago

And MIX would have some inverse MUC issues, like accumulation of temporary participants or being more sensitive to s2s issues.

Nice things, can't have them!

Lol

How are we on mix support anyway?

I can say that Tigase supports MIX and BeagleIM and SiskinIM have support for it and if I'm correct Kaidan will get it as well

Ejabberd has something IIRC

I've heard rumors of multiple people intending to start working on MIX for Prosody, but so far I've seen no proof.

I know there was something in ejabbrerd, but I'm not sure if it is up-to-date

as far as I remember ejabberd does not have the latest MIX

But Tigase does?

the latest slixmpp version ships with initial MIX support, some of it tested against Tigase

mathieui: actual question: how did you setup Tigase? I wanted to test something about it and couldn't find any information about how to configure it anywhere

I assumed you had to buy some enterprisey support plan or something

Or is it only configurable through the web setup thing?

Tigase has MIX

SamWhited, web setup is for initial setup and works quite well

Andrzej: that's not an option for me

SamWhited, I tested against the official servers

and documentation is still available https://docs.tigase.net/

I *think* that's what I was looking through and I couldn't find anything about how to configure it

Although this looks different than I remember, it's been a bit.

SamWhited, I created accounts on xmpp.cloud and tested on mix.xmpp.cloud, FYI

In this case I wanted to be able to programatically set something up locally. Oh well.

at the time there was no MIX-PAM yet so some things worked and others did not

I ended up giving up and rage closing the issue because I couldn't find any info at all on the tigase site, so I guessed it just wasn't supported

I'm not the greatest Docker fan but ... Docker?

SamWhited, you could always reach out and submit an issue or send an email

or ask in Tigase's MUC

Andrzej: if I have to go to those lengths just to set up the server, it's not worth it and I'll just use something else :) was just hoping someone happened to have done it since people said they were using it

@SamWhited you said that web-installer would be a no-go for you and you would prefer direct configuration explanation?

To be clear, you likely don't have to use docker. Basically all containers are inter-compatible these days. So it might be better to just call them a container.

Docker, the package manager.

actually if Sam was able to run Tigase by itself (just on JVM) then enabling MIX on that setup would be relatively straightforward (and wouldn't require docker)

Wojtek: I want to use it in two places: one is a thing that automatically configures servers for some unit tests (so it needs to write a config file or maybe a database or something) and the other is a Terraform plugin that deploys infrastructure programatically like a lot of businesses use. Neither can control a web interface.

s/unit tests/integration tests/

still very-much doable. web-installer is just to give you a really simple tool to configure the server, but the core of the configuration is done via `config.tdsl` file (which web installer basically creates)

Wojtek: is there documentation on that anywhere? I did look through the docs and around the web for a long time and couldn't find any info

we do run our own funcional tests: https://github.com/tigase/tigase-tts-ng -> https://build.tigase.net/nightlies/tts-ng-tests/index.html)

@SamWhited: unfortunately the is no guide how to enable mix, I just made a note to create it (though it would be rather simple) - we made a blog entry about MIX and how to use it but we neglected the other aspect of the story

oh come on SamWhited you don't feel like writing some selenium automation running headless chrome to set up something? :D

moparisthebest: I heard it runs webscale so maybe I should try it!

that's the spirit!

But seriously, I had this same problem with Tigase and OpenFire (openfire docs mentioned a config XML file, but not where it was or what anything inside of it was). I would have assumed corporate sort of stuff would have some sort of way to provision itself as part of enterprises normal infrastructures that I could piggy back on

(or just a config file)

@SamWhited I think that "quick start" (https://docs.tigase.net/tigase-server/master-snapshot/Administration_Guide/html/#QuickStart) + https://docs.tigase.net/tigase-server/master-snapshot/Administration_Guide/html/#dslConfig should give you what you need; the missing bit would be what to put in TDSL to enable MIX

Thanks, I'll give those a look; I don't need mix in particular, just a basic setup.

sure thing, and if something is still unclear or we could improve we would appreciate feedback (sometimes it hard to notice what may not be so obvious when you deal with something on a daily basis) :-)

Pretty sure I looked at the quick start guide and it mentions literally none of this, but I'll read through it again. I definitely hadn't found this DSL description, so that will be helpful, but at a quick glance there's literally nothing to show me a config file or what it should look like or where it should go.

But I'll read through it and maybe after reading the whole thing it will become more clear. I'd just expect to actually be able to quickly set something up up front and then figure out all the details later.

(ahh ther eit is, you have to scroll down a *long* way to find an example; will set it up then read everything and see how it goes)

yeah, it's quite lengthy - the problem with docs: either make it short-and-to-the-point but it may lack things or describe but then it may be overwhelming... probably restructuring it could help

I read something called "The 4 types of documentation" once that was pretty insightful.

thanks

Can't find it myself, but I see lots of hits for that and I imagine they'll be saying something similar.

@Zash https://documentation.divio.com/ - this by anychance? does seem to make sense

Ah, yes, that image looks familiar.

Dear Fosstondon folks: https://fosstodon.org/web/statuses/105618198867580357

thanks emus !

You are welcome

About 30 new follower on Fosstodon within one hour 😮️

people on fediverse are very interested in chat suddenly

I'm not on anything else (other than xmpp and irc) so I don't know if that extends elsewhere too

WhatsApp changed their terms (or did they go back on that?) and the resulting diaspora brought down Signal.

yep I did hear that, not the going back part though, that would surprise me

either way hopefully no putting the genie back in the bottle (of the, oh crap, facebook owns my chat? variety)

Reversed or delayed or some sort of reaction to all their users jumping ship.

moparisthebest, Hacker News is also into chat these days. Pidgin made the front page yesterday...

I'm not on WA and you should assume that I have no idea what I'm talking about. 😉

I thought you said they were into chat, not legacy software?

:)

the egyptian pyramids are nice too, I don't want to chat using them

Today was an article about the demise of ICQ, and someone in the comments asked if anyone knew a similar article about XMPP

moparisthebest: Pidgin is good, XMPP is bad, Matrix is good.

Zash, sorry, does not compute

That's the impression I get of HNs opinions.

Zash: yes, you're specifying the docker as a specific set of software used to manage and run containers, but the industry has settled on OCI standard for years now.

So it's more accurate to just say container, or OCI container, since whatever pre-packed container tigase is distributing will likely run on any container system.

http://opencontainers.org

But, I really don't mean that. I mean Docker Hub.

Just like "git" = Github.

As in the "package" repository and whatever tooling you use to download and run stuff from that.

I'm only advocating to reduce unnecessary branding. Docker hub is just a container source.

There are still a lot of people in our community who are unfamiliar with containers, and who docker is probably not the best solution.

Zash, "package" means npm right?

See there, confusion 😅

moparisthebest, no, "package" = .deb !

reminds me of an article I just saw today https://medium.com/@krishna.thokala2010/building-a-simple-irc-with-rust-b7204566d950 he built an IRC server with an http REST framework

obviously has no idea what "IRC" is, but that didn't stop him

Especially for beginners, as someone who has run classes as a paid instructor, I have found podman to be much easier to get started with. Especially for people familiar with Linux

the one where the first introduction is "just `alias docker=podman` and you're done" ?

People can certainly "get started" with docker quickly if they're just typing commands, but then they're usually completely lost.

TIL: podman is finally packaged in Debian. Wasn't last time I looked.

Thus I've never touched it.

And when you say "container", I think of LXC, which is completely different from "Docker"

Both are podman's directions for people familiar with docker. The commands for surface interaction, things like building and running containers, are very different from commands for hosting it.

you mean you don't start out with teaching them how to set up a k8s cluster? but how will they scale????

LXC is yet another example, yes.

No my introduction usually is how to go from their own laptops to life cycle of development and deployment. Which in San Francisco is what most companies are focused on.