[tech] Wiki / Moin1->Moin2 / `mussel` ?

[Nick Bannon]

(see also: https://gitlab.ucc.asn.au/UCC/tech-todo-list/-/issues/77 )

- A couple of side-notes:

  - One of the things our current wiki gives us is change notifications,
    particularly on pages like... https://wiki.ucc.asn.au/ChangeLog
    If you're logged in, you can "subscribe" or "watch" (or "unsubscribe")
    to any page, or use regular expressions in your settings&notifications
    page. Unfortunately, this is defeated if people get into the habit of
    ticking "this is a Trivial Change", typo fix, etc.  on every single
    edit, major or not - I'm looking at you, [ROY]! ::-)

  - I don't think `mussel` is literally running on its first install
    from last millenium, but it sometimes seems close. It was originally
    moderately priced new hardware, a wonderful little hardware hack,
    top-end dual Pentium-II performance on a budget:
https://old.reddit.com/r/vintagecomputing/comments/zorzzs/slot_1_cpu_intel_celeron_300a_the_greatest/
http://www.cpu-central.com/Articles/dualceleron/c_b75.jpg

    ...and of course we had arguments over whether it was meant to be
    "experimental" or "stable", etc.! I think it ran FreeBSD for a while!

    However, it stuck around, had upgrades, and settled down as "user"
    machine (shell box everyone can log into) which also made it a good
    place to run "the" web server with people's own CGI-BIN programs or
    whatever else they wanted. This role stuck around when we p2v'ed
    into the `atlantic` Proxmox cluster.

    Upgrading/replacing/rebuilding, config-managed /
    https://docs.ansible.com/ -style, this kind of web service is a good,
    easy project. We can spin up/tear down as many test servers as we
    like, and use https://www.haproxy.org/ to switch between them until
    we're happy.

The [wiki](https://moinmo.in/WhyWikiWorks)(see also
https://wiki.c2.com/?WhyWikiWorks
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:BOLD ... ) is one of the
blockers on one of the longer term general upgrade projects blocking the
routine upgrade of `mussel` and the general rebuild of the services that
have been running on it.

We're running https://moinmo.in/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MoinMoin
on Python2, not a complicated deployment, and I suspect a
straightforward config-managed deploy of
[Moin2](https://moinmo.in/MoinMoin2.0#How_to_help) /
https://github.com/moinwiki/moin on a fresh VM is easiest path forward.
Of course, there's other options, such as a redeploy of the packaged
Moin1 on a clean Debian LTS VM; or migrating the content to different
software.

Still, a pretty straightforward, self-contained, web service.

What the current MoinMoin provides for us is a place for docs _without_
needing auth or logins at all, even for non-UCC members (e.g. from other
clubs). Returning contributors can create an account and
[set preferences and notifications](https://wiki.ucc.asn.au/RoyXu?action=userprefs&sub=notification)
, which has been useful - but I think at this point we'd really like
that to be AD/LDAP logins or not at all, as long as the
logged-out-experience is still fully functional.

Nick.

-- 
   Nick Bannon   | "I made this letter longer than usual because
nick-sig at rcpt.to | I lack the time to make it shorter." - Pascal