Re: [PATCH]URL is unavailable

[Borislav Petkov <bp@alien8.de>]

On Thu, Sep 13, 2012 at 09:35:43AM -0400, Konstantin Ryabitsev wrote:
> On 13/09/12 05:32 AM, Borislav Petkov wrote:
> > My memory is hazy on this, but after the move, what's the policy on
> > enabling users.kernel.org or userweb.kernel org or some other user web
> > serving thing? I vaguely remember that we don't want to do this anymore
> > but I'm not sure.
> 
> Well, as such system would be the largest security risk, it's
> understandable that we're, err... reticent to have it up anywhere near
> the rest of the infrastructure. :) We do have ssh enabled on two systems
> that require git and release management, but anyone ssh'ing in never
> gets a real shell and is severely locked down with SELinux.
> 
> > In any case, if we do, it would probably be better to have a whole
> > different machine for such stuff and let users upload their stuff again
> > without touching the old backups at all...
> 
> A better question is -- what is the problem we are trying to solve? We
> are not in the business of providing free web hosting -- our aim is to
> facilitate kernel development. We already provide a mechanism for git
> trees and release tarballs. What is lacking is a simple way to publish
> documentation -- it can be currently done with kup, but it's poorly
> suited for uploading and managing many small files.
> 
> We already have a skeleton implementation of pulling such docs from git
> trees (e.g. git docs are published that way). It's on my list of things
> to extend this to a more universal and versatile system that would make
> it easy for anyone to publish arbitrary documentation via their git
> access -- perhaps on a subdomain like docs.kernel.org/treename/[etc]. We
> can even require the use of "git tag -s" -- this will give us both
> adequate security and history of changes.
> 
> I think this would be a better approach than allowing unfettered ssh
> access and upload of arbitrary files.

You're right, I agree with all that but what happens if someone wants
to really upload an arbitrary file - say a tarball of stuff he's been
working on but it is not ready for a repo yet. Or a microcode blob or
whatever. Or even a doctored picture of Alan Cox celebrating the queen
:-)

I think this was the main reason behind userweb but I guess we're better
off finding different storage for stuff like that now.

Thanks.

-- 
Regards/Gruss,
Boris.