Skype / IRC Logging
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David White
Mar 16, 2011, 9:43:49 PM3/16/11
to crisiscom...@googlegroups.com
Deborah,
Thank you for your email and for the links. This is very helpful, and I have gone ahead and added myself to the IRC / Skype logging project as well as the other one. I also looked at the Infrastructure wiki page, and noticed that we have a conference call on Saturday - I can make that, so will plan to be on Skype at that time.
Skype is a closed system and has not published an API. As a result, it would be very hard (impossible?) to do logging from the Linux command line. Before I read your email, I was envisioning installing the X system on this old box I have, and firing up a regular Skype client (which outputs its log files in HTML format), and then uploading those files automatically once/day into the wiki.
After discussing some things with Ted and Lori on Skype this evening, I was reminded that we can install the X server and other GUI needed functionality onto a remote server - and use VNC to connect (for a while, I was thinking that the requirements to host the logging / bots on the OSU servers would be impossible).
Can someone please explain to me the difference between Skype and IRC from an organizational level? I remember IRC was in use last winter after the Haiti quake. Recently, I know that Heather has made the decision to use Skype for the current crisis response effort. But now I'm seeing both in the Wiki and in this email an indication that there's discussions taking place on IRC now anyway. I just want to make sure we're all on the same page in this regard (as an aside, I've been making a point of being online in #crisiscommons and #crisiscamp in case anyone logs in there looking for ways to volunteer - so that I can point them towards the Skype channel).
The consensus that Ted, Lori and I came to this evening is that at this point, it would be in the organization's best interest to begin development and work on this logging system immediately on the OSU servers, and not even have work done locally. Deborah, do you or Spike have the authority get something setup over there for this effort and give Ted, myself, and whoever else will be working on this project access to the server via VNC & SSH?
Any thoughts on this? As I said in chat tonight, "I'm all ears, and willing to work as a team on all this infrastructure stuff.... I don't want to become a recluse, a noisy gong, or a know-it-all do-it-all annoying freak". :)
- David
--
- David White -
Smooth Stone Services
Computer Technical Support, IT Services, & Web Hosting Solutions
http://www.smoothstoneservices.com
da...@smoothstoneservices.com
Blog: http://www.davidmartinwhite.com
Thank you for your email and for the links. This is very helpful, and I have gone ahead and added myself to the IRC / Skype logging project as well as the other one. I also looked at the Infrastructure wiki page, and noticed that we have a conference call on Saturday - I can make that, so will plan to be on Skype at that time.
Skype is a closed system and has not published an API. As a result, it would be very hard (impossible?) to do logging from the Linux command line. Before I read your email, I was envisioning installing the X system on this old box I have, and firing up a regular Skype client (which outputs its log files in HTML format), and then uploading those files automatically once/day into the wiki.
After discussing some things with Ted and Lori on Skype this evening, I was reminded that we can install the X server and other GUI needed functionality onto a remote server - and use VNC to connect (for a while, I was thinking that the requirements to host the logging / bots on the OSU servers would be impossible).
Can someone please explain to me the difference between Skype and IRC from an organizational level? I remember IRC was in use last winter after the Haiti quake. Recently, I know that Heather has made the decision to use Skype for the current crisis response effort. But now I'm seeing both in the Wiki and in this email an indication that there's discussions taking place on IRC now anyway. I just want to make sure we're all on the same page in this regard (as an aside, I've been making a point of being online in #crisiscommons and #crisiscamp in case anyone logs in there looking for ways to volunteer - so that I can point them towards the Skype channel).
The consensus that Ted, Lori and I came to this evening is that at this point, it would be in the organization's best interest to begin development and work on this logging system immediately on the OSU servers, and not even have work done locally. Deborah, do you or Spike have the authority get something setup over there for this effort and give Ted, myself, and whoever else will be working on this project access to the server via VNC & SSH?
Any thoughts on this? As I said in chat tonight, "I'm all ears, and willing to work as a team on all this infrastructure stuff.... I don't want to become a recluse, a noisy gong, or a know-it-all do-it-all annoying freak". :)
- David
On Wed, Mar 16, 2011 at 7:58 PM, deborah shaddon <deborah...@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi guys,
Dave and Ted, check out these 2 projects under Infrastructure Working
Group, and register your interest:
We started the requirements/outlaying for the IRC Logging a while back
(I just cleaned up):
http://wiki.crisiscommons.org/wiki/Infrastructure/Project/IRC_Logging
I've restarted this one for stuff we need to do on shoring-up some IRC/
Skype stuff (not necessarily sexy, but this is an area that CCIWG
needs help in too):
http://wiki.crisiscommons.org/wiki/Infrastructure/Project/CHAT_Collab
You can see where all of this can fit in. In general, we need to be
able to create this sort of capability hosted at our provider (OSL)
with our establishing admin procedures (ie, we want to remove
ourselves directly from sysadmin), so I think different approaches are
ok, we just need to recast ourselves in that light. If we can
greenlight a dev solution, we can probably get dev space there to work
it out.
Thanks!!
Deborah
On Mar 16, 12:15 pm, David White <dwr...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Folks,
> I wanted to formally introduce myself to you guys here in the Infrastructure
> Group. My name is David White, and I am a server administrator who has
> dabbled in programming (but doesn't like it), am a computer technical
> specialist by day (currently), and am a hopeful entrepreneur in building up
> a web hosting, technical support, and IT consulting organization that will
> target mainly nonprofit organizations world wide. I eventually would like a
> "segment" of this business to work in the disaster relief side of things...
>
> I have experience with operating CentOS and Ubuntu servers, I love the Linux
> shell, have worked in the MySQL shell, and I love open source. I don't like
> programming (and am frankly terrible at it) or "web development" although I
> do enjoy working from inside (admining) CMSs. I have extensive experience
> with Drupal.
>
> I'm very busy at the moment, as some of you know, but hopefully by the early
> part of next week, things will calm down for me. I'm working a full time job
> as a tech support specialist right now, and am running my business of web
> hosting, etc... on the side (which, as I've already said, I hope to grow
> into something full time within the next 2-3 years).
>
> I've been chatting with Heather, Ted, and Lori on Skype over the past couple
> of evenings, and I know that a lot of discussion has been thrown out about
> the method of instant communication. I'm an IRC guy, but I respect Heather's
> decision to use Skype for the current Japan crisis, and will do everything I
> can to support the efforts on that front.
>
> To that end, I just purchased an old Poweredge 1300 last weekend (for $10
> bucks!) for me to mess around with, have a testing environment for my
> production VPSs, and run some backups. Since I'm likely going to be
> connecting it to the internet (through my home internet connection), I've
> been talking with Ted about setting up a simple logging mechanism on the
> box, and automatically uploading the logs (say, once / day) to the Wiki. I
> could also obviously do some greps and what-not to compile a list of all the
> links and keywords mentioned throughout the day.
>
> Any thoughts on this? If this project is being worked on actively by someone
> else, then be my guest - finish it up! But if not, then I'm willing to
> tackle this one and hopefully have something up and running by the middle -
> to late part of next week.
>
> Once the simple logging is in place, then we can go back later and start
> doing fancy stuff with bots. But for now, I think everyone agrees that
> logging is needed.
>
> Also, I'm on a very reliable home internet connection - I live in
> Chattanooga, and am on EPB's Fiber Optic connection - they are on the few
> cities in the world right now to have 1GB connections available for home
> users (we're not on that fast of a connection, but still!). So with that
> said, I'd be willing to provide my IP address to some folks to login to the
> box and mess around.
>
> - David
>
> --
> - David White -
> Smooth Stone Services
> Computer Technical Support, IT Services, & Web Hosting Solutionshttp://www.smoothstoneservices.com
> da...@smoothstoneservices.com
> Blog:http://www.davidmartinwhite.com
--
- David White -
Smooth Stone Services
Computer Technical Support, IT Services, & Web Hosting Solutions
http://www.smoothstoneservices.com
da...@smoothstoneservices.com
Blog: http://www.davidmartinwhite.com
deborah shaddon
Mar 17, 2011, 9:51:56 PM3/17/11
to CrisisCommons Infrastructure Working Group
David,
I can help you move forward on the IRC-Logging Dev as a POC, but a
couple things. One, realize there is no urgency to this request,
better to go forward here pragmatically, we've lived without this for
a year, I'd rather you think about it with the peeps (so no rush to
have this compete with your full-time job stuff that you mention).
Two, Spike is currently listed as project lead on the wiki, as such,
we should reach out to him to determine if any movement has been made
on this, and to get his input (just as a mater of courtesy, I'm sure
Spike will like the help, or may even turn this over to you).
Additionally, realize that we had previously stakeholdered and
identified this need, so it is essentialy 'greenlight' for OSL.
However, we don't have unlimitted space in OSL, so we do have to make
sure that we review requests not just on their applicability and
priority to the community, but their likelihood to garner support and
be sustainable (CC is litered with orphan projects, which becomes a
real concern when we start throwing hardware at stuff). Criteria has
been posted in some of this google group in the past.
So I would like you to update the wiki project page with some more
context on a few things, this also helps me to start crafting what
this 'New Dev Process' can be:
1. What is the proposed solution 'technology' stack of the solution
you will need, where code will be managed (ie github), etc., lamp
stack, installing some opensource thingy or developing something new?
can 'new' be opensourced?)
2. Describe the proposed solution approach
3. Who will be the team, do you need more folk to start?
4. Outline a very high-level plan of when you plan to do what by when,
like one line.
5. Need a committment to report in weekly (or periodically,whatever
frequency makes sense) on wiki the status, update wiki with
participants, etc.. Minor care-and-feeding is all.
6. I do want to mention that requests for sysadmin access will require
some additional scrutiny, because the VM that you might be on might
have to host other stuff too and we want to make sure people are not
stepping on each other (in all honesty, we are still working this
out).
For now, however, we will continue to use Skype per the decision you
quoted below, but the reason for having two isn't to duplicate (and
thus confuse people), but to find the right niche/use-case for which
one makes sense, since we have recognized a place for both. This is
why it is important to continue capture pros/cons/observations rather
than make any rash decisions, I setup the wiki page to do that (and
will add some historical context here from the google-group). In
general, we had IRC up until the rhok one went away and we had to
switch to freenode. Over the course of the year, through various
camps, community calls, and other collaboration opportunities, skype
has received far more favorable response, for these primary reasons,
which I think I went into in another discussion-thread, but I'll
summarize here: 1) many many of the camp leads (representing various
cities) have noted skypes ease-of-use and ubiquity as much easier to
use and folks generally liked it better, most camps represent both
technical and non-technical folks, 2) many of our response and
partnership organizations, which are NOT technology people, ie, the
EM, HumanityRoad, CERT volunteers, know skype and can use skype, and
are not really ready for IRC (we've tried). 3) Skypes mobile tie apps
are superior. So in that respect, the decision was made to reflect
the majority concensus of the community that was using this capability
at the time, and our ability to influence adoption of this broadly.
But we have all stated we believe there are some benefits (ie, the
ability to log, and others like Sahana, etc., are there), in IRC, and
there is a place for this too, why we haven't completely dropped it.
There may even be something else in the future that works better than
either of these. So, we will track the pros/cons/observations,
strenghten our capabilities for support, training, and usability, and
identify 'in which cases' we will use particular tools. So, this all
reflects that this 'decision' was actually made in an open, and
informed way based on experience over time. And, go ahead and use IRC
for this project, since it probably makes sense, but we will
collaborate as a community in skype for now, and detail project
technical collaboration is probably a good use-case for IRC
(particularly if you log it, smile).
We can talk more on skype on Saturday skype-in.
Thanks,
Deborah
> <deborahshad...@gmail.com>wrote:
> Blog:http://www.davidmartinwhite.com- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -
I can help you move forward on the IRC-Logging Dev as a POC, but a
couple things. One, realize there is no urgency to this request,
better to go forward here pragmatically, we've lived without this for
a year, I'd rather you think about it with the peeps (so no rush to
have this compete with your full-time job stuff that you mention).
Two, Spike is currently listed as project lead on the wiki, as such,
we should reach out to him to determine if any movement has been made
on this, and to get his input (just as a mater of courtesy, I'm sure
Spike will like the help, or may even turn this over to you).
Additionally, realize that we had previously stakeholdered and
identified this need, so it is essentialy 'greenlight' for OSL.
However, we don't have unlimitted space in OSL, so we do have to make
sure that we review requests not just on their applicability and
priority to the community, but their likelihood to garner support and
be sustainable (CC is litered with orphan projects, which becomes a
real concern when we start throwing hardware at stuff). Criteria has
been posted in some of this google group in the past.
So I would like you to update the wiki project page with some more
context on a few things, this also helps me to start crafting what
this 'New Dev Process' can be:
1. What is the proposed solution 'technology' stack of the solution
you will need, where code will be managed (ie github), etc., lamp
stack, installing some opensource thingy or developing something new?
can 'new' be opensourced?)
2. Describe the proposed solution approach
3. Who will be the team, do you need more folk to start?
4. Outline a very high-level plan of when you plan to do what by when,
like one line.
5. Need a committment to report in weekly (or periodically,whatever
frequency makes sense) on wiki the status, update wiki with
participants, etc.. Minor care-and-feeding is all.
6. I do want to mention that requests for sysadmin access will require
some additional scrutiny, because the VM that you might be on might
have to host other stuff too and we want to make sure people are not
stepping on each other (in all honesty, we are still working this
out).
For now, however, we will continue to use Skype per the decision you
quoted below, but the reason for having two isn't to duplicate (and
thus confuse people), but to find the right niche/use-case for which
one makes sense, since we have recognized a place for both. This is
why it is important to continue capture pros/cons/observations rather
than make any rash decisions, I setup the wiki page to do that (and
will add some historical context here from the google-group). In
general, we had IRC up until the rhok one went away and we had to
switch to freenode. Over the course of the year, through various
camps, community calls, and other collaboration opportunities, skype
has received far more favorable response, for these primary reasons,
which I think I went into in another discussion-thread, but I'll
summarize here: 1) many many of the camp leads (representing various
cities) have noted skypes ease-of-use and ubiquity as much easier to
use and folks generally liked it better, most camps represent both
technical and non-technical folks, 2) many of our response and
partnership organizations, which are NOT technology people, ie, the
EM, HumanityRoad, CERT volunteers, know skype and can use skype, and
are not really ready for IRC (we've tried). 3) Skypes mobile tie apps
are superior. So in that respect, the decision was made to reflect
the majority concensus of the community that was using this capability
at the time, and our ability to influence adoption of this broadly.
But we have all stated we believe there are some benefits (ie, the
ability to log, and others like Sahana, etc., are there), in IRC, and
there is a place for this too, why we haven't completely dropped it.
There may even be something else in the future that works better than
either of these. So, we will track the pros/cons/observations,
strenghten our capabilities for support, training, and usability, and
identify 'in which cases' we will use particular tools. So, this all
reflects that this 'decision' was actually made in an open, and
informed way based on experience over time. And, go ahead and use IRC
for this project, since it probably makes sense, but we will
collaborate as a community in skype for now, and detail project
technical collaboration is probably a good use-case for IRC
(particularly if you log it, smile).
We can talk more on skype on Saturday skype-in.
Thanks,
Deborah
>
> - Show quoted text -
David White
Mar 17, 2011, 11:16:01 PM3/17/11
to crisiscom...@googlegroups.com
Deborah,
I just wanted to write a short response now and say that I completely understand all of this. You are right - I agree that it is only considerate (and proper) to have Spike's input (and everyone else's, for that matter) on this project. Thanks for reminding me of this. Second, I will go into the wiki when I have some time next week and hash out some thoughts based on the items / questions you have outlined below.
I look forward to our conversation on Saturday!
- David
I just wanted to write a short response now and say that I completely understand all of this. You are right - I agree that it is only considerate (and proper) to have Spike's input (and everyone else's, for that matter) on this project. Thanks for reminding me of this. Second, I will go into the wiki when I have some time next week and hash out some thoughts based on the items / questions you have outlined below.
I look forward to our conversation on Saturday!
- David
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