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Posted to dev@forrest.apache.org by Ross Gardler <rg...@apache.org> on 2005/08/09 10:43:52 UTC
Improving our welcome docs pitiful(wasRe: Simple committership)
Tim Williams wrote:
> On 8/6/05, Thorsten Scherler <th...@apache.org> wrote:
>>The important point is that new committer are generally
>>overwhelmed by the information and infrastructure of the project and the
>>ASF. Some learn better step by step understanding what is ASF all about
>>and what a PMC member have to do (I consider myself as such a
>>somebody).
>
>
> I personally wasn't overwhelmed. The docs are fairly good except for
> the pitiful email situation.
Tim, can you explain what you mean by "pitiful email situation". I see
an opportunity to improve the learning process.
Ross
Re: keep private emails private (Was: Improving our welcome docs pitiful)
Posted by Diwaker Gupta <di...@apache.org>.
On Tuesday 09 August 2005 11:20 pm, David Crossley wrote:
> Diwaker Gupta wrote:
> > This is changing. Here's an excerpt from "News from the infrastructure
> > list" sent out on committers@a.o on 2005/07/18:
>
> Please do not take private emails into a public forum.
> http://www.apache.org/foundation/how-it-works.html#confidential
Sorry, my bad. I should have realized this when I couldn't find this email in
a public archive and had to dig it out of my mailbox... :-(
> > The easy solution right now is to use mail.apache.org as your outgoing
> > mail server. ...
>
> Are you sure that Infra@ wants that to happen?
I don't really know. I figured that if Apache _is_ hosting an SMTP server
thats accepts connections on port 25 from anywhere, combined with the fact
that its hard to get other SMTP servers to relay @a.o emails, then it was
probably intended to be used that way. But I could be wrong.
Yep, I think its best to pursue this with infra directly, thanks for the note.
--
Web/Blog/Gallery: http://floatingsun.net
keep private emails private (Was: Improving our welcome docs pitiful)
Posted by David Crossley <cr...@apache.org>.
Diwaker Gupta wrote:
> This is changing. Here's an excerpt from "News from the infrastructure list"
> sent out on committers@a.o on 2005/07/18:
Please do not take private emails into a public forum.
http://www.apache.org/foundation/how-it-works.html#confidential
Thanks for trying to explain the email issues,
but a better approach would be as i suggested in
my previous reply - get the whole story straight
on the infrastructure mailing list then patch the
doc that was referred to.
> The easy solution right now is to use mail.apache.org as your outgoing mail
> server. ...
Are you sure that Infra@ wants that to happen?
-David
Re: Improving our welcome docs pitiful(wasRe: Simple committership)
Posted by Diwaker Gupta <di...@apache.org>.
On Tuesday 09 August 2005 9:40 am, Tim Williams wrote:
> > > I personally wasn't overwhelmed. The docs are fairly good except for
> > > the pitiful email situation.
I had problems setting up email myself a few weeks back (mostly SMTP related)
and I had asked on the dev-list as well, and also exchanged a few mails with
David off line. Comments inline.
> 1. The preferred way of sending with @apache.org address is
> apparently header mangling. My problem is that gmail doesn't yet
> support alternate from addresses as far as I can tell.
This is changing. Here's an excerpt from "News from the infrastructure list"
sent out on committers@a.o on 2005/07/18:
> Email services
> --------------
> We are being flooded with spam. We've already set up a second mail server
> and we will be setting up two more. We plan to start delivering mail that is
> sent to your @apache.org e-mail addresses directly from those machines to
> your chosen forwarding address. We also plan to offer secured SMTP on these
> machines so that you can send e-mail using your @apache.org account. We will
> not be setting up POP nor IMAP.
Like you, my preferred solution would have been to use GMail, if GMail allowed
alternative from addresses. However, moving forward, I think thats highly
unlikely. As SPF and DomainKeys gain momentum, its more and more unlikely
that you will be allowed to send email from an address thats different that
the one your mail host is actually authenticated to provide email services
for.
The easy solution right now is to use mail.apache.org as your outgoing mail
server. As the above mail suggests, at some point we will have secured SMTP
hosted by Apache, so that'll end all problems.
Another easy solution is to just use your ISP's mail server, or setup your own
(thats what I do right now).
> 2. Setting up client for it with ssh tunneling. I read some mail
> posts about setting up an ssh tunneling using port forwarding but
> after an hour or so with PUTTY, I abandoned that solution. (may very
> well be a firewall issue that I'm unable to figure out).
>
> 3. PINE. Pine seems to be the only user-friendly client loaded on
> minotaur but I wasn't able to receive email to it, but I could send
> successfully.
I don't understand why reading mail should be any problem. If you are using
pine/mutt only for the convinience of being able to send mails from your a.o
address, hopefully one of the solutions I listed above will work. For
reading, you are free to choose where you want the mail to go.
> Numbers 2 and 3 could use some documentation that I'm not smart enough
> to write.
I'm happy to write this up if it seems a lot of people are running into this
problem.
> All this just seems unclean to me. I suppose it just seems somewhat
> ironic that apache, where everything is accomplished through email,
> has such a cludgey approach. I've never looked at James but it seems
> that since we have our own mail system we should be able to come up
> with a secure email approach that "just works" without "figuring it
> out". I realize documentation would help ease the burden but I guess
> I've got to wonder why (given how mature a technology email is) there
> is such a burden that needs easing?
Yes. But the infrastructure team is really small, and they have tons to do.
We're getting there, slow but steady :-)
> As I write this, it is apparent how dumb it was of me to stumble
> through some of this without at least asking a question on the list,
> so hopefully I didn't miss something simple and obvious.
I was surprised too... apparently it seems a lot of people just use their ISP
server to begin with and therefore don't face that problem :-)
Diwaker
--
Web/Blog/Gallery: http://floatingsun.net
Re: Improving our welcome docs pitiful(wasRe: Simple committership)
Posted by Nicola Ken Barozzi <ni...@apache.org>.
Tim Williams wrote:
...
> I've never looked at James but it seems
> that since we have our own mail system we should be able to come up
> with a secure email approach that "just works" without "figuring it
> out".
Just a pointer.
http://wiki.apache.org/james/HostApacheOnJames
http://wiki.apache.org/james/JamesByTheNumbers
--
Nicola Ken Barozzi nicolaken@apache.org
- verba volant, scripta manent -
(discussions get forgotten, just code remains)
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Re: Improving our welcome docs pitiful(wasRe: Simple committership)
Posted by "Gav...." <br...@brightontown.com.au>.
----- Original Message -----
From: "David Crossley" <cr...@apache.org>
|
| I don't use Putty, but i heard people talk on Infra@ that
| you now need to use ssh v2. However see below.
I don't know about the others, but I find Putty fairly
straight forward to use. I have version 0.58 so that
version and above uses SSH 2 by default, reverting
to 1 if 2 is not available.
I have not used Putty for Forrest, but if someone wants
to give me details to try with, then I will do so I report
back with a HowTo if this will be of any use.
Gav...
--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Anti-Virus.
Version: 7.0.338 / Virus Database: 267.10.5/67 - Release Date: 9/08/2005
Re: Improving our welcome docs pitiful(wasRe: Simple committership)
Posted by David Crossley <cr...@apache.org>.
Tim Williams wrote:
> Ross Gardler wrote:
> > Tim Williams wrote:
> > >
> > > I personally wasn't overwhelmed. The docs are fairly good except for
> > > the pitiful email situation.
> >
> > Tim, can you explain what you mean by "pitiful email situation". I see
> > an opportunity to improve the learning process.
>
> Ok, pitiful may have been a bit too strong;)
>
> Here are the issues I faced while setting things up.
>
> 1. The preferred way of sending with @apache.org address is
> apparently header mangling. My problem is that gmail doesn't yet
> support alternate from addresses as far as I can tell.
>
> 2. Setting up client for it with ssh tunneling. I read some mail
> posts about setting up an ssh tunneling using port forwarding but
> after an hour or so with PUTTY, I abandoned that solution. (may very
> well be a firewall issue that I'm unable to figure out).
I don't use Putty, but i heard people talk on Infra@ that
you now need to use ssh v2. However see below.
> 3. PINE. Pine seems to be the only user-friendly client loaded on
> minotaur but I wasn't able to receive email to it, but I could send
> successfully.
Perhaps mutt. However see below.
> My current state of affairs: If I really want to send from my apache
> address, I'll just ssh to minotaur and use PINE. All
> twilliams((at))apache.org mail now forwards to my gmail account,
> meaning if I do reply to it, it will be from my gmail account.
> Alternate "from" addresses is on the gmail wishlist so hopefully this
> won't be an issue any for long because I do like using gmail for all
> mailing list stuff because of its labels and "conversation" views --
> don't know how I got along without it honestly.
>
> Numbers 2 and 3 could use some documentation that I'm not smart enough
> to write.
No need. See the last paragraph at
[1] http://www.apache.org/dev/user-email.html
The ASF does not encourage either of those methods.
I am not entirely sure of the reason. I gather that
we don't want to get into managing mail accounts,
backing-up personal spaces, and other resaons.
Probably the Infra volunteers would rather spend
their time on other things. (I am not joking.)
Actually someone needs to go to Infra@ and work out
the exact reasons and then add that to [1]. Then work
out how to provide, or explain, alternatives.
Even though not encouraged, the ssh and pine/mutt
methods were once documented at apache.org. Try the
Waybackmachine.org, or our SVN, for dev/committers.html
> All this just seems unclean to me. I suppose it just seems somewhat
> ironic that apache, where everything is accomplished through email,
> has such a cludgey approach. I've never looked at James but it seems
> that since we have our own mail system we should be able to come up
> with a secure email approach that "just works" without "figuring it
> out".
Until now we have not been able to run dynamic
apps at a.o due to many reasons: too many services
on one machine, cannot risk dynamic apps gobbling
the resources, not enough volunteers, too much else
to attend to. Gradually this is being fixed.
> I realize documentation would help ease the burden but I guess
> I've got to wonder why (given how mature a technology email is) there
> is such a burden that needs easing?
This is brilliant, Tim. You have identified a
huge impediment for new committers. If we can
clear this up, then there will be a big benefit
for all of us.
> As I write this, it is apparent how dumb it was of me to stumble
> through some of this without at least asking a question on the list,
> so hopefully I didn't miss something simple and obvious.
Always ask, don't stumble. Start here on dev. If we can't
answer or point to ASF doco, then someone can take it to Infra@
-David
Re: Improving our welcome docs pitiful(wasRe: Simple committership)
Posted by Tim Williams <wi...@gmail.com>.
On 8/8/05, Ross Gardler <rg...@apache.org> wrote:
> Tim Williams wrote:
> > On 8/6/05, Thorsten Scherler <th...@apache.org> wrote:
>
>
> >>The important point is that new committer are generally
> >>overwhelmed by the information and infrastructure of the project and the
> >>ASF. Some learn better step by step understanding what is ASF all about
> >>and what a PMC member have to do (I consider myself as such a
> >>somebody).
> >
> >
> > I personally wasn't overwhelmed. The docs are fairly good except for
> > the pitiful email situation.
>
> Tim, can you explain what you mean by "pitiful email situation". I see
> an opportunity to improve the learning process.
Ok, pitiful may have been a bit too strong;)
Here are the issues I faced while setting things up.
1. The preferred way of sending with @apache.org address is
apparently header mangling. My problem is that gmail doesn't yet
support alternate from addresses as far as I can tell.
2. Setting up client for it with ssh tunneling. I read some mail
posts about setting up an ssh tunneling using port forwarding but
after an hour or so with PUTTY, I abandoned that solution. (may very
well be a firewall issue that I'm unable to figure out).
3. PINE. Pine seems to be the only user-friendly client loaded on
minotaur but I wasn't able to receive email to it, but I could send
successfully.
My current state of affairs: If I really want to send from my apache
address, I'll just ssh to minotaur and use PINE. All
twilliams((at))apache.org mail now forwards to my gmail account,
meaning if I do reply to it, it will be from my gmail account.
Alternate "from" addresses is on the gmail wishlist so hopefully this
won't be an issue any for long because I do like using gmail for all
mailing list stuff because of its labels and "conversation" views --
don't know how I got along without it honestly.
Numbers 2 and 3 could use some documentation that I'm not smart enough
to write.
All this just seems unclean to me. I suppose it just seems somewhat
ironic that apache, where everything is accomplished through email,
has such a cludgey approach. I've never looked at James but it seems
that since we have our own mail system we should be able to come up
with a secure email approach that "just works" without "figuring it
out". I realize documentation would help ease the burden but I guess
I've got to wonder why (given how mature a technology email is) there
is such a burden that needs easing?
As I write this, it is apparent how dumb it was of me to stumble
through some of this without at least asking a question on the list,
so hopefully I didn't miss something simple and obvious.
--tim