FeministWiki:Technical documentation

This page documents the FeministWiki's technical infrastructure, the target audience being technicians.

Hosts

The following table documents the DNS configuration, and can be used as part of the /etc/hosts file on each server to obviate the need for DNS lookups when connecting to one another.

IP	FQDN	Host	Purpose
85.214.101.34	feministwiki.org		Wiki
85.214.101.34	www.feministwiki.org	www	Wiki
85.214.101.34	ldap.feministwiki.org	ldap	LDAP
85.214.101.34	chat.feministwiki.org	chat	Web-client for XMPP
85.214.101.34	forum.feministwiki.org	forum	BBS Forum
85.214.101.34	mail.feministwiki.org	mail	Web-client for Mail
85.214.101.34	files.feministwiki.org	files	File storage
85.214.101.34	imap.feministwiki.org	imap	IMAP
85.214.101.34	smtp.feministwiki.org	smtp	SMTP
85.214.101.34	xmpp.feministwiki.org	xmpp	XMPP
85.214.101.34	irc.feministwiki.org	irc	IRC
85.214.101.34	social.feministwiki.org	social	GNU social
85.214.101.34	add-member.feministwiki.org	add-member	Add a member

(As you can see, all services are on the same server for now.)

SSH access

FeministWiki hosts have ssh enabled, but password login is disabled. You must own a valid private key to log in.

Git repo of scripts and configuration

The following GitHub account hosts repositories with scripts and configuration used by the FeministWiki:

https://github.com/FeministWiki

Certs

The FeministWiki uses LetsEncrypt to acquire digital certificates for encrypted communication.

To ease use of the letsencrypt command, the file /root/etc/domains contains all the FQDNs used by the FeministWiki, one per line. Given that, the preferred way to populate the /etc/letsencrypt/live/feministwiki.org directory with fresh certs is to run the following command while TCP port 80 is free (e.g. stop Apache first):

letsencrypt certonly --authenticator standalone -d "$(tr '\n' ',' < /root/etc/domains)"

Additionally, for programs that require a cert file and its private key in a single combined .pem file, run the following commands to generate such a file:

cd /etc/letsencrypt/live/feministwiki.org
cat fullchain.pem privkey.pem > certbundle.pem

The script /root/bin/letsencrypt-refresh does all of the above, so in practice you just need to run the following commands to recreate the cert:

service apache2 stop  # Assuming Apache is running on the machine
letsencrypt-refresh
service apache2 start

The above can be used not only to refresh a cert that's running out, but also to add a new domain to the cert. Just add the domain to /root/etc/domains and run the commands.

Note that the letsencrypt command doesn't work well on a "dumb" terminal such as an Emacs shell buffer. Make sure to run it from within a proper terminal emulator.

Services

This section documents the individual services of the FeministWiki. They should work regardless of what server they're on. I.e. every service could in theory be hosted on its own server.

LDAP

Host: ldap.feministwiki.org Software: OpenLDAP

The LDAP service contains the central database of FeministWiki members. The structure looks like this:

• dc=feministwiki,dc=org
  • ou=members
    • cn=username
      objectClass: inetOrgPerson
      cn: username
      uid: username
      sn: -
      userPassword: {SSHA}saltedhash
      mail: username@feministwiki.org
    • cn=username2
      objectClass: inetOrgPerson
      cn: username2
      uid: username2
      sn: -
      userPassword: {SSHA}saltedhash2
      mail: username2@feministwiki.org
      manager: cn=username,ou=members,dc=feministwiki,dc=org
    • ...
  • ou=groups
    • cn=members
      objectClass: groupOfNames
      cn: members
      member: username
      member: username2
      member: ...

Notes:

• The cn (common name) and uid (user ID) fields both contain the username. This is because some software is preconfigured to look at uid, while most look at cn.
• The sn (surname) field simply contains a minus character as a placeholder, because it's a mandatory field.
• The manager field is optional and we use it to record the member who added the member in question.

Wiki

Host: feministwiki.org, www.feministwiki.org Software: MediaWiki

(continue here)