[ww-devel] the webwork server webwork.maa.org is GOING AWAY -- report on progress --- HELP is needed

[mgage]

Hi all ,

I hope that subject line got your attention.  

The MAA is shutting down the server webwork.maa.org <http://webwork.maa.org/> ending the lease that they have had for many years.
I’ve been told that the lease ends at the end of February, so there are about two weeks left.

There is a new server, currently called   test1.webwork.maa.org <http://test1.webwork.maa.org/>  located in the amazon cloud that is designed to replace it once we get the
necessary apps transferred over.  

The applications that Arnie Pizer and Jason Aubrey set up around 2010 have worked well, essentially without updates or maintenance, for 10 years but
all of them are many revisions behind the currently versions and moving them to the new server (with different and more recent infrastructure ) is an uphill task. 
Many of the extensions and the original versions of the software are no longer maintained, so there has been a lot of work done to make the 
transition and still more left to do.  Transitioning databases and encrypted passwords has been particularly hard. 

Here is what has been accomplished and what is left to do.

bugzilla
	Bugzilla has been moved to https://test1.webwork.maa.org/bugzilla <https://test1.webwork.maa.org/bugzilla>.   
        All user accounts should be preserved, although you may need to ask for “forgot password” in order to login.
        All bug records before mid-January have been transferred
        I expect that transferring the last set of bug records from mid January to the end of February will go smoothly when the switchover occurs.
        My thanks to Glenn Rice who has been a big help in overcoming some of the issues (especially sendmail issues) 
           that arose during the transfer of bugzilla to the new box.

mediawiki
	Media wiki has been mostly transferred to https://test1.webwork.maa.org/new_mediawiki <https://test1.webwork.maa.org/new_mediawiki> 
        You should be able to login to your accounts on the wiki, possibly with having to use “forgot password” to reset your password.
        Most of the pages have transferred successfully so no data is lost.
        Some of the basic extensions “Widgets”, and “RSS” have been installed.
        HELP:   There are other extensions, especially search engines, that need to be researched 
                      (there are new options for search) and then installed on the new test1.webwork box.
                      I expect this to go smoothly once the research is done, but it takes time.

moodle (forums)
	The forums are now available at https://test1.webwork.maa.org/moodle <https://test1.webwork.maa.org/moodle>   in the course UsingWW where they were before.
        You may have trouble logging in since the password authentication link with the wiki is broken.
        You may be able to create a new login using the email option to create a login so that you can look around 
         but I don’t believe your new name will be connected with your old posts.
        HELP:  The single sign on mechanism from the wiki has broken down.  Both moodle and mediawiki have changed the methods for 
                     encrypting their passwords several times and the method by which moodle inspected the passwords in the mediawiki database
                     to authenticate has broken down.  Research is needed to determine if these two apps even share a common encryption method and then figure
                     out how to reinstate the single sign on — or abandon that and allow independent sign ons.  
                    Having to choose new passwords is not a big burden but loosing   
                     the login name will seriously degrade the conversation record in the forums.  (Is there a way to join posts from two user names if we have to?)
                    Research needed to find a solution, either no single sign on, or moodle being the source for the authentication, or (as before) mediawiki being the source.
                    On the plus side there is a lot more infrastructure in both moodle and mediawiki for single sign on then there was in 2010.
        help:  Some of the forum posts cannot be reached by author, but can be reached by searching for the title. 
                     The behavior is as described in this moodle bug report: https://tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-66292 <https://tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-66292>
                     It seems to match a known bug in moodle 3.7 and 3.8 so perhaps it will get fixed for us. 

planet (blog aggregator)
	this software is no longer maintained.  a new version by Dave Cross  at https://metacpan.org/pod/perlanet <https://metacpan.org/pod/perlanet> is one possible replacement. There are probably others.
        help: Since the only data stored is the list of blogs aggregated I think that getting a 
                 replacement up and running should be relatively easy, but it’s also not as urgent.

rt (Request Tracker)
        This organizes the incident reports and other requests sent to webwork at maa.org
	HELP: Work on porting this to the new box has not yet begun. 
        The documentation for Request Tracker is good and there are instructions for upgrade and migration

mailman (webwork development list) — THIS LIST
	For some reason it had just come to my attention that mailman was also housed on webwork.maa.org <http://webwork.maa.org/>
        HELP: transferring mailman seems to be difficult.  Research is needed to see if it is better to transfer the posts 
                   to a modern mailman on the new server or whether to migrate the posts to a google group or something similar.
        HELP:  In either case after the research is done it will be  time consuming task to transfer the data.

       As far as I know the only active mailing list on this server is the webwork development list.

POD documentation
	This was transferred a while ago to demo.webwork.rochester.edu <http://demo.webwork.rochester.edu/> so there is not immediate issue here

Webwork Sites map:
	The data for this actually disappeared a few months ago when the MAA shut down the forms.maa.org <http://forms.maa.org/> box and  
        moved to a vendor solution for enrolling new courses on the MAA server sites.  With luck I recovered most of the data
        from the way-back machine and the map is now running using Google spreadsheets and google map apps to place the pin.
        That situation is stable for now but needs to be looked at — the recovery was done in a hurry and is still a bit of a hack.

Is there other infrastructure on the webwork.maa.org <http://webwork.maa.org/> machine that we need to protect?


Send me email if there are questions, suggestions, offers of help.

Take care,

Mike
gage at math.rochester.edu <mailto:gage at math.rochester.edu> 

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