SoylentNews

As an aside, I did experiment with EUIV's multiplayer functionality after posting the last topic. As I found, while it is functional, it is very likely to desync at high speeds, and thus causes large amounts of waiting periods, which I think would be uninteresting for folks to watch. Sorry about that. ~ NCommander

Why We Dumped LDAP

One of the golden rules of system administration is "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". Given that LDAP is generally considered critical infrastructure for sites that depend on it, its worth spending a few moments explaining why we replaced it. Our LDAP backend was powered by OpenLDAP, which is generally the de facto standard for LDAP servers on Linux. In our experience though, OpenLDAP is extremely difficult to configure due to storing its configuration information within the LDAP tree itself (under cn=config), and being incredibly difficult to examine its current state, as well as recovering from any misconfiguration. In practice, I found it necessary to dump the entire LDAP configuration, modify the raw LDIF files, and then reimport with slapcat, and then pray. Painful, but manageable since, in practice, the overall server configuration shouldn't change frequently.

Unfortunately, every aspect of OpenLDAP has proven to be painful to administer. In keeping with the idea that none of our critical infrastructure should have single points of failure, we established replica servers from our master, and configured client systems to look at the replicas in case the master server take a dive (or is restarting). While a noble idea, we found that frequently without warning or cause, replication would either get out of sync, or simply stop working all together with no useful error messages being logged by slapd. Furthermore, when failover worked, systems would start to lag as nss_ldap kept trying to query the master for 5-10 seconds before switching to the slave for each and every query. As a whole, the entire setup was incredibly brittle.

While many of these issues could be laid at OpenLDAP (vs. LDAP itself as a protocol), other issues compounded to make life miserable. While there are other LDAP implementations such as 389 Directory Server, the simple fact of the matter is that due to schema differences, no two LDAP instances are directly compatible with each other; one can't simply copy the data out of OpenLDAP and import it directly into 389. The issue is further compounded if one is using extended schemas (as we were to store SSH public keys). As such, when slapd started to hang without warning, and without clear indication as of why, the pain got to the point of looking for a replacement rather than keep going with what we were using.

As it turns out, there are relatively few alternatives to LDAP in general, and even fewer supported by most Linux distributions. Out of the box, most Linux distributions can support LDAP, NIS, and Hesiod. Although NIS is still well supported by most Linux distributions, it suffers from security issues, and many same issues with regards to replication and failover. As such, I pushed to replace LDAP with Hesiod, which was originally designed as part of Project Athena.

Project Athena

Hesiod was one of the many systems to originate out of Project Athena, a joint project launched between MIT, DEC, and IBM in the early 80s to create a system of distributed computing across a campus, eventually terminating in 1991. Designed to work across multiple operating systems, and architectures, the original implementation of Athena laid out the following goals:

• To develop computer-based learning tools that are usable in multiple educational environments
• Establish a base of knowledge for future decisions about educational computing.
• Create a computational environment supporting multiple hardware types
• Encourage the sharing of ideas, code, data, and experience across MIT

As such, work coming from Project Athena was released as free-and-open source software, and provided a major cornerstone in early desktop and networking environments that are commonly in use today such as X Windows, and Kerberos.

As of 2015, 34 years after Athena was started, its underlying technology is still at MIT today, in the form of DebAthena.

Overview of Hesiod

Moving away from the history, and onto the actual technology itself, as indicated above, Hesiod is based in DNS, and takes the form of TXT records (the TXT record type itself was designed for Hesiod, as was the HS class). A sample Hesiod record for a user account looks like this:

mcasadevall.passwd      IN TXT          "mcasadevall:*:2500:2500:Michael Casadevall:/home/mcasadevall:/bin/bash"
2500.uid                IN CNAME        mcasadevall.passwd
mcasadevall.grplist     IN TXT          "sysops:2501:dev_team:2503:prod_access:2504"

For those familiar with the format of /etc/passwd, the format is obvious enough. Out of the box, hesiod supports distributing users and groups, printcap records (for use with LPRng), mount tables, and service locatator records. With minor effort, we were also able to get it to support SSH public keys. Since Hesiod is based on DNS, data can be replicated via normal zone transfers, as well as updated via dynamic DNS updates. Since DNS is not normally enumerable in normal operation, CNAME records are required to allow lookups for ids to be successful.

New types of records can be created by simply adding a new TXT record. For instance, for each user, we encode their SSH public keys as a (username).ssh TXT record. The standard hesinfo can properly query and access these records, making it easy to script:

mcasadevalllithium~$ hesinfo mcasadevall ssh
ssh-rsa AAAAB3NzaC1yc2EAAAABIwAAAQEA4T3rFl8HondKnGq3+OEAoXzhsZL3YyzRIMCFQeD6aLLHCoVGAwUs3cg7bqUVshGb3udz5Wl/C4ym1aF5Uk5xaZWr2ByKZG6ZPFQb2MZbOG+Lcd5A14gSS2+Hw6+LIoMM8u6CJvIjbTHVI2wbz/ClINDEcJC0bh+YpuaKWyt2iExHATq153ST3dih+sDDK8bq6bFMKM8sdJHl9soKGo7V7i6jIn8E84XmcdTq8Gm2gt6VhOIb/wtr1ix7nxzZ7qCxAQr//FhJ8yVsmHx7wRwkndS7muPfVlVd5jBYPN74AvNicGrQsaPtbkAIwlxOrL92BsS6xtb+sO2iJYHK/EJMoQ== mcasadevall@blacksteel

As such, Hesiod is easy to expand, and provides both command line applications, and the libhesiod API to both query and expand the information Hesiod is able to deliver, and can be deployed to any environment where a sysadmin can control DNS records. As of writing, a set of utilities to integrate and easily manage Hesiod on Amazon EC2's DNS Service (known as Route53) exist in the form of Hesiod53.

Drawbacks to Hesiod

Hesiod inherits several drawbacks due to being based upon DNS. Primarily, it can be affected by various cache poisoning attacks, or hijacking upstream DNS servers. These weaknesses can be mitigated by implementation of DNSCurse or client-side validation of DNSSEC records (standard DNSSEC does not autheticate the "last mile" for DNS queries). Like NIS, if password hashes are stored in Hesiod, they're world-readable, and vulnerable to offline analysis; for this reason, Hesiod should be deployed alongside Kerberos (and pam_krb5) for secure authentication of users and services. At SN, we've been using Kerberos since day 1 for server-to-server communication (and single-sign on for sysadmins), so this was trivial for us. Other organizations may have more difficulty.

Furthermore, under normal circumstances, DNS records can not be enumerated, and nss_hesiod will not provide any records if an application queries for a full list of users (for example, getent passwd on a shell will only return system local users). This may break some utilities who are dependent on getting a full list of users, though in over a month of testing on our development system (lithium), we weren't able to find any sort of breakage.

Finally, although this problem is not inherent to Hesiod, at least on Linux systems, attempts to query users not in /etc/passwd can hang early boot for several minutes. The same issue manifests itself with use of nss_ldap and SSSD. As of writing, we have not determined a satisfactory workaround for the problem, but as our core services are redundant and support automatic failover, a 5-10 minute restart time isn't a serious issue for us.

Finally, although most UNIX and UNIX-likes support Hesiod, there's no support for it on Windows or Mac OS X.

In Closing

Due to its ease of use, we're expectant that Hesiod will drastically reduce the pain of system administration, and removes a service that has proven to be both problematic, and overly complex. While I don't expect a major upswing in Hesiod usage, in practice, it works very well in cloud environments, and for those who find the use of LDAP painful, I highly recommend you experiment in evaluating it as long as one is mindful of it's limitations

I hope you all enjoyed this look at this rather obsecure, but interesting piece of history, and if people are interested, I can be tempted to write more articles of this nature.

~ NCommander

Avoiding Community Fragmentation

Every time the topic of expanding SoylentNews comes up, there's a fear that we may fragment what is already a very small community. While I understand where these concerns are coming from, I'm not sure that fear is justified. My thought here is that if you're reading SoylentNews for the articles and community, being able to stay on SN to read more niche topics would keep you here. For example, I'm a fairly avid Dwarf Fortress fan, but I can't discuss the game here; as such, I either post on /r/dwarffortress or on Bay12 about it. A Dwarf Fortress community on SoylentNews would allow me to discuss one of my favorite games here instead.

The intent is to keep the main page of SoylentNews as it is right now; a source of general news and information; the editors will remain in control of what is (or isn't) posting to SN front page. I don't want to move to a reddit (or firehose) style voting system for articles since I feel that would: lower the quality of content here, cause unpopular information to get buried, and wreck what IMHO has been a rather good system thus far. Individual nexuses may decide to use different criteria for their information, but said content would be limited to that nexus. Or in other words, this would be a purely additive change, not a revolutionary one.

Community Governance

Another thing we've promised since near the start is involving the community on major decisions and policies that this site would take. As such, it's been a relatively informal system with an article going up, feedback collected, and then acted on. I feel that if we're going to expand the site, a more formal framework of governance needs to be established — acting as a checks-and-balances system for the entire site. The fact of the matter is the original Slashcott, or reddit's current self-destruction process could have been averted had the community had a proper say in governance and other actions. For example, Wikimedia, the Ubuntu Project, Debian, and the Apache Foundation all have an elected set of users that act as community advocates.

Having community governance in effect is supposed to act as a circuit breaker — to prevent the staff from acting against the wishes of the community. We have a proven track record of being forefront in both listening to and acting on community concerns, but the entire system is dependent on the goodwill of the staff. People change as time goes on and it's possible that if we're here in ten years, none of the current staff and developers will still be here. Lest us forget that the green site was a haven for many of us until Dice took over. For SoylentNews to survive indefinitely, we need to have a system in place to make sure that the goodwill of the staff isn't the only thing keeping us from going into the abyss.

The problem is: where we do we define this line? Too much debate would cause everything on SN to grind to a halt; too little would prevent governance from being effective.

Furthermore, I'm concerned that a traditional-style community council would be ineffective. I struggle to remember any case where such a system really acted as true force of power in any organization I've been involved in. As such, I would like to think that we may want to mimic national conventions system from Article V of the US Constitution. Specifically, if X number of users (where X is a large percentage of the community), or nexus admins (acting as representatives of their community) across the site form and sign a petition, we could set up a convention to allow the community to overrule the staff and reform the site as necessary. Such a system would give the staff a relatively free hand in day-to-day operations, while acting as an effective circuit breaker to allow the collective force of the community to come to bear if it's ever necessary. This system can be directly incorporated into the bylaws, giving it legal power to enforce its demands, and not some wishy-washy system that can be ignored. I'd like to hear suggestions and feedback from the community on how best to proceed on establishing a system that allows the community to have significant power if it ever should need it.

Monetization and Revenue Sharing

I know this is going to be a touchy subject, so I want to clarify that nothing is set in stone. The simple fact of the matter though is that SoylentNews PBC requires money. As of right now, we can cover our server hosting costs with revenue coming in from subscriptions. This is a very good place to be, but I'd like to do better. I've made no secret that I'd love to get to the point that, long term, SN can do independent journalism, or at least have part or full time staff dedicated to improving the site. In the shorter term, I'd like to have the resources to form a parent not-for-profit to oversee the site, and the mission objectives as laid out by the manifesto, and even perhaps pursue 501(c)(3) status.

For those who don't remember, when I discussed incorporation originally, we hit a major snag that SN follows such an unusual business model, combined with the fact that most not-for-profit corporations deal with things like parks or fire departments. While it is certainly possible to form a not-for-profit that covers SN, it would require a lawyer to determine the specifics, in addition with the usual costs of forming a business. With that in mind, SoylentNews PBC (our legal overlord), simply doesn't have the resources to do that. Forming the non-profit and making sure checks-and-balances are directly incorporated into the bye-laws would make sure the site would never be at risk of a buyout, regardless of who is leading the site, and a cornerstone in fulfilling our promise to the community.

Furthermore, there's the moral aspect to consider. It's a simple fact that without the community, we wouldn't be here, or as successful as we have been. As such, if we end up monetizing community nexuses, at least part of those funds should go to those who volunteer their time and effort here, both the staff and the overseers of a nexus.

I've got a couple of ideas that I'd like to bounce off the community to see what the general feelings are. This is broken into two parts: monetization ideas, and revenue sharing.

Monetization Ideas

Require Payment To Create A Nexus

This was the most obvious idea I had when I started drafting this novel. Pay a bit, and create your own community. I'm not really a huge fan of this idea, because it means that someone has to pay to create a place to discuss things, and my gut is telling me that this would go against our mission statements, even if on paper it seems completely reasonable to me. There is perhaps a middle ground that we could limit nexus creation to subscribers. Overall, I'm very much on the fence for this idea though.

Offer A Premium Tier

As a second option, we could allow nexuses to get additional functionality, such as the ability to fully re-theme their section of the site, have nexuses-within-nexuses, provide subscriber features to all users within a nexus, or provide general file and image hosting. I'm largely open to ideas on both what we could offer, and how much it could cost.

Other Ideas

Beyond these two, I've also considered the possibility of allowing community nexuses to run their own advertising, or selling hosted independent rehash instances for a turnkey website. I'm not sure either of these are good ideas (though hosted instances may be useful as a side business), which is why I didn't write about them in length. I'm of course always open to good ideas from the community on the subject

Revenue Sharing

I've said it before, and I will say it again, but this site is nothing without its community. If we're successful in increasing our revenue, then part of that money should be given back to that community, either in the form of free subscriptions or nexus upgrades, or as cold hard cash. Any of the editors here can tell you that building a community of any sort is a massive job and very time consuming. The admins of community nexuses will have to face the same challenges and time commitments that the editorial team current does. As of right now, subscriptions cover our hosting and legal costs, but not much more. If I could, I would give every person who has volunteered their time and effort a paycheck, but that's simply not feasible. What we can do, however, is set a small portion of incoming revenue aside for re-investment.

Once community nexuses are live, subscribers (or those re-upping a subscription) will be able to set a nexuses that gets part of those funds (the default will be the nexuses the user is currently browsing), and the option to "leave a tip" so to speak. Most of that money will go into the general fund to pay for the site or to build a legal war chest, but the tip will be set aside, and placed in a fund for that community. That fund can be used by admins of a given nexus to give their users free subscriptions, buy the premium tier, or other site related functions. We can also create the possibility of "cashing out" so to speak, though that will require discussions with our CPA and lawyer. I realize that this is unlikely to ever generate a significant amount of money, but it may allow for a local gathering with free beer or something. Specifics (and legalities) have to be hashed out, but I would love to hear the communities thoughts on this.

In Closing

Its been a wild 1.5 years, and this site has grown far beyond my initial expectations. While I can't say what the future holds, I want to make sure we have the ability to cement our future in a more permanent fashion, and not fall victim to the same pitfalls that destroyed (or are destroying) sites like Slashdot, digg, or reddit. Its possible this is all a bad idea, and I'm depending on everyone to get your feedback and to readjust things.

On one final note, a few users keep asking us about warrant canaries. I've never done one of these before, but I'm hoping that this will help assure those who are concerned that we've been warranted or something:

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

SoylentNews PBC has never received any requests for law enforcement, or
has diverged any user information as required by a court of law or similar.

Headlines of July 5th as of writing:

The Climate One Year On: Exit Carbon Tax, Enter Brown Coal

Contact Temporarily Lost With New Horizons

NVIDIA Shows a Realistic HairWorks 1.1 Demo with 500K Fluttering Hairs

President/CEO
Michael "NCommander" Casadevall

Signed with:

pub   4096R/D2247639 2011-05-12 [expires: 2016-06-09]
      Key fingerprint = 37F0 1189 3BAE 3611 C45B  8E15 733E 1A42 D224 7639
uid                  Michael Casadevall <mcasadevall@ubuntu.com>
uid                  Michael Casadevall <mcasadevall@debian.org>
uid                  Michael Casadevall <mcasadevall@kubuntu.org>
uid                  Michael Casadevall <mcasadevall@soylentnews.org>

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If anyone wishes to build a chain of trust to my GPG key to verify this message, I'm based in western New York, and available for key signing parties. ~ NCommander