[Adminsysters] Fwd: servepub.net - building own infrastructure

Wed May 3 10:31:10 CEST 2023

Hi everyone,

Thank you for the invitation, and sorry for late response as we are 
preparing for the feminist federation week long event in Barcelona 
starting next Monday. As Winnie is joining we will have the occasion to 
  talk a bit more about the servepub project and the dependencies, since 
we didn't have a meeting with you before.

We understand that in order to circumvent rigid university networks, an 
external public server could play the role of an access point to a 
closed network (proxy). Systerserver has two public servers and we could 
install a VPN in one of these to serve as a public access to your 
raspberry-pi.
Since you will have two raspberry-pies, you also need to think of two 
subdomains.
However keep in mind that this setting involves long-term maintenance 
and support for you and for us.

We need to also get the green light from mur.at, where we host our 
servers, and a general consensus from the close community of Systerserver.

Moreover, we feel that doing everything in one day workshop (pi setup 
and VPN) would not prove fruitful in terms of learning. Network 
interfaces and VPN has a complexity and a steep learning curve.

Here I would like to point to two of my manuals about VPN, that can help 
prior to the workshop.

screen versions
how to intall a VPN on single board computer and make it portable:
https://psaroskalazines.gr/pdf/rosa_beta_25_jan_23.pdf

intorduction to what is a VPN:
https://psaroskalazines.gr/pdf/fanzine-VPN-screen-en.pdf

booklet print
https://psaroskalazines.gr/pdf/fanzine-VPN-print-en.pdf

best wishes,
Mara

On 4/28/23 14:20, Batool Desouky wrote:
> Hi Winnie, hi all!
> 
> This is all very exciting -- thank you Winnie for putting it in motion.
> 
> As far as dates are concerned, the 26th can work for some of us, though 
> it would probably be easier if it were in the evening as some people are 
> at work in the morning. If this is not possible as it will probably be a 
> long session, then the next best option would be a weekend day but I 
> understand that thats not easy if we're trying to get a space on campus.
> 
> Either way the 26th can work for a few of us so it's fine if that's the 
> best day for everyone else.
> 
> As for the server maintenance, yes potentially some in-grid members 
> (myself included) would be able to do that depending on availability and 
> capacity.
> 
> We're happy to have a pre-meeting online soon to take about details of 
> the day.
> 
> Best,
> 
> Batool
> 
> On 2023-04-26 11:59, Winnie Soon wrote:
> 
>> Thanks Luke for your reply and your support 🙂 Yes we can definitely 
>> arrange a physical space in the UK ideally at CCI, UAL.
>> May be @In-grid/@Systerserver: Would you be able to get back if you 
>> are available on the 26 Jun? Confirming the date would be helpful to 
>> room booking and Luke to book transport. Details we can arrange in 
>> terms of the content.
>> I am also thinking once we all confirm the date/time, then we could 
>> have a pre-meeting online so as to decide how to make the workshop 
>> more effective, in terms of what the preparation would be for each 
>> group, etc.
>> In-grid would be potentially set it up and initial maintain this. We 
>> will pass the Pis to them soon so that they can prepare that. But 
>> Geoff/Me/Christian would be also involved in maintaining it as well 
>> and we might able to bring students / research assistant to involve in 
>> the maintenance.
>> Thanks all.
>> best,
>> Winnie
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> *From:* cellarspoon at riseup.net <cellarspoon at riseup.net>
>> *Sent:* Wednesday, April 26, 2023 9:39 AM
>> *To:* Winnie Soon <w.soon at arts.ac.uk>; info at systerserver.net 
>> <info at systerserver.net>; batooldesouky at riseup.net 
>> <batooldesouky at riseup.net>; hmryan.esq at gmail.com 
>> <hmryan.esq at gmail.com>; romainbiros at gmail.com <romainbiros at gmail.com>; 
>> sunniliao at gmail.com <sunniliao at gmail.com>
>> *Cc:* cua at cc.au.dk <cua at cc.au.dk>; geoffcox at lsbu.ac.uk 
>> <geoffcox at lsbu.ac.uk>
>> *Subject:* Re: Fwd: servepub.net - building own infrastructure
>> Hey all!
>>
>> This sounds pretty exciting!
>>
>> I'm personally interested to attend in person if a physical space will
>> be organised and use the 250 GBP budget to cover costs. Had been
>> planning to visit London in anyway... if you can let me know asap I can
>> try get cheap trains/boats organised.
>>
>> I'm happy to participate in whatever task division is set up. I think
>> the process looks covered in the 1 through 5. I'm not sure on the order
>> of things and also what In-grid / Systerserver folks would prefer to
>> do?
>>
>> And for the 2 hr presentation, is this a space to work on the 1-5 tasks
>> or just a more general present/discuss moment about self-hosting /
>> maintenance / etc. or?
>>
>> I can imagine doing some hands on review / exploration of fundamentals
>> might be beneficial? We wrote some stuff with Varia and friends some
>> time ago https://homebrewserver.club/category/fundamentals.html 
>> <https://homebrewserver.club/category/fundamentals.html>
>>
>> Some further thoughts:
>>
>> - Do we know who will be taking care of this going forward? Will they
>> be able to physically attend? That would be best to increase the
>> chances that there is a good "handover"
>>
>> - I think there is a delicate balance to think through with
>> Systerserver/In-grid/Autonomic preparing the system beforehand and
>> having the long-term maintainers of this system involved in its
>> creation from the start. I've seen several projects being handed off
>> and more or less overwhelming the new folks trying to pick things up.
>> For example, getting into system adminstration is not trivial and
>> things like VPN networks are hard. I realise this is a necessity re:
>> academic networks but it might be worth considering "less is more" for
>> the initial phase? To maximise involvement of those will continue this
>> project. Up to you all.
>>
>> - Writing documentation is a pretty good way to learn together. Is
>> there some common platform we can do that on the day? This could even
>> happen on the servers themselves which is also a way to get familiar
>> with logging in / using / etc.
>>
>> Best,
>> Luke
>>
>> PS. Sending from my personal mail as I'm actually currently in the
>> process of leaving Autonomic atm but we've decided that I can run with
>> this project 🙂 Autonomic will be in touch on another thread about
>> working together too though!
>>
>> On Tue, 2023-04-25 at 16:01 +0200, Autonomic Co-op wrote:
>> > -------- Forwarded Message --------
>> > From: Winnie Soon <w.soon at arts.ac.uk>
>> > To: Autonomic Co-op <helo at autonomic.zone>, info at systerserver.net
>> > <info at systerserver.net>, Batool Desouky <batooldesouky at riseup.net>,
>> > HM
>> > Ryan <hmryan.esq at gmail.com>, romainbiros at gmail.com
>> > <romainbiros at gmail.com>, sunniliao at gmail.com <sunniliao at gmail.com>
>> > Cc: Christian Ulrik Andersen <cua at cc.au.dk>, geoffcox
>> > <geoffcox at lsbu.ac.uk>
>> > Subject: servepub.net - building own infrastructure
>> > Date: Sat, 22 Apr 2023 10:22:24 +0000
>> >
>> > Dear In-grid, Systerserver and Autonomic,
>> >
>> > First of all, thanks so much for supporting this project. As
>> > discussed
>> > briefly, we (Geoff (LSBU), Christian (Aarhus University) and Winnie
>> > (CCI, UAL) ) would like to organize a workshop gather different
>> > communities (In-grid:
>> > https://www.in-grid.io/ <https://www.in-grid.io/>, Autonomic: 
>> https://autonomic.zone/ <https://autonomic.zone/>,
>> > Systerserver: https://systerserver.net/) 
>> <https://systerserver.net/)> to learn collectively,
>> > discuss
>> > issues, and more importantly to build alliances in working
>> > alternative
>> > infrastructures.
>> >
>> > We are able to offer a small fee of £250 for each group for this
>> > workshop (sorry it's not more but it gets things started). The
>> > workshop
>> > would be hybrid as we don't have resources set aside for travel etc,
>> > but those of us in London would ideally get together in the same
>> > space.
>> >
>> > Our main aim is to build two Raspberry Pis , where one is to act as
>> > the
>> > main server and documentation of code/upgrade/system admin works,
>> > etc:
>> > with a web server, media wiki and gitea installed (would be
>> > physically
>> > located at CCI primarily and can be remotely access to it). The other
>> > Pi would be more mobile that include wiki2print (developed by Varia)
>> > for the upcoming issue of our journal APRJA (but connect to the main
>> > server).
>> >
>> > So to kick start with this process "we think" the following is what
>> > we
>> > need to cover (we are not expert in this area, so your help/input
>> > would
>> > be appreciated):
>> >
>> > 1. Flashing and bootstrapping the raspberry Pis (Autonomic)
>> > 2. web server (Nginx) configuration, SSH access (Autonomic)
>> > 3. bash script (for upgrade/server maintenance/reuse the code for
>> > other
>> > Pi in future) (Autonomic)
>> > 4. Purchase of domain, settings of DNS, Public IP and network
>> > configuration, and sub domain for the Pi (Systerserver)
>> > 5. To deal with university VPN > TInc setup (Systerserver)
>> > 6. Maybe more... so we need your input  (anything you think we should
>> > know)
>> >
>> > So we want to organize a workshop where you can help sharing the
>> > skills/ideas, tentatively:
>> >
>> > - 15 mins: Geoff/Winnie/Christian: intro and context
>> > - 15 mins: In-grid: intro and as a group
>> > - 2 hours: presentation by Autonomic + discussion
>> > - 30 mins: break
>> > - 2 hours: presentation by Systerserver + discussion
>> >
>> > We'd like to suggest a tentative date for this: Monday 26 June,
>> > 12.00-
>> > 17.00 (ONLINE).
>> >
>> > We understand it is not a workshop where we can learn everything in
>> > just 5 hours because system admin or system configuration is a
>> > specialized area, but we hope that this is a starting point to get
>> > things going as a collective effort. Once the servers are set up
>> > (primarily by in-grid) we would migrate what Varia have been
>> > developing
>> > at the next stage (wiki2print).
>> >
>> > @In-grid, we can also make it hybrid and for those in London we can
>> > gather together either in CCI or LSBU (more to be confirmed).
>> >
>> > Let us know if this is feasible for you all, and if you have any
>> > things
>> > to add, please share :)
>> >
>> > best,
>> > Geoff + Christian + Winnie
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > ---
>> >
>> > Dr. Winnie Soon (🌈 they/them)
>> >
>> > Course Leader & Senior Lecturer, MA/MSc Computing and Creative
>> > Industry
>> > (Modular)
>> >
>> > UAL Creative Computing Institute (CCI)
>> >
>> > Web: https://www.siusoon.net<https://twitter.com/decolonisator> 
>> <https://www.siusoon.net<https://twitter.com/decolonisator>>
>> > <https://twitter.com/decolonisator <https://twitter.com/decolonisator>>
>> >
>> > Mastodon:
>> > post.lurk.org/@siusoon<https://siusoon.net/post.lurk.org/@siusoon>
>> >
>> >
>> > Recent exhibition/publication:
>> >
>> > 1. Data Relations (until 19 Mar 2023), Australian Centre for
>> > Contemporary Art: https://acca.melbourne/exhibition/data-relations/ 
>> <https://acca.melbourne/exhibition/data-relations/>
>> >
>> > <http://www.arts.ac.uk/cci <http://www.arts.ac.uk/cci>>2. Soon. W., 
>> (2023). Writing an Article as
>> > if Writing a Piece of Software. Toward a Minor Tech (Peer-reviewed
>> > newspaper), 12(1). Christian Ulrik Andersen, Geoff Cox (eds.). link:
>> > 
>> https://darc.au.dk/fileadmin/DARC/newspapers/toward-a-minor-tech-online-sm.pdf 
>> <https://darc.au.dk/fileadmin/DARC/newspapers/toward-a-minor-tech-online-sm.pdf>
>> >
>> > 3. Soon, W., & Valesco, P. (2023). "(De)constructing Machines as
>> > Critical Technical Practice". Convergence: The International Journal
>> > of
>> > Research into New Media Technologies
>> >
>> > 4. Soon, W. (2023). "Queering Code Manual".Them all, Magazine.
>> > Retrieved from http://www.them-all-magazine.com/winniesoon 
>> <http://www.them-all-magazine.com/winniesoon>
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