SLAC WWW-Tech Mtg 5/15/96

Attendees: Tony Johnson, John Halperin, Joan Winters, Pat Kreitz, Bebo White, Boe Boeninger, Mike Wendling, Laurie Gennari

Agenda:

• Super Wrap
• Spires Proxy crashes
• Contacting Mwww
• Search Utilities
• Front Page Demo
• Paris Highlights
• Action Items
• AOB

Super Wrap

Wrapper between server and cgi-scripts, kill cgi-bin processes (and their descendants) after five minute time-out. Version now installed on test (www:5080) server. Two issues:

1. SCRIPT_NAME. There appears to be a bug in the CERN httpd, which makes it impossible for the wrapper to correctly set SCRIPT_NAME..Few scripts use this environment variable (SPIFACE is one). We need to worry about harvest, hypernews etc. We need to test these scripts under the test server..
2. CPU Limits etc. Can limit CPU time, filesize, core dumps, elapsed time. John recommends 16 Mbytes maximum filesize, 24 Mbytes memory, 1 minute of CPU and no core-dumps. John will implement these limits on the test server. People should test their scripts with these limits.

John would like to install super-wrap in production early next week. People should test their scripts this week.

Search Utilities

Search engines technology still has a way to go! On site we have:

• Harvest (with GLIMPSE and WAIS)
• Swish
• Verity (for Babar via HEPNRC)

Too many pages accessible via the web, very labor intensive to keep filter list up-to-date.Need to set reasonable expectations (e.g. only index .HTML pages). Mike proposes to only index files of type HTML..It might be worth looking at other engines such as verity for PDF documents, especially SLAC publications. Mike will have it all done by next meeting (or sooner).

SPIRES Proxy crashes

Proxy servers continue to crash due to particular URL's (about a dozen total crashes per day). Needs to be understood. John points we should review the need for some temporary rules.

Contacting MWWW (etc.)

www-admin is the right way to ask for support from www-tech. In general we have very limited manpower and are unlikely to be able to install new services on request. Bebo suggested one possibility would be to assign one or more people to at least reply to all www-admin mail. We need to draft a web page describing (among other things) where to send requests for assistance.

Front Page Demo

Future Technology Items

• Authoring Tools
• Site Maintenance Tools
• Newer Servers
• Smart Home Page
• Improved Web Pages
• Search Engines

Action Items

• Pat will convert and kill existing Clancey documents as appropriate to remove broken links - 1/3/96 [Pat is working on a document saying these have been redirected and Bebo will put in a rule to accomplish this. This has a sunset clause of 6 months. 3/6/96 This has been delegated to Kathryn. Kathryn will put a pointer into the directory giving Pat's Email address. She is awaiting the text of the pointer page from Patricia 3/20/96. No action 4/17/96. Pat reports it is on hold, she is waiting to hear from Patrick. Kathryn/Laurie will make sure that Patrick gets a copy of the files in his ~clancey directory. Then the space will be freed up. Executables will not be sent. 5/1/96]]
• Bebo/Bob will look into Netscape/fasttrak as an alternative production server. 5/1/96 In progress, get status at next meeting]

Stalled Action Items - Next Review in mid May

• Bebo will investigate the interactions of Netscape and the SLAC news server from Macs. [STARtraked, Bebo talked to campus, and deduces that it is the SLAC News software Cnews. We await the installation of the new News server, latest estimate June 1996. update on News server progress 2/21/96. No Progress 3/6/96. Boeheim states that we could have the new news server in 3 weeks. 3/20/96. The new news servers should be available for Bebo to start the install/configure process 4/5/96, see Rough Notes for 4/3/96].
• Tony will deal with the SPIFACE logs. [It awaits new disk 2/7/96. The new disk arrived and Tony moved the logs, now he needs to automate the truncation 2/21/96. Tony has deleted them from AFS space, next he has to do the automation. 3/6/96. No progress, no urgency 3/20/96. No action 4/3/96]
• Tony will draft a document as a high level intro to CGI scripts and security issues. [Tony handed out a first draft of this document. Everyone should read the page (it is at http://www/~tonyj/cgi.html) and send comments by Email to Tony. The idea is that this will be linked to from a Tutorial page on authoring (being created by Joan). This tutorial page may be linked from the bottom of the SLAC highlighted page. 2/21/96. Tony will incorporate suggestions from Joan and John and then put it out there with a link from some standard page. 3/6/96. No progress 3/20/96. Tony lost Joan's comments due to water getting on his notes 4/3/96.]
• Joan will draft a requirements/needs document for a SLAC Web test server. 1/3/96 [No progress 2/7/96. Joan has talked to Tony and they have agreed it is lower priority than the document on Rights and Responsibilities of SLAC Web Authors. 3/6/96.]
• Someone will set up a wish list of items, such as getting/installing/configuring/customizing etc. mergemail. This will be made publicly available via the Web at SLAC so we can encourage others to take the baton. [we are awaiting a volunteer for this. However, given that we only have one item at the moment it is not a pressing item 2/21/96].

AOB

Next Meeting

Wednesday June 5, 1996.