Thoughts about tech, politics, and more
(Tag: fsfe)
Docker2Caddy - An automatic Reverse Proxy for Docker containers
So you have a number of Docker containers running web services which you would like to expose to the outside? Well, you probably will at least have considered a reverse proxy already. Doing this manually for one, two or even five containers may be feasible, but everything above that will be a PITA for sure. At the FSFE we ran into the same issue with our own distributed container infrastructure at and crafted a neat solution that I would like to present to you in the next few minutes.
The power of git-sed
In the recent weeks and months, the FSFE Web Team has been doing some heavy work on the FSFE website. We moved and replaced thousands of files and their respective links to improve the structure of a historically grown website (19+ years, 23243 files, almost 39k commits). But how to do that most efficiently in a version controlled system like Git?
In our scenarios, the steps executed often looked like the following:
System Hackers meeting - Lyon edition
For the 4th time, and less than 5 months after the last meeting, the FSFE System Hackers met in person to coordinate their activities, work on complex issues, and exchange know-how. This time, we chose yet another town familiar to one of our team members as venue – Lyon in France. What follows is a report of this gathering that happened shortly before #stayhome became the order of the day.
I love the hidden champions
A few days ago I’ve sent an announcement email for today’s I Love Free Software Day to a large bunch of people. Most of the remarkably many replies have been positive and a pure joy to read, but some were a bit sceptical and critical. These came from Free Software contributors who are maintaining and helping projects that they think nobody knows and sees – not because these software projects are unused, but because they are small, a building block for other, more popular applications.
The 3rd FSFE System Hackers hackathon
On 10 and 11 October, the FSFE System Hackers met in person to tackle problems and new features regarding the servers and services the FSFE is running. The team consists of dedicated volunteers who ensure that the community and staff can work effectively. The recent meeting built on the great work of the past 2 years which have been shaped by large personal and technical changes.
The System Hackers are responsible for the maintenance and development of a large number of services. From the fsfe.org website’s deployment to the mail servers and blogs, from Git to internal services like DNS and monitoring, all these services, virtual machines and physical servers are handled by this friendly group that is always looking forward to welcoming new members.
Protect freedom on radio devices: raise your voice today!
We are facing a EU regulation which may make it impossible to install a custom piece of software on most radio decives like WiFi routers, smartphones and embedded devices. You can now give feedback on the most problematic part by Monday, 4 March. Please participate – it’s not hard!
In the EU Radio Equipment Directive (2014/53/EU) contains one highly dangerous article will cause many issues if implemented: Article 3(3)(i). It requires hardware manufacturers of most devices sending and receiving radio signals to implement a barrier that disallows installing software which has not been certified by the manufacturer. That means, that for installing an alternative operating system on a router, mobile phone or any other radio-capable device, the manufacturer of this device has to assess its conformity.
FSFE Planet has been refurbished
If you are reading these lines, you are already accessing the brand-new planet of the FSFE. While Björn, Coordinator of Team Germany, has largely improved the design in late 2017, we tackled many underlying issues this time.
So what has changed under the hood?
- The whole system runs in a Docker container now, with all code accessible on our Git. Yes, Docker has drawbacks, but in this case it eases maintenance for our volunteers and makes contributions to design and code very simple.
- The old planet ran on a very old Debian server which had issues with modern TLS versions. This basically erased a few blogs from the planet whose webservers do not support older encryption standards.
- The design has been improved once more. It now more closely aligns to the design of our main page fsfe.org and feels more natively to use and browse.
- Many blogs which were not accessible any more have been removed, and those which redirected to other URLs have been updated accordingly.
So with the migration to the new system you will probably find a few new blogs and unread posts in your RSS feeds now. So please do not be confused about it but look forward to even more useful and interesting bits from the FSFE community!
I love astroid! #ilovefs
You cannot imagine how long I’ve waited to write this blog post. Normally I’m not the bragging kind of guy but for this year’s edition of my „I love Free Software“ declaration articles (after 2014, 2015 and 2016) I just want to shout out to the world: I have the world’s best mail client: astroid!
Update February 2018: Meanwhile I have published my mail config incl. astroid, notmuch, offlineimap etc. It is a rather complicated and special setup but perhaps it will help you.
Build FSFE websites locally
Note: This guide is also available in FSFE’s wiki now, and it will be the only version maintained. So please head over to the wiki if you’re planning to follow this guide.
Those who create, edit, and translate FSFE websites already know that the source files are XHTML files which are build with a XSLT processor, including a lot of custom stuff. One of the huge advantages from that is that we don’t have to rely on dynamic website processors and databases, on the other hand there are a few drawbacks as well: websites need a few minutes to be generated by the central build system, and it’s quite easy to mess up with the XML syntax. Now if an editor wants to create or edit a page, she needs to wait a few minutes until the build system has finished everytime she wants to test how the website looks like. So in this guide I will show how to build single websites on your own computer in a fraction of the FSFE’s system build time, so you’ll only need to commit your changes as soon as the file looks as you want it. All you need is a bit hard disk space and around one hour time to set up everything.
OpenRheinRuhr 2016 – A report of iron and freedom
Last weekend, I visited Oberhausen to participate in OpenRheinRuhr, a well-known Free Software event in north-western Germany. Over two days I was part of FSFE’s booth team, gave a talk, and enjoyed talking to tons of like-minded people about politics, technology and other stuff. In the next few minutes you will learn what coat hangers have to do with flat irons and which hotel you shouldn’t book if you plan to visit Oberhausen.