[Operators] Fwd: Looking for full xml list / app idea

[Swen Lux]

On 24.04.2011 22:04, Ben Zimmer wrote:
>>> The one that was linked to from the old services-site has some columns
>>> lacking (like country, CA) while the table available on the
>>> wordpressy-site has those columns but is lacking others in change.
>> Right, we removed lat/lon because it was causing the table to be cut off
>> in most browsers, because it was a pain to gather and update that data,
>> and because country is probably close enough.
> Agreed, but more important is the lack of the CA-field in the
> xml-list, as that would be required for the automatic checks
> (SSL-capability) to work. Perhaps we could merge the xml-file and the
> html-table data, to get a complete list to use.
>
>>> I'd like to hear some feedback and suggestions on the "app-idea". To
>>> be honest I was a bit bored last weekend and already set up a basic
>>> app that can import the old services-full.xml into a sql-database and
>>> can receive new registrations by form-submission. If there is interest
>>> I'd be willing to polish it up a bit so you can have a look.
>>  From your description, I assume that the app is a form-submission page
>> (in WordPress or separate?) that handles/formats the input data, sends a
>> message to this list, sends messages to the right domain contacts, etc.
>> Correct?
> My first shot is a standalone app (as I'm not that fluent in PHP and
> wordpress-plugins) written in Python (based on the flask framework).
> The feature-set I have in mind would look like this:
> Frontend:
>   - Page to display the table for the human eye
>   - represantations of that table in xml, json to to be used by
> clients or other applications
>   - form for server-admins to register their servers/domains
>
> Backend:
>   - Table as in the frontend but with capability maintain the
> server-list by hand (displays all information necessary to approve a
> sever)
>   - on new request by the frontend-form:
>     - adds server to backend table, marked as "not approved"
>     - sends email to server-admin addresses for verification
>     - does SRV-, SSL-checks and displays results in the backend table
>     - sends new requests to mailinglist
>     - once one of us has contacted the domain-owner personally and all
> checks are positive the server could be marked as "approved" and
> appears in the frontend-table and xml-list
>   - does regular checks on availability, SRV-records etc. and informs
> staff about offline servers
>
> Hope I forgot nothing :) The main goal would be to have all tools to
> approve a server in one place.
>
> Ben
That sounds more than great! I have an mailserver running which is not 
under high load (~7k mails a month) maybe we could script the initial 
mail to postmaster / hostmaster of the root-domain?

But this whole app sounds more than helpful!

Great idea Ben!

best,

Swen