X-Git-Url: https://sipb.mit.edu/gitweb.cgi/wiki.git/blobdiff_plain/738a261b49befdcba578a3006801334a06313674..a66c7a9d6c6e5e072a0b1d480fafe29e1280ef71:/projects/ideas.mdwn diff --git a/projects/ideas.mdwn b/projects/ideas.mdwn index e10219f..f7b373f 100644 --- a/projects/ideas.mdwn +++ b/projects/ideas.mdwn @@ -12,6 +12,8 @@ along with the person who's suggested the project or a team that would be good to contact. Feel free to get in touch if something sounds interesting or you want advice getting started. +A [[list from 2008-2009|/doc/project-ideas]] may also have some relevant ideas. + ## "add me to this list" button If I'm a webmaster for some group with an announcement list, it would be @@ -46,8 +48,8 @@ out each update to a ticket with a generic subject line, so it doesn't easily indicate whether the bug was resolved or someone just commented on it. It also doesn't know how to receive e-mail, so we can't reply to the e-mails it generates and have our comments go back into the bug -tracker, and we can't (make bugs@mit.edu create Trac -tickets)[http://debathena.mit.edu/trac/ticket/216]. There are one or two +tracker, and we can't [make bugs@mit.edu create Trac +tickets](http://debathena.mit.edu/trac/ticket/216). There are one or two alleged plugins to do this, but they create a new ticket on every e-mail, rather than doing something intelligent with replies; a better plugin in both directions would be extremely helpful. @@ -76,6 +78,16 @@ This would be immensely more useful as an iPhone application. _Contact: ccpost_ +## Safari plugin for setting identity preferences + +Safari's handling of client-side certificate authentication [changed around OS X 10.5.3](http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1679), such that Safari won't present (and won't prompt you to present) a client-side certificate if certs are only optional. Unfortunately, most sites around MIT only optionally accept certs, in spite of the fact that they'll error out if you don't provide one. + +You can override this unfortunate behavior with "Identity Preferences", and IS&T's answer for this is [CertAid](http://ist.mit.edu/services/software/certaid/10x), which simply seeds the Keychain with a pre-defined list of websites for which Safari should present your cert. This isn't a great solution for, e.g., scripts.mit.edu, which has thousands of sites - far too many to give to IS&T to include in CertAid. If that wasn't irritating enough, Identity Preferences don't take affect until you restart your browser. + +A better solution would be a plugin for Safari that intercepted 401 errors sent over SSL, prompted you to set an Identity Preference, and then attempted to reload the page with the new identity preference set. + +_Contact: broder_ + ## Snapshotted virtual machines for all popular Linux distributions A common need for people writing Linux software is to check that their @@ -97,19 +109,6 @@ support. If this is the kind of thing that interests you... _Contact: nelhage_ -## inotify logger for scripts and Debathena - -On both our [web hosting platform](http://scripts.mit.edu/) and Athena -cluster machines, we have way more software packages installed than we -suspect people use, but no good way of determining this. There's a Linux -interface called [inotify](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inotify) that -lets you get notifications when another user accesses the filesystem: it -would be pretty simple to use this to collect aggregate (anonymous) -statistics of what programs and packages are used frequently or even at -all. - -_Contact: geofft_ - ## SIPB PostgreSQL server A lot of people prefer Postgres to MySQL, so having a community Postgres @@ -161,6 +160,41 @@ there are RPM packages installed on some but not all of the servers, or if there are changes in /etc, other than hostname and such, that we haven't committed to the scripts Subversion repository. +## SIPB Library + +SIPB has a bunch of books in its library. It'd be nice if a list of +the library books also existed online in some sort of sane, searchable +database. One possible platform is the [Exhibit](http://simile-widgets.org/exhibit/) project (which originates from a collaboration between the Haystack group in CSAIL and the MIT Libraries). This would require mostly just making a spreadsheet of the information. + +_Contact: pbaranay, fawkes_ + +## Search across every public git repository + +The [git](http://www.git-scm.com/) version control system has been +rapidly gaining in popularity both in the world of free software at +large as well as at here at SIPB. One of the properties of git is +that every object, whether it's a specific version of a file or a +changeset to a project's source code, has a unique identifying hash +(e.g., "8c5fa44b1a4902ba1f84a71df20bfe4f21867a7c"). Given one of these +hashes, it should be possible to identify which project it came from +and what it refers to. + +The "easy" way to do this is to create a massive single git repository +with references to every public git repository we can find, but that +probably causes performance problems, so you may need to be cleverer +about how data is stored and expose a different interface. You'll +also need to figure out a way to find all public git repositories. + +_Contact: geofft, nelhage_ + +## Improve the Setup and UI for new users of Zephyr + +Currently, it is a pain to get someone else set up using zephyr +within screen on Linerva with automatically-renewing tickets. +We should write scripts to set them up so that that all they +have to do is enter a command or click an icon, type their kerberos +password, and then know how to use Barnowl. + ## Your Project Here SIPB can help you out in terms of both computing resources and