The developer services set up to support the SEUL project constitute a fairly immense, complex system. We use several machine (or at least parts of machines) to handle the various aspects of the system, as we currently have no one system of sufficient power to run all these services.

We are using all GPL'd software (to the best of our knowledge) for everything from mailing lists to bug tracking. Various packages in each field have been analyzed and in most cases actually trialed before selecting the best package that fits our needs. They have then been integrated to the best of our abilities, given the available time. More integration will be done as time allows.

Some of the software has been written "in-house" (more precisely, in omega's room) to handle both special needs of the SEUL project and fill holes in available functionality. The CVS support scripts are a good example of this kind of work.

What?

We currently have two machines actively providing services, plus several others being used for development. The active servers are all housed at MIT, and are run by Roger Dingledine. The development machine are all in Portland, OR, in Erik Walthinsen's house. One machine has a dedicated root partition for development, and two other machine are used as remote-notification test beds.

• cran.seul.org (aka cranleigh.mit.edu)
  

  Our main CVS server. The CVS repository is located on this machine, which then runs all the support scripts. All the cgi-bin pages used from www.seul.org are loaded from this server, to make sure that all data is current, and so there is no unnecessary replication of data or network traffic.

  All our project management and bug tracking software will also run on this server, unless it is found to be both advantageous and possible to put it elsewhere. It will also run the primary incarnation of majordomo, to keep things centralized.

• belegost.seul.org (aka belegost.mit.edu)
  

  The primary web server. It will be virthosting as www.seul.org, using the remote-notification features of the CVS support scripts to keep the web site up-to-date. It is also used as the list exploder for the majordomo system.

• cvs.test.seul.org (aka beta.omegacs.net)
  

  A small (486/33) machine being used to develop all these services. It may have any combination of all the services running on it at any one time.

• www.test.seul.org (aka psi.omegacs.net)
  

  Used as an auxiliarily test machine, for remote-notification maintenance of the web site and list exploder testing.

Hardware

Each service usually uses several packages in concert to get the job done right. Due to the interdependent nature of all the services, however, it is difficult to list all the packages and dependencies linearly. An attempt has been made below to group packages as closely together as possible relative to the services they provide.

• RedHat Linux 4.2
  

  RedHat was installed on all the developer machines before the SEUL Project started, and we have seen no compelling reason to change. It is (IMO) the best distribution out there if you want to get a machine up and running quickly.

• CVS

  CVS is the Concurrent Versions System, built on top of RCS. It allows users of a repository to operate simultaneously on the same source, allowing branching and merging, as well as release tagging and other very useful features. CVS is currently maintained by Cyclic Software, who also provides support contracts.

• CVS support scripts
  

  Written any maintained by Erik Walthinsen, these scripts are installed into hooks provided by CVS into almost all stages of the process. These scripts provide a highly configurable permissions system based on development groups, commit and rtag notification to arbitrary systems, and some branching support. More information can be found in the documentation.

  
• Apache
  

  The world's most popular web server software (derivitives of which run 49.90% of all known servers as of December 1997, according to Netcraft's survey) is used to serve all our pages. On www.seul.org its virthosting capabilities are used, and on cvs.seul.org its modules and cgi-bin functions are put to the test. Its ability to push large volumes of data with minimal load is extremely useful, as our machines will be loaded down with other things.

Software