Re: [Monotone-devel] usher 0.99 release (name-based virtual hosting for monotone)

[Richard Levitte]

In message <address@hidden> on Thu, 3 Feb 2011 02:26:18 -0500, Hendrik Boom 
<address@hidden> said:

hendrik> On Wed, Feb 02, 2011 at 12:09:23AM +0100, Richard Levitte wrote:
hendrik> > In message <address@hidden> on Tue, 1 Feb 2011 15:05:33 -0500, 
Hendrik Boom <address@hidden> said:
hendrik> > 
hendrik> > In your configuration file, you have a logdir setting.  You
hendrik> > might want to look at the log file there (write.log, I believe).
hendrik> 
hendrik> Yes.. There is oe now.  I stopped looking because for a while there 
hendrik> wasn't one, but one has now showed up.  It seems to be asking me for a 
hendrik> passphrase for key ID address@hidden {599fffe...}
hendrik> 
hendrik> Presumably, monotone wants a passphrase wo start up in server mode.
hendrik> 
hendrik> What's the recommended way to provide one nowadays?  The method
hendrik> involving the get_passphrase hook that the tutorial says is deprecated 
hendrik> because of insecurity?  It does have to be available when there's no 
hendrik> user logged in on the server machine.

When it comes to automatic starts, such as starting a monotone server
under usher, this is of course a problem (as it is with all mechanisms
that require a password).  The solution still involves the
get_passphrase hook (the deprecation is more for users than server
maintainers), and make sure it's appropriately protected, or to use
the expanded version contrib/get_passphrase_from_file.lua, which has
the passphrases it need to cover in a separate file (which should be
appropriately protected).

hendrik> > hendrik> Or does it misreport a successful fork with an invalid
hendrik> > hendrik> monotone command as a failed fork?  Or ... (fill in the real
hendrik> > hendrik> explanation here, please?)
hendrik> > 
hendrik> > Well, an invalid command of some sort WOULD result in a failed fork,
hendrik> > so that's definitely a plausible explanation.  Check the log in
hendrik> > {logdir}.
hendrik> 
hendrik> Well, as long as the monotone process gets started, even if it 
hendrik> immediately complains and exits, the fork itself has succeeded, so at 
hendrik> the very least it's a misleading error message.  But at this point 
hendrik> that's just a quibble.

There's a little bit more done to check that the monotone server has
started correctly.  Usher waits for the server to output something and
expects the first line to contain "beginning service".  If that
doesn't happen, it will consider the fork a failure, hence the error
message.  Maybe there should be a little bit more text explaining that
one might get more answers from the appropriate log...

Cheers,
Richard

-- 
Richard Levitte                         address@hidden
                                        http://richard.levitte.org/

"Life is a tremendous celebration - and I'm invited!"
-- from a friend's blog, translated from Swedish