CNM Tech Board 2023-10-26

CNM Tech Board 2023-10-26 is the meeting of CNM Technology Board‎ that occurred on October 26th, 2023. The predecessor meeting is CNM Tech Board 2023-10-19; the successor meeting is CNM Tech Board 2023-11-02.

"Old" businesses

All of "old" businesses are related to launch of iDosvid in Kenya in order to make iDosvid pitch real.

Wiki

(Situation)

CNM MediaWiki comes with two drawbacks -- (a) lack of CNM LDAP integration, so new students cannot access the wiki, and (b) lack of mobile-friendliness. So, Natalia installed new wiki engines to try:

• DocuWiki looks like mobile-friendly MediaWiki. Written in PHP, lightweight, but not fancy.
• XWiki has a strong structure and acts like Confluence. Gary couldn't find how to plug it into CNM GitLab. It has a Redmine integration though. At the same time, it looks good for complex documentation, not introductory learning. Plus, it is written in Java and consumes more resources than the others.
• Wiki.js seems like the application our school students will enjoy the most. Natalia integrated it into CNM LDAP; we now look for opportunities to migrate our MediaWiki database to our Wiki.js instance.

We also didn't really try those wiki that comes with CNM Social. They may solve the task as well.

(Task, critical)

To provide the learners with mobile-friendly lightweight wiki

LMS

(Situation)

CNM Moodle looks like well-suited for CNMCyber Bootcamps, but less appropriate for the first two courses than Canvas LMS. So, Natalia was trying to install it. OpenEdX is, probably, too complex for us for now.

(Task, not critical)

To provide the learners with a lightweight LMS instance, so they can practice with that, while populating it with the courses. For MVP, we plan to use the wiki as the content delivery platform.

WordPress

1. CNM WordPress. Because of changes in the visa process, I cannot predict when I get to China. Since we don't do a dry run, most likely, I have time to work on something. I am thinking about our websites -- at least, they will help our educaship marketing. During our tech board, I propose to discuss that.

VPN and proxy

1. Break through the wall. Natalia enabled experiments with OpenVPN. However, I found at least one place where VPN is blocked, so, technically, encrypted VPN can be recognized and blocked. I would like to play with the Tor browser. Also, Natalia, may you take a look at Shadowsocks? It is regarded as the best solution to our needs at least here -- https://www.howtogeek.com/802198/vpn-alternatives-what-can-you-use-besides-a-vpn/

Businesses to watch

Community

• Updates: CNMCyber Community Board, Careerprise bizopp, Educaship pitch, iDosvid pitch

1. Meetings of CNMCyber Community Board are postponed. It looks like Kevin stopped attending our boards, so let's postpone the Community Board until better times come.

Advisory committee

1. Educaship pitch is now in beta testing. My https://wiki.cnmcyber.com/en/Educaship_pitch sprint is complete. I haven't decided what I will work on next, but whatever it will be, it will be on a new wiki.

Dry run

1. Dry run for iDosvid is cancelled. My funds are depleting faster than I expected. Thus, I propose to skip the dry run and look at every expense in the nearest future. -- what is the scope and budget?

Proxmox Lab

• CNM Lab Farm

Recording

• Updates: VM-based recording experiments. 4 cores CPU, 32Gb RAM, 64Gb hard. Natalia to create a kind of instruction, Natalia and Kevin to collaborate
• Discussions: Can we install OBS Studio to VM?
• Plans:

Jitsi

• Updates: Create an instance on the non-clustered Proxmox, Jitsi bandwidth
• Plans: Gary to reach out to previous applicants
• Discussions:

Onboarding

• Updates: Joseph, Natalia to check the CNM Lab project
• Discussions: Are we ready to onboard? If no, what else do we need to do?
• Plans:

Proxmox cluster

• Updates: CNM Bureau Farm, Jitsi/Odoo/HumHub, DNS, CNM pfSense, monitoring -- Telegraf + InfluxDB + Grafana, Uptime Kuma, Passbolt, mail server, LDAP, DNS zone, IPv4, what else to do? HA test, alpha testing, DNS
• Discussions: Muhammed, next steps
• Plans:

WSO2 IS

• Updates: Natalia to install WSO2 IS on the CNM Lab Farm and try to plug to Opplet, "A" record
• Discussions:
• Plans: After CNM WordPress integration, we will look for contractors to plug in other applications.

"New" businesses

First-priority backlog

1. Mail server: mail.opplet.net, mail.bskol.com, mail.cnmcyber.com,
2. CNM Lab
3. Possibly, get rid of DigitalOcean

Second-priority backlog

1. CNM Tube, livestreaming
2. CNM Lab Farm, non-cluster Proxmox; for VM project -- Ansible; time tracking
3. CNM Campus Farm

Waiting backlog

1. PHP tasks such as CNM MediaWiki beyond CNM LDAP
2. CNM LDAP, LDAP-C contractor
3. Cloudflare