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

• Task (critical): To provide the learners with mobile-friendly lightweight 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 design; only one approved skin is mobile-friendly. To try something different, Natalia installed new wiki engines:
  1. DocuWiki looks like mobile-friendly MediaWiki. Written in PHP, lightweight, but not fancy.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
  4. BlueSpice is built on the top of MediaWiki and features the same drawbacks.
  5. We also didn't really try those wiki that comes with CNM Social. They may solve the task as well.
• Actions:
  1. Kevin will explore CNM Social's wiki. In the best case scenario, we will use those wiki for the first and second course lessons and the third course practice.
  2. If we decide that CNM Social's wiki doesn't satisfy our needs, Natalia will check whether we can (a) plug DocuWiki in CNM LDAP with, let say, https://www.dokuwiki.org/plugin:authldap and (b) populate with existing data through https://www.dokuwiki.org/tips:mediawiki_to_dokuwiki_converter
  3. Gary will take a look at BookStack to host EmployableU Concepts.

LMS

• 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.
• 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 and, most importantly, for MVP too.
• Actions: Get back to the project when critical tasks are resolved.

WordPress

• Task {not critical): To provide the learners with individual CNM WordPress instances, so they can practice with those.
• Situation: CNM WordPress is essential for CNM Website Projects' MVP. Gary offers to start using it - at least, those websites that will help our educaship marketing.
• Actions: Natalia will create a new VM or VMs.

VPN and proxy

• Task (critical): To set up Shadowsocks before the trip.
• Situation: Gary is going to a country with restricted Internet. We practiced with OpenVPN and Outline VPN. At one place, OpenVPN was blocked. Natalia changed the port and the block was lifted. However, at least expedia.com refuses to accept VPN, so we should 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/
• Actions: No additional actions, Gary missed that Shadowsocks works with Outline VPN.

HumHub

• Task (critical): To make CNM HumHub available for CNMCyber Event-Driven Projects practice.
• Situation: Gary sees no solution, but CNM HumHub, for CNMCyber Event-Driven Projects practice. For event organizing specifically, we need to add the "Meetings" module.
• Actions: Kevin will review CNM Social and suggest the actions.

Businesses to watch

Community

Meetings of CNMCyber Community Board were postponed, but we can re-start them to connect with a school teacher. Updates: CNMCyber Community Board, Careerprise bizopp, Educaship pitch, iDosvid pitch, CNMCyber Event-Driven Projects

Advisory committee

Educaship pitch sprint is complete and it is now in beta testing.

Dry run

Dry run for iDosvid depends on the budget and outcome proposals.

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