Session Date/Time: 14 Feb 2023 19:00

TOOLS

Summary

The TOOLS working group discussed preparation for IETF 116, ongoing infrastructure migrations (DNS to Cloudflare, MySQL to PostgreSQL), and the future of document differentiation tools (ID-diff vs. RFC-diff). Plans for an experimental, announcement-only Mastodon instance were considered. Urgent issues like a BibXML bug blocking RFC publication were highlighted.

Key Discussion Points

IETF 116 Preparation:
- Focus on clearing meeting-affecting bugs, particularly around scheduling and agenda use, has been a priority.
- IETF 116 will be the first draft deadline with the asynchronous submission tool API. Anticipation for its impact and a desire to encourage its use for IETF 117.
DNS Migration to Cloudflare:
- The migration is still planned for the next few weeks but will be postponed if it conflicts with the draft submission crunch period.
- The migration path involves a short period where the DNS zone will be unsigned (DS records withdrawn), followed by insertion of new DS records.
- A proper in-place signed rollover was deemed impractical due to registrar and cloud service provider limitations and policies.
PostgreSQL Migration and Environment Improvements:
- The PostgreSQL transition was rescheduled due to non-trivial collation differences between PostgreSQL and MySQL.
- Progress has been made in understanding and addressing collation issues, with only a few remaining (e.g., Django user usernames to prevent case-folding collisions).
- A trial migration of the full production database on a hot standby machine is planned for the coming days to estimate actual downtime.
- The PostgreSQL cluster on ietfa (the main production machine) is very old and uses outdated defaults. A rebuild of this cluster is planned to use modern UTF-8 character sets and collation rules. This affects only the Wagtail website database, which is small and has low update frequency.
ID-diff / RFC-diff Parity:
- Efforts to bring ID-diff into parity with RFC-diff revealed that the remaining work was not worth the investment.
- The decision is to refocus on continuing to support RFC-diff itself, despite its reliance on older technologies like awk and shell scripts.
- The main issue with the previous RFC-diff web service implementation was its pyhd wrapper (a Python-based rapid deployment tool), which had security issues. The current RFC-diff at authortools does not suffer from these.
- The pyhd wrapper will be deprecated and its GitHub repository archived.
- A suggestion was made to provide an easy UI button on ID-diff output to generate RFC-diff, recognizing that some users are vocal about the differences.
- Concern was raised about the long-term maintainability of RFC-diff due to the decreasing number of individuals with deep knowledge of awk, shell, and other legacy technologies.
Mastodon Use:
- A proof of concept exists for running a controlled Mastodon instance.
- Discussion focused on whether to move forward with an announcement-only instance, populated by automated posts from the Data Tracker (similar to previous Twitter feeds) and potentially a moderated queue for announcements (like ietf-announce).
- Rich Salz advocated for automated, Data Tracker-coupled announcements, including IETF blog posts and meeting announcements, but not for hosting accounts for individuals.
- It was suggested to pose this as a low-effort experiment to avoid long-term maintenance of an unused service.
- The underlying mechanism would involve adding outgoing event hooks to the Data Tracker.
Tools Help Email Alias:
- Proposal to deprecate old, non-descriptive bug reporting email list names (e.g., django-project, data-tracker-project) and advertise tools-help@ietf.org instead.
- Redirects will be put in place for old aliases.
IMR Reports (Information Management Review Reports):
- Work is underway to migrate legacy monthly progress reports (draft actions, group actions, mailing list info) from old Perl and Python scripts.
- These reports will be moved into the Data Tracker and mail archive for better maintenance.
Infrastructure Strategy RFI:
- The RFI has been released and closes at the end of the month. Community members were encouraged to ensure relevant parties are aware and provide input.
Wiki Migrations (Trac to Wiki.js):
- Content migration is nearing completion.
- Questions regarding licensing and attribution tracking have been raised.
Data Tracker:
- Five releases have occurred since the January meeting, focusing on media-impacting issues.
- Upcoming work includes finishing PostgreSQL migration, then moving to Django 4 (which is becoming critical due to loss of dependency support for Django 2).
- The GUI draft submission endpoint is planned to be updated to use the new asynchronous backend before the IETF 116 submission crunch.
BibXML Services:
- Issue #339 regarding incorrect target URLs for references (pointing to RFC-vs.info instead of info pages) is currently blocking RFC publication.
- An urgent fix is being pursued, initially scoping the change to the bibxml-rfc data set where the correct target is known.

Decisions and Action Items

DNS Migration: Proceed with the planned migration to Cloudflare, allowing for a short unsigned period, but deferring if it coincides with IETF 116 draft submission crunch.
PostgreSQL Migration:
- Conduct a trial migration of the full production database on a hot standby machine in the next few days.
- Rebuild the old PostgreSQL cluster on ietfa using modern defaults in the coming weeks.
ID-diff / RFC-diff:
- Refocus efforts on maintaining and supporting RFC-diff, rather than bringing ID-diff to full parity.
- Deprecate the pyhd wrapper used for previous RFC-diff web services.
- Investigate the feasibility of a UI button to provide RFC-diff output from ID-diff.
Mastodon: Proceed with a low-effort experiment to run an announcement-only Mastodon instance, coupled with Data Tracker outgoing events and a moderated queue.
Tools Help Email Alias: Proceed with advertising tools-help@ietf.org as the primary bug reporting address and implement redirects from older aliases.
IMR Reports: Continue work to migrate legacy monthly reports to Data Tracker and mail archive.
BibXML Services: Prioritize fixing Issue #339 to unblock RFC publication, initially focusing on the bibxml-rfc data set.

Next Steps

Continue monitoring the asynchronous draft submission tool for IETF 116.
Report on the production PostgreSQL database migration trial at the next TOOLS call.
Further evaluate the long-term strategy for RFC-diff maintenance given its legacy dependencies.
Implement the initial Mastodon experiment.
Complete IMR report migration.
Address licensing and attribution questions related to Wiki migration.
Complete remaining PostgreSQL work for Data Tracker, then initiate the migration to Django 4.
Resolve BibXML Issue #339 to unblock RFC publication.