Re: [Sks-devel] Query UI which offers all servers in the SKS mesh

[Sebastian Urbach]

On Tue, 28 Dec 2010 01:11:59 -0500
Phil Pennock <address@hidden> wrote:

Hi Phil,

> The server query interface at http://sks.spodhuis.org/ now automatically
> adds a new list drop-down, if JavaScript is enabled in your browser,
> letting you choose any server in the SKS mesh to query against.  No
> JavaScript, no list of alternative servers, and the UI degrades down
> cleanly.

Im impressed, nice Job Phil ! Thats definitely a great feature, so
nobody have to hop from one key-server to another to check out if his
or her key is known publicly on all servers. And it seems also nice for
the group-spirit within the sks-network :-)

> Note that the hostnames used are those configured into the sks instances
> as their own hostname, so not all are valid in public DNS; "antix",
> "basket" and "booboo" come to mind.  The default server is the one
> running on the host the JS was loaded from.

Nothing to complain, everything in order.

> This relies on my mesh spidering service to deliver the list of
> hostnames as JSON.  If the service has recently restarted then the
> complete mesh won't be available, so instead a fallback list will be
> used, which is just the hosts in my membership file.  [503 leads to
> second AJAX query]  If the results are all valid public DNS, then this
> is the likely cause.

If i may contribute an idea, wouldn't it be better to use the latest
available list as a backup and not just your membership file when the
service needs to be restarted ?

> Some minor Python additions to the mesh daemon and a little JavaScript
> and this was fairly easy, but I'm certainly not a professional JS
> programmer and it probably shows.

It works and it's a great feature, that's what matters to me.

> Copyright status: I don't know the various CC options and am not in the
> mood to explore legalese right now, so if you want to copy the
> JS/HTML, go ahead, but just let me know in a private mail please,
> especially if you fix the AJAX callback URL to be my generated list,
> instead of something on your server.

I will definitely try it :-) Still need a private mail ?

-- 

Mit freundlichen Gruessen / yours sincerely

Sebastian Urbach

----------------------------------------------------------
One word of truth shall outweigh the whole world
----------------------------------------------------------
Alexander Issajewitsch Solschenizyn (1918 - 2008)
Mathematiker, Schriftsteller und Nobelpreisträger

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