Use http get and set requests instead of ftp

[Botsareus]

Hey Numsgil I was thinking (well actually I got the idea from a guy I hang out with at school)

Can we replace the ftp with simple http get and set requests? That way we can really streamline everything and make it scale.

Problem is, do not how a clue how to write the server side portion of it. I may be able to hack the client side into vb6 though.

Also, wasn't this exactly what Shasta was working on?

[Numsgil]

Yes, I think it's a reasonable approach and yes, it was one of the plans for a while.  It needs server side support, either PHP or python or whatever, and I'm not really a web programmer so I didn't know how to do that.
 There's also security concerns and I'm not enough of a web programmer or linux guy to know what is or isn't a good idea here.  I'd want to jail the custom server side code as much as possible so it can't break things and can't be used as an entry point to attack the server.

[spike43884]

I suspect PHP.
Though, I'm just too out of touch with web programming and haven't ever properly done PHP. You'd have to check really.

If we get a proper web programmer down here, it'd be nice to have an internet page where we can see what's happening on an internet sim.

[theblaze]

Not a "proper" web programmer, so I'd be able to get it all put together securely etc (I'm more on the admin / security kinda stuff), but it won't have a pretty web page. Someone else can write the css if they'd like. Also, I'd suggest that the site should be moved to https using lets encrypt, really simple to set it up

[Numsgil]

What do you need me to do?

[theblaze]

RE https or the internet mode stuff?

[Numsgil]

Yeah, sounded like you were maybe volunteering some expertise in the area?

[theblaze]

Yeah, I'm happy to help out.

[theblaze]

For the internet mode stuff I'll get the server side stuff running, then it's just adding code to Darwinbots. For the https it's pretty simple to set it up, but if you give me access to the server hosting it I can do it for you. Have multiple sites using lets encrypt, as well as all my own sites ( https://crt.sh/?q=%25theblazehen.com ), and it works really well. Would also be neat to have a matrix.org / riot.im server if you'd like me to set one up

[theblaze]

For the internet mode, will the DB client ask for if there's a bot available to get regularly and always take it if there is one, or is the server side more intelligent and selectively chooses DB clients? I've got measures in place to prevent abuse (Draining all bots / pushing out a lot of your own bots),  but I'd need to know if I need to add more intelligence for the server

Eg, if there isn't any intelligence in the client then it may be worth, on receiving an uploaded bot assign it to another connected IP, rather than sending it back to the first client that issues a GET. I feel I may be over complicating things, and the simple method should work well enough:w

[Numsgil]

For the https it's pretty simple to set it up, but if you give me access to the server hosting it I can do it for you.

Would you mind just walking me through setting it up?  I'd like to have at least some idea of what's changed so when it breaks I vaguely know what to poke   The server is just a linux box.

Would also be neat to have a matrix.org / riot.im server if you'd like me to set one up.

Can you give me the elevator pitch for how you think it'd work?  Is it just a matter of hooking up the Darwinbots client/desktop app, and then matrix would be the server?  Do we have/get to run matrix on our own server?

For the internet mode, will the DB client ask for if there's a bot available to get regularly and always take it if there is one, or is the server side more intelligent and selectively chooses DB clients?

At the moment/historically it's first-come-first-serve, and there's nothing to prevent either duplication of bots when two people download a file at once or getting your own bot back.  But we can certainly do something smarter, especially if it's only a little bit of code to enable.  But my first priority would just be getting something set up.

I've got measures in place to prevent abuse (Draining all bots / pushing out a lot of your own bots)

Can you issue login credentials to people?  That would prevent at least some sorts of abuses I'm concerned with.  If we could tie it in the forum authentication that would be even better, but that might be tricky.

[theblaze]

Would you mind just walking me through setting it up?  I'd like to have at least some idea of what's changed so when it breaks I vaguely know what to poke   The server is just a linux box.

https://certbot.eff.org/ has a good quick start guide, otherwise we can chat on IRC or something if you have issues.

RE matrix, think of it as the IRC that we used to run just that it has scrollback / good web access etc. Was a bit off topic though.

At the moment/historically it's first-come-first-serve, and there's nothing to prevent either duplication of bots when two people download a file at once or getting your own bot back.  But we can certainly do something smarter, especially if it's only a little bit of code to enable.  But my first priority would just be getting something set up.

So what I've been thinking is to have a URL that you can use for different environments, eg im.darwinbots.com/zerobots or a private im.darwinbots.com/myownpersonalsim732187

Can you issue login credentials to people?  That would prevent at least some sorts of abuses I'm concerned with.  If we could tie it in the forum authentication that would be even better, but that might be tricky.

Should be possible, will be a bit tricky to do it with the forum details though

[theblaze]

two people download a file at once or getting your own bot back.

So I'm thinking for each world (better word than environment in previous reply), each client needs to stay within +10 and -10 bots (client identified by IP, not that hard to beat the restriction, but if someone wants to they'll find a way) to prevent taking all / flooding the IM with their own bots, then we keep a pool of say 100 bots on the server. If a client requests to GET a bot and they're within their limit and we have 100+ bots on the server then we choose a random bot, send it to them, and delete it from the server. Won't guarantee that you won't get the same bot right back, but you'll have a good chance it isn't the same you sent out.

[theblaze]

Woot, got it running. Will make it publicly available in 2-3 hours

[Numsgil]

I got the https certificates but certbot is having a hard time installing them in to apache.  We have a lot of virtual hosts that are Include'd from other files, and I think that's confusing it.  I'll need to manually add the certificates to all the virtual host files.  Sometime in the next few days hopefully.