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1
The Webhotell at University of Bergen
  • Helge Opedal
  • Integration and application development
  • IT department - University of Bergen
  • 2012



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The Webhotell team
  • Raymond, Ronny, Trond and Helge
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What do we do?
  • Provide solutions for all students and staff so they can publish web-content
  • Upgrading, upgrading, upgrading
  • Monitor uptime and system resources (especially when something goes wrong)
  • Track and prevent hackers and spammers
  • Give user support
  • Resolve bugs and errors reported by users
  • Enable new instances requested by students and staff





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Numbers and statistics
  • All counts of sites and users and more are performed at 9th of May 2012
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”Webhotell”: A collection of several services
  • Static HTML service:
    • Folk (People)
    • Org (Organizations)
    • Kurs (Courses)
  • Dynamic HTML services:
    • Wiki
    • Blog
    • Hospits

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Static HTML service
  • People, Org and Course
    • Static HTML with Apache webserver on Linux RHEL
    • No PHP, cgi-bin or other dynamic serverside components
      • People: 750 users personal homepages
      • Org: 96 sites
      • Course: 9 sites
    • Examples:
      • http://folk.uib.no
      • http://org.uib.no/tekna/
      • http://kurs.uib.no/litteraturglobaliseringfortelling/
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Wiki service
  • A solution for groups to add and change content, mainly text related. (A wikipedia thingy)
  • Mediawiki software
    • PHP, Apache webserver, Postgresql databases
  • 74 wiki instances today
  • 36 extensions (added modular functionality)
  • Examples:
    • https://wikihost/itwiki
    • https://it.uib.no/en




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Wordpress multisite
  • Providing website solutions for student, staff and organizations
    • User management and extended web content capabilites.
  • Based on Wordpress system; PHP, Apache, Mysql database
  • 165 instances today
  • 67 plugins
  • 33 themes available for everyone (93 themes in total)
  • 573 UiB content contributers (users of WP sites)
  • Examples:
    • http://eurospheres.org
    • http://mib.uib.no
    • http://clara.uib.no
    • http://dekanblogg-hf.b.uib.no


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Hospits
  • PHP and Mysql hosting service for students and staff
  • Self managing hosting service
  • 107 sites
  • Examples:
    • http://arenaromanistica.uib.no/
    • http://studblogg.uib.no
    • http://ecl.cultland.org/




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Validating users
  • Different solutions:
    • ldap (wiki, people, org, course, hospits)
    • kerberos (some few wiki’s)
    • local users (wiki, blog)
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How do users access services to update web-content?
  • Web-interface
    • Blog, Wiki and Hospits
  • SSH/SFTP
    • Hospits, People, Org and Course
  • Samba (smb/cifs)
    • Folk, Org and Course


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Security
  • Security breaches:
    • Systems like Wordpress and Mediawiki reduces the probability
    • Allowing users to add serverside code increases the probability
  • Static HTML is very safe
  • Hackers like Hospits :-)
    • Potential security holes
    • Difficult to test all sites because of variety in programming code provided by users
  • Server security is intact
    • root access is almost impossible to achive
    • Apache user has limited rights
    • Data is secured in version controlled TSM backup system
  • Activites against hacker activity
    • Email spam controll
    • Nightly clamscan file-scan of all files on Hospits
    • Firewall IPtables restrictions
    • Sites on Hospits with security ”holes” are being closed down and web-content can be moved to the Blog or Wiki.
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The future? What do we want
  • Self-service
    • users create their own sites on the fly
  • Drupal multisite hosting
  • Database hotel maybe?
    • Oracle/Postgresql/Mysql
  • Expanding core technologies (Python, Postgres, and others)


14
Thanks
  • Helge Opedal
  • IT department - University of Bergen