Update Status in IPdb Status Update appears broken

Date: Mon, 26 Oct 1998 13:05:20 -0400 (AST)
From: Edward Dyer <aa146@chebucto.ns.ca>
To: Christopher Majka <nextug@is.dal.ca>
cc: "Michael T. Smith" <michael@csuite.ns.ca>, CCN Technical Committee <ccn-tech@chebucto.ns.ca>,
Precedence: bulk
Return-Path: <ccn-ip-mml-owner@chebucto.ns.ca>

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On Sat, 24 Oct 1998, Christopher Majka wrote:

> On Sat, 24 Oct 1998, Michael T. Smith wrote:
> 
> > Can you come up with any specific examples? I've
> >  - changed ip-1488's jumpkey twice, success
> >  - changed ip-1519 (not yet created)'s priv list name twice, success
> >  - changed ip-1519's proposed group twice, success
> >  - added a pub list to ip-1519, success (removed by hand just in case)
> 
> Here is the sort of peculiarity I am finding: go to ip-1423 at:
> 
>    Linkname: IPdb Status Update
>         URL: http://www.chebucto.ns.ca/cgi-ipbin/status-update?IP=ip-1423
> 
> (This is a dead IP application for a group that I will shortly delete,
> however, I've kept it around so we can play with it).
> 
> Try deleteing the entries for jumpkey:, Group List: or Private Mail List:
> (so that there is no information in these fields) and then select Update
> Status. Presto: the information re-appears!
> 
> I guess this is not life or death, however it would be nice to be able to
> (for instance) eliminate a jumpkey entry if we didn't want to have
> anything there at all.

I'll preface this by saying this reply is from general knowledge, 
rather than from having actually examined all the relevant parts of
the system. But here is my suspicion of why it happens this way...

I would suppose there might be a valid real-world reason for having
no jump-key, although I can't think of one - unless we are about to
support IP's that exist in isolation, with no links from the rest of
CCN :-?

I think we might have to special case the script that generates the
i list.

As far as ml-priv is concerned, I am sure that it would break some
of our scripts not to have ml-priv available, so I assume the script
simply doesn't delete it. 

Group list sounds like it too is essential, I suspect, although now
that the editor-in-chief can add himself to an ip-group it is not so
critical as before, still it is useful to maintain a record of
who is responsible for the site :)  even if it is the self-same
editor-in-chief.  I don't think it would break anything to have an
"empty" ip-group, except perhaps all-ips mail.  May need another
special case check.

Someone with a very good grasp of the system might be able to go and
bomb-proof all the associated places, but I don't think it would be
trivial.  Meantime, the checks may be too restrictive, but the
alternative is to dope out better tests to ensure that something
that will break is not allowed to happen.  And I come back to
wondering, how could an ipdb entry work at all if it were missing
those items?

I guess the ipdb scripts should reply with a response saying why (or
at least that) it has refused :-)  Put that on the list to
investigate... 

> I can't figure out why it's possible to change entries in these fields but
> not to delete them altogether. Any ideas?
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Chris

Ed Dyer aa146@chebucto.ns.ca   (902) H 826-7496  CCN  Assistant Postmaster
http://www.chebucto.ns.ca/~aa146/    W 426-4894  CSuite Technical Workshop
Religion Page Editor, Chebucto Community Network http://www.chebucto.ns.ca


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