A solution:
 - have domains point to mageia.org host server;
 - have a vhost for each domain, that will rewrite the request "mageia.$tld" to "mageia.org/?fromtld=$tld"
 - have the webapp decide or propose where to go, depending on:
    - a locally maintained map of tld => language when this is easy [1]
    - browser language preferences
    - user interactive decision if needed

[1] Mageia.org website is handling languages, not countries. TLDs are not related to languages, but to countries, or non-country stuff. In some cases, however, there's a single match (mageia.fr => mageia.org/fr for instance). In some other cases, that may be different (mageia.ch => de(-ch), fr(-ch), it(-ch)).

There is 2 steps : 
- dns setup, do we host the dns for them or not

Hosting the dns on our server is rather easy, the only problem is the administrative burden of renewal ( and the cost )
Letting people taking care of dns is easier for now, but will be bad if we need to do change, and is not good if we want to ensure it work, etc. 


- vhost setup
 - would the $tld information be useful ? 
Otherwise, this part would be quite easy, just one template of mod_rewrite and that's it.

CC: (none) => misc

(In reply to comment #2)
> There is 2 steps : 
> - dns setup, do we host the dns for them or not
> 
> Hosting the dns on our server is rather easy, the only problem is the
> administrative burden of renewal ( and the cost )
> Letting people taking care of dns is easier for now, but will be bad if we need
> to do change, and is not good if we want to ensure it work, etc. 

So far, let's say that they manage their DNS to point to our server. If relevant, and they are ok with it, we may get the hosting/managing ourselves.

> - vhost setup
>  - would the $tld information be useful ? 

Yes, to automate the redirection from a given country tld to the proper language, if this can be automated easily (remove the "mageia." part of it and send it in the query string), when obvious (other cases will have the list of supported languages).

I'm not sure what you are talking about.

I own the domain mageia.de. I'm using a costfree hoster for a minimal webspace.
There's no contents except a .htaccess file:
--------------------------
#RewriteEngine On
#RewriteBase /

RedirectPermanent  /  http://mageia.org/de/
--------------------------

That's all.

CC: (none) => molch.b

 * that works too, with the redirection maintainance being in each .htaccess/vhost file (be it hosted on your end, or in a central place);
 * some people may not want to host it on their end (this bug comes from such one query wrt mageia.ro that was discussed on sysadmin ml, but got forgotten);
 * for one tld, there may be several languages available (.ch => de, fr, it; .us => en, es for instance);
 * if we are to manage several domains in a row like this, better have a minimal setup;
 * the proposal above is just to have the same place for all vhosts, redirect to the same place and move the redirection map in a single place in the web site config).

By the way, thinking of it now, a perhaps even lighter solution could be to have all domains config in the same vhost as mageia.org and have the website conf detect the virtualhost and act accordingly (no need to redirect to mageia.org/?fromtld=).

(In reply to comment #2)
> There is 2 steps : 
> - dns setup, do we host the dns for them or not
> 
> Hosting the dns on our server is rather easy, the only problem is the
> administrative burden of renewal ( and the cost )
> Letting people taking care of dns is easier for now, but will be bad if we need
> to do change, and is not good if we want to ensure it work, etc. 

dns hosting and "administrative burden of renewal ( and the cost )" is two different things. We could host the dns, without being owner of/paying the domain name. But I don't know if we should do that.

Or we could ask that mageia.org association own the domains, and ask people to donate money instead of paying a domain they only redirect to mageia.

CC: (none) => boklm

(In reply to comment #5)
> 
> By the way, thinking of it now, a perhaps even lighter solution could be to
> have all domains config in the same vhost as mageia.org and have the website
> conf detect the virtualhost and act accordingly (no need to redirect to
> mageia.org/?fromtld=).

I think we should have everything official hosted on mageia.org only, so a redirect would be better.

So the people visiting websites understand what is official or not :
 - http://mageia.org => official
 - http://mageia.[somethingelse] => not official

(In reply to comment #7)
> I think we should have everything official hosted on mageia.org only, so a
> redirect would be better.

That wouldn't change.

> So the people visiting websites understand what is official or not :
>  - http://mageia.org => official
>  - http://mageia.[somethingelse] => not official

This one would, in case it were redirected, be rewritten under mageia.org anyway. And that is only to manage domains that are registered and people want to forward to us.

(In reply to comment #8)
> (In reply to comment #7)
> > I think we should have everything official hosted on mageia.org only, so a
> > redirect would be better.
> 
> That wouldn't change.

Ah, I misunderstood you previous comment talking about one vhost for all domains.

I saw that this thread was abandoned, but I'd like to breath new life into it :-)
Warning: I have no technical skills in this domain, so please excuse my "innocence".

I own the mageia.ro, there's no DNS service associated with it at the registrar where it was bought and there's no renewal fee, I pay once and it's for life. Lucky for me it didn't cost me a fortune, only 50 EUR :-)

The registrar technical team told me that as it's registered in their system, I only need to replace in the fields where their DNS servers are indicated with the Mageia's one. They also told me that this is the easiest way to do it and the redirection from mageia.ro to mageia.org/ro/ to be done on Mageia's servers.

And, in the end, there's no will to sparse the community efforts in a non official site for the Romanian community, this is why I (insist) would like that the Romanian's community official site to be mageia.org/ro/ (and redirect mageia.ro to it). This will respect and preserve the model in place: an official site translated in every possible language :-)

The forum in Romanian language will follow the same model as the others, it'll be hosted externally on www.MageiaUsers.ro and there will be a redirection link in the official forum. Once again, we (insist) like to preserver the actual model in place.

A community is stronger than ever when it stays together.

CC: (none) => cfrussen

Ok so the redirection on the web should ok soon.

www.mageia.$tld -> redirect to www.mageia.org/fromtld=$tld 
and since this is the season, I can bundle a 2nd redirection for the same price.

For the dns, i will have to see how to do it properly ( ie, in a clean fashion from a technical point of view ).

I have added the dns part as well, but do not have any domain to test, so for now, we can consider this as being untested.

For the sysadmins, everything is in : 
  http://svnweb.mageia.org/adm/puppet/deployment/tld_redirections/manifests/init.pp?revision=1807&view=markup

Thanks. We could test with mageia.org, if Florin has the info to update his DNS with.

Once this is done, test with:
 * go to http://www.mageia.ro/
 * should be rewritten into http://www.mageia.org/?fromtld=ro
 * which in turn is rewritten into http://www.mageia.org/ro/
 * if tld is unknown, it redirects to http://www.mageia.org/?langs that lists currently supported locales.

In fact, the .ro is already deployed, so the next step is on florin side. Either we host the dns, or he do.