I have started to deploy, but found some bug in our puppet setup.

CC: (none) => misc

Ok I think I fixed so far the 2 issues , let's try to see if this work better

Ok so installing the forum uncovered some issues in our puppet manifests ( see the various fix in the afternoon ), and still requires manual intervention for filling the database. 

This should be automated for next time.

*** Bug 655 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

CC: (none) => rdalverny

German forum is installed, the db was filled with the same data as the others. I tried to go further, but this requires access that I do not seems to have.

And the url is https://forums.mageia.org/de/index.php

Any further improvement?
ATM I see a message "This board has no forums" while below it says that there are "Total posts 2 ⢠Total topics 2 ⢠Total members 4 ⢠Our newest member maat"

I try to login but then I get a familiar error:
--------------------------
General Error
SQL ERROR [ postgres ]

ERROR: null value in column "user_timezone" violates not-null constraint []

An SQL error occurred while fetching this page. Please contact the Board Administrator if this problem persists.
-------------------------

I think we had that in the international forum at the beginning.

Weird :/
I do not see the error with my login ( but I cannot log at all )

I have the same error.

On going to the page directly, I have:

  [phpBB Debug] PHP Notice</b>: in file <b>/includes/auth.php</b> on line <b>432</b>: <b>Invalid argument supplied for foreach()

On trying to log in, I have the same error as reported in #c7 by Wolfgang.

I think the admin must finish the installation but I do not have the forumadmin password. I will try to change it later.

Ok so I finally found the issue, it was a caching problem. Phpbb cache the configuration on the disk and this do not seems to work fine. I will switch to a memory based cache to avoid this issue in the future . 

FYI, the forums are now working, but the category are still the english one, I changed the forumadmin password and cannot place the previous one as it is encrypted. ( I can change it again ).

ATM I get a 404 with forums.mageia.org/de - is the subdirectory /install still there (it has to be erased after installation to be able to access the forum).

Thx for your efforts, Michael. How do we go from here? Is maât setting this up or is anybody else appointed admin?

I would propose a German admin. It's easier having an admin speaking the language.

Wobo, perhaps you forgot the trailing "/"? Btw, can the apache config be chaged, so it doesn't need the "/"?

I was playing with forums to see the different cache ( and it seems that apc works fine, so I will look at switching ) so maybe some stuff didn't worked.

There was no redirection from /de to /de/ . And regarding who can setup, I do not know, all informations I have come from this bug report, but I guess we have to decide who take care of the forum and how, etc. ( if possible, in a way that do not result in a too much chaotic way ).

Yes, I forgot the slash. With the slash at the end it is working. 

As I see it is already set up, although with english titles.

I suggest:

 - leaving the setup as it is to mirror the international forum and only translate the forum/subforum titles

 - leaving the same setup regarding permissions to avoid discussions like "why is this not as in the German forum" or the other way round.

 - having German speaking admin and moderators is a necessity, /me thinks.

Nice to have: 
 - redirection to the German forum based on browser info or whatever (it works with the main Mageia web page)
 - (for the future) a set of links in the header of the international forum pointing to the German forum and others to come.

The problem is that we have 2 differents db, with 2 differents set of permissions, so they are not synced. 
And the question of who and where are managed the group of moderator is stil open. ( keep in mid the big picture, like "granting email aliases" and "letting people vote easyly", which basically mean "better to store that in ldap as primary source of group based information" IMHO ).

This does not collide with the first 3 points of my suggestion (those which are to be cleared ASAP to be able to open the forum).

But first thing should be changing the forum to German - are the German language files installed? I remember giving maât the location of the language files (formal and informal).

Meaning, the next things to do:
 - changing the language to DE
 - appointing an admin with overall permissions who can then
 - appoint Global Moderators inside the forum (from already existing users in LDAP)
 - care for the rest of the setup of the forum (translating teh existing forum descritzions and all the other nitty gritty things which take most of the time).

As for redirection and setting up groups in LDAP, IMHO this is not so pressing (filling in those 6 or 7 names of international and German moderators in a future to be LDAP group is (hopefully) not a big deal). I just would recommend not to let the opening of the forum be blocked beyond the final release.

No german file, only english and half of the french one.

(In reply to comment #17)
> The problem is that we have 2 differents db, with 2 differents set of
> permissions, so they are not synced. 
> And the question of who and where are managed the group of moderator is stil
> open. ( keep in mid the big picture, like "granting email aliases" and "letting
> people vote easyly", which basically mean "better to store that in ldap as
> primary source of group based information" IMHO ).

/me thinks it would be easier (as a general rule) to let local apps manage locally what is already easily managed locally, with its own logic/UI, instead of backporting its own complexity up a layer.

Yes, that makes it more complex but easier too: it decouples things - and that's good. And as long as there are people to manage the local base (forum admins), that should be fine.

If that's easy to manage in LDAP, so be it. But if it requires some more work, better leave it to local app, where it's already available.

(In reply to comment #15)
> There was no redirection from /de to /de/ 

Well, at least, /de should rewrite to /de/ . As to having / redirect to the right locale as is done on www, it's easily done using http://svnweb.mageia.org/web/www/trunk/localeDetection.class.php?view=markup (usage example in relocate() function in http://svnweb.mageia.org/web/www/trunk/langs.inc.php?revision=319&view=markup#l35 ).

I can deliver this (standalone) part if needed?

(In reply to comment #19)
> No german file, only english and half of the french one.

Hmm, so maât did not install it. :(

What can we do? It's a matter of 
 - downloading the tarball
 - opening the tarball and copying the files to their respective location in
the forum file tree.
 - then the lang has to be set in the admin panel.

Telling where is the tarball would be a good start. I will commit to git later.

https://www.phpbb.de/downloads/sprachpakete.php
"Sprachdateien Deutsch âDuâ 3.0.8 [zip]
DateigröÃe: 259.03 KiB
MD5-Summe: 280ed505158d4875f95bdf0b8201ac0f"

This is the informal language pack. Do you have all this in git? Ok, then I can mail customization changes of files to sysadmin list, right?

Adding remark:
"informal" here means the informal nature of addressing the user, not informal status of the software!

If you want to see the sources used, you can get them from git with :
git clone ssh://git.mageia.org/git/forum

Thx Nicolas, done. It matches with our setup (at least the visible parts of the forum, haven't checked others). So, I could help (if needed in future) with customization requests, sending just diffs to be integrated in respective files.

The german pack is pushed on git repos... you can pull/update then install it through admin / system : language packs

Update pulled

How are we going to continue?

Who will be administrators / moderators of the German forum?

Oliver

Moderators need obviously to speak german lang... and as for /en having some native speakers would be better.

for admins i think they'd better speak german too.

=> hence we'll need a public list for forum admin coordination (to ensure that structures and setups are simlar between forums for example) with inside all forum admins (and modearators too... having sysadmins -- or at least one of them -- subscribed would be a good thing too)

Like it is done for i18n ? 

We do have the following structure :
- 1 big i18n group, with 2 representant/leader
- small language specific team, with people able to commit ( committers ), people who are leader of the team ( usually also committers )

So we can use the same structure, with moderator instead of translator, and forum admins instead of commiters.

This way, we have some common structure, we reuse the same procedure,s and we have a way for moderator people to be represented in council ( as planned in the beggining )

Yes, this would be an ideal solution from the technical point of view. Provided translators are also suited as moderators (like, show the social skills a moderator must have). Then there is the question if they would take this time consuming job.

Admins should be people who know how to administrate a forum software (at best have some experience but not a must_have) because it is their job to answer to requests and (if reasonable) make the necessary changes in the forum settings. They also need the social skills like moderators (that's a must_have). I don't know if all committers are suited as admins. And again there is the question of availability for the job.

Mind that admins and moderators are very important because they will likely be the main point of contact between the new users of Mageia and the Mageia crowd. Therefore much of the success of Mageia depends on their behavior and ability to deal with all kinds of situations (look at Isadora and Germ in the international forum as very positive examples)

For the German forum Oliver suggested that he and I will start as admins (Oliver because of his presence and knowledge, I because of my experience as admin and my knowledge of the forum software). Both because many German users already know us.

Of course we will also act as Global Moderators, but we may/will need more (depending on the growth of the forum).

No, I didn't say to use translator, but to use the organisation of i18n.

Ah, ok, so I misunderstood the whole thing, especially the sentence:
"So we can use the same structure, with moderator instead of translator, and
forum admins instead of commiters."

I understand the idea to use existing groups or a wish to have some automatism or common structure. But as explained admins and moderators are positions which are based on the individual's personality, not on technical skills such of a group like translators, artwork creators, packagers. I'd rather search such people in the communications crowd because being communicative is one of the needed skills.

But the i18n group is the right place to start searching staff for localised forums, no doubt.

I seriously start to wonder my english skil, given the number of people not understanding what I say.

Again, when I said "reuse the structure", I mean organize things in the same way. And individual personality and hability to moderate a forum is just another skill that can be learned like the others, there is nothing magic about it ( if people can be teached to negociate with terrorists, forum moderation is something that can be learned too ).

English is an alien language to both of us :)

I don't agree that you can "learn" to be communicative. We know enough examples for good and bad moderators. You yourself would be a bad moderator (you yourself wrote something in that line several times), you have other skills. Adam W, Germ, Oliver are examples of good moderators.

But that set aside, I think the main difficulty will be to find suited people who also volunteer for this time consuming job.

Anyhow, if Oliver's proposition is ok we should see to get on with the German forum. 

1. Oliver and I need complete admin status to start making the forum ready to be public.

2. The issue with redirection, can it be solved (see comment #20 ) ?

@misc - there's nothing wrong with your English, I understood you perfectly - use the same *structure*, but not necessarily the same *people*.

CC: (none) => margot

(In reply to comment #36)
> Anyhow, if Oliver's proposition is ok we should see to get on with the German
> forum. 
> 
> 1. Oliver and I need complete admin status to start making the forum ready to
> be public.
> 
> 2. The issue with redirection, can it be solved (see comment #20 ) ?

How can I help to get this going, to have a German forum for release date? Is there something I can do?
It would be of great help if we were ready to include a pointer to a German forum in the upcoming release announcements (german version).

Hi Wobo

1) : Just done (thanks misc for doing sql magic)

2) : Will be done just a little bit later once sysadmin can save a little bit of time (but release critical things first i guess)

Ok so the last issue was lack of people with founder privileges. Maat gave e the command :

update phpbb_users set user_type=3 where user_id=$X;  with X being his own userid. 

( I just write it there for reference )

note for myself : 
adapt .de template like i did for english to forward people to identity instead of local register page

done :)

Thx folks. Will see what I can do now.

Unfortunately the wrong language pack was installed in git. We will use the informal pack ("Du"), installed is the formal pack ("Sie").
I gave the correct pack's name and location in comment #23

So, pls somebody install the correct pack in git, then we can switch the default in the ACP.

Question: Why was I not set as Administrator? (just a question, it is not really important as long as I have all the permissions)

Forum all set to be opened to the public.

Pushed informal pack ("Du") to git repos.

Once pulled you will be able to install both and let people choose

You are set as Administrator and also Global Moderator and Mageia Founder.

(Though it seems that groups setup (color and display mode) from /en forum were not kept)

Your default group is Mageia Founders but you can change it either through admin CP or through your user CP (profile setup)

Thx for the explanation.

I pulled the updated pack ( forgot to post on this bug sooner ).

Thx misc, I activated it in the ACP.

Problem: I set the default language as "Deutsch (Du)", when I log out and start the forum later, the default is back to English. I log in, look in the ACP: it's set to English. I change it to German, log out.
Later I look, it's back to English.

Is this somehow stored in a db or config file which is protected by tight permissions? I never had that problem at MandrivaUser.de, once the default is set, it keeps the default until I change it.

Mind, I'm not talking about the user preferences, this seems to work ok. It's the default setting (the way the forum looks when you are not logged in, or for a visitor).

An idea which I can't check myself:
Is there any central configuration file for forums.mageia.org which has its influence on all forums below that subdomain ?

This would possibly explain the problem.

Indeed, we do have a puppet script to force the language.

I will switch to de, as it was only en for now.

OMG! I've spent some time searching for the cause of this behavior!
Pls switch to the informal de pack, thx

well, what is the setting for the informal de pack ? ( ie, the codename ) ?

its just 'de', only the formal pack has an extended codename.

BTW: are there any other external settings I should know about which may influence the forum software? I think I'd rather ask now than possibly wasting time with searching next time.

(In reply to comment #53)
> Pls switch to the informal de pack, thx

Sorry, when I wrote comment #53 I was still sleeping - I should have checked to see if you had already switched to "de" (which you had).

You can check phpbb_config  : 
http://svnweb.mageia.org/adm/puppet/modules/phpbb/manifests/init.pp?revision=1691&view=markup

ldap_base_dn
auth_method
ldap_mail
ldap_uid
cookie_domain
server_name
default_lang

We use this to deploy the forum and configure it automatically. The default_lang is indeed something we could avoid, it will just requires to set it on every forum by hand on installation, but the idea was to avoid manual step ( so people can focus on more productive task ).

Well, the admin has to do some settings anyway at forum start, so setting the language is just one more click in the ACP.

Default lang is the language which is shown when you are not logged in - it has to be German for the German forum, french for a french forum, spanish for a spanish forum, etc., because that's what the visitor (not logged in) is seeing.

At first glance I can't see any settings in the link you gave which would interfere with ACP settings, the default lang seemed to be the only one.

Thx

PS: when you are used to customize your own forum (change overall_header.php and the like) it is hard to admin a forum without being able to customize :)

Created attachment 503 [details]
additional registration field in German forum

There seems to be a "hole in the wall" with forum registration:

Steps to reproduce:

1. user clicks on 'Login' in the forum

2. he gives invalid data, so the login fails
Underneath the login area there is a field explaining about registration and a
button "Register" - see screenshot as attachment #503 [details]
(this field does not exist in the international forum!)

3. He clicks on this button and instead of leading him to identity.mageia.org
he is presented the forum registration screen.

4. He reads and accepts the generic forum rules, fills in his data and the
captcha, clicks on "Register".

5. He receives a mail from the forum with his register data and an activation
link. Clicking on this link he sees the forum screen with a success message.

6. He tries to login but (of course) the login fails.

I tried this and can confirm.

I looked at the matching tab in the ACP but I see no problem there.

Maat said he need to adapt the template.

Yes, I know. He just has to comment out a part in /styles/prosilver/template/login_body.html

That's all.

It would be nice if this could be done ASAP!

I already received several mails from users who ran into that trap. One user complained at the set forum-admin address, which is maat - who had to forward it to me because people write in German.

I already asked maat yesterday to change this admin address to me.

(In reply to comment #62)
> Yes, I know. He just has to comment out a part in
> /styles/prosilver/template/login_body.html
> 
> That's all.

Done for that (but not commented... i found a better way) :)

For email address i'd advocate the creation of a forumadmin-de  alias to forward contacts messages to both .de admins

Till that i can set up a temp address (please wobo let me know the mail addr you mant me to set up)

(In reply to comment #64)
 
Whichever way, the point is that it's done (although I already created a mail template for complaining users :-/ )
 
> For email address i'd advocate the creation of a forumadmin-de  alias to
> forward contacts messages to both .de admins

Yes, sure.
 
> Till that i can set up a temp address (please wobo let me know the mail addr
> you mant me to set up)

wobo.mageiaforum@googlemail.com

done :)

Nice, thx!

As for the registration I see that you only changed the operation of the button - that leaves the links to the generic forum rules and privacy policy in place (which I wanted to avoid).

Means: as soon as we have a privacy policy for the Mageia forums and as soon as we do have Mageia forum rules (is anybody working on those 2 issues?) these links have to be changed as well (I'll keep this on my list).

Well, I would prefer avoid having too much aliases to manage by hand. So couldn't we rather use a ldap group ? 
( so forum-admins-de@group. would work )
( and once we find how to make ldap -> forum work, we will manage this part with ldap to avoid duplication of information )

Certainly no problem from my side - my main concern is that 
 - users experience a short response time
 - nobody's time is wasted by having to forward mails he can not reply to anyway

OTOH a group receiving such mails may result in several answers sent to the user (from each group member), may be even with different contents.

(In reply to comment #20)
> (In reply to comment #15)
> > There was no redirection from /de to /de/ 
> Well, at least, /de should rewrite to /de/ . As to having / redirect to the
> right locale as is done on www, it's easily done using
> http://svnweb.mageia.org/web/www/trunk/localeDetection.class.php?view=markup
> (usage example in relocate() function in
> http://svnweb.mageia.org/web/www/trunk/langs.inc.php?revision=319&view=markup#l35
> ).
> I can deliver this (standalone) part if needed?

Unfortunately there has been no change yet. I know that you are busy and I would not call because of a "convenience" problem.

But this is a real problem, because the link to "Forum" on the German main page leads to the english forum and there is not one word about the German forum anywhere on the Mageia pages. A German user will not know that this German forum even exists, except for the users who read it in the mandrivauser.de forum or in the english forum at Mageia.

Of course it's also a matter of convenience, users have to fill in the whole URL manually instead of clicking on the link in the header of mageia.org.

(In reply to comment #68)
> Well, I would prefer avoid having too much aliases to manage by hand. So
> couldn't we rather use a ldap group ? 
> ( so forum-admins-de@group. would work )
> ( and once we find how to make ldap -> forum work, we will manage this part
> with ldap to avoid duplication of information )

Or for now, a group/alias for all forum admins ?

(In reply to comment #69)
> 
> OTOH a group receiving such mails may result in several answers sent to the
> user (from each group member), may be even with different contents.

Someone answering a mail received on an alias should add the alias in copy, so others know it was answered.

A group/alias for all is a idea, but I am not sure that everybody speak german :)

(In reply to comment #70)
> (In reply to comment #20)
> > I can deliver this (standalone) part if needed?
> 
> Unfortunately there has been no change yet. I know that you are busy and I
> would not call because of a "convenience" problem.

Attached a script to place at the root of forums.mageia.org. 

The good: it works; and only redirects to forums.mageia.org/{language}/ is {language} is known to be supported. Else it redirects to forums.mageia.org/en/ (note that we could have other fallback languages than English if needed).

The not-so-good:
 - this script hosts a map of known forum languages;
 - our phpBB setup hosts a map of know forums languages with their actual URLs; see https://forums.mageia.org/en/viewforum.php?f=20 (which should be ported instead into a top nav bar item)
 - Apache config has redirections to individual forums.

So it could be improved:
 - have a single map of forums somewhere;
 - have redirection rules send the request to a PHP script to decide where to redirect if needed:
    - /en/ (known, locally supported) => ok, go ahead
    - /fr/ (known, remotely supported) => ok, redirect
    - / => redirect to best Accept-Language match
    - /kg/ (unknown) => redirect to best Accept-Language match

> But this is a real problem, because the link to "Forum" on the German main page
> leads to the english forum

Has been fixed/pushed a few days ago without a notice for known forums (yet another map of forums to manage, yeah!).

Created attachment 557 [details]
PHP redirection script for forums.mageia.org

The overall solution (as has been done in Mandriva forum):

In the international forum the header displays all known forums, local as well as external. 

After this has been done 

- no need for redirects by a script, let all users come to the international forum. There they will see their language and can go to their forum (which they will bookmark anyway after the first visit) - or do not see their language, meaning that there is no forum in that language (at least that we know of) and they have to do with the international forum.

- no need for the forum section (Supporting Community forums) any more
- no need to change the forum entry in the nav bar, let it point to forums.mageia.org for all languages

- no need to deal with different maps

Next time, could a different bug report be opened instead of putting everything in one bug report ?

Yes, the normal way to have an extra bug for each bug :)

But here the whole "report" from start almost to the end is a consistent string of issues, each following or being a consequence of a previous issue.
So IMHO it was ok to gather the whole topic in one report. 

The last part is related to the whole forum & website section, though.

(In reply to comment #77)
> The last part is related to the whole forum & website section, though.

That's for me :-p I'll push bugs for that; see bug 1797 and bug 1798.

(In reply to comment #75)
> The overall solution (as has been done in Mandriva forum):
> 
> In the international forum the header displays all known forums, local as well
> as external. 
> 
> After this has been done 
> 
> - no need for redirects by a script, let all users come to the international
> forum. There they will see their language and can go to their forum (which they
> will bookmark anyway after the first visit) - or do not see their language,
> meaning that there is no forum in that language (at least that we know of) and
> they have to do with the international forum.
> 
> - no need for the forum section (Supporting Community forums) any more
> - no need to change the forum entry in the nav bar, let it point to
> forums.mageia.org for all languages
> 
> - no need to deal with different maps

And let 404 errors for people who prefer to memorize urls and type them (without the trailing /)

Not that good imho :-(

My point of view : The Communities forum shown in /en/ is perfectly OK, manageable through a dedicated admin interface... we just need to adapt the script to get the map from /en/ forums database...

So :

-- No more 404, 
-- an always up to date map, 
-- links between forums allowing better SEO marks.

And we can *ALSO* provide some kind of web service to give an up-to-date forum menu for all mageia sites...

Just putting a global menu that we'll have to maintain (and iimn push via puppet to each of our website) is not something i'd call optimized if we want to spare a little bit of time for our sysadmins :)

(In reply to comment #79)
> 
> And let 404 errors for people who prefer to memorize urls and type them
> (without the trailing /)

Sorry, how would that happen? You can't avoid all 404s caused by typos by users who prefer to type URLs instead of using links
 
> My point of view : The Communities forum shown in /en/ is perfectly OK,

Except that it is hidden in the forum. People not speakign English will see an english forum and hit the back button. Why should they look further in a foreign language forum for something that may be there or not?

> And we can *ALSO* provide some kind of web service to give an up-to-date forum
> menu for all mageia sites...

No need, just a link back to mageia.org/[lang] and there's your nav bar. Remember that mageia.org will be the main landing zone and should provide links to everywhere else.

Can we close this one? (and ventilate remaining issues into other bugs if needed?)

Yes. Remaining issues are already in other bugs, as you wrote in comment #78

The German forum is here: http://forum.mageia.org/de/

Status: NEW => RESOLVED
Resolution: (none) => FIXED

(In reply to comment #83)
> The German forum is here: http://forum.mageia.org/de/

Yes, I see that you refined the redirection (or whatever) :)