As part of the New Maintainer web site, there is a GPG Key Signing
Coordination page found at http://nm.debian.org/gpg.php This page
is intended as a service to people who wish to get involved with
the Debian Project (and need their GPG key signed for the identity
part of the New Maintainer process), and to Debian members who are
not yet connected to the web of trust.
Since the page was hosted on satie.debian.org it was affected by the
fire at Twente University. While the front-end written in PHP is in
CVS on gluck.d.o, we have unfortunately lost most scripts used for the
back-end as well as the (current) database. However, incidentally I
sent out mails to everyone who had not updated their entries in four
months a week before the fire. I have used these mails (combined with
a backup of the database from May) to restore (most of) the information.
How does this affect you:
- If you have updated your entries following my mail, these changes
have been lost. Please login again and update your entries. Those
who have requested a new password following my mail should have
received a new passwd by email by now (If not, just email me).
Please log in with this password, change it and update your entries.
If you did not update your entry after you received my mail because
it was still up to date, don't bother (for now).
- If you have registered less than four months ago, your entry has
been lost. Please register again.
- If you have updated your entries in the last 4 months, they have
unfortunately been lost. I installed your entries from May and
sent private mail to you already asking you to check if those entries
are still accurate.
In summary, the GPG Key Signing Coordination page is about where it
was before the fire. I had a spare evening yesterday and have
re-implemented (and improved) the scripts we used to have (these
script, for example, purge expired entries or let the maintainers of
the page remove users or change their passwords).
In the future, I plan to make several additions. For example, after
my mails asking you to verify your entry if you hadn't updated it for
four months, some people complained that they had to do this. One of
the main objections were that it takes too long to log in and update
the entry. I will either allow people to simply respond by email or
provide an exact URL which updates your entries. More on that later.
However, I want to stress the importance of reminding people to update
their entries periodically. I really want to ensure that the offers
are still valid and the information accurate. While most information
will not change for most people, some people might move or become too
busy to offer to sign other people's keys. Also, some email addresses
might stop working (and in fact did -- I removed those people). I
will therefore ask people to confirm their entries every 4-6 months.
However, I will try to make this task as painless as possible.
Anyway, I hope this service is useful. Questions or complaints to
gpg-coord@nm.debian.org
Thanks to James Troup (without whom nothing would be possible), Ralf
Treinen (who helps maintaining this page), Peter Palfrader (who is
always to blame), Verena Dudde (who's not a figment of my imagination)
and Matt Kraai (who improved the texts on the web page).
--
Martin Michlmayr
tbm@cyrius.com
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