Re: Removing old news from webpages
On Mon Jul 21, 2025 at 5:01 PM BST, Thomas Lange wrote:
Set up a web server on a new domain, restore the old news there.
Thanks, work on this has already started.
Provide a generic apache redirect rule for www.d.org
The current redirect rules can be found in
https://salsa.debian.org/dsa-team/mirror/dsa-puppet.git
in the file
./modules/roles/templates/apache-www.debian.org.erb
A diff or MR for this file can than be reviewed by the web team, but
the DSA team has to apply it.
Thank you for the hint on where to put the configuration.
As I keep stressing, restoring the URIs fast is critically important to
many (even if not to the current webteam) so my first few MRs will be to
put in place temporary (HTTP 302) redirects to the corresponding mail in
the list archives; the new Debian web service will follow later.
Once we have stable hosting the redirects can be replaced with permanent
HTTP 301 ones.
It should be a redirecton rule, that only redirects from /news to the
new domain, if the directory (/news/<year>/) is not found on the local
disk.
This can't be done with a Redirect (from mod_alias) but could be done
with mod_rewrite and RewriteCond. There are already some mod_rewrite
stuff in there so that shouldn't be a problem.
However, I don't think e.g. www.debian.org/News/2000/this-never-existed
should redirect to anywhere; the 404 should be served from
www.debian.org. Otherwise we are delegating too much decision making
about what is a valid page or not to the still-to-come web service.
Therefore the rule-set is going to have to encode the specific files you
deleted (and, I guess going forward, will continue to delete); not just
the parent year.
Unless we're lucky and a shorter pattern can be written to match what
needs to be, I expect we will end up with a relatively long list of
static entries, which could be handled by mod_alias Redirect.
On #debian-www rhonda already tought about setting up an archive for
old news but after we talked to each other she said that she may drop
this effort. But maybe she still likes to help.
I've reached out to Rhonda over mail to see what she was thinking but I
haven't yet had a reply.
I'm currently working on this on my own but in the fullness of time this
shall require the normal team maintenance stuff (configuration in VCS,
place to file bugs, more than one DD access to relevant systems, agreed
place to discuss the service, etc.). It seems to me, that the most
sensible team for this to live would in fact be the webteam. And so once
I have the service up, I anticipate requesting to join the webteam.
I hope that the people that felt disappointed about the removal of old
news can drive the work of setting up this archive in the near future.
Was it in any doubt that we (I) would work on this? Even after I stated
so explicitly? Is it concern that nobody would do anything the reason
behind your refusal to restore the content, even temporarily? I'm not
going to continue to try and convince you to change your mind, but I'd
appreciate it if the team could clearly state your reasoning, otherwise
there's a shadow hanging over me.
--
👱🏻 Jonathan Dowland
✎ jmtd@debian.org
🔗 https://jmtd.net
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