[Python-Dev] Re: What to do about the Wiki?

[Skip Montanaro]

    Guido> Juergen Hermann, Moinmoin's author, said he fixed a few thin=
gs,
    Guido> but also said that Moinmoin is essentially vulnerable to
    Guido> "recursive wget" (e.g. someone trying to suck up the entire =
Wiki
    Guido> by following links).  Apparently this is what brought the si=
te
    Guido> down this weekend -- if I understand correctly, an in-memory=
 log
    Guido> was growing too fast.

I'm a bit confused by these statements.  MoinMoin is a CGI script.  I d=
on't
understand where "recursive wget" and "in-memory log" would come into p=
lay.
I recently fired up two Wikis on the Mojam server.  I never see any
long-running process which would suggest there's an in-memory log which=

could grow without bound.  The MoinMoin package does generate HTTP
redirects, but while they might coax wget into firing off another reque=
st,
it should be handled by a separate MoinMoin process on the server side.=
  You
should see the load grow significantly as the requests pour in, but
shouldn't see any one MoinMoin process gobbling up all sorts of resourc=
es.
J=FCrgen, can you elaborate on these themes a little more?

    Guido> I believe that Juergen has fixed the log-growing problem.  S=
hould
    Guido> we enable the Wiki again and hope for the best?

With an XS4ALL person at the ready?  Perhaps someone can keep a window =
open
on creosote running something like

    while true ; do
        ps auxww | egrep python | sort -r -n -k 5,5 | head -1
=09sleep 15
    done

I'm running out for the next few hours.  I'll be happy to run the while=
 loop
when I return.

Skip