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Air gapped Talkyard

By KajMagnus @KajMagnus2020-08-15 04:23:58.541Z

It'd be nice if Talkyard could just work, in an air gapped network. Maybe problems:

  • Talkyard currently might want to download a font from https://fonts.googleapis.com.
  • Talkyard also does a request to polyfill.io.
  • Did I add the config value to prevent sending external requestst to StopForumSpam, Google Safe Browsing API, Akismet, etc?
  • In the future, probably there'll be some optional telemetry. Needs to be disabled when air gapped.
  • Talkyard's automatic self-upgrades assumes access to Docker Hub and GitHub. How should upgrades work instead, when air gapped?

What about a config value: talkyard.airgapped = true? that tells Ty to not try to access any external things.

  • 4 replies
  1. W
    richard weedon @weedonrp
      2020-12-03 05:17:25.535Z

      I would like to know as well. Many industries code in airgapped environments. Why wouldn't you just use stackoverflow otherwise?

      1. In an air gapped environment, how do you get notifications? Say you use some kind of on-premise chat, maybe Mattermost or Zulip — then, how do you know if you got a new chat message? (And maybe Talkyard, some time later.)

        Maybe checking the messaging system, is a daily routine? (Instead of checking the email in the morning, you check an air gapped chat?)

        Or is there an air gapped email server & email clients?

        Or "air gapped" mobile phones, with no the-real-Internet connection and no SIM card, that connects to a local "air gapped" network? If it's ok for me to ask

      2. W
        In reply toKajMagnus:
        richard weedon @weedonrp
          2020-12-03 16:05:09.536Z

          Well, let me clarify Use Case, and maybe OP is the same: Air-gapped to me means very controlled environments that restrict/whitelist outbound internet access or otherwise have no internet access at all. In my case, EVERYTHING classified as a Server/Service has no outbound internet access. Inbound is OK (via proxy like F5). So this includes all collaboration tools, dev tools, everything. Endpoint/workstations have internet access.

          A further Use Case is entire networks that span the world and is literally, physically air-gapped from any wire or hardware that touches the internet.

          The concept of your product would be great for these uses. Very simple and effective and cheap way for devs to share and help each other within their dark caves where they are forced to work every day where they have zero contact to the outside world within their work areas. Especially if it had native support for SAML and auto-created accounts with Name and Email values from the trusted IDP. (I posted about this to the instant support)

          1. I
            In reply toKajMagnus:
            Ian Anderson @idanderson26
              2020-12-03 18:05:20.616Z

              Yes, I concur about the need to have an air-gapped version. One of the great Use Cases for Talkyard is that it can provide a team the knowledge base they desire but they necessarily don't want it out on the open internet. So if a team is developing in a lab with no internet connection, the team can still have Talkyard as their own internal knowledge management system.

              1. Progress
                with doing this idea
              2. @KajMagnus marked this topic as Started 2020-12-11 22:42:23.802Z.