ICT:Development status - decisions

Project status and decisions

This page summarizes the key technical decisions taken during the initial setup of the project. It is intended as a memory aid for future reference.

Overall status

• The wiki is currently **under construction**
• No public access
• Focus is on **structure first**, then **content**
• No urgency for upgrades or migrations

MediaWiki version strategy

• Current version: **MediaWiki 1.45**
• This version is **not LTS**
• Current LTS is **1.39**
• Target is the **next LTS after 1.39** (not yet released at the time of writing)

Decision:

• Stay on 1.45 during development
• Avoid unnecessary upgrades
• Re-evaluate when the next LTS is available and stable

Namespaces and purpose

HO

• Club-related structured content
• Access restricted to members of the club group
• Intended to be used with Page Schemas

DA

• Club-related structured content (distinct purpose from HO)
• Access restricted to members of the club group
• Intended to be used with Page Schemas

Research

• Temporary namespace
• Used for cleanup and transition
• Will disappear in the future (not now)

ICT

• Permanent namespace
• Personal technical documentation
• Contains configuration notes, procedures, and decisions
• Acts as long-term memory for system maintenance

Access control philosophy

• Access is based on **group membership**, not on admin status
• Being sysop does NOT automatically grant access to club content
• Club access must be explicitly assigned

This allows:

• Fine-grained control
• Safe onboarding of future sysops
• Clear separation between technical administration and content access

Groups in use

• club → access to HO and DA, uploads allowed
• research → access to Research namespace
• ict → access to ICT namespace
• sysop → technical administration only

Upload policy

• File uploads are **restricted to club members**
• Normal users cannot upload files
• Sysops can upload only if they are also members of club

This is intentional.

Namespace protection

• Lockdown extension is used
• Read access to protected namespaces is explicitly restricted
• Transclusion bypass is prevented using non-includable namespaces

Page creation discipline

• Pages must be created directly in the correct namespace
• Correct namespace comes **before** Page Schemas
• Avoid creating pages in the main namespace and moving them later

Backup and recovery approach

• MediaWiki and MariaDB run on **separate VMs**
• VMs are powered off before backup
• Full virtual disks are copied (no snapshots)
• This provides full rollback capability

Development and infrastructure

• Development currently runs on a personal PC using Hyper-V
• VMs are restricted to **Hyper-V configuration version 9.0**

 * Ensures compatibility with Windows Server 2019

• Operational servers use replication
• Risk of immediate failure is low

Future infrastructure plans

• Short term: move VMs to Hyper-V on Windows Server 2019
• Long term: possible move to Proxmox on new hardware
• No urgency; expected hardware lifetime is 3+ years

Current focus

• Review and stabilize current setup
• Begin using Page Schemas
• Start with one namespace and one schema
• Proceed slowly and deliberately

End of summary.