[MiNT] Sparemint Site

[Mark Duckworth <mduckworth@atari-source.com>]

Hey guys,

I just wanted to let you all know that many of the security features are
in place on the new sparemint site at http://dev.sparemint.org.  The
system is based on a simple integer value that defines a users privilege
level.  Each operation in the system has a minimum privilege level and
maximum privilege level.  An unlogged in user has a privilege level of 0
where as a standard user is 10, and an administrator is 20.  This is
pretty nifty because it allows us to show the Logout link, upload a new
package link, etc, but only when you're logged in.  However, when you
are logged in, don't bother showing the "create a new account" or
"login" links.  Administrative links won't be shown to normal users and
so on.  A simple but very effective security setup.

As such some portion of the site is now invisible, yet the new account
creation portion is not done yet.  I'll notify you all when it is and
when it is done, I encourage everyone to create accounts and follow the
development progress.  Based on current completion I believe the
development site will be able to replace the live site in less than a
month.  I believe in less than 6 months we will have automatic system
updates based on the sparemint site and we'll have fantastic package
management as good as any linux distribution.  I intend to write a gem
update client similar to redhat's up2date.  It won't be anything special
but it will be an easy to use way to encourage normal users of high end
broadband connected atari systems to keep their systems up to date.  In
addition to this work, a lot of the back end metadata stuff is
completed.  Now I just have to write a nice good page to query against
all this data and we have some useful features.

In the mean time, I wrote a very rough first draft document that is
intended to introduce the typical Atari user to sparemint.  I feel like
a lot of typical TOS or MagiC users with no linux experience might be
confused and frightened by sparemint when, today, with easymint, they
really shouldn't be.  It's probably missing a lot of content it should
have and it has some curses it probably shouldn't have but I think I get
the general point across.  What do you guys think?  It's readable at:

http://dev.sparemint.org/documentation.php?showdoc=7

Thanks,
Mark
http://portal.atari-source.com