Guild of Writers

Since Dustin no longer maintains his UAM database, we need an alternative to comfortably download and install ages for offline TPOTS installations. With the recent release of Somewhere, this became quite urgent (at least, a lot of people were complaining ), so in my spare time I created a copy of Dustin's UAM database (containing only the three most recent releases of every age), and added the recent age updates and releases (Rell-too and Somewhere). You can find the result at http://www.the-deep-island.de/uru-ages/. I did some testing, but there might still be rough ages. For the future, I plan to move most of the old files to the GoW server which Hoikas kindly provided (the DI hard disk is quite full already), and I hope to provide an RSS feed for easier notification of age updates - but the latter will probably not happen before end of February.

To use the new age database, you need to configure your UAM to connect to it: Hit the "Change Server" button in the UAM tab, and enter the following URL: http://www.the-deep-island.de/uru-ages/. Then hit "Ok" and finally "Get Latest List". That's it.

Currently, there is no upload form for age authors. I propose the following procedure for age releases:
* The age author uploads the archive with all age files on some one-click hoster and announces the release or update, with the link, on these forums
* As soon as I find the time, I can put it on to the Deep Island dataserver and UAM database, so everyone on the DI Shard or using that datavase can comfortably get the age. Impatient explorers do not have to wait, but if they choose to sue the original package they might hit into some rough edges (I perform some automatic checks, and file organization normalization, when putting an age onto the dataserver). And, of course, admins of other Shards do not have to wait until I finally wrote that exam, or whatever is blocking me

Please tell me if things work properly on your side. Suggestions for improvements are always welcome, both for the user and author side of things. However please keep in mind that Drizzle/UAM itself (that is, the tool you are using) is still unmaintained, I am just going to maintain that UAM database.

Yay It works,

Show Spoiler

after I typed in the address correctly

Thank you thank you,

Great, thank you!

The move of mos of the data to the GoW server is completed - thanks a lot, Hoikas!
For you, nothing should change. You may have to "Get the latest list" again if Drizzle still sees the old links.

Why am I getting a privacy/security/persistency risk warning? And a suggestion to delete the file _socket.pyd?

You get this warning when you select the "Network access" module in Drizzle.
This module lets Ages access external content, for example get data from servers on the internet, which is a security and privacy risk.
If you have absolute confidence in Age writers, keep this module and disregard the warning.
Otherwise delete this module in Drizzle and you won't get the warning anymore.

Chacal wrote:You get this warning when you select the "Network access" module in Drizzle.
This module lets Ages access external content, for example get data from servers on the internet, which is a security and privacy risk.
If you have absolute confidence in Age writers, keep this module and disregard the warning.
Otherwise delete this module in Drizzle and you won't get the warning anymore.

There's no additional security/privacy risk to enabling the network access module. The python scripts in URU already have full system access - they can run arbitrary executables and scripts on the users computer.

The only benefit you'll get from disabling it is to make Drizzle STFU


EDIT: That's not to say I think scripts should have arbitrary network access - they probably shouldn't. But to imply that disabling it makes running fan ages safer is just wrong. There is always a risk when running python code from an unknown source.

Branan wrote:...The python scripts in URU already have full system access - they can run arbitrary executables and scripts on the users computer......

Hmm - can one "sandbox" this? Set a firewall to prevent TPoTS from "leaving the premises" even if a "bad" age arrives via Drizzle?

gimlet wrote:

Branan wrote:...The python scripts in URU already have full system access - they can run arbitrary executables and scripts on the users computer......

Hmm - can one "sandbox" this? Set a firewall to prevent TPoTS from "leaving the premises" even if a "bad" age arrives via Drizzle?

Aside from running Uru in a virtual machine... no

Branan wrote:But to imply that disabling it makes running fan ages safer is just wrong. There is always a risk when running python code from an unknown source.

Exactly. It is a question of managing risk.
Disabling network access lowers the risk.
I don't know about "safer", it is not a term we use in information security.