The document describes Collabograte, an integration platform for collaboration components. It aims to provide an open platform for integrating components like wikis, blogs, mailing lists, and chat while maximizing user freedom and flexibility. It uses Puppet for configuration management and integrates components like OpenLDAP, MediaWiki, WordPress, Postfix, Cyrus, and ejabberd. Collabograte provides virtual machine images and Puppet modules to configure the integrated stack on a Linux host.

1. Collabograte: An Integration Platform
for Collaboration Components
Kartik Subbarao
Consultant
kartiksubbarao.com
subbarao@computer.org
Code: https://github.com/kartiksubbarao/collabograte
Mailing list: http://groups.google.com/group/collabograte

2. The Integration Challenge
Project A Project B Upstream Projects
OS Distribution OS Distributions
A.rpm/deb
B.rpm/deb
Company 1 Company 2
Enterprise IT
A B A B

3. One Option: Preintegrated Stacks
Project A Project B
Upstream Projects
OS Distribution A
A.rpm/deb B
B.rpm/deb Preintegrated OS Distributions
Stack Stack Providers
Company 1 Company 2
Enterprise IT
A B A B

4. Collabograte
Company 1
A B
Project A OS Distribution
A.rpm/deb
B.rpm/deb Company 2
Project B
A B
Collabograte

5. Objectives
● Provide a platform for integrating collaboration
components
● Build a community of IT integrators who are
interested in collaboration
● Provide a channel for communicating
integration-related feedback to upstream
projects and OS distributions

6. What Collabograte is Not
● Collabograte is not:
– A preintegrated, turnkey solution
– A single stack of fixed deliverables
– A business
– A hosted service
– A heavyweight repository for “certified” versions
of upstream code
– Targeted for nontechnical end users

7. VM KVM Xen
OS
CentOS RHEL Ubuntu Debian
Configuration
Management Puppet Chef
Collabograte Directory OpenLDAP 389DS
Components Wiki MediaWiki MoinMoin DokuWiki
Currently Supported Blogs WordPress Drupal
Mail
Possible Future Transport Postfix
Mail Store Cyrus IMAP Dovecot
Mailing Lists Sympa
Discussion
Forums INN phpBB
Instant
ejabberd jabberd2 Openfire
Messaging
Other TBD

8. Context: Integration and
Differentiation
Upstream Projects High need for
Differentiation
Intermediate need for
OS Distributions Differentiation and
Integration
High need for
Enterprise IT Integration

9. Guiding Principles

10. Use and Contribute to Actively
Maintained Work
● Use existing OS packages wherever possible,
and seek to improve them where necessary
● Contribute integration-friendly features to
upstream projects
● Maximize both technical and collaborative
benefits

11. Maximize User Freedom
● Enable as many useful
platforms/components/tools as possible
● Choose dependencies as consciously as
possible
● Open Source – FreeBSD license

12. Minimize Footprint of
Configuration Changes
● Change only those things that need to be
changed
● Keep in mind that integration is rarely a one-
time event, while managing current
requirements
● Pay attention to evolving application defaults
● Treat configuration files as collections of
objects and make targeted modifications –
Augeas is a valuable tool for this

13. Augeas Example
● Given the following in /etc/hosts:
192.168.122.10 example.com
● The following Augeas command:
set /files/etc/hosts/*[canonical = 'example.com']
/alias[last()+1] lists.example.com
● Looks for the /etc/hosts entry with a canonical
hostname of example.com, and adds
lists.example.com as an alias:
192.168.122.10 example.com lists.example.com
● More info at http://augeas.net

14. Flexibility and Structure
● Both flexibility and structure are valuable
● Integration often involves the art of adapting
something without changing it too much
● It may make sense to selectively override
principles as a tradeoff

15. Integration Overview

16. VM Installation on a Host System
● Install the prerequisite RPMs on the host system with
yum install qemu-kvm libvirt virt-manager virt-viewer
rpm-build
● Clone the collabograte git repository on the host system with git clone
https://github.com/kartiksubbarao/collabograte
● Create the virtual machine on the host system with create_vm.sh
● Build the collabograte-puppet RPM on the host system with
make -C puppet rpm
● Copy the collabograte RPM to the guest VM and install it with
yum install collabograte-pupppet*.rpm
● Apply the puppet manifests on the guest VM with
puppet apply -e 'include collabograte'

17. Common Module
● Module for configurations/settings that are
referenced/required across multiple modules
● Host/Domain name
● Common utility packages
● Administrative usernames and passwords
● Syslog configuration

18. LDAP Directory
● Currently supports OpenLDAP
● Sample LDIF and additional schema sourced
from the Fedora 389 Directory Server Project
● Username and password authentication
● Groups used as mailing lists and IM groups

19. dn: uid=scarter,ou=People,dc=example,dc=com
objectClass: top
objectClass: person
objectClass: organizationalPerson
objectClass: inetOrgPerson
cn: Sam Carter
givenName: Sam
sn: Carter
ou: Accounting
l: Sunnyvale
uid: scarter
mail: scarter@example.com
telephoneNumber: +1 408 555 4798
facsimileTelephoneNumber: +1 408 555 9751
roomNumber: 4612
manager: uid=dmiller,ou=People,dc=example,dc=com

20. Wiki
● Currently supports MediaWiki
● Uses the LdapAuthentication extension to
integrate with the LDAP Directory
● Partially configured with WWW::Mechanize

22. Blogs
● Currently supports WordPress Multisite
● Uses the wpDirAuth plugin to integrate with the
LDAP Directory
● Partially configured with WWW::Mechanize

24. Mail Transport and Mail Store
● Currently supports Postfix for Mail Transport
and Cyrus IMAP for the Mail Store
● Postfix and Cyrus IMAP are integrated with
LMTP
● Postfix uses LDAP for mail routing decisions,
and Cyrus IMAP uses saslauthd to
authenticate users against the LDAP
Directory

26. Mailing Lists and
Discussion Forums
● Currently supports Sympa for Mailing Lists and
INN for Discussion Forums (Newsgroups)
● Sympa uses LDAP for user authentication and
authorization
● Lists are maintained as groups in the LDAP
directory
● Sympa Lists are bidirectionally gatewayed to
INN Newsgroups

29. Instant Messaging
● Currently supports ejabberd
● Uses the LDAP Directory for authentication,
authorization and roster membership

31. Git Tags and Branches
● Git tags mark release versions for the project
as a whole, or for one or more components
● Git branches enable local customizations for
specific components, to be managed
alongside common configuration
● The project community will evolve these
conventions over time