Project: Multi-Site Wikipedia

A Project to have a Wikipedia mirror running at multiple sites across Merri-bek, largely in the homes of our volunteers rather than at Community facilities so that we can iterate quickly.

This project will be complete when:

1. Sites are Set Up Correctly
   • At least 3 sites are running a Wikipedia Mirror
   • At least 2 of the sites are physically within Merri-bek (some of our volunteers live in neighbouring suburbs).
   • Sites can be setup using our instructions, rather than relying on deep technical knowledge
   • Sites contain at least two Raspberry Pi's, running docker swarm, and wikipedia (Kiwix) is running on that swarm
2. Simple uptime monitoring
   • We collect basic information, from the point of view of the internet, on the uptime of all the public urls
3. Wikipedia is accessible at the correct URLs
   • Each of the sites can be accessed from the internet at a site-specific domain name, eg Radish House at https://wikipedia.radish.merri-bek.tech.
   • From the internet the url https://wikipedia.merri-bek.tech displays the wikipedia mirror by serving it from one of the sites (our public wikipedia URL).
   • Our public wikipedia URL keeps working with minimal downtime if a site fails, but directing traffic to another site
   • Our public wikipedia URL rotates traffic across sites over time even if they are all up (not necessarily as even load balancing).
   • From the local wifi of each of the sites, both https://wikipedia.merri-bek.tech and https://wikipedia.SITENAME.merri-bek.tech display the local wikipedia and work even if the internet connection is down.
   • From the local wifi of each of the sites, https://wikipedia.internet.merri-bek.tech accesses forces an attempt to access https://wikipedia.merri-bek.tech over the internet (and thus fails if it's down).

The following things are specifically out of scope for this project, even though they might be good ideas in the future:

1. Power monitoring
2. Battery backup
3. Solar power
4. Support roster, backup site stewards
5. Updating Kiwix automatically

Merri-bek Tech will fund the cost of necessary hardware for each site, and will retain ownership of that hardware. If people prefer to use self owned hardware for some or all of the site, that's also fine (as long as MBT owned hardware is clearly differentiated with labels).

Power & internet usage should be nominal at this stage, and MBT is not offering to carry ongoing costs in that area. If there's a need for people to add static IPs to their internet plans (we may not need that) then MBT may consider covering the cost of that (to be discussed).

Each site needs funding approval from MBT, which is a bit dependent on it being operated by a dedicated volunteer likely to continue with the project. Although the goals of this project say at least 3 sites, funding 5 or more is ok.

In order to setup a Site, you should be able to follow the instructions on Building a Site.