[privatebin] enhance guide

[franok]

Enhance guide by instructions for read-only access for non-authenticated users using Basic Auth restriction for POST requests in .htaccess file.

I successfully implemented a "read-only" restriction on my instance of PrivateBin and would like to share my knowledge in the lab guide.

[luto]

Thanks! :) I added a few notes.

[franok]

@luto thanks for the review, I replied to one of your comments and addressed all other requested changes

[noave]

hey, like suggested in the comment I would propose to do it like this with moving the app folders:

[noaguide@perseus noaguide]$ pwd
/var/www/virtual/noaguide
[noaguide@perseus noaguide]$ mkdir privatebin
[noaguide@perseus noaguide]$ mv -t privatebin html/cfg/ html/lib/ html/tpl/ html/vendor/

so you have a folder structure like here

[noaguide@perseus noaguide]$ tree -L 2
.
├── html
│   ├── bin
│   ├── browserconfig.xml
│   ├── CHANGELOG.md
│   ├── CREDITS.md
│   ├── css
│   ├── i18n
│   ├── img
│   ├── index.php
│   ├── INSTALL.md
│   ├── js
│   ├── LICENSE.md
│   ├── manifest.json
│   ├── nocontent.html
│   ├── Procfile
│   ├── README.md
│   ├── robots.txt
│   └── SECURITY.md
└── privatebin
    ├── cfg
    ├── lib
    ├── tpl
    └── vendor

this would rather be consistent with the other guides. But i must admit, I am a bit surprised, that privatebin does not have a real clean public folder like it is usual in other apps.

But anyway, I was able to install it this way

[franok]

hey, like suggested in the comment I would propose to do it like this with moving the app folders: [...] this would rather be consistent with the other guides. But i must admit, I am a bit surprised, that privatebin does not have a real clean public folder like it is usual in other apps.

The latest comment by @SalocinHB suggests something different: https://github.com/Uberspace/lab/pull/1516#discussion_r1172365440

which is why Nextcloud keeps it's data directory in $HOME.

---

But anyway, I was able to install it this way

I updated this guide according to my setup on my own uberspace. As you were able to install it with my instructions, I do not really see a reason, why it couldn't be merged this way. In case you have any objections, please let me know.

[franok]

As I do not see any further functional Todo for this PR, I set it back from "Draft" state, to "Ready for Review". Please reconsider, if this update/enhancement can be merged in current state. Thank you :)

[noave]

The latest comment by @SalocinHB suggests something different:

nextcloud only stores the static data files in the home folder, which is a good and clean approach. But the all the code files reside in /var/www. Most frameworks nowadays usually have a specific public folder (like symfony etc.).

However, here you named the folder privatebin-data which is not really correct why I chose just privatebin where I moved the codefiles and changed the path like you suggested. Then with the first note one creates, the app creates a folder data within there. I thought about using a symlink from /var/www/virtual/username/privatebin/data to ~/privatebin-data. Then code, public folder, data would have been separated. But the apps also creates php code files within the data folder :smile: so its all mixed up again anyways.

So, since there is this little tiny security afford of storing the data files in ~/home I would for now follow your approach using the ~/privatebin folder (but with this naming, not privatebin-data). Even if this means storing php code files in ~/home which is not the usual way here.

The cleanest approach would be using a mysql database, since we have everything on board on a Uberspace I guess there is no reason to depend on storing the data in files at all. But for now I will add this only as an issue.

[noave]

looks like you did not allow pushing to your branch, so I will first merge here and rename privatebin-data to privatebin afterwards

[noave]

thanks in any case :)

[franok]

So, since there is this little tiny security afford of storing the data files in ~/home I would for now follow your approach using the ~/privatebin folder (but with this naming, not privatebin-data). Even if this means storing php code files in ~/home which is not the usual way here.

Sure, I'm also fine with ~/privatebin.

The cleanest approach would be using a mysql database, since we have everything on board on a Uberspace I guess there is no reason to depend on storing the data in files at all. But for now I will add this only as an issue.

Yes, I guess it can be tackled in a separate PR to enhance the guide with instructions for using MySQL.

looks like you did not allow pushing to your branch, so I will first merge here and rename privatebin-data to privatebin afterwards

Ah, sorry, did not remember I restricted edits by maintainers.

Thank you for following up on the naming and thank you for the review & merging of the PR 🙂👍