[Server-devel] What's cooking in the XS pot this week (2008-10--01)

[Martin Langhoff]

On Fri, Oct 3, 2008 at 6:22 PM, Bryan Berry <bryan.berry at gmail.com> wrote:
>> How happy are you with DanGuardian? Is it a useful filter?
>
> We use it internally w/in our office and we are happy w/ it. We use it
> locally to "eat our own dog food." By default it blocks a lot if not
> most content on the Internet, including stuff that doesn't seem
> objectionable at all.

Yeah, that's one of my concerns. I looked a little bit at DG
documentation a few days ago, as I was fighting with Squid's memory
usage, to understand how resource intensive it is, and how it works.
And in the back of my mind the question was - is this the right tool?

When you mention it blocks most content, I'm less than thrilled. A
filter that is too blunt will actually backfire -- will be too easy to
false-match and also easy to workaround. Users will learn something
but perhaps not what we want. A smarter filter, one that does not give
all/most users an incentive to find workarounds, is a much healthier
solution. But I'll get deep into it later, more likely in the 0.6
cycle.

Now that you mention you're using it in a real life setup, what does
top tell you about its memory usage?

> I think dans is essential because it will keep the adults from using up
> all the bandwidth to look at porn. the secondary reason, to protect kids
> is also important ;)

Noble causes indeed!

cheers,,



m
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 martin at laptop.org -- School Server Architect
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