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Neale Pickett 2018-09-20 16:15:34 +00:00
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67
README.md
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@ -20,12 +20,33 @@ It also tracks scores,
and comes with a JavaScript-based scoreboard to display team rankings.
How everything works
---------------------------
Running a Development Server
============================
docker run --rm -it -p 8080:8080 dirtbags/moth-devel
And point a browser to http://localhost:8080/ (or whatever host is running the server).
When you're ready to create your own puzzles,
read [the devel server documentation](docs/devel-server.md).
Click the `[mb]` link by a puzzle category to compile and download a mothball that the production server can read.
Running a Production Server
===========================
docker run --rm -it -p 8080:8080 -v /path/to/moth:/moth dirtbags/mothd
You can be more fine-grained about directories, if you like.
Inside the container, you need the following paths:
* `/moth/state` (rw) Where state is stored. Read [the overview](docs/overview.md) to learn what's what in here.
* `/moth/mothballs` (ro) Mothballs (puzzle bundles) as provided by the development server.
* `/moth/resources` (ro) Overrides for built-in HTML/CSS resources.
This section wound up being pretty long.
Please check out [the overview](docs/overview.md)
for details.
Getting Started Developing
@ -121,39 +142,3 @@ the category will vanish,
but points scored in that category won't!
Resources Directory
===================
Making it look better
-------------------
`mothd` provides some built-in HTML for rendering a complete contest,
but it's rather bland.
You can override everything by dropping a new file into the `resources` directory:
* `basic.css` is used by the default HTML to pretty things up
* `index.html` is the landing page, which asks to register a team
* `puzzle.html` and `puzzle.js` render a puzzle from JSON
* `puzzle-list.html` and `puzzle-list.js` render the list of active puzzles from JSON
* `scoreboard.html` and `scoreboard.js` render the current scoreboard from JSON
* Any other file in the `resources` directory will be served up, too.
If you don't want to read through the source code, I don't blame you.
Run a `mothd` server and pull the various static resources into your `resources` directory,
and then you can start hacking away at them.
Changing scoring
--------------
Believe it or not,
scoring is determined client-side in the scoreboard,
from the points log.
You can hack in whatever algorithm you like.
If you do hack in a new algorithm,
please be a dear and email it to us.
We'd love to see it!

273
docs/overview.md
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@ -16,8 +16,142 @@ indicating score within each category,
and overall ranking.
How Scores are Calculated
-------------------------
State Directory
===============
The state directory is written to by the server to preserve state.
At no point is anything only in memory:
if it's not on the filesystem,
mothd doesn't think it exists.
The state directory is also used to communicate actions to mothd.
`initialized`
-------------
Remove this file to reset the state. This will blow away team assignments and the points log.
`disabled`
----------
Create this file to pause collection of points and other maintenance.
Contestants can still submit answers,
but they won't show up on the scoreboard until you remove this file.
This file does not normally exist.
`until`
-------
Put an RFC3337 date/time stamp in here to have the server pause itself at a given time.
Remember that time zones exist!
I recommend always using Zulu time.
This file does not normally exist.
`teamids.txt`
-------------
A list of valid Team IDs, one per line.
It defaults to all 4-digit natural numbers,
but you can put whatever you want in here.
`points.log`
------------
The log of awarded points:
EpochTime TeamId Category Points
Do not write to this file, unless you have disabled the contest. You will lose points!
`points.tmp`
------------
Drop points logs here.
Filenames can be anything.
When the file is complete and written out,
move it into `points.new`,
where a non-disabled event's maintenance loop will eventually move it into the main log.
`points.new`
------------
Complete points logs should be atomically moved here.
This is to avoid needing locks.
[Read about Maildir](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maildir)
if you care about the technical reasons we do things this way.
Mothball Directory
==================
Put a mothball in this directory to open that category.
Remove a mothball to disable that category.
Overwriting a mothball with a newer version will be noticed by the server within one maintenance interval
(20 seconds by default).
Be sure to use the same compilation seed in the development server if you compile a new version!
Removing a category does not remove points that have been scored in the category.
Resources Directory
===================
Making it look better
-------------------
`mothd` provides some built-in HTML for rendering a complete contest,
but it's rather bland.
You can override everything by dropping a new file into the `resources` directory:
* `basic.css` is used by the default HTML to pretty things up
* `index.html` is the landing page, which asks to register a team
* `puzzle.html` renders a puzzle from JSON
* `puzzle-list.html` renders the list of active puzzles from JSON
* `scoreboard.html` renders the current scoreboard from JSON
* Any other file in the `resources` directory will be served up, too.
If you don't want to read through the source code, I don't blame you.
Run a `mothd` server and pull the various static resources into your `resources` directory,
and then you can start hacking away at them.
Making it look totally different
---------------------
Every handler can serve its answers up in JSON format,
just add `application/json` to the `Accept` header of your request.
This means you could completely ignore the file structure in the previous section,
and write something like a web app that only loads static resources at startup.
Changing scoring
--------------
Scoring is determined client-side in the scoreboard,
from the points log.
You can hack in whatever algorithm you like,
and provide your own scoreboard(s).
If you do hack in a new algorithm,
please be a dear and email it to us.
We'd love to see it!
How Scores are Calculated by Default
------------------------------------
The per-category score for team `t` is computed as:
@ -38,138 +172,3 @@ Because we don't award extra points for quick responses,
teams always feel like they have the possibility to catch up if they are skilled enough.
Requirements
-------------
MOTH was written to run on a wide range of Linux systems.
We are very careful not to require exotic extensions:
you can run MOTH equally well on OpenWRT and Ubuntu Server.
It might even run on BSD: if you've tried this, please email us!
Its architecture also limits permissions,
to make it easier to lock things down very tight.
Since it writes to the filesystem slowly and atomically,
it can be run from a USB flash drive formatted with VFAT.
On the server, it requires:
* Bourne shell (POSIX 1003.2: BASH is okay but not required)
* Awk (POSIX 1003.2: gawk is okay but not required)
* Lua 5.1
On the client, it requires:
* A modern web browser with JavaScript
* Categories might add other requirements (like domain-specific tools to solve the puzzles)
Filesystem Layout
=================
The system is set up to make it simple to run one or more contests on a single machine.
I like to use `/srv/moth` as the base directory for all instances.
So if I were running an instance called "hack",
the instance directory would be `/srv/moth/hack`.
There are five entries in each instance directory, described in detail below:
/srv/moth/hack # (r-x) Instance directory
/srv/moth/hack/assigned.txt # (r--) List of assigned team tokens
/srv/moth/hack/bin/ # (r-x) Per-instance binaries
/srv/moth/hack/categories/ # (r-x) Installed categories
/srv/moth/hack/state/ # (rwx) Contest state
/srv/moth/hack/www/ # (r-x) Web server documentroot
`state/assigned.txt`
----------------
This is just a list of tokens that have been assigned.
One token per line, and tokens can be anything you want.
For my middle school events, I make tokens all possible 4-digit numbers,
and tell kids to use any number they want: it makes it quicker to start.
For more advanced events,
this doesn't work as well because people start guessing other teams' numbers to confuse each other.
So I use hex representations of random 32-bit ints.
But you could use anything you want in here (for specifics on allowed characters, read the registration CGI).
The registration CGI checks this list to see if a token has already assigned to a team name.
Teams enter points by token,
which lets them use any text they want for a team name.
Since we don't read their team name anywhere else than the registration and scoreboard generator,
it allows some assumptions about what kind of strings tokens can be,
resulting in simpler code.
`categories/`
--------------
`categories/` contains read-only category packages.
Within each subdirectory there is:
* `map.txt` mapping point values to directory names
* `answers.txt` a list of answers for each point value
* `salt` used to generate directory names (so people can't guess them to skip ahead)
* `summary.txt` a compliation of `00summary.txt` files for puzzles, to give you a quick reference point when someone says "I need help on js 40".
* `puzzles` is all the HTML that needs to be served up for the category
`bin/`
------
Contains all the binaries you'll need to run an event.
These are probably just copies from the `base` package (where this README lives).
They're copied over in case you need to hack on them during an event.
`bin/once` is of particular interest:
it gets run periodically to do everything, including:
* Gather points from `points.new` and append them to the points log.
* Generate a new `puzzles.html` listing all open puzzles.
* Generate a new `points.json` for the scoreboard
### Pausing `once`
You can pause everything `bin/once` does by touching a file in the root directory
called `disabled`.
This doesn't stop the game:
it just stops points collection and generation of the files listed above.
This is extremely helpful when, inevitably,
you need to hack the points log,
or do other maintenance tasks.
Most times you don't even need to announce that you're doing anything:
people can keep playing the game and their points keep collecting,
ready to be appended to the log when you're done and you re-enable `once`.
`www/`
-----------
HTML root for an event.
It is possible to make this read-only,
after you've set up your packages.
You will need to symlink a few things into the `state` directory, though.
`state/`
---------
Where all game state is stored.
This is the only part of the contest directory setup that needs to be writable,
and tarring it up preserves exactly the entire contest.
Notable, it contains the mapping from team hash to name,
and the points log.
`points.log` is replayed by the scoreboard generator to calculate the current score for each team.
New points are written to `points.new`, and picked up by `bin/once` to append to `points.log`.
When `once` is disabled (by touching a file called `disabled` at the top level for a game),
the various points-awarding things can keep writing files into `points.new`,
with no need for locking or "bringing down the game for maintenance".

19
src/maintenance.go
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@ -119,12 +119,6 @@ func (ctx *Instance) tidy() {
// Do they want to reset everything?
ctx.MaybeInitialize()
// Skip if we've been disabled
if _, err := os.Stat(ctx.StatePath("disabled")); err == nil {
log.Print("disabled file found, suspending maintenance")
return
}
// Skip if we've expired
untilspec, err := ioutil.ReadFile(ctx.StatePath("until"))
if err == nil {
@ -225,10 +219,15 @@ func (ctx *Instance) collectPoints() {
// maintenance is the goroutine that runs a periodic maintenance task
func (ctx *Instance) Maintenance(maintenanceInterval time.Duration) {
for {
ctx.tidy()
ctx.collectPoints()
ctx.generatePuzzleList()
ctx.generatePointsLog()
// Skip if we've been disabled
if _, err := os.Stat(ctx.StatePath("disabled")); err == nil {
log.Print("disabled file found, suspending maintenance")
} else {
ctx.tidy()
ctx.collectPoints()
ctx.generatePuzzleList()
ctx.generatePointsLog()
}
select {
case <-ctx.update:
// log.Print("Forced update")

2
src/mothd.go
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@ -47,7 +47,7 @@ func main() {
)
listen := flag.String(
"listen",
":8000",
":8080",
"[host]:port to bind and listen",
)
flag.Parse()