Help Create A Chat Control Resistant Turnkey Chatmail/Deltachat Relay Stack - Rootless Podman Compose, OpenSUSE BCI, Hardened, & SELinux by 3nd5h1771fy

Description

The Mission: Decentralized & Sovereign Messaging

FYI: If you have never heard of "Chatmail", you can visit their site here, but simply put it can be thought of as the underlying protocol/platform decentralized messengers like DeltaChat use for their communications. Do not confuse it with the honeypot looking non-opensource paid for prodect with better seo that directs you to chatmailsecure(dot)com

In an era of increasing centralized surveillance by unaccountable bad actors (aka BigTech), "Chat Control," and the erosion of digital privacy, the need for sovereign communication infrastructure is critical. Chatmail is a pioneering initiative that bridges the gap between classic email and modern instant messaging, offering metadata-minimized, end-to-end encrypted (E2EE) communication that is interoperable and open.

However, unless you are a seasoned sysadmin, the current recommended deployment method of a Chatmail relay is rigid, fragile, difficult to properly secure, and effectively takes over the entire host the "relay" is deployed on.

Why This Matters

A simple, host agnostic, reproducible deployment lowers the entry cost for anyone wanting to run a privacy‑preserving, decentralized messaging relay. In an era of perpetually resurrected chat‑control legislation threats, EU digital‑sovereignty drives, and many dangers of using big‑tech messaging platforms (Apple iMessage, WhatsApp, FB Messenger, Instagram, SMS, Google Messages, etc...) for any type of communication, providing an easy‑to‑use alternative empowers:

• Censorship resistance - No single entity controls the relay; operators can spin up new nodes quickly.
  
• Surveillance mitigation - End‑to‑end OpenPGP encryption ensures relay operators never see plaintext.
  
• Digital sovereignty - Communities can host their own infrastructure under local jurisdiction, aligning with national data‑policy goals.
  

By turning the Chatmail relay into a plug‑and‑play container stack, we enable broader adoption, foster a resilient messaging fabric, and give developers, activists, and hobbyists a concrete tool to defend privacy online.

Goals

As I indicated earlier, this project aims to drastically simplify the deployment of Chatmail relay. By converting this architecture into a portable, containerized stack using Podman and OpenSUSE base container images, we can allow anyone to deploy their own censorship-resistant, privacy-preserving communications node in minutes.

Our goal for Hack Week: package every component into containers built on openSUSE/MicroOS base images, initially orchestrated with a single container-compose.yml (podman-compose compatible). The stack will:

• Run on any host that supports Podman (including optimizations and enhancements for SELinux‑enabled systems).
  
• Allow network decoupling by refactoring configurations to move from file-system constrained Unix sockets to internal TCP networking, allowing containers achieve stricter isolation.
• Utilize Enhanced Security with SELinux by using purpose built utilities such as udica we can quickly generate custom SELinux policies for the container stack, ensuring strict confinement superior to standard/typical Docker deployments.
• Allow the use of bind or remote mounted volumes for shared data (/var/vmail, DKIM keys, TLS certs, etc.).
  
• Replace the local DNS server requirement with a remote DNS‑provider API for DKIM/TXT record publishing.
  

By delivering a turnkey, host agnostic, reproducible deployment, we lower the barrier for individuals and small communities to launch their own chatmail relays, fostering a decentralized, censorship‑resistant messaging ecosystem that can serve DeltaChat users and/or future services adopting this protocol

Resources

• The links included above
• https://chatmail.at/doc/relay/
• https://delta.chat/en/help
• Project repo -> https://codeberg.org/EndShittification/containerized-chatmail-relay

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Enhance git-sha-verify: A tool to checkout validated git hashes by gpathak

Description

git-sha-verify is a simple shell utility to verify and checkout trusted git commits signed using GPG key. This tool helps ensure that only authorized or validated commit hashes are checked out from a git repository, supporting better code integrity and security within the workflow.

Supports:

• Verifying commit authenticity signed using gpg key
  
• Checking out trusted commits
  

Ideal for teams and projects where the integrity of git history is crucial.

Goals

A minimal python code of the shell script exists as a pull request.

The goal of this hackweek is to:

• DONE: Add more unit tests
  • New and more tests can be added later
    
• Partially DONE: Make the python code modular
  
• DONE: Add code coverage if possible
  

Resources

• Link to GitHub Repository: https://github.com/openSUSE/git-sha-verify

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Improve chore and screen time doc generator script `wochenplaner` by gniebler

Description

I wrote a little Python script to generate PDF docs, which can be used to track daily chore completion and screen time usage for several people, with one page per person/week.

I named this script wochenplaner and have been using it for a few months now.

It needs some improvements and adjustments in how the screen time should be tracked and how chores are displayed.

Goals

• Fix chore field separation lines
• Change screen time tracking logic from "global" (week-long) to daily subtraction and weekly addition of remainders (more intuitive than current "weekly time budget method)
• Add logic to fill in chore fields/lines, ideally with pictures, falling back to text.

Resources

tbd (Gitlab repo)

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Bring to Cockpit + System Roles capabilities from YAST by miguelpc

Bring to Cockpit + System Roles features from YAST

Cockpit and System Roles have been added to SLES 16 There are several capabilities in YAST that are not yet present in Cockpit and System Roles We will follow the principle of "automate first, UI later" being System Roles the automation component and Cockpit the UI one.

Goals

The idea is to implement service configuration in System Roles and then add an UI to manage these in Cockpit. For some capabilities it will be required to have an specific Cockpit Module as they will interact with a reasource already configured.

Resources

A plan on capabilities missing and suggested implementation is available here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ZhX-Ip9MKJNeKSYV3bSZG4Qc5giuY7XSV0U61Ecu9lo/edit

Linux System Roles:

• https://linux-system-roles.github.io/
• https://build.opensuse.org/package/show/openSUSE:Factory/ansible-linux-system-roles Package on sle16 ansible-linux-system-roles

First meeting Hackweek catchup

• Monday, December 1 · 11:00 – 12:00
• Time zone: Europe/Madrid
• Google Meet link: https://meet.google.com/rrc-kqch-hca

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Liz - Prompt autocomplete by ftorchia

Description

Liz is the Rancher AI assistant for cluster operations.

Goals

We want to help users when sending new messages to Liz, by adding an autocomplete feature to complete their requests based on the context.

Example:

• User prompt: "Can you show me the list of p"
• Autocomplete suggestion: "Can you show me the list of p...od in local cluster?"

Example:

• User prompt: "Show me the logs of #rancher-"
• Chat console: It shows a drop-down widget, next to the # character, with the list of available pod names starting with "rancher-".

Technical Overview

1. The AI agent should expose a new ws/autocomplete endpoint to proxy autocomplete messages to the LLM.
2. The UI extension should be able to display prompt suggestions and allow users to apply the autocomplete to the Prompt via keyboard shortcuts.

Resources

GitHub repository

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Create a page with all devel:languages:perl packages and their versions by tinita

Description

Perl projects now live in git: https://src.opensuse.org/perl

It would be useful to have an easy way to check which version of which perl module is in devel:languages:perl. Also we have meta overrides and patches for various modules, and it would be good to have them at a central place, so it is easier to lookup, and we can share with other vendors.

I did some initial data dump here a while ago: https://github.com/perlpunk/cpan-meta

But I never had the time to automate this.

I can also use the data to check if there are necessary updates (currently it uses data from download.opensuse.org, so there is some delay and it depends on building).

Goals

• Have a script that updates a central repository (e.g. https://src.opensuse.org/perl/_metadata) with metadata by looking at https://src.opensuse.org/perl/_ObsPrj (check if there are any changes from the last run)
• Create a HTML page with the list of packages (use Javascript and some table library to make it easily searchable)

Resources

Results

• https://perlpunk.github.io/opensuse-perl-meta/
• https://github.com/perlpunk/opensuse-perl-meta

Day 1

• First part of the code which retrieves data from https://src.opensuse.org/perl/_ObsPrj with submodules and creates a YAML and a JSON file.
• Repo: https://github.com/perlpunk/opensuse-perl-meta
• Also a first version of the HTML is live: https://perlpunk.github.io/opensuse-perl-meta/

Day 2

• HTML Page has now links to src.opensuse.org and the date of the last update, plus a short info at the top
• Code is now 100% covered by tests: https://app.codecov.io/gh/perlpunk/opensuse-perl-meta
• I used the modern perl class feature, which makes perl classes even nicer and shorter. See example
• Tests
  • I tried out the mocking feature of the modern Test2::V0 library which provides call tracking. See example
  • I tried out comparing data structures with the new Test2::V0 library. It let's you compare parts of the structure with the like function, which only compares the date that is mentioned in the expected data. example

Day 3

• Added various things to the table
  • Dependencies column
  • Show popup with info for cpanspec, patches and dependencies
  • Added last date / commit to the data export.

Plan: With the added date / commit we can now daily check _ObsPrj for changes and only fetch the data for changed packages.

Day 4

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Mail client with mailing list workflow support in Rust by acervesato

Description

To create a mail user interface using Rust programming language, supporting mailing list patches workflow. I know, aerc is already there, but I would like to create something simpler, without integrated protocols. Just a plain user interface that is using some crates to read and create emails which are fetched and sent via external tools.

I already know Rust, but not the async support, which is needed in this case in order to handle events inside the mail folder and to send notifications.

Goals

• simple user interface in the style of aerc, with some vim keybindings for motions and search
• automatic run of external tools (like mbsync) for checking emails
• automatic run commands for notifications
• apply patch set from ML
• tree-sitter support with styles

Resources

• ratatui: user interface (https://ratatui.rs/)
• notify: folder watcher (https://docs.rs/notify/latest/notify/)
• mail-parser: parser for emails (https://crates.io/crates/mail-parser)
• mail-builder: create emails in proper format (https://docs.rs/mail-builder/latest/mail_builder/)
• gitpatch: ML support (https://crates.io/crates/gitpatch)
• tree-sitter-rust: support for mail format (https://crates.io/crates/tree-sitter)

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git-fs: file system representation of a git repository by fgonzalez

Description

This project aims to create a Linux equivalent to the git/fs concept from git9. Now, I'm aware that git provides worktrees, but they are not enough for many use cases. Having a read-only representation of the whole repository simplifies scripting by quite a bit and, most importantly, reduces disk space usage. For instance, during kernel livepatching development, we need to process and analyze the source code of hundreds of kernel versions simultaneously.This is rather painful with git-worktrees, as each kernel branch requires no less than 1G of disk space.

As for the technical details, I'll implement the file system using FUSE. The project itself should not take much time to complete, but let's see where it takes me.

I'll try to keep the same design as git9, so the file system will look something like:

/mnt/git
      +-- ctl
      +-- HEAD
      |    +-- tree
      |    |    +--files
      |    |    +--in
      |    |    +--head
      |    |
      |    +-- hash
      |    +-- msg
      |    +-- parent
      |
      +-- branch
      |      |
      |      +-- heads
      |      |      +-- master
      |      |            +-- [commit files, see HEAD]
      |      +-- remotes
      |             +-- origin
      |                     +-- master
      |                            +-- [commit files, see HEAD]
      +-- object
            +-- 00051fd3f066e8c05ae7d3cf61ee363073b9535f # blob contents
            +-- 00051fd3f066e8c05ae7d3cf61ee363073b9535c
                  +-- [tree contents, see HEAD/tree]
            +-- 3f5dbc97ae6caba9928843ec65fb3089b96c9283
                  +-- [commit files, see HEAD]

So, if you wanted to look at the commit message of the current branch, you could simply do:

cat /mnt/git/HEAD/msg 

No collaboration needed. This is a solo project.

Goals

• Implement a working prototype.

• Measure and improve the performance if possible. This step will be the most crucial one. User space filesystems are slower by nature.

Resources

https://orib.dev/git9.html

https://docs.kernel.org/filesystems/fuse/fuse.html

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go-git: unlocking SHA256-based repository cloning ahead of git v3 by pgomes

Description

The go-git library implements the git internals in pure Go, so that any Go application can handle not only Git repositories, but also lower-level primitives (e.g. packfiles, idxfiles, etc) without needing to shell out to the git binary.

The focus for this Hackweek is to fast track key improvements for the project ahead of the upstream release of Git V3, which may take place at some point next year.

Goals

• Add support for cloning SHA256 repositories.
• Decrease memory churn for very large repositories (e.g. Linux Kernel repository).
• Cut the first alpha version for go-git/v6.

Stretch goals

• Review and update the official documentation.
• Optimise use of go-git in Fleet.
• Create RFC/example for go-git plugins to improve extensibility.
• Investigate performance bottlenecks for Blame and Status.

Resources

• https://github.com/go-git/go-git/
• https://go-git.github.io/docs/

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