FAQ Table of Contents

How do I install Confusa?
How do I get a pretty tarball of confusa?
I want to contribute to Confusa – where do I start?
Your approach is wrong!
What is git
My new certificate cannot be revoked!
I revoke my certificate, but nothing happens!

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I install Confusa?

You need to things.

1. SimpleSAMLphp is used for authentication.
   Configuration is not covered here,  but [[http://rnd.feide.no/simplesamlphp]] contains excellent documentation.
2. Confusa itself.
   You can do this in several ways.
   - The simplest is probably to download the deb-packages from [[http://non-gnu.uvt.nl/debian/lenny/|the APT-repository]] hosted by [[http://www.uvt.nl|UvT]].
   - Download the latest stable archive from [[http://beta.confusa.org/downloads/]]
   - Checkout the source from git (git clone git://git.assembla.com/confusa.git) and follow the instructions in INSTALL

How do I get a pretty tarball of confusa?

At he moment, assembla does not support archive-download, but you can download the archive with git and then:
git archive —format=tar —prefix=confusa/ HEAD | gzip > confusa.tar.gz

I want to contribute to Confusa – where do I start?

Well, the first thing you should do, is to fire off an email to confusa-dev@confusa.org. Add whatever questions you might have, tell us why you want to contribute and what you intend to do. Then submit patches. We use git, and this makes creating and submitting patches very easy. If your patches make sense, they will be included in the main repository. If not, well don’t worry, we’ll tell you what and why it’s wrong.

If you’re very eager, we also have an irc-channel (#confusa@freendoe) where you are more than welcome to participate.

I think your approach is fundamentally wrong, I think the whole system should be redesigned from the bottom up! How do I get this done?

To be honest – you won’t. But fear not – Confusa is open source, we use git and we encourage you to create your own repository and change it to your liking. All we ask in return, is that you
a) Keep the license
b) Return the favour by making your tree public so that we can have a look at your version and pick what we like and include in our tree (with proper credit to authorship etc given).

You keep talking about git – what is this git of yours?

Actually, it’s not “our git”. Git is a distributed version control system created by Linus Torvalds in the wake of the BitKeeper fallout. Instead of introducing git here, go git-home and read through the introduction and howtos there.

My new certificate cannot be revoked!

In most cases, this is because you have to wait for little while. The portal will cache the order-number and will therefore be able to retrieve the certificate directly when quering the CA-backend. The revoke-engine uses another approach, and new certificates will not show up in the general search-area until approximately 5 minutes after being signed.

If you still cannot revoke your certificate via the dedicate revoke-page after 5 minutes, something may have gone wrong and you should contact support. The contact-addresses for your local IT-support is listed in the portal.

I revoke my certificate, but nothing happens!

Be patient my young padawan. The revoke-action may take a few minutes, and the listing will be a bit slow to update. After 2-3 minutes it should be in sync. If nothing happens withing 10 minutes, please try again or contact your IT-support.