Changes:

0.1.0 / 2010-07-14

• 1 major enhancement

  • Birthday!

• http://bitbucket.org/krbullock/xpgrep

I quickly discovered that the REMOTE_USER environment variable, which for a CGI app would contain the username which was authenticated by Apache, doesn’t get passed via the proxying magic to Rails (when run via mongrel or the like). My Google-fu turned up this thread, which has a solution that sets an X-Forwarded-User header to the value of REMOTE_USER. That header gets passed on in the proxied request to the Rails app. Here’s the magic incantation:

RewriteCond %{LA-U:REMOTE_USER} (.+)
RewriteRule . - [E=RU:%1]
RequestHeader add X-Forwarded-User %{RU}e

It put me on the right track, but still wasn’t working. There’s two problems with the solution given there:

1. The RewriteRule only matches the root URL of the application (the . matches any single character). Back to regex class. It should read ^.*$, that is, match all URLs.

1. It uses mod_rewrite’s ‘lookahead’ to determine the final (post-rewriting) value of REMOTE_USER. I, however, am using this in a directory configuration context, which for esoteric implementation reasons doesn’t require lookahead—we can use the REMOTE_USER variable directly.

Here, then, is my final config, added before the rest of the normal Rails .htaccess rules:

RewriteCond %{REMOTE_USER} (.+)
RewriteRule ^.*$ - [E=RU:%1]
RequestHeader add X-Forwarded-User %{RU}e

Using the X-Forwarded-User header in Rails

The other thing that the aforementioned post didn’t tell me was how to use the forwarded header once Apache was forwarding it. Rails doesn’t do anything automatically with an X-Forwarded-User header; you have to get at it in your controllers through the request object. I added the following method to ApplicationController (and used helper_method to make it available to views):

# app/controllers/application_controller.rb
class ApplicationController < ActionController::Base
  def http_remote_user
    request.env['HTTP_REMOTE_USER'] || request.headers['X-Forwarded-User']
  end
  helper_method :http_remote_user
end

It checks first for the HTTP_REMOTE_USER environment variable, so that if you want to deploy your app differently you don’t need to change the code.

You could write a before_filter to enforce authentication, but I’ll leave that as an exercise for the reader. For this app, I need to know the authenticated username, but I don’t want the app to have anything more to do with authentication. The above does the job handily.

Changes:

2.1.0 / 2010-06-04

• 1 major enhancement

  • Add support for deploying with a patch queue. Useful e.g. for setting up a staging site with minor changes to the production configuration.

• http://hitsquad.rubyforge.org/vlad-hg/

• http://rubyforge.org/projects/hitsquad/

• http://bitbucket.org/krbullock/vlad-hg/

The Labordes (Joseph Laborde is the lay leader of St. Philippe – St. Jacques) are all alive and uninjured. Jonas (the oldest son) escaped “by a miracle.” He was at the Episcopal University [in Port-au-Prince], on the roof, when the earthquake occurred. The building collapsed around him, killing many of his classmates and professors. Jonas found a small hole and crawled through “like a snake.”

The Labordes’ home is cracked but standing, but, like everyone in the area, they are living and sleeping outside [...] they are having three or four aftershocks a day. Joseph has led morning prayer outside, in front of the collapsed church.

Kerwin+ himself was reportedly in Port-au-Prince with his brothers, Carlo and Roosnel, when the earthquake occurred. They were stuck in the city overnight, but were able to return to Léogâne on the following day. Kerwin+ has celebrated Eucharist on the grounds at Sainte Croix—Dianne reports, “he thought nobody would come, but in fact 200 – 300 people came.”

With this report, we now know that no one with close ties to St. John’s, at least, was badly harmed, although their situation remains extremely difficult, and virtually everyone there has lost friends or family. We continue to pray for them, and the Minnesota parishes with partners are discussing how best to help our partner congregations as they begin to rebuild.

On Friday, February 5, 2010, from 2 p.m. to 8 p.m., the Art for Haiti Relief Committee and St. James on the Parkway (directions) will host an ‘Exhibition and Art Sale for Haiti’.

The exhibit will display paintings, sculpture, and a variety of artifacts at a variety of prices. These works are for sale to help raise money for the vast needs of victims in Haiti. All proceeds go to victims of the Haitian earthquake for immediate life saving and sustaining uses.

As everyone now knows, this beautiful but poor country and people have suffered incredible destruction. Haitian history, too, has been rife with difficulties: slavery, colonialism, and natural disasters. Haiti’s people, by nature, are peaceful, honest, creative and family-loving, which makes their plight all the more close to the hearts of us who have an easier, safer life.

The artworks on display are primarily from Haiti, plus others from the Caribbean and from tribal cultures in Africa, North and South America, India and Oceania. These art pieces and artifacts are infused with essential life-loving and native esthetics, often pure, simple and vivid. Such works have sometimes been called Naive or Primitive Art; at their heart, they invoke warmth, hope, resilience, and joy.

Haitian work includes small paintings of landscapes, farming and village life, as well as reliefs in thin steel that express fantastic animals, figures with foliage, and a ‘garden of Eden’, made of metal cut from oil drums. Small wood carvings show native figures and enchanting animals. Other items for sale include posters, photographs and Haitian coffee.

The “Exhibition and Art Sale for Haiti” is free to all. Refreshments will be available.

St. Luke’s and St. Alban’s are among Episcopal and other churches helping this one-day activity.

Please help support this relief effort any way you can. Proceeds will be distributed through Partners in Health and Episcopal Relief and Development.

Dianne Pizey spoke to Kerwin+ on Monday morning:

He told me what we already knew – Haiti is almost completely destroyed, the church has lost almost everything, every person he knows has lost at least one loved one, everyone is sleeping outside and they have nothing but the clothes on their back, everyone is crying [for] their loved ones. He didn’t lose any immediate family, but he lost three cousins in Port au Prince. He lost many, many parishioners from Ste. Croix in Léogâne, including three young people who had just started at the Episcopal University in Port au Prince.

At St. Philippe – St. Jacques, the church is completely destroyed, and the school is very badly damaged, just like all the other churches and schools. He said there were not many deaths there.

Kerwin+’s wife, Rholcie, and daughter, Kercie, are both okay but still shaken. Terry Franzen, who leads the Haiti partnership at Christ Church in Norcross, GA, and joined the St. John’s trip to Haiti last June, reports from a conversation with Kerwin+ on Tuesday:

[Kerwin+] has made arrangements to get Rholcie and Kercie to the Dominican Republic on Friday and then to Ft. Lauderdale, where Kerwin’s cousin will meet them.

St. Joseph d’Arimathie, Jasmine

In the same e-mail, Terry relays news from Kerwin+ about Christ Church’s partner congregation, of which he is also Priest-in-Charge:

Kerwin said that he spoke to Maxo, the lay leader for St. Joseph’s today. He said that the church is badly cracked and that everyone is sleeping outside because of the damage to their homes and their fear of another quake.

Bonne Nouvelle, Bigonet

Maria Roesler, a friend of Ruth Anne Olson of St. James on the Parkway’s Haiti partnership, spoke to Kerwin+ on Sunday about Bonne Nouvelle in Bigonet, St. James’ partner congregation.

He reports that the church is destroyed and the school was badly damaged, but nobody from the Bonne Nouvelle church or the school died. He did mention another church that is nearby (I didn’t catch the name) and says that a lot of people from that church died. [...] [M]ost people are sleeping outside, as their houses were destroyed. [...]

He says that they truly need prayer in this time, because many people are crying for family that they have lost. He was encouraged to hear about the prayer service that was held here for Haiti.

Epiphanie, L’Acul

Epiphanie, the Episcopal congregation in the town of L’Acul near Léogâne, is partnered with Messiah in Saint Paul. Mike Carlin, co-director of CODEP, which is located across the road from Epiphanie, sent this report to Suzanne Wiebusch, Messiah’s liason for their partnership, on Monday:

Epiphan[i]e has some serious damage to [its] facility. I will be assessing the damage the[re] later today with an architect that is stopping by. We worshipped outside yesterday and had a beautiful service.

When Jean-Louis and his family arrived at Gressier, however, they found no one there. Many of the residents had moved to the mountains for fear of remaining near unstable structures or for fear of an oncoming tsunami. Jean-Louis joined his family. [...]

Jean Louis promised the citizens of Gressier, now living in makeshift shelters on the district’s mountainside, he would help raise funds for basic needs like tents, medical supplies, and water.

full story

We have received word from Crochu, a small mountain village (and also, I believe, an arrondissement) where St. John’s has done several mobile clinics with Carmel Valdema. Burt Purrington reports:

I was especially worried about Berline (“Méla”) Vètinèl, a recently-graduated nurse and the daughter of Elinèl Vètinèl, the head lay leader at St. Alban’s, Crochu. [...] Last Friday, Berline’s niece, who lives in Atlanta, called to say she’d talked to Berline and her mother and they were all right although they were staying outside their home because of the fear of aftershocks.

She also told me that there had been some damage at Crochu but that Berline’s sister, Tazia, and her family were OK.

This morning, after 10 days of unsuccessful calls from both ways, Tazia and her husband, Louis-Jacques, got through—and I was able to call them back when their calling card got low. [...]

Today I learned that some people in Crochu were injured by the quake, and a cousin of Louis-Jacques was killed (though he may have been in [Port-au-Prince] at the time of the quake). There was considerable damage at and around Plaisance (and I assume most of southwestern Crochu and perhaps all of Crochu). The damage was especially bad in the poorest communities on top of the mountain above Plaisance and Bouzi. Vètinèl’s home collapsed, so Berline doesn’t have a clinic any more. Tazia & Louis-Jacques’s home is badly damaged, and their kitchen & twalèt (probably the best in all of [southwest] Crochu) collapsed. Same with [Louis-Jacques'] mother’s home on top of the mountain. The sewing machines that Tazia and the young women in her sewing co-op use are badly damaged. A generator that [Louis-Jacques] just bought was damaged too. Thankfully, the spring at Plaisance is still flowing, and people can still go down the mountain to buy rice, cooking oil, spaghetti, canned fish, sugar, salt, etc. at the markets in Bon Repos & Croix-des-Bouquets which is good. The people of Crochu, like most people in rural Haiti, depend on store-bought goods from the cities, and they would be in big trouble if supplies of these staples weren’t maintained. Because prices for these goods are considerably inflated now, people in poor areas like Crochu will have even greater difficulties keeping their families fed.

This morning’s quake has widened and lengthened cracks in the walls of the School somewhat, but buildings are still in use.

More importantly, they are still serving patients in Léogâne.

Word arrived Tuesday evening that a truck with Dr. Chip Lambert and many supplies arrived at FSIL. Chip Lambert, M.D. is Director, Mission Service, Medical Benevolence Foundation, partnering with the Presbyterian Church USA. This morning we had word that “Chip is miraculously with Hilda doing great stuff after an heroic effort to pack and transport more than 3000 lbs of just what she needed…”

Dean Hilda Alcindor, students, and a visiting nurse faculty volunteer were mobilized within a half hour after the first quake. They have set up 10 first aid stations around the town of Léogâne. The Dean said that 5,000 Léogâne townspeople are being cared for in the yard of the school.

What I find more disturbing, though, are the two subtext points he seems to be making:

1. Charities working in Haiti already have plenty of money to support their relief efforts there.

   His given example is that Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières , or MSF), on their US donation page, is asking for unrestricted donations to their general Emergency Relief Fund. From this he extrapolates (falsely) that MSF “has already received enough money over the past three days to keep its Haiti mission running for the best part of the next decade.” He goes on to compare the earthquake in Haiti and subsequent outpouring of support to the 2004 tsunami in the Indian Ocean. But as the US Executive Director of Doctors Without Borders points out,

   comparisons to the Tsunami are misplaced because the medical systems affected by that crisis were not decimated and the short and long term emergency surgical needs of the population were much narrower.

   Furthermore, even if MSF did have plenty of money to support their work in Haiti, other organizations don’t. Groups like Partners in Health, which is now running the General Hospital in Port-au-Prince, are serving thousands of patients with extremely limited supplies, doing surgery with no anesthesia, making splints out of whatever’s handy in lieu of casts. They need money to purchase supplies and get them into the country. (Incidentally, they also need clearance to actually land the planes full of supplies.)

2. Money donated to charities working in Haiti won’t all go to Haiti anyway.

   To demonstrate this point Salmon cites the recent hubbub over accounting at Yéle, and takes particular exception to the fact that 20% of the funds from the George Clooney telethon will go to Yéle. I’m not convinced that there’s anything so fishy going on at Yéle as is being alleged, and it may well be racism that’s partly fueling the scrutiny of that organization in particular. But I would point out that the other 80% of money raised by the telethon will go to Oxfam America, Partners in Health, the Red Cross, and UNICEF, organizations that have an established presence in Haiti and are respected for putting all donations to use in the place they’re needed (although the Red Cross is not without their share of controversy).

By all means, when you donate for relief in Haiti, donate unrestricted funds, so that the organizations receiving them can decide for themselves how best to use them. And don’t let Felix Salmon’s faulty framing of that point deter you from doing so.

While we’re at it, let’s stop referring to Haiti (or any other country?) as a failed state. It’s patronizing and unhelpful, and moreover it insults the Haitian people: Haiti is a country with remarkably functional communities, given the poverty and instability imposed on them (largely by the rest of the world). If its national government is dysfunctional, it’s not because of any defect in the Haitian temperament or culture that the term ‘failed state’ implies.

CNP team is in a vehicle on the way to Leogane now to go set up too and jump in with what has been started. [...] Save [the Children] and CNP are working on getting camps set up and we’re addressing food and water issues.

and in another e-mail:

CNP is finalizing a partnership with Save the Children and we will work with FSIL and the Notre Dame Filariasis Program to help in Leogane. Anyone interested in donating to CNP can do so at http://www.cnphaiti.org/.

According to Suzi Parker, who runs the guesthouse at l’Hôpital Sainte Croix and has been in relatively regular e-mail communication with CNP staff, the hospital is helping Doctors Without Borders to set up surgical facilities in Léogâne:

There are 3 areas of medical care in Leogane right now besides at HSC [Hôpital Sainte Croix]. The nursing school [FSIL] which operates under the umbrella of HSC has seen an enormous number of people, and had several babies born there. The soccer field in town also has seen lots of patients, and I hear that the UN compound just outside town has a group there. All over town, tent cities have grown up, and folks are building lean-to’s from salvaged building materials. [...]

Latest news is that Doctors Without Borders is setting up an operating unit in the field behind the hospital, using our electrical and water. We are lending them gas from the generator until they are operational, hopefully by tomorrow. Another NGO, Caritas, wearing Catholic Relief Services t-shirts will come and help in the day clinic. Good news, as they talked about docs, pharmacist, and supplies, and we need more of all of them.