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Operations/Minutes/2026-06-25

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OpenStreetMap Foundation, Operations Meeting - Draft minutes

These minutes do not go through a formal acceptance process.
This is not strictly an Operations Working Group (OWG) meeting.

Thursday 25 June 2026, 19:00 London time
Location: Video room at https://osmvideo.cloud68.co

Participants

New action items from this meeting

  • Grant to create and send a quote for the QGIS traffic server to the supplier. [Topic: QGIS tile render server purchase]
  • Grant to provide the S3 bucket name to Tom. [Topic: Point-in-time recovery]

QGIS tile render server purchase

Michelle (OSMF accountant) has created the QGIS invoice on the 10th of June and it is unclear if the Treasurer has sent it to QGIS. Héctor checked Xero (online bookkeeping platform) and the invoice is not marked as paid. He will ask Michelle and Roland for an update.

  • OWG has determined the preferred specs of the server intended for QGIS traffic.
  • We probably need to complete the purchase soon, in case pricing changes again.

On secondhand market

  • The secondhand market seems to be cooling down.
  • High prices encourage people to keep old equipment longer and become more willing to purchase used equipment.

Other points mentioned during discussion

  • OSMF is overdue with contractors' payments. Paul sent a reminder on 2026-05-20.
    • There were some banking issues which could affect other financial tasks.

Action item

Grant to create and send a quote for the QGIS traffic server to the supplier. Purchases should be paid within 30 days, according to their website.

Compress plain GPX uploads with gzip

Related to https://github.com/openstreetmap/openstreetmap-website/pull/7124

Topic raised by Rubén López Mendoza

The PR https://github.com/openstreetmap/openstreetmap-website/pull/7124 currently aims to automatically un-gzip GPX uploads, if the user supplied them gzipped, and gzip again on download. The main motivation for the PR is probably that Windows doesn't cope well with gzip files. You would have to add custom metadata to the upload on S3 to record the fact that it was supplied originally as un-gzipped file.

If the browser has indicated that it supports content encoding, then the code redirects you to Amazon, but with instructions for Amazon to send it with the content encoding header so that the browser unzips it automatically. There seems to be a fallback where we proxy it and do the un-gzipping ourselves.

Windows

  • The Windows gzip difficulties might not still be true.
  • gzip file extension is not supported on Windows, unless you have WinZip. The browsers support content encoding with gzip.
  • One can't do anything with a gzip file in Windows - it needs to be loaded into a program.
  • A tar.gz file opens exactly the same as a zip file on Windows.
    • The discussion is about an individual trace rather than a tar.gz
  • .gz works on Windows - it didn't work on older Windows versions.

Seems like a website issue, rather than an OPS one - it will reduce the storage needed.

Suggestion

  • Send it back to the browser as .gz file. JOSM understands .gz files.

Other points mentioned during discussion

  • S3 does some very surprising things to gzipped content.
  • User-provided un-gzipped GPX files are currently being gzipped before being saved to Amazon S3.
  • Preference by Grant for zstandard, but we don't support it.

Point-in-time recovery

Point-in-time recovery testing pending. The credentials are in Chef private - Grant added them there on 4th of December, but Tom was not informed about this.

Paul attended the PG backrest office hours at a conference and had discussions about differences between backrest and barman and has notes. Both options seem viable.

Other points mentioned during discussion

  • The OSM database setup is large but not particularly complex

Action item

Grant to provide the S3 bucket name to Tom.

Vector tile database reload

Paul plans to do a vector tiles database reload - language-related.

Stormfly 04 and Ridley

Stormfly 04

  • Is an end of life Gen9 Nominatim server.
  • It is hosted at Oregon State University (OSU), which has not yet started billing us for the machines in their new data centre. We were previously not paying for it.
  • Sarah Hoffman (Nominatim maintainer) does not need the machine but is happy to use it.

Ridley

  • Most of Ridley's services, which are related to OSMF, have been moved to Naga.

On CiviCRM

Grant needs to work on CiviCRM, as it is a blocker. CiviCRM has 20 extensions and hidden credentials. We had some forced upgrades where some CiviCRM extensions were disabled because they were no longer compatible and nothing appeared to break.

Need to determine

  • Which extensions are in use. Many extensions got installed and were never removed.
  • Which reports are being read.
  • Why there are multiple payment gateways when only one payment gateway is in use.
  • Who has the credentials for the payment gateways. Probably Guillaume Richard (former board member and Membership Working Group (MWG) volunteer) and Roland (current Treasurer).

Other points mentioned during discussion

  • Paul was an MWG volunteer.
  • The board is eager to see some progress on CiviCRM.
  • The MWG had contracted someone to work on CiviCRM issues.

External DB for gps

https://github.com/openstreetmap/openstreetmap-website/pull/7111 - https://github.com/openstreetmap/chef/pull/856

Topic raised by Rubén López Mendoza

Rubén had been discussing the GPS database work with Minh. Rubén will pause the database splitting work and focus on other GPX-related tasks such as visibility improvements.

Grant created a pull request in Chef to skip GPS data table from backups.

Suggestion

  • Get proper base backups before merging the Chef change that skips the GPS data table.

Other points mentioned during discussion

  • The GPS data table is large and backing it up weekly may be redundant, as the data exists elsewhere and could be re-imported if needed.

Action items

  • 2026-06-11 Grant to increase the number of workers for Apache across the tile servers. [Topic: Upgrading workers for Apache]
  • 2026-06-11 OWG to follow up on chat about 1) and change the 509 error code to 429 for the website in cgimap, 2) relaxing the 509 limit if it hits people unintentionally, 3) requiring a minimum error count so as to not alarm on tiny POP error percentages. [Topic: Reducing Fastly alerts]
  • 2026-05-28 Minh to follow up on DWG non-disclosure agreements, then IP access for moderators in website repo. [DWG request for user info for moderators]
  • 2026-05-28 Paul to ask OSM France how do they view if we retire the HOT style from osm.org since it is not under active development [AOB: Tracestrack topo and HOT layers]
  • 2026-05-14 Grant to check with Fastly team via Slack about 100% ngwaf traffic
  • 2026-05-14 Paul to do PR setting referer policy header on embed
  • 2026-03-19 Grant to research what triggers a large download from QGIS. [Topic: QGIS Tiles usage] # 2026-05-14 Not much progress; unable to find the new usage header in latest versions. # 2026-06-11 Action item to be parked.
  • 2026-03-19 Paul to overhaul how we're doing the 404 tiles. [Topic: Tiles] To be replaced by ticket.
  • 2026-03-19 Paul and Grant to run some time limited experiments during non peak hours to test catching anonymous/fake-ua scrapers. Genuine Google Bot etc will continue to be permitted. [Topic: Fastly Client Challenges]
  • 2026-03-05 Grant to do a dry run for the Mailman conversion, probably on Rhaegal in Croatia. [Topic: Upgrades: Machines on Ubuntu 22.04]
  • 2026-01-22 Grant to get AWS S3 bucket credentials for the dev server. [Topic: Credativ consultancy on OSM.org Postgres database update] # 2026-05-14 Bucket created, credentials not provided yet.
  • 2025-10-16 Grant and Paul to set up a meeting about AWS Identity and Access Management Roles Anywhere https://docs.aws.amazon.com/rolesanywhere/latest/userguide/introduction.html. [Topic: AWS CA cert] # 2026-05-14 Grant to chat to Tom about what CA + Signed Certs are required. Grant to read the AWS documentation on requirements.
  • 2025-10-16 Grant to create a PR regarding refactoring some stuff. Make kitchen handle selecting cookbook-OS combos. and only running tests on cookbooks that have changed [Topic: Reworking of Test Kitchen methods for defining which jobs run on Test Kitchen Github actions]
  • 2025-10-16 Grant to create a PR about adding logic to Chef for retrying failed initial creation of Let's Encrypt certificates [Topic: Add logic to Chef for retrying failed initial creation of Let's Encrypt certificates]
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