[pmwiki-users] PITS 00417 WikiGroup Mirroring

Monty pmwiki at ioioi.us
Sun Apr 10 04:55:49 CDT 2005


 > Date: Sun, 10 Apr 2005 04:50:02 -0400
 > From: Radu <radu at monicsoft.net>
 >

Radu,

Thank you sincerely for your time and thoughts, in reply to my earlier 
note regarding the proposed " WikiGroup Mirror " feature.

 > Having a bit of experience with automatic synchronization tools, I
 > would not set my wiki to be automatically synched. It goes against
 > your best pro argument: the separation of development and production.

When you separation of development[sic] (staging), and production 
servers, does not require or imply that there is zero automated 
deployment of MERE CONTENT from staging to production.

 > And mirroring for backup purposes seems a bit resource-intensive.

If the mirror is performed only once annually, or once monthly, it may 
not be resource intensive at all!  Heck, even once daily on most (small, 
medium, or even large) WikiGroups would not be a heavy load on the CPU, 
storage, or bandwidth (assuming all attachments over "X"(configured) 
kilobytes are excluded in the process).  WikiGroup Mirror would only be 
resource intensive if there were megabytes of attachments involved.

 > Not to talk about the sync problems you may get into is
 > people start modifying different mirrors at the same time :)

True, synchronization requires true Computer Science algorithms or 
heuristcs to solve, and as such is non-trivial, and shall be excluded 
from this feature request entirely.  I will totally expunge the PITS 
from any mention of sync, and leave it only talking about a mirroring.

A separate PITS shall be opened to talk about the more advanced "sync" 
idea and some academic with interest and time can implement that.

 > Even if using DNS tricks to hide the fall of one server,
 > the dns network is slower to update than just
 > restoring a new backup copy somewhere else
 > and alerting the users by email.
 > I know - I had to do it couple of weeks ago :)

As a former datacenter admin, I'm also aware of this scenario, and I 
agree that the "round robin" method of DNS load balancing is an inferior 
selection.  There are much better ways to go about it, but that is 
beyond the scope of the topic at hand (however quite interesting, and 
I'd love to blog about it on my wiki!).

 > That being said you could write a shell ftp script on the platform
 > you're working with (I know ways for Dos, Win, older MacOSes and Unix)
 > to use a text document to batch-ftp a set of pages.

You completely miss the point.  Go back and reread the justifications 
and criteria, because this was specifically addressed.  One of the 
requirements for the project is that the mirroring can be done by a 
non-technical WikiUser to whom the WikiAdministrator entrusts with a 
simple password and URL.  Keeping it simple!! :~)

 > Why would this be part of pmwiki itself?

It need not be part of pmwiki itself.

Is PITS the wrong place to suggest cookbook/recipe ideas? I'm new so 
sorry if PITS is only for Pm or only for PmWiki, and not for extensions 
or skins!  And direct me to the right location to blog 
not-necessarily-Pm ideas :).

 > It could go as an Administration recipe in the Backup set of recipes.

Hmm, well it could.  But, refer again to the requirements in this PITS; 
again, this is a solution which can be maintained by a WikiUser.

 > just how ic ;)

Your feedback and help
is appreciated.

Regards,

Monty






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