Battlestar Wiki:Chiefs' noticeboard/Archive6

Amazon EC2 feasibility?[edit]

Just came across this suggestion from one of our respondents to our survey:

"See if you can work a way to run the wiki (but not the mysql database) on Amazon EC2 servers, or some other "elastic" server farm where, as an episode airs, you can for 1 day suddenly boost the resources with which you run it tenfold, while not paying a big bill. Amazon EC2 does this but does not have static storage for your database, which would mean a lot of bandwidth to a remote database. However, another hosting company might offer you virtual servers by the hour on a network where they also let you keep your dedicated server and sql database."

Is this feasible? Could we do this? Pros? Cons? -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate - Battlestar Pegasus} 22:22, 26 February 2008 (CST)

Well if there's a company out there that offers this for a reasonable price, why not? --Catrope^{(Talk to me or e-mail me)} 03:53, 27 February 2008 (CST)

This is almost like squaid server. The only time that we do have downtime or very werid slowness is near airing, which is true. But when we goto the Battlestar Forum during those times, its as fast as a button, with no slow down. My mind tells me that is just a Mediawiki I/O program when it comes to having to reteive the database. We might have to run that connection test script again (disable stats of course) again with mem-cache enabled. Directing everyone off to an off-site database is not the problem. We do that already with Athena, which is on a different subnet than Apollo, it be almost investing in a "Load Balanceing" hardware that we can place in front of Apollo that filters traffic more directly. WWW --> Load Balancer -- double split arrow --> Apollo + Athena. However, Athena never talks with the outside world, cept on the admin port and talks with Apollo internally at ThePlanet. Shane ^{(T - C - E)} 13:19, 4 March 2008 (CST)

How about we set up a third DB server as a slave? It wouldn't have to be on a separate machine, it could run on Apollo. The other way around may even be better: have Athena do the hard work (servicing reads) and be somewhat lighter on Apollo (only writes). For more information on setting up master/slave DB servers in MediaWiki, go here. --Catrope^{(Talk to me or e-mail me)} 07:49, 5 March 2008 (CST)

I'm going to second Shane's comments regarding MediaWiki... During "Razor's" premiere and the two days following, the forum was fine, with the Wiki seeming to be the slowest. Coincidentally, when Apollo became bogged down, I had to deactivate the mysql database on Athena in order to get Apollo accessible via SSH, which tells me that Apollo was being the workhorse there... and was also being a bottleneck, apparently. So it seems to be that we need to beef up the Apollo server, and not Athena, which was fine even through the entire thing. -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate - Battlestar Pegasus} 10:22, 5 March 2008 (CST)

Have we yet figured out a way to simulate "battle" load, outside of trial by fire yet? It seems like most of the simulations so far have been less violent than the real deal. While it is not something we ought to subject our servers to on a whim, it would be nice to be able to test configuration changes before they face combat. --Steelviper 12:54, 6 March 2008 (CST)

Someone familiar with the pywikipediabot framework (not me, I'd have to learn Python xD) could write up a bot that does lots of writes. Without it, we can really only simulate a flood of reads (I could write up something for that, though). --Catrope^{(Talk to me or e-mail me)} 14:06, 6 March 2008 (CST)

I think I understood that it was the concurrent edits (and edit conflicts that result) that were bringing us down. --Steelviper 14:47, 6 March 2008 (CST)

Yeah, I wanted to say that (must've deleted it while rewriting): our largest problem is the edit flood, that's why we protect articles or put the wiki in read-only mode. We could maybe arrange for an edit fest, though: we all agree to submit a large number of edits more or less simultaneously (we can prepare them beforehand) at the Hangar Bay, and see what happens. IRC (Freenode?) would be useful to coordinate that. --Catrope^{(Talk to me or e-mail me)} 14:58, 6 March 2008 (CST)

Style idea[edit]

For those wanting a simpler style, I ran across this. With a little tweaking, it would probably work here for those people wanting a cleaner layout. Thoughts? -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate - Battlestar Pegasus} 22:48, 9 March 2008 (CDT)

As a less is more kinda person, I like it. -- FrankieG 23:32, 9 March 2008 (CDT)

I can't see it. :/ --DrWho42 01:11, 10 March 2008 (CDT)

Do you mean you can't access it, or don't see it working for us? -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate - Battlestar Pegasus} 10:02, 10 March 2008 (CDT)

I am one of the five people who actually love the dark red/black style, but as option for those who don't (and that's a lot of people) that would be good. It seems to have a larger font too. -- Serenity 06:35, 10 March 2008 (CDT)

Hey, I thought I was the only one who stuck with bsgbook (dark red/black), guess not then. On topic: the more choice, the better, of course. --Catrope^{(Talk to me or e-mail me)} 07:26, 10 March 2008 (CDT)

I happen to use (and love) the new style as well. The only thing I can say against it is the width issue, seeing as I have a 17" widescreen. Other than that, the style I pointed out is simple and gets rid of some of the clutter... it may work for us. It may not. Also, keep in mind that our current style (~~BsgBook~~ ahem, Battlestar) will remain our default style, these will just be alternatives for people who don't like the current style.-- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate - Battlestar Pegasus} 10:02, 10 March 2008 (CDT)

The current default is battlestar, right? (The "new" style) --Catrope^{(Talk to me or e-mail me)} 10:12, 10 March 2008 (CDT)

You're right. :) -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate - Battlestar Pegasus} 10:20, 10 March 2008 (CDT)

*cough* Battlestar iPhone *cough* and *cough* Battlestar Light *cough* :D Shane ^{(T - C - E)} 10:46, 10 March 2008 (CDT)

When will either of these be ready? -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate - Battlestar Pegasus} 15:11, 11 March 2008 (CDT)

PHP upgrade?[edit]

While testing my API framework on Battlestar Wiki, I ran into a compatibility problem in PHP's serialze() output. The problem is that the PHP serialize output changed somewhere between versions, so my (new) version expects data in a different format than the BSWiki server outputs, causing an error. Maybe you guys could upgrade PHP when you start your upgrade spree (1.12, extensions)? --Catrope^{(Talk to me or e-mail me)} 14:14, 23 February 2008 (CST)

Yep. I'll do that now then. Shane ^{(T - C - E)} 14:18, 23 February 2008 (CST)

Running the instlal test. Once it passes, I will shut down Apache while I install the new version. 5.2.5. Shouldn't take long. Shane ^{(T - C - E)} 14:41, 23 February 2008 (CST)

Done. 5.2.5 active. :) Shane ^{(T - C - E)} 14:44, 23 February 2008 (CST)

Thanks. There seems to be a different problem, though: the output is prefixed by a space. Can you grep for files that have a space before the <?php or one after the ?> (the latter shouldn't occur anywhere, though). --Catrope^{(Talk to me or e-mail me)} 14:58, 23 February 2008 (CST)

In the skin? Shane ^{(T - C - E)} 15:11, 23 February 2008 (CST)

Maybe. All I know is that there's some PHP file with a leading or trailing newline (not a space, sorry). --Catrope^{(Talk to me or e-mail me)} 15:22, 23 February 2008 (CST)

Would this include extensions as well? Or no? -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate - Battlestar Pegasus} 17:41, 23 February 2008 (CST)

While I'm on that tangent, could it be the DismissableSiteNotice that mucks things up? After all, it does generate a space in the main skin, and doubtless on others. -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate - Battlestar Pegasus} 17:42, 23 February 2008 (CST)

Can you run a debugger to see which file it stops at? There are over 100+ files. I am not going through all of them to remove new lines which I keep so I don't loose my mind when looking at the code. :) Shane ^{(T - C - E)} 18:33, 23 February 2008 (CST)

It could be an extension, yes. DismissableSitenotice is the most likely suspect, followed by other recently installed extensions. I unfortunately don't have a way of checking which .php file is guilty. You could use grep(1) to look for a newline followed by <?php , or you could check the most recently installed extensions first and hope it's in one of them. --Catrope^{(Talk to me or e-mail me)} 09:48, 24 February 2008 (CST)

For one thing that I lack it's using grep. Tell me what I would enter into the shell to look for it :) Shane ^{(T - C - E)} 12:30, 24 February 2008 (CST)

grep '<?php' -n *.php | grep -v ':1:'. The first grep searches for all occurrences of <?php and prints line numbers too (-n), the second grep filters the output for all matches not on the first line (-v lists only non-matching lines). --Catrope^{(Talk to me or e-mail me)} 13:36, 24 February 2008 (CST)

Have we found the culprit yet? -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate - Battlestar Pegasus} 09:36, 26 February 2008 (CST)

No. Could you run the grep command I posted above in some of the extension directories? --Catrope^{(Talk to me or e-mail me)} 09:44, 26 February 2008 (CST)

[bsgwiki@apollo extensions]$ grep '<?php' -n *.php | grep -v ':1:'
[bsgwiki@apollo extensions]$ grep '<?php' -n *.php | grep -v ':1:'
[bsgwiki@apollo extensions]$

Shane ^{(T - C - E)} 11:28, 26 February 2008 (CST)

Actually, I've found that you have to go to each sub directory and run the grep expression... So the culprits I found so far are AddHtml and a few others. -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate - Battlestar Pegasus} 11:39, 26 February 2008 (CST)

oh sob. doh. that's right :P Shane ^{(T - C - E)} 12:32, 26 February 2008 (CST)

What's the sit rep on this? -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate - Battlestar Pegasus} 15:10, 11 March 2008 (CDT)

The problem is still there. --Catrope^{(Talk to me or e-mail me)} 17:02, 11 March 2008 (CDT)

I'll have to write a perl script to check each file. I am really not in the mood to do it manually :) Joe.. email Shane ^{(T - C - E)} 00:24, 12 March 2008 (CDT)

TOS tag out of place[edit]

I'm using BSG monobook in Firefox and the TOS emblem appears about half a centimetre too low. OTW 10:26, 11 March 2008 (CDT)

Yeah... I will fix that. :) Thanks for the update! (Give me a few mintues...) Shane ^{(T - C - E)} 10:36, 11 March 2008 (CDT)

Try a hard refresh. It should be now in the correct place. :) Now to gwad my eyes for switching to bsgmonobook!!!!! Shane ^{(T - C - E)} 10:41, 11 March 2008 (CDT)

Fixed now! OTW 13:38, 12 March 2008 (CDT)