On Mon, Feb 16, 2009 at 11:02 AM, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Alternatively, the number of jobs processed per
request could be made
a function of the length of the backlog (in terms of time) - the
longer the backlog is, the faster we process jobs. Then if the job
queue get to being months behind we would all notice it because
everything would start running really slowly.
Jobs are not processed on requests. They're processed by a cron job.
You can't just automatically run them at a crazy rate, because that
will cause slave lag and other bad stuff. If too many are
accumulating, it's probably due to a programming error that needs to
be found and fixed by human inspection. (Tim just made several
commits fixing things that were spewing out too many jobs.)
(Obviously, the length
of the job queue needs to be added to whatever diagnostic screen the
devs first check when the site slows down, otherwise it won't help
much.)
#wikimedia-tech has enough people that regular warnings posted there
would probably get noticed.