Hi Ariel,

I don't really understand why the dumps need to be halted as I thought the mediawiki code and database dump code were basically two separate entities already*.  I guess the 1.17 branch code changes the structure of the database causing potential errors in the database dump?  I also don't understand the "precautionary" logic of halting the dumps, as a dump with errors is better than no dump in the case where there are a limited supply of recent dumps due to the RAID server failure as well.  If its only a couple day halt as you mentioned that's probably irrelevant, but it sounds like it may be a longer period of limited testing from your last wikitech email, which makes me wonder if it is even worth halting the dumps in the first place.. Also wouldn't potential dump errors be detected better if they continue to be produced and check them for errors, rather than halt them?

cheers,
Jamie


*
http://svn.wikimedia.org/viewvc/mediawiki/branches/REL1_17/
http://svn.wikimedia.org/viewvc/mediawiki/branches/ariel/xmldumps-backup/


----- Original Message -----
From: "Ariel T. Glenn" <ariel@wikimedia.org>
Date: Saturday, February 5, 2011 10:56 pm
Subject: [Xmldatadumps-l] upcoming 1.17 deployment and the xml dumps
To: xmldatadumps-l@lists.wikimedia.org, wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org

> A little bit before the scheduled deployment of the 1.17 branch
> on our
> production servers, I will be halting production of XML dumps.
> Deployment is set for Tuesday Feb 8 at 07:00 UTC, so a few hours
> beforethat I'll start shutting down processes.
>
> This is a precautionary measure; after the deployment and any hasty
> fixes that may be needed, I will be doing some testing to ensure that
> dumps are not impacted, before we restart them. Barring some bizarre
> problem, we should be back up and running within a day or two.
>
> Ariel
>
>
>
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