On 26/09/12 20:25, Ryan Lane wrote:
temporary blockers
- no replication of wikimedia wiki databases
** joining of user databases with wiki databases
We currently have no plans for having the user databases on the same servers as the replicated databases. Direct joins will not be possible, so tools will need to be modified.
-50
It's such a useful feature, that it would be worth making a local mysql slaves for having them. I know, the all-powerful labs environment is unable to run a mysql instance, but we could use MySQL cluster, trading memory (available) to get joins (denied).
- no support for script execution dependency (on ts: currently done by sge)
There's less of a need for this in Labs. If whatever you are running is really expensive, you can have your own instance. That said, I was looking at integrating a global queuing system. It won't be SGE, though.
If someone is really keen on SGE, then I recommend they work with us to puppetize it. Thankfully, open grid engine is already packaged in ubuntu, which should make that much easier.
SGE is a strong queue system. We have people and tools already trained to use it. It would be my first option. That said, if the presented alternative has the same user interface, it shouldn't be a problem. For instance, I don't have an opinion about which of the SGE forks would be preferable.
- no support for servlets
I'm not sure what you mean by servlet?
J2EE, I guess.
- no DaB.
I'd love DaB to help us improve Labs.
Everything about Labs is fully open. Anyone can help build it, even the production portions.
- Ryan
Would it be worth our efforts? I sometimes wonder why we should work on that (yes, I'm pessimistic right now). For instance the squid in front of *.beta.wmflabs.org. It was configured by Petan and me. We had absolutely no support from the WMF. The squid wasn't purging correctly. It worked on production, so there was a config error somewhere. We begged to see the squid config for months. But as it was in the private repository, no, it can't be shown, just in case it has something secret (very unlikely for squid config). Yes, we will clean them up and publish, eventually. Months passed (not to mention how publishing the config had been requested years ago). It could have been quickly reviewed before handing out, and we weren't going to abuse it if there really something weird was there. Replicating the WMF setup was done without viewing that same setup. I finally fixed it. I was quite proud of having solved it. Where is that file right now? It vanished. The file was lost in one of the multiple corruptions of labs instances. It was replaced with a copy of the cluster config (which was finally published in the meantime). So it feels like wasted effort now. I'd have liked to save a local copy at least.
It's not enough to leave tools there and say "It is fully open. Anyone can help build it"