Hi Mark. Thanks for your efforts trying to keep the site up.

About the proposed solution, if I'm understanding the process correctly, your proposal is to recreate a wiki on a new server by using only XML dumps. Note that this will not import logs nor user accounts.

If the move is required for downgrading SMW, because SMW table structure will be different, wouldn't be possible to import the entire database, delete the SMW tables and let the installer recreate them, and populate the data? This will prevent any data loss from logs and accounts. This can be done also in-place on the current wiki, of course, but that would probably require disabling SMW to prevent errors when viewing pages, which in turn will break most templates anyway since everything depends on SMW, at least during the transition period.

Best regards,

-- Jesús Martínez Ciencia Al Poder

El mar, 12 sept 2023 a las 3:54, Mark A. Hershberger (mah@everybody.org) escribió:

Hi, WikiApiary users!

WikiApiary has been in write-only mode and, since I haven't posted any information, people have been asking what's up.

I would like to bring the site back online as soon as possible, but my time is quite limited and I need some help. If you can help with any of the steps under the "A solution" section, please let me know.

The problem === =======

The problem seems similar to the one that Justin Lloyd reported[1] early this year. Cindy left a comment[2] on that issue that gives some insight into the problems we're seeing on WikiApiary.

There has already been some discussion tonight about WikiApiary and SMW on the Semantic MediaWiki discussion channel[3].

A solution = ========

In the immediate term, though, we need to do something to get the site back online. What we've been doing hasn't been working, so another approach is needed.

The first idea that I have for doing that is taking an XML dump of the site and importing it into an older version of SMW. I do not have the resources to do this, so I need to ask for help from you all.

I *think* the immediate steps are:

1. Create an XML dump of the site.

2. Set up a wiki with an older version of SMW (3.x?) on WMCS and import the site there.

3. Run rebuildData.

4. Turn the site and the bots back on, pointing to the new WMCS site.

Those steps would get WikiApiary back online.

The Future === ======

After that, we could start to think about the long-term fix is to address the scalability problem with WikiApiary. Doing that means either fixing the bug in SMW or re-architecting the site so that SMW is no longer used.

I know this is a lot to digest, but I'm hoping that we can, as a community, figure out a way to get the project that Jamie Thingelstad started all those years ago back online.

Mark.

Footnotes: [1] https://github.com/SemanticMediaWiki/SemanticMediaWiki/issues/5392

[2] https://github.com/SemanticMediaWiki/SemanticMediaWiki/issues/5392#issuecomm...

[3] https://matrix.to/#/!buSEZBEvVNBUdwhvvn:matrix.org/$Xl86P6MWjCE8-4lEzKQdUgym...

-- Mark A. Hershberger NicheWork LLC 717-271-1084 _______________________________________________ Wikiapiary mailing list -- wikiapiary@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe send an email to wikiapiary-leave@lists.wikimedia.org

Hi.

May I ask where you are moving to? Is it possible to restore from backup and not to upgrade SMW?

Sorry if I make misunderstood. I am not familiar with SMW and databases.

Regards, TripleCamera2022.