On Monday we start deploying a new version of MediaWiki, 1.21wmf2, to
the sites, starting with mediawiki.org and 2 test wikis
(https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki_1.21/Roadmap). 1.21wmf2 will
have 3 big new things in it and we need your help to test on the "beta"
test site http://deployment.wikimedia.beta.wmflabs.org/wiki/Main_Page
now to see if there are any really critical bugs.
1) The new ContentHandler (
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/ContentHandler ) might affect handing of
CSS and JavaScript pages, import/export (including PDF export), and API
stuff, especially when rendering and editing. I'd suggest we also look
out for issues in template rendering, images and media handling,
localisation, and mobile device access. (merged on Oct 9)
2) High-resolution image support. This work-in-progress will try to
give higher-res images to high-density screens that can support it, like
new Retina displays. More info at
https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/24115/ . One of the bigger risks of
the high res stuff is load-based, since we may see substantial new load
on our image scalers. So *all* image scaling might be impacted. (merged
on Oct 11)
3) "Sites" is a new backend to represent and store information about
sites and site-specific configuration. This code is meant to replace
the current interwiki code, but does not do so just yet. Still, keep an
eye out for site-specific configuration or interwiki issues.
Right now the version of MediaWiki on the beta cluster dates from 9 Oct
and thus has ContentHandler but not the high-res image support or Sites.
So please test on the beta sites now and look out for these issues on
your sites in the weeks ahead.
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Category:MediaWiki_test_plans has some
ideas on how to find errors.
Thanks! With your help we can find bugs early and get them fixed before
they affect lots of readers and editors.
--
Sumana Harihareswara
Engineering Community Manager
Wikimedia Foundation
FYI
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Erik Moeller <erik(a)wikimedia.org>
Date: Sun, Oct 7, 2012 at 2:07 PM
Subject: FYI: Language link behavior change in next MW rollout
To: mediawiki-i18n(a)lists.wikimedia.org
For your information, the next deployment version of MediaWiki will
have a small change in the behavior of interlanguage links.
Currently, in Wikimedia wikis, if you type:
[[de:Test]]
[[de:Experiment]]
in a page, both links will be rendered. However, only one link will be
stored in the database and available through the API (see bug 24502:
https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=24502 ).
This changeset:
https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/25232/
causes only one (the first) link to be rendered and stored in the
database, preventing the inconsistency between database state and
rendered output. This will be the new behavior with 1.21wmf2, which
will be deployed starting 10/15.
Cheers,
Erik
--
Erik Möller
VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation
Support Free Knowledge: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
--
Erik Möller
VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation
Support Free Knowledge: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
FYI
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Erik Moeller <erik(a)wikimedia.org>
Date: Sun, Oct 7, 2012 at 1:13 PM
Subject: Partial outage today
To: Wikimedia developers <wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Hi folks,
We had issues with our old fallback media storage server (the one
we're replacing on Monday [1]), causing cascading issues on the
cluster, starting around 5PM UTC. The outage affected editors, as well
as readers viewing uncached pages. Everything should be back to
normal.
Thanks to Domas/Asher/Ariel/Leslie/Jeremy/CT and anyone else who helped.
Erik
[1] http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2012-October/063704.html
--
Erik Möller
VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation
Support Free Knowledge: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
--
Erik Möller
VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation
Support Free Knowledge: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Ariel T. Glenn <ariel(a)wikimedia.org>
Date: Thu, Oct 4, 2012 at 5:19 AM
Subject: [Wikitech-l] Media infrastructure maintenance (uploads
disabled) Friday Oct 5, 11 am UTC
To: Wikimedia developers <wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
We're going to swap out ms7, the current media server fallback, for a
netapp. We'll start this on Friday Oct 5 at 11am UTC, to conclude at
2pm UTC or earlier. This will entail turning off uploads to all
projects during the switchover. It is possible that
ExtensionDistributor and captchas will be affected during this time as
well; other services should be fine.
Ariel
_______________________________________________
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https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Just quick note that, as announced in August
<http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/mediawiki-l/2012-August/039678.html>,
translatewiki.net yesterday dropped support for about 260
extensions/message groups.
People still using code from SVN will no longer have the localisation
updates they might expect.
If you need or care about one of them and the respective localisation,
you should get in contact with its developer(s) (or become one) so that
it's migrated to
Git.<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Git/Conversion/Extensions_queue>
Most or all of them need some tender loving care anyway.
The list of removed message groups is in
https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/26045/ and reproduced below for your
convenience.
Sorry for the crossposting,
Nemo
ABC, Advanced Meta, Advanced Random, Ajax Login, AJAX Poll, Ajax Query
Pages, Ajax Show Editors, Amazon Plus, Api Explorer, Api SVG Proxy,
Article Comments, Article To Category 2, Asksql, Autoincrement, Back and
Forth, Bad Image, Batch User Rights, Block Titles, Book Information,
CallCassandra, Categorize, Category Browser, Category Intersection,
Category Members On Sidebar, Category Multisort, Category Multisort
Chinese, Category On Upload, Category Sort Headers, Category Stepper,
Category Watch, Change Author, Chemistry, Close Wikis, Collab Watchlist,
Comment Spammer, Contributions Edit Count, Contributors, Contributors
Add-on, Cooperation Statistics, Count Edits, Create Box, Create
Redirect, Creative Commons Rdf, Cross Namespace Links, Crosswiki Block,
Crowd Authentication, Data Transclusion, Date Diff, Delayed Definition,
Delete Queue, Did You Mean, DPL Forum, Dublin Core Rdf, Duplicator, Edit
count, Edit Messages, Edit Own, Edit Section Clearer Link, Edit Section
Hilite Link, Edit Similar, Edit User, Elm Easy Ref, Email Address Image,
Email Page, Email Users, Emergency DeSysop, Etherpad Lite, External
Pages, Farmer, Favorites, File Attach, File Page Masking, Find Spam,
Fixed Image, Flag Page, Flv Handler, Folk Tag Cloud, Form, Format Email,
Framed Video, Freq Pattern Tag Cloud, Front Back Matter Forced
Wikilinks, GeeQuBox, GeoLite, Get Family, Global User rights, Gnuplot,
Google Analytics, Google Maps, Go To Category, Groups Sidebar, Hide
Namespace, Honeypot Integration, HTMLets, Icon, Image Tagging, Import
Free Images, Import Users, IM Status, Include WP, Index Function, Inline
Categorizer, Inspect Cache, Interactive Block Message, Interface
Concurrency, Interwiki List, IP Auth, JS Kit, Last User Login, Latex
Doc, Link OpenID, Livelets, Local JQuery, Lockdown, Logo Functions,
Lookup User, Lua, Magic No Numbered Headings, Mass Blank, Mass Edit
Regex, Math Stat Functions, Media Functions, Metadata Edit, Meta
Keywords, Metavid Wiki, MicroID, Mini Donation, Minimum Name Length,
Mini Preview, Mirror Tools, Most Revisors, Multi Boilerplate, Multi
Upload, Natural Language List, Navigation Popups, Network Auth, Newest
Pages, News, News Channel, No Bogus Userpages, Notificator, Nss MySQL
Auth, OpenID, Oracle Text Search, Other Sites, Package Force, Page By,
Page In Cat, Page Object Model, Parser Wiki, Patroller, Pdf Book, People
Categories, Pipe Escape, Piwik, Player, Plotters, POV Watch, Preloader,
Preview Functions, Private Page Protection, Profile Monitor, Protect
Section, Proxy Connect, PSI NoTocNum, Pure Wiki Deletion, Purge, Purge
Cache, QPoll, Qr Code, Random Image, RDFIO, Record Admin, Redirect,
Reflect, Regex Block, Research Tools, Resumable Upload, RPED, Search
Box, See also, Semantic Data Types, Semantic Project Management,
SemanticSignup, Semantic Web Browser, Sendmail To Wiki, Shared User
Rights, Show Processlist, Sidebar Donate Box, Sign Document, Simple
Security, Slippy Map, SNMP query, Sound Manager 2 Button, Spam Diff
Tool, Spam Regex, Special 404, Special File List, Special Talk,
SQL2Wiki, Stale Pages, Sternograph, Stock Charts, Storyboard, String
Functions, Sudo, Suhosin, SVG Zoom, Tab0, Talk Here, Tasks, Template
Info, Template Link, TidyTab, Todo, Todo Tasks, Toolserver Tools -
Holeks Cite book template generator, Toolserver Tools - Kolossos Kml On
Openlayers, Toolserver Tools - Soxred93, Tooltip, Transliterator, Tree
And Menu, Trusted Math, TSPoll, UK Geocoding For Maps, Uniwiki -
Authors, Uniwiki - Auto Create Category Pages, Uniwiki - Cat Box At Top,
Uniwiki - Create Page, Uniwiki - Css Hooks, Uniwiki - Custom Toolbar,
Uniwiki - Format Changes, Uniwiki - Format Search, Uniwiki - Generic
Edit Page, Uniwiki - Javascript, Uniwiki - Layouts, Uniwiki - Moo Tools
12 core, Usage Statistics, User Contact Links, User Debug Info, User
Images, User Page Edit Protection, User Rights Notif, VariVote,
Watchers, Watch Subpages, Web Store, What Is My IP, White List Edit, Who
Is Watching, Whos Online, Wiki Article Feeds, Wiki At Home, WikiBhasha,
Wikidata, Wikilog, Wiki Sync, Wiki Tweet, Woopra, XMLRC, YouTube Auth Sub.
Hi everyone,
As noted by Peter (see note to wikitech-l below), he has performed a
major upgrade of the operating system on one of our image scaler
machines, as a test for upgrading all of them (upgrading from Ubuntu
10.04 (Lucid) to Ubuntu 12.04 (Precise)). The image scalers are
responsible for generating scaled-down versions of images for
inclusions in wiki articles, as well as converting SVG images into
PNG. The great thing about this upgrade is that 12.04 comes with much
newer versions of imagemagick and librsvg, which both have many
bugfixes from their previous versions. The risky part is that the new
versions *might* introduce new bugs serious enough that things might
temporarily get worse.
So, please keep an eye on these functions over the coming days, and
report any problems you suspect are caused by this upgrade.
Thanks!
Rob
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Peter Youngmeister <py(a)wikimedia.org>
Date: Tue, Oct 2, 2012 at 6:10 AM
Subject: [Wikitech-l] New Imagescaler disto/packages
To: Wikimedia developers <wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Hello all,
I just enabled srv190 as an imagescaler running ubuntu 12.04 precise with
new versions of imagemagick and librsvg.
This is a test for upgrading all of our imagescalers to newer versions
of... many things. Upgrading these boxes and these packages is often
problematic, so please let me know if you notice any issues with the new
setup.
Thanks!
--peter
_______________________________________________
Wikitech-l mailing list
Wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
https://blog.wikimedia.org/2012/09/25/page-curation-launch/
Please check this out -- there's a video tour, a tutorial, and more --
and ask your wiki communities for their thoughts.
"Every day, thousands of new pages are created on Wikipedia, requiring
hundreds of volunteer editors to check them for quality -- a process
called 'New Page Patrol.' To help these patrollers do their important
work, we are pleased to announce the launch of Page Curation, a new
suite of tools for reviewing articles on Wikipedia.
Current page patrol tools like Special:NewPages and Twinkle can be hard
to use quickly and accurately, and have led to frustration for some
users. Page Curation aims to improve that page patrol experience by
making it faster and easier to review new pages, using two integrated tools:
the New Pages Feed
the Curation Toolbar
...."
--
Sumana Harihareswara
Engineering Community Manager
Wikimedia Foundation
Forwarded as this is of potentially wider interest. This may be a
breaking change for some older bots that haven't been maintained.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Sam Reed <reedy(a)wikimedia.org>
Date: Wed, Sep 5, 2012 at 3:06 PM
Subject: [Wikitech-l] HTML5, it's a coming (again)!
To: wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
It's been a long time coming (for the nth time..), but we're scheduling a
deployment of HTML5 across the Wikimedia cluster [1]. This is set for Monday
17th September at 18:00-20:00 UTC [2].
The intention is to set $wgHtml5 [3] to true everywhere. It's been running
on MediaWiki.org and our 2 test wikis for quite a while, and other sites
like translatewiki.net with no issues.
The intention is to leave it enabled unless it causes major problems. If
you're running an application that screen scrapes, shame on you; you've had
enough notice to get it fixed! ;)
Now is the time to fix up your scripts and programs (where necessary), tell
your friends!
Sam
[1] https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=27478
[2] http://wikitech.wikimedia.org/view/Software_deployments#Week_of_Sept_17
[3] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:$wgHtml5
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Wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Tim Starling <tstarling(a)wikimedia.org>
Date: Fri, Sep 21, 2012 at 4:07 AM
Subject: [Wikitech-l] #switch limits
To: wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
Over the last week, we have noticed very heavy apache memory usage on
the main Wikimedia cluster. In some cases, high memory usage resulted
in heavy swapping and site-wide performance issues.
After some analysis, we've identified the main cause of this high
memory usage to be geographical data ("données") templates on the
French Wikipedia, and to a lesser extent, the same data templates
copied to other wikis for use on articles about places in Europe.
Here is an example of a problematic template:
<https://fr.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mod%C3%A8le:Donn%C3%A9es_PyrF1-2…>
That template alone uses 47MB for 37000 #switch cases, and one article
used about 15 similarly sized templates.
The simplest solution to this problem is for the few Wikipedians
involved to stop doing what they are doing, and to remove the template
invocations which have already been introduced. Antoine Musso has
raised the issue on the French Wikipedia's "Bistro" and some of the
worst cases have already been fixed.
To protect site stability, I've introduced a new preprocessor
complexity limit called the "preprocessor generated node count", which
is incremented by about 6 for each #switch case. When the limit is
exceeded, an exception is thrown, preventing the page from being saved
or viewed.
The limit is currently 4 million (~667,000 #switch cases), and it will
soon be reduced to 1.5 million (~250,000 #switch cases). That's a
compromise which allows most of the existing geographical pages to
keep working, but still allows a memory usage of about 230MB.
At some point, we would like to patch PHP upstream to cause memory for
DOM XML trees to be allocated from the PHP request pool, instead of
with malloc(). But to deploy that, we would need to reduce the limit
to the point where the template DOM cache can easily fit in the PHP
memory limit of 128MB.
In the short term, we will be working with the template editors to
ensure that all articles can be viewed with a limit of 1.5 million.
That's not a very viable solution in the long term, so I'd also like
to introduce save-time warnings and tracking categories for pages
which use more than, say, 50% of the limit, to encourage authors to
fix articles without being directly prompted by WMF staff members.
At some point in the future, you may be able to put this kind of
geographical data in Wikidata. Please, template authors, wait
patiently, don't implement your own version of Wikidata using wikitext
templates.
-- Tim Starling
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