Wikitech-l June 2004

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111 participants
189 discussions

Re: [Wikipedia-l] Server down message
by Brion Vibber 10 Jun '04

10 Jun '04

Ulrich Fuchs wrote: >>Why can't we simply have a Wiki-editable server down message that will >>be used automatically? By definition we can't since when the wiki is down it can't access the wiki. >> In particular, it should be a different one on >>each different language Wikipedia. :-p That we've already got. (Devs: please use outage.php and declareOutage() rather than hard-coding $wgSiteNotice.) > Yes. PLEASE. And PLEASE: Would the developers please announce on THIS LIST: It took me a while to get this information out of people but here we go: > * When the Wiki will go down 18:00 UTC tomorrow (June 11). > * Why the Wiki will go down To reboot Zwinger with an updated kernel which will fix the disk driver. This should improve performance; as the main file (not database) server the sluggish disk is a bottleneck. > * And how long the outage will be. Estimated at a half hour. > That isn't so difficult, is it? > > Please give us at least 15 Minutes to change the mentioned server down message > accordingly, so that people can save their work. In theory, we've committed to always giving 24 hours notice prior to any planned maintenance downtime. -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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Greek wikipedia with monobook still (half) broken
by Andreas Kasenides 10 Jun '04

10 Jun '04

Can somebody please look into this? This was adaquately described by Timwi on this list and I include the final message from the discussion. I certainly tried to correct the problem with reediting and correcting the offending messages but alas! This behaviour appears only in the new monobook interface, it works correctly if the user switches to other styles. Please help. Thanx ank > Brion Vibber wrote: > >> Timwi wrote: >> >>> On second inspection, it definitely does *not* look fine! >>> http://meta.wikipedia.org/upload/3/38/Greek_problem_screenshot.png >>> This seems to be a problem with the software. The messages in the >>> MediaWiki namespace of [[el:]] are correct. >>> >>> Someone seriously needs to fix that, quickly. >> >> >> Use the letter "i" instead of the number "1" in "π" and "φ". > > > Brion, if you read my message, you will see that I said "The messages > in the MediaWiki namespace of [[el:]] are correct." They are using > neither "π" nor "&p1;", but the correct UTF-8 character for Greek Pi. > > Please fix this. (When Wikipedia is back up ...) > > Thanks, > Timwi -- Andreas Kasenides e-mail: Andreas.Kasenides_at_cs.ucy.ac.cy <mailto:Andreas.Kasenides%20at%20cs.ucy.ac.cy> (replace the _at_ above with @)

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Hints for mediawiki performance
by Matias Pelenur 10 Jun '04

10 Jun '04

Hi all, I've recently installed MediaWiki 1.3.0beta2 (off the CVS tip) on a Linux box and, while it works really nicely -- lots of kudos to all tje developers out there -- I want to make sure that my server is configured for best performance; right now response time is not super fast, although not terrible either. I'm running the site on a "virtual-server" 2GB 2-proc machine running Redhat 9. I have Apache 2.0.49, PHP 4.3.6, MySQL 4.0 stable. I installed all these myself and am using pretty much whatever the default configurations are. I wonder if in particular for MySQL (and perhaps Apache) I may have a sub-optimal configuration. So I'm basically looking for hints on what configuration values people have used for MySQL (memory, buffer sizes, cache sizes, etc), PHP (mysql persistent connections or not?), Apache (threading module type, memory, caveats, etc etc) that have shown good improvements. I did just see the post on Apache settings not making much of a difference, but maybe MySQL settings might. I don't have that many pages or users on this new wiki (SeattleWiki.org) yet, but I'm hoping that will change soon, and I'm hoping to be ready for it :) Incidentally I couldn't find a page with this info on meta.wikipedia but maybe I didn't look hard enough. I can definitely add any useful replies to a new "performance settings" page. Thanks in advance, Matias

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Reworked css include/pref/tooltip/accesskey subsystem
by Gabriel Wicke 10 Jun '04

10 Jun '04

I've just committed some major changes: * accesskeys and tooltips moved to js, needs to be customized/localized at MediaWiki:Monobook.js. Saves many calls to wfMsg, reduces page size, shows access key prefix depending on browser/os. Easy to customize by changing the ta array. * skinphptal underline and justification wired up to produce generated css * MediaWiki:Skin.css used for anons as well * addcss call removed from header * separate js var file included that holds things like the stylepath and the tooltip/accesskey array * rtl css included from generated css Translators: Many translated accesskey-XY and tooltip-XY messages need to be moved to the Monobook.js array, they are now deprecated. The remaining ones might follow soon. I also changed the wording and key of the 'clear your cache' message as it's now also displayed above the prefs as well. A new string is qbsettingsnote. Gabriel Wicke

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Dorky Farfetched Idea of the Day
by Evan Prodromou 09 Jun '04

09 Jun '04

So, I talked previously about putting field-value pairs into MediaWiki pages: http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Field-value_pairs Now I'm thinking that Notation3 ("N3") might be a better match: http://www.w3.org/2000/10/swap/Primer ~ESP -- Evan Prodromou <evan(a)wikitravel.org> Wikitravel - http://wikitravel.org/en/ The free, complete, up-to-date and reliable world-wide travel guide

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[Fwd: Wikitech-l post from responsable.ekipage@online.fr requires approval]
by Brion Vibber 09 Jun '04

09 Jun '04

I initially discarded this as spam (HTML mail, request for "partnership", first paragraph links to a web site) but on second look it looks legit. Sorry! ------------- Subject: Urgent : Demande de Partenariat / Urgent: Ask Partnership From: "responsable.ekipage" <responsable.ekipage at online.fr> Date: Wed, 9 Jun 2004 16:22:39 +0200 To: <wikitech-l at wikipedia.org> Monsieur, Ne sachant trop à qui m'adresser, je me permets de vous écrire, espérant qu'il vous sera possible de transmettre mon courrier à la personne concernée par ma requête. Je développe un site ludo-éducatif pour enfants : www.ekipage.net non commercial et totalement gratuit. Ce site comporte également un espace dédié aux enseignants (représentant 90% des inscrits) et aux parents. Je souhaiterais solliciter l'autorisation d'utiliser votre encyclopédie selon plusieurs modalités éventuelles (et que vous définirez), dans la perspective de permettre aux enseignants (notamment) d'accéder à votre encyclopédie libre pour une utilisation scolaire par exemple. * Soit en intégrant un moteur de recherche dans Ekipage, lequel moteur utilisant le Contenu de Wikipédia (s'il vous est possible de me fournir le code htlm) * Soit en me permettant de faire ouvrir votre site dans une frame de mon propre site, * Soit en téléchargeant le contenu de Wikipédia : http://download.wikipedia.org/ (lequel serait directement utilisable sur mon site). Il va de soit, que je ferais tous les liens et mentions que vous souhaiterez (en référence à Wikipédia) et peut bien évidemment insérer votre logo. Le projet : Wiktionary (http://fr.wiktionary.org) : un dictionnaire et thésaurus, m'intéresse également dans le même cadre. En outre, il apparaît que les enseignants venant sur mon site, pourraient être intéressés pour apporter leur contribution à ce projet. Un grand merci par avance de votre réponse, Anne REQUIER (France) Dear Sir, Too not knowing with which to address to me, I allow myself to write to you, hoping that it will be possible for you to transmit my mail to the person concerned with my request. I develop an ludo-educational site for children: www.ekipage.net noncommercial and completely free. This site also comprises a space dedicated to the teachers (accounting for 90% of the registered voters) and to the parents. I would wish to request the authorization to use your encyclopaedia according to several possible methods (and that you will define), with a view to to allow the teachers (in particular) to reach your free encyclopaedia for a school use for example. * Either by integrating an engine of research in Ekipage, which driving using the Contents of Wikipédia (if it is possible for you to provide me the code htlm) * Or while allowing me to make open your site in a frame of my own site, * Or by downloading the contents of Wikipédia: http://download.wikipedia.org/ (which would be directly usable on my site). It goes from is, that I would establish all the links and mentions which you will wish (in reference to Wikipédia) and can obviously insert your logo. The project: Wiktionary (http://fr.wiktionary.org): a dictionary and thesaurus, also interest me within the same framework. Moreover, it appears that the teachers coming on my site, could be interested to contribute their share to this project. Large a mercy by advance of your answer, Anne REQUIER (France) N'oubliez pas de visiter notre site ludo-éducatif pour enfants du primaire et du collège à l'adresse suivante www.ekipage.net !

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Help for use of template
by wiki pedista 09 Jun '04

09 Jun '04

Hi all, I want to make a template page where, if I use it without arguments, the parameter {{{1}}} has the value {{PAGENAME}}, but if I do use an argument, the parameter {{{1}}} has the value with which I'm calling. Is that possible? Sorry if this is not the proper list. Also sorry for even asking the question, but after close to an hour looking through the documentation in meta and en, I still don't know if this is possible. AstroNomer __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Friends. Fun. Try the all-new Yahoo! Messenger. http://messenger.yahoo.com/

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Distributed image / media file hosting
by T_Karcher＠gmx.de 09 Jun '04

09 Jun '04

Hi all, sorry if this has been brought up before (I'm not reading wikitech-l on a regular basis), but I just got an idea for reducing the server load at Wikipedia without messing around with distributed databases and the like: Why not distribute static images and media files for starters? http://de.wikipedia.org/upload/9/9a/WikiReader_Internet.pdf alone will be responsible for more than 5 GB of transfer volume this month (a guess based on my experience with http://tkarcher.gmxhome.de/WikiReader_Schweden.pdf ). With more and more images and large media files on the rise, we could noticeably reduce the server load by distributing these files. How? Well, first we'd need some (5 to 10?) mirrors willing to sync their data on a daily basis. Once these servers are up and running, we could implement a simple, PHP-driven load balancing by changing the image (and media file) source locations dynamically. (Script driven as opposed to server driven, because we'd have to check whether the file was added within the last 24 hours. You wouldn't want to wait for your newly added image to appear in your article a whole day, would you?) What do you think about it? Thomas

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EasyTimeline and WikiHiero enabled on all wikis
by erik_moeller＠gmx.de 09 Jun '04

09 Jun '04

EasyTimeline by Erik Zachte is an extension for creating graphical timelines with clickable links. WikiHiero by Guillaume 'Aoineko' Blanchard is for rendering hieroglyphs. Both are now enabled on all Wikimedia wikis. As per our earlier extension syntax vote, EasyTimeline uses the <timeline> syntax, WikiHiero uses the <hiero> syntax. You can read more about them here: http://test.wikipedia.org/wiki/EasyTimeline http://test.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiHiero To my knowledge, MediaWiki is the only wiki software which supports such functionality. It should make our wikis interesting even in the highest academic circles. Although EasyTimeline can generate SVG output, only PNG output is currently supported. In the future, we hope to offer SVG as a user preference. Regards, Erik

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Load tests, tweaking apache
by Ivan Krstic 09 Jun '04

09 Jun '04

Jeronim and I spent about three hours doing some load testing on yongle after taking it out of rotation. The idea was to see whether Apache tweaking could effect any kind of a performance increase. Short summary: it couldn't. 100 requests randomly sent to a sample of URLs collected from 'en' main page produced the following numbers: Elapsed time: 7.50 secs Data transferred: 3137074 bytes Response time: 0.64 secs Transaction rate: 13.33 trans/sec Throughput: 418276.53 bytes/sec Concurrency: 8.51 Slow. Next step was to remove all of the Special:* and Category:* pages from the list, since they're database-intensive. The load test now completed in 6.21 seconds, with 16.1 trans/s. Marginal increase, but nothing significant. Two particular pages were then picked: [[Vietnam War]] (large) and [[Pyrite]] (small). Running with 50 concurrent clients, 50 repetitions, Pyrite rendered with about 21.6 trans/sec and Vietnam War with about 18.9 trans/sec. A static image file (from upload) was then tried, yielding 1785 trans/s. Two different sets of Apache settings for Max/Min SpareServers, StartServers, MaxClients and MaxRequestsPerChild were tried, but the resulting performance numbers didn't seem different in any way that would hold up to statistical significance. Bottom line: Apache doesn't even get close to being a bottleneck. A survey of the apache machines showed about 5-19 requests/sec being processed on them. The boxes had little free ram lying around, but generally weren't swapping. However, if these numbers are any good indication, here's some inference, which should be taken as educated guessing only: - PHP/Mediawiki are slow. A good start for anyone willing to tackle this will be to look at http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Profiling/Live_aggregate_20040606 - The current Wikipedia setup won't scale too much, but things will improve once the servers we've been having problems with become operational. From there on, we'll likely be able to deal with growth by just acquiring new apaches and putting them into the farm. - Static files are by no means a bottleneck, and should not be a priority for distribution in the near future. Cheers, Ivan.

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Wikitech-l June 2004