Tod wrote:
I'm building out a test server and already have a production server running. I'm considering replicating the production content over to test using rsync.
I understand I'll need to handle the database contents differently. I also know that I'll need to maintain a slightly different mediawiki configuration on test than I have in production.
Is this an advisable approach? If so, what are the particular files I should exclude during the sync process? Are there any gotchas I should be watching out for?
Thanks in advance for your time and suggestions.
The files on both sites would be the same. There wouldn't be a need to rsync except the images/ folder. You can use svn from the mediawiki branch to make sure both servers are working with the same contents.
For the database contents, you would setup replication in mysql. But since you would also modify the test db locally, that may produce funny effects. An easy way would be to do a daily backup and import that into test. This way, you also verify that your backups work. But you might want not to wipe test edits nightly.