re: > "aphlict" service had been disabled on Phabricator because it caused stability issues.
I am happy to announce that aphlict, the notification service for Phabricator using websockets, is now finally back again.
If you allow it in your Phabricator settings you should get realtime pop-up notifications again (or for the first time ever if you are newer).
Also when tasks are moved around on workboards you should see that again without having to reload the page.
In your Phabricator Settings -> Applications -> Notifications you can choose from "Web Only", "Desktop Only, "Web and Desktop" or "No Notifications". Up to you which you like most.
--- snip --- some technical details follow if you care ---
aphlict is now running on a dedicated VM just that is separate from the main Phabricator server, called aphlict1001.eqiad.wmnet. It is running on Debian buster with nodejs 10.
We are not using Apache with "mod_proxy_wstunnel" any longer which caused the original instability and even if it was still unstable it would not affect the main Phabricator anymore as it did in the past.
Also our caching servers (ATS/Varnish) now speak TLS to an envoy-proxy on the dedicated backend which then proxies to the aphlict service locally. So traffic is encrypted also behind the caching layer and no more httpd is involved.
The flow is now:
user client -> wss://phabricator.wikimedia.org (ATS) -> ws://<local>:3120 (Varnish) -> wss://aphlict.discovery.wmnet (Envoy) -> (local) nodejs:22280 and separately phab1001 -> aphlict1001:22281
This resolved https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T238593