2011/2/9 Jamie Morken jmorken@shaw.ca:
Hi Ariel,
I don't really understand why the dumps need to be halted as I thought the mediawiki code and database dump code were basically two separate entities already*. I guess the 1.17 branch code changes the structure of the database causing potential errors in the database dump? I also don't understand the "precautionary" logic of halting the dumps, as a dump with errors is better than no dump in the case where there are a limited supply of recent dumps due to the RAID server failure as well. If its only a couple day halt as you mentioned that's probably irrelevant, but it sounds like it may be a longer period of limited testing from your last wikitech email, which makes me wonder if it is even worth halting the dumps in the first place.. Also wouldn't potential dump errors be detected better if they continue to be produced and check them for errors, rather than halt them?
The dump code and MW code are intertwined, they're not separate. I think the xmldumps-backup branch you're linking to is just a branch Ariel is playing around in or working on dump-specific code or something.
We really don't want any maintenance scripts running when doing 1.17 stuff, and the dumps use maintenance scripts.
Roan Kattouw (Catrope)