[Mediawiki-l] Wiki Farm with Shared tables on one wiki

[Paul Wakfer]

On Thu, 16 Apr 2009 00:50:46 +0200, Platonides wrote:
> I don't really know about this, but perhaps you can do a GRANT ALL/GRANT
> SELECT as Bar to user Foo for Bar's db? Although as GRANT OPTION is not
> included by GRANT ALL it might not be available, but it's worth trying.
>   

Thanks for replying. However, I did already try various mysql commands 
to circumvent my shared host's limitations on my db names and usernames, 
including GRANT. It appears that they have made the mysql installation 
options such that shared host users do not have any permission to use 
the GRANT command at all. Other than changing the user passwords (only 
through a host supplied interface, not by use of mysql itself) all that 
I am given when the db is created are three usernames: xxx, xxx_w and 
xxx_r (where xxx is my account username with the host) with separate 
passwords for each, which enable respectively create, delete, change, 
write tables; just writing and reading; or merely reading. Everything 
works fine with any one wiki and I have already easily successfully 
exported and imported individual tables.

At the moment I see no solution but to change the code so that the 
username (at least) is also changed to the common one whenever the 
shared tables are accessed. While I am doing this I figure I might as 
well make the change to also enable a different db host (the common one) 
to also be used. However, my biggest concern at this point is that I do 
not see how the JOIN mysql command can work if the tables are not in a 
common db (which appears to be allowed by the mediawiki LocalSettings 
parameters) unless perhaps the tables that one would normal want to 
share (mainly "user" and "usergroups" are never used with a JOIN command 
(something that is not at all clear from the mediawiki code).

To satisfy this concern (about the JOIN command - which I really need to 
do before I start trying to make the necessary coding changes), I would 
really like to know if there is a mediawiki installation which currently 
used shared tables on one dd with the other tables of at least one of 
the wikis using this shared table being on an entirely separate db.

--Paul