On Sun, Sep 2, 2012 at 5:59 PM, Tim Starling tstarling@wikimedia.org wrote:
The other reason for the existence of the backend thumbnail store is to transport images from the thumbnail scalers to the 404 handler. For that purpose, the image only needs to exist in the backend for a few seconds. It could be replaced by a better 404 handler, that sends thumbnails directly by HTTP. Maybe the Swift one does that already.
My understanding is that thumb.php already streamed the thumbnail back to the 404 handler via HTTP and has done so for at least the past two years or so.
Roan