ibiblio services/changes announcement list

[Cristóbal Palmer <cmpalmer AT metalab.unc.edu>]

== Executive Summary ==

The following services are now running php 5.2.6-4:

  * Web cluster testing & staging.
    (http://www-dev.ibiblio.org)
  * Vhost cluster testing & staging.
    (eg. http://burmalibrary.org.test.ibiblio.org)
  * Webmail.
    (https://secure.ibiblio.org/webmail/)

!!! IMPORTANT !!!

  * TEST YOUR SITE using the web cluster testing or vhost testing URL
    that applies to you.
  * Open a ticket if you have trouble testing your site
    (http://www.ibiblio.org/help)
  * Mediawiki, WordPress, Joomla, Drupal and other CMS software
    packages care what URL they are called from, so using www-dev.ibiblio
    or .test.ibiblio.org URLs may not work. Please file a ticket if this
    is the case with your site.

== Full Change Notice ==

  There is a major push within the PHP-based web development community
to move to PHP 5.2.x. Many Software packages that ibiblio contributors
depend on will drop support for releases of PHP older than 5.2.x in
the coming months. For that reason, we would like to use a 5.2.x
version as soon as possible. We have not yet set a date for an upgrade
of our production PHP version, but we will be announcing a date soon.

  To facilitate the move, we have installed PHP 5.2.6-4 on chef, the
server that provides webmail. This server also acts as a staging area
where ibiblio contributors can test their sites before they go live
with changes.

  ibiblio contributors with ibiblio web directories
(http://www.ibiblio.org/example/) would use "www-dev" to access this
staging server (http://www-dev.ibiblio.org/example). Logs for your
directory as accessed from that URL are available from
login.ibiblio.org (tribal). When I'm logged into login.ibiblio.org,
that would look like this:

[admin@tribal ~]$ cd /public/var/log/www-dev/
[admin@tribal www-dev]$ ls -alh www-dev_*
-rw-r--r--  1 nfsnobody nfsnobody  99K Sep 17 11:45 www-dev_access_log
-rw-r--r--  1 nfsnobody nfsnobody 227M Sep 18 17:00 www-dev_combined_log
-rw-r--r--  1 nfsnobody nfsnobody  63M Sep 18 16:33 www-dev_error_log

  ibiblio contributors with virtual hosts (http://example.net) would
use ".test.ibiblio.org" to access the staging server
(http://example.net.test.ibiblio.org). Logs for your vhost as accessed
from that URL are available from login.ibiblio.org (tribal). If you
were the webmaster of musopen.com, for example, that would look like
this:

[admin@tribal ~]$ cd /public/var/log/www-dev/
[admin@tribal www-dev]$ ls -alh musopen_*
-rw-r--r--  1 nfsnobody nfsnobody 4.6K Sep 18 17:09 musopen_error_log
-rw-r--r--  1 nfsnobody nfsnobody  27K Sep 18 17:09 musopen_log
[admin@tribal www-dev]$ tail -4 musopen_error_log 
[Thu Sep 18 17:08:29 2008] [error] [client 152.2.241.141] File does not 
exist: /public/vhost/m/musopen/html/favicon.ico
[Thu Sep 18 17:08:29 2008] [error] [client 152.2.241.141] File does not 
exist: /public/vhost/m/musopen/html/404
[Thu Sep 18 17:08:32 2008] [error] [client 152.2.241.141] File does not 
exist: /public/vhost/m/musopen/html/favicon.ico
[Thu Sep 18 17:08:32 2008] [error] [client 152.2.241.141] File does not 
exist: /public/vhost/m/musopen/html/404

  Users of many common PHP-based packages will notice that in trying
to access their sites from the staging server, they get redirected to
the live cluster immediately, making it very difficult to test their
sites. If you are confident you know how to test, the ideal way would
be for you to take an unused, test sub-directory of your site and
install a (small please!) parallel version of your site there. So, for
http://example.net you might have http://example.net/dev-testing/ as
your test directory. In that directory you would install, for example,
WordPress, BUT during the setup process you would use
http://example.net.test.ibiblio.org/dev-testing/ to set up the
site. WordPress would then conclude that the proper URL is the
.test.ibiblio.org URL. ALSO be careful to use a different table prefix
when setting up the database for the test site. This is great for both
you and us, since nobody knows your site better than you do, including
any plugins, extensions, or widgets you might be using, and there are
many more contributor-run sites than there are staff hours to test.

  The alternative is to file a ticket with us and trust us to test the
software package and plugin/extension/widget combinations that you
tell us you are using. If you are using the most recent Mediawiki or
WordPress with no plugins or extensions, then we have already tested
that and confirmed that it works.

  Some caveats when installing a test version of any app that you may
be using:

  * BACK UP your database before you start!!
  * Use a sensible table prefix
  * double-check your CHARSET settings (must be latin1 for
    mysql2.ibiblio.org)
  * Try without any plugins/extensions/widgets before you try with all
    your plugins/extensions/widgets.
  * Add plugins/extensions/widgets one at a time.

As always, file a ticket if you have problems or questions.

Cheers,
-- 
Cristóbal Palmer
ibiblio.org systems administrator