pcplantdb

["Lawrence F. London, Jr." <lfl@intrex.net>]

John Howe wrote:

> > The main reason I would opt to make my contributions elsewhere (with
> > regrets)
> > if HG isn't done on ibiblio is:
> > 1) Cost, time and trouble if not on ibiblio
> > 2) Its a blind alley as I see it; I can't invest a lot of trust in where
> > the project might
> > go/end up if we don't host on ibiblio - I fear intrusion into HG by some
> > used car salesman
> > who might get enough control to haul it off to parts unknown to do with it
> > what he/they will.
> > For my money it is safe and sound on ibiblio and with NP support from the
> > Permaculture Institute,
> > for the long haul. This frees us to work on platform and data acquisition
> > - which is what we are the most interested in anyway.
>
>
> I hope that your reference to "used car salesman" is not in reference to
> my offer to host Zope until the logistics of ibiblio hosting is
> solidified. 

Of course not. I referred to some possibility that somewhere along the line 
the HG group
got pressured into making a deal with a flybynight "used car salesman"-type 
motivated
to coopt our project. I have seen this happen before where a promising 
project gets coopted by
a pressure group who subverts its mission to serve their own ends.

> > I'd like to think that I would have significant contributions to make to
> > HG over time; that means text data, photos, videos and sound files;
> > all original stuff from me. I'd much rather be part of a permaculture
> > _database_ project than just create a permaculture wiki and website.
>
>
> It would appear to me that there is still some need to solidify the design
> of the application currently envisioned and to establish a consensus on
> the platform(s). It might behoove us all to revisit the deployment
> architecture.
>
> > I hope you all can find a way to work on ibiblio.
>
> The primary issue appears to be the serving of content off a NFS store. If
> multiple Zope instances access a ZopeDB stored on NFS, then corrupting of
> the database is highly likely. A dedicated raid system might be in order,
> or researching the Zope architechture to ensure multiple instances of Zope
> do not corrupt the ZopeDB.

Is NFS, Network File System?

> I would be curious to see how the data-structire will be stored ( what
> exactly? ), or perhaps Zope serves as a meta-database on top the core
> mysql db? Somethings to reflect upon... maybe reverse store object
> references in mysql? Speaking of mysql, which version is in production @
> ibiblio?

I will see if I can find out. I have a MySQL account and use it in the 
PHPWiki I run.
From the MySQL website referred to in the ibiblio systems info page:
http://dev.mysql.com/
MySQL Database Server
    * Generally Available (GA) 4.0.20
    * Beta 4.1.3
    * Alpha 5.0.0
I would guess that they run (GA) 4.0.20 as that might be the stable release
There's no further breakdown on software versions.

Here's more info on the software and hardware ibiblio runs:
http://www.ibiblio.org/systems/infrastructure.html
" Given ibiblio's focus on open source software and public domain content, open source solutions are employed whenever possible. As 
mentioned above, the servers run Linux (or GNU/Linux if you prefer), mainly RedHat. Application software includes:"

    * Apache
    * ProFTPD
    * MySQL
    * PostgreSQL
    * Mailman
    * Icecast
    * Tomcat
    * php
    * Perl
    * OpenSSL
    * mod_SSL
    * LVS (Linux Virtual Server)
    * keepalived
    * Nagios
    * Cricket

Here are locations of ibiblio documentation that this project might need if a 
relationship is established with them:

About ibiblio
http://www.ibiblio.org/about.html

Systems Central
http://www.ibiblio.org/systems/

ibiblio Collection Criteria
http://www.ibiblio.org/collection.html

Contributor's FAQ and Visitor's FAQ
http://www.ibiblio.org/faq/

* SUGGESTED NAME CHANGE
<*>
[BTW I just noticed that ibiblio hosts the "Open Video Project".]

Perhaps the name of our project could be revised this way:

permaculture.info
The Open Permaculture Project
An open library of plants, permaculture and their relationships
<*>


> And just to clarify, I offered my server as a working Zope prototype, not
> as the official store for all permaculture.info content. Having the Zope
> instance hosted anywhere at this point allows for the collection of
> Apache/Zope server statistics and use patterns. Collecting this data will
> serve as a hard metric for required server capacity planning in future
> endevours. I anticipated at least a six month window before ibiblio could
> deploy Zope effectively.

I decided to inquire further about this timeframe and emailed Fred about it, 
fwiw:

<>
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: pcplantdb project
Date: Sat, 14 Aug 2004 11:24:13 -0700
From: Lawrence F. London, Jr. <lfl@intrex.net>
Organization: http://market-farming.com  --  Venaura Farm
To: help@ibiblio.org

Fred:

The pcplantdb people are trying to decide what db software to use. This will
affect where the project is hosted for the long term.
1) Can you say with any certainty, in terms of months or years, when ibiblio 
will provide a dedicated Zope server for developers to use?
2) Would you, now or later, accept donation of such a server and if so how 
much would it cost. If yes and there would also be administrative
costs, how much would that amount to?

- They already have a temporary Zope server to use for development purposes 
so if option 1) looks favorable to the project group or
2) is possible and they can raise the money then they can migrate to ibiblio 
at the appropriate time.

<>

> I definitely can *not* host all intended content on the scale as infered
> in previous posts, especially streaming media.

That would take a LOT of drive space and bandwidth for sure, if things go
as desired.

The best option now seems to be that if Zope is the chosen platform then 
develop the prototype on your machine and
wait for ibiblio to make a dedicated Zope server available whereupon we 
migrate to there from arashi. By all means stay
in frequent touch with Fred at ibiblio about this.


--
L.F.London
lfl@intrex.net
http://market-farming.com
http://www.ibiblio.org/ecolandtech