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Should forums.gentoo.org move to a commercial forums package?
Yes -- keeping older posts searchable is more important than sticking with GPL-only products
53%
 53%  [ 84 ]
No -- lose some of the older posts and stay on the GPL'd phpBB
46%
 46%  [ 73 ]
Total Votes : 157

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Jeedo
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PostPosted: Tue Sep 30, 2003 8:53 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Esben wrote:
On a side note, I have sometimes wondered if it would be possible to delete old, unanswered questions, or perhaps threads with no views in a long time.


I agree with the first suggestion deleting old questions, but certanly not deleting just unanswered threads, a good example of a useful thread that goes unanswered is this one https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=89382 - something i posted which would come in handy for anyone setting up gentoo on a Rev B. iMac, something rare, but exactly what is good about these forums, stuff like this is archived here.


A good idea that someone had here is deleteing all the stuff in off the wall, but that will only buy us time not solve the problem.
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BartVB
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PostPosted: Tue Sep 30, 2003 11:38 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

With some tweaking the admins won't have to delete anything :D
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babalinux
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PostPosted: Tue Sep 30, 2003 11:43 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Narada wrote:
Hello. I have not voted as yet as I'd like your view on a certain portion of the gentoo linux social contract.
Code:

However, Gentoo Linux will never depend upon a piece of software unless it conforms to the GNU General Public License, GNU Lesser General Public License or some other license approved by the Open Source Initiative (OSI.)  Note: We are considering extending the above clause to require that all core Gentoo Linux components must conform to a license approved by the OSI and Free Software Foundation (FSF.)


So, I think that there's just one view.
If the forum, and the software used to support it, can be considered as a component of Gentoo GNU/Linux project (and it *should*, IMO), the answer would be:

No -- lose some of the older posts and stay on the GPL'd phpBB

or just look for another GPL'd software that has a better performance with the DB, or let's improve the current one.
The point is: if you're going to use a non GPL'd software, IMHO you're not following the terms of the above "gentoo linux social contract".

That's the only way I think the thing should be considered.

Cheers, baba
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SHS`
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PostPosted: Tue Sep 30, 2003 12:23 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

People seem to be ignoring poor BartVB's posts (he did help write 2.0.x with the other phpBB2.0.x developers ;) ).

Get the upgrades done, and you can stay with phpBB and not loose any posts.

Given that both the front and back-end servers are both meaty dual Xeons, there should be no problem coping with a much larger forum.

Bart's own pair of servers are "just" 1600ish+ XP AMD's, and phpBB.com itself was running on a single P3-800ish with a tiddly 512MB of RAM.

Lastly I could vote with an option as there's no need to prune posts, and phpBB is fine for the job as per comments previously. :D
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hensan
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PostPosted: Tue Sep 30, 2003 12:26 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Ok, guess I should spill my 2 cents on this matter as well...

I think we should stick with GPL software. I think the best solution would be to back-up old posts and remove them from the active forum for the moment, then bring them back when a new version of phpbb can handle them again.

So, what could be deleted or archived?

- Off the Wall posts that hasn't been replied to in 3 months.
- Gentoo Chat that hasn't been replied to in 3 months.
- Duplicate Threads older than 3 months.
- Unanswered posts older than 3 months (with the exception of Tips & Tricks)

Of course, the pruning should stop one a version of phpbb or other Free forum software that can handle the loads becomes available.
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klieber
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PostPosted: Tue Sep 30, 2003 12:42 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

SHS` wrote:
People seem to be ignoring poor BartVB's posts (he did help write 2.0.x with the other phpBB2.0.x developers ;) ).

Quite the contrary...in fact, I just installed mmcache this morning and it's running as I type this. We'll see how it affects performance and stability.

If anyone notices any oddities, can you drop me a PM please?

--kurt
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Edweirdo
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PostPosted: Tue Sep 30, 2003 1:24 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

What if you were to move the forums to a USENET news server? It should be able to handle the load and if you connect it to the rest of the world Google (and the other search engines (are there others?)) would automatically index it for searches. Others who are non-gentoo people might see answers to general questions where they otherwise wouldn't.

Just my idea.
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SHS`
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PostPosted: Tue Sep 30, 2003 2:03 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

klieber wrote:

Quite the contrary...in fact, I just installed mmcache this morning and it's running as I type this. We'll see how it affects performance and stability.

If anyone notices any oddities, can you drop me a PM please?

--kurt


Good to hear, my own experience of mmcache was "why didn't I know of it's existance earlier?". My own server, which hosts an aquaintances fora, is nearing the magic 2M... so it gets a good workout. :D

No issues for me, and page gen times seem a little faster... it'll take a couple days to see how changes pan out anyway. :D

Also, one more thing, I noticed the Stats module used here is version 2.x... it might be worthehile to upgrade that to 3.0 Beta (after upgrading the fora to 2.0.6 first of course ;) ).

It's actually pretty stable from the last beta release, and vastly improves perforance, with less server load as it caches data, as opposed to generating the whole lot each time.

Example from the author's own forum: http://www.opentools.de/index.php?page=3
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klieber
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PostPosted: Tue Sep 30, 2003 2:13 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

SHS` wrote:
Good to hear, my own experience of mmcache was "why didn't I know of it's existance earlier?".

bleh -- ran into the first error. In the administration control panel, the left navigation frame no longer functions, replaced instead with:
Quote:
Fatal error: Cannot redeclare renumber_order() in /var/www/forums.gentoo.org/admin/admin_forums.php on line 167


--kurt
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BartVB
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PostPosted: Tue Sep 30, 2003 2:24 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Hmm, thanks :D I ran into that too after after I migrated to a new server. This new server also has a newer version of mmcache.. :\ This saves me quite a bit of searching ;) Thanks!

Going to write the mmcache author...
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klieber
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PostPosted: Tue Sep 30, 2003 2:35 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

BartVB wrote:
Going to write the mmcache author...

We're using 2.3.23, if it helps. I haven't tried 2.4.1 yet.

--kurt
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BartVB
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PostPosted: Tue Sep 30, 2003 2:46 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

mmcache 2.4.0 over here.. Going to try 2.4.1
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klieber
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PostPosted: Tue Sep 30, 2003 2:49 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

we went the other way and downgraded to 2.3.20 and that seems to have cleared up that specific problem. From talking to the gentoo dev that maintains that ebuild in portage, he mentioned that 2.3.21+ have had some stability problems and he recommends sticking with .20 for now.

--kurt
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SHS`
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PostPosted: Tue Sep 30, 2003 3:02 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

klieber wrote:
SHS` wrote:
Good to hear, my own experience of mmcache was "why didn't I know of it's existance earlier?".

bleh -- ran into the first error. In the administration control panel, the left navigation frame no longer functions, replaced instead with:
Quote:
Fatal error: Cannot redeclare renumber_order() in /var/www/forums.gentoo.org/admin/admin_forums.php on line 167


--kurt


I think that can actually happen with any version once the cache for MMCache has filled up, even with 2.3.x on occasion I'd get the odd blank page with said error in the Apache error log.

I've been running 2.4.1 without issue since release, and just for the record, my MMCache settings in php.ini:

Code:
Directive   Local Value   Master Value
mmcache.cache_dir   /tmp/mmcache   /tmp/mmcache
mmcache.check_mtime   1   1
mmcache.compress   1   1
mmcache.content   shm_and_disk   shm_and_disk
mmcache.debug   0   0
mmcache.enable   1   1
mmcache.filter   no value   no value
mmcache.keys   shm_and_disk   shm_and_disk
mmcache.optimizer   1   1
mmcache.sessions   shm_and_disk   shm_and_disk
mmcache.shm_max   0   0
mmcache.shm_only   0   0
mmcache.shm_prune_period   600   600
mmcache.shm_size   24   24
mmcache.shm_ttl   600   600


My settings are set such that it'll automagically purge old unaccessed files once the cache has filled up, since a full cache appears to be what's causing the error when trying to use the phpBB ACP. YMMV.
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klieber
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PostPosted: Tue Sep 30, 2003 3:23 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

OK, so at this point, here's what we're leaning towards doing.

  • Installing and testing a PHP accelerator (mmcache) -- done already
  • Upgrading to the latest version of phpBB, 2.0.6 -- we have a Gentoo dev working on patching the files.

And seeing how this works. If it solves the performance problems, at least long enough to see how 2.2 performs, then great. If not, I believe the majority of the respondents so far have indicated that ensuring we do not lose posts is more important than sticking with a GPL'd program. Thus, we will look at alternate solutions that allow us to scale better.

Also, we would very much like to find a way to easily stay on phpBB2. That means less work for us and less hassle for our users. I appreciate the suggestions that you all have offered. Some of them require too much integration and/or development work to make them feasible, either from an implementation standpoint or from a standpoint of maintaining a hacked-up custom code base on an ongoing basis. Others have been very helpful and will hopefully allow us to continue using phpBB for some time to come.

--kurt
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Techie-Micheal
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PostPosted: Tue Sep 30, 2003 5:57 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

A_Jelly_Doughnut wrote:
and I think that we would be willing to work with you to help save phpBB.

A_Jelly_Doughnut
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Just a note to people who are confused, A_Jelly_Doughnut is in no way affiliated with the phpBB.com Staff.
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iamlarryboy
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PostPosted: Tue Sep 30, 2003 6:52 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Here are my two cents.

It is clear that the forums (and the ability to search) are vital to the Gentoo project. I guess you could say that Gentoo depends on them. Therefore the social contract would apply.

However which is worse, violating the social contract and having a critical piece of Gentoo work, or keeping to the contract and making Gentoo dysfunctional?

Clearly niether is ideal! However, we must do something. This is my solution. As a TEMPORARY measure switch over to a propriatary solution. Then, work hand in hand with the phpBB developers to get that software to acceptable performance then switch back. I think that this solution would best keep with the spirit (if not the letter) of the social contract. At any rate It is the most pragmatic one. Ask yourself, WWLD? (What would Linus do?)

Either way I trust our admins and moderators to come up with an aimiable solution. There is a lot of talent arround these parts and I am sure that we will solve this issue. I only wish there was some way I could help!

PS: Thank you guys for ALL of your hard work!
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nbrown
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PostPosted: Tue Sep 30, 2003 7:04 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Hey Kurt, maybe you addressed this already, but is there a deadline for when this decision will be made? I noticed you mentioned Friday in one post, but I was wondering if that was a real deadline or you were just making a point.

-nbrown

PS I vote we switch to a proprietary system if we need to. Keeping the posts is incredibly important to a distribution like this. If the tweaks can hold back the flood for a bit though, then I say we should look into other alternatives (omega, helping phpbb, etc).
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A_Jelly_Doughnut
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PostPosted: Tue Sep 30, 2003 10:15 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Techie-Micheal wrote:
A_Jelly_Doughnut wrote:
and I think that we would be willing to work with you to help save phpBB.

A_Jelly_Doughnut
phpBB Support Guru
Just a note to people who are confused, A_Jelly_Doughnut is in no way affiliated with the phpBB.com Staff.
We as in the community.
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keli
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PostPosted: Wed Oct 01, 2003 2:37 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

My vote would be - IF the updates + fixes + mmcache etc. don't work as expected, rather try to go with InvisionBoard...

although I do hope, the proposed patches will work out ;)
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BartVB
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PostPosted: Wed Oct 01, 2003 10:07 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

About the redeclare problem of MMcache, it seems to be Zend related:

http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=814375&group_id=69426&atid=524487
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ts77
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PostPosted: Wed Oct 01, 2003 2:32 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

How about using phorum5?

The server would be bored with 500.000 posts and we could give one-on-one support to fix all problems which may occur. A phpBB-converter could also be done in no time.

AND Phorum is no commercial package ;-), its using a BSD-style license modeled after the apache-license.


Regards,

Thomas
- Phorum Dev-Team Member -
http://phorum.org

PS: my personal site runs phorum3 with 3500 forums and 2.900.235 posts currently on a dual-athlon machine with 2 GB RAM ;-)
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PostPosted: Wed Oct 01, 2003 3:28 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Kind of circular reference - but this topic in the phpBB2 forums is discussing your discussion here about the phpBB2 performance :)

The techies there are giving some coments ...

Greetz
Stefan
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klieber
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PostPosted: Wed Oct 01, 2003 3:33 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

swimmer wrote:
Kind of circular reference - but this topic in the phpBB2 forums is discussing your discussion here about the phpBB2 performance :)

yep -- you'll note I posted in that thread.

--kurt
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PostPosted: Wed Oct 01, 2003 3:49 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

klieber wrote:
swimmer wrote:
Kind of circular reference - but this topic in the phpBB2 forums is discussing your discussion here about the phpBB2 performance :)

yep -- you'll note I posted in that thread.

--kurt


Yes, sorry :oops:

I should have read both topics completely :(

Sorry for that - /me goes back in the corner saying nothing anymore ...

Stefan
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