Forum OpenACS Q&A: Sysadmin meeting at Valencia

I think it should be a good idea to have an informal meeting between sysadmins at Valencia's OpenACS Conference.

It could be a good oportunity to know us, talk about our experience administrating oacs, our problems, clustering... and maybe talk about future projects (like apache migration, for example), or even start one 😉

It could be fine if at least Innova people (Marcos and Joaquin) and Valencia's (Agustin) could be there, but it can be even better if we can make an international sysadmin group!

Cheers, Héctor

I think of it is a very good idea.

See you next week!

Regards,
Agustin

I've looked at Apache migration, starting with the old aD code for ACS 3x that ran with Apache 1.3. It could probably be resurrected though the amount of engineering effort required to make it production-quality would be fairly large.

Both of these options are things that might be fun to talk about in Vienna, even informally over beer at night if there's no time available during the days.

i am not sure about the advantages, esp. when c-code modules from aolserver are involved

apache migration

Wouldn't a meeting targeting and inviting "sysadmins" be an appropriate place to compile and share "configuration profiles" for OpenACS/AOLServer deployments rather than discussing the highly improbable chance to have it ported to what-ever-platform-technology?

I mean, there are recurring threads on these forums on the voodoo of aolserver configuration:

• How to appropriately trace, identify, and cope with performance issues? Why not compile all the useful infos repeatedly given by Gustaf N., Dave et al. nicely and give some tool support (extend developer-support, xotcl-request-monitor)?
• How to DOCUMENT and REPORT them so others can help effectively?
• Provide two or three sample configs, as available for other platform technologies (RDBMSs, ...) that target different (organisational) users. Or, a web-based configurator where someone can enter profile attributes in a guided manner?
• Provide a repository to store and share configurations?

This is even something you can get started at the conference: in medias res ...

As for Apache: Do not underestimate the implications. Apache has different concurrency models and the infrastructure is sufficiently distinct. Btw. if you look for stable or responsive maintainership, mod_tcl is not the best choice ... though there were life signs at this years Tcl2008: http://www.tcl.tk/community/tcl2008/schedule.html (Olly Stephens talk)

Enjoy your time in valencia!

best
//stefan

The main purpose of the sysadmin meeting is to meet each others and share some knowledge that is not in the forums right now, talk about our common problems and solutions for them, all in an informal way.

A lot of this common problems are related to the use of aolserver. and I think that the posibility of an apache|naviserver future migration is an interesting topic to discuss. Aolserver seems to be low maintained, specially some of the modules (last commit on nsopenssl was on 2006, and the last one on nsldap and nscache is 5 years old). Openacs is fully dependant on aolserver, and this can take us into problems in the future.

About the topics you are pointing out, it would be great that we could talk about all of them too. They seem really useful to me, and can be achieved in a short period of time :)

It's a pity that you will not be in Valencia to talk about all this things while having a beer 😉

Cheers, Hector

Getting a robust implementation working under Apache would be a large implementation effort. My background is in compiler writing and operating systems work (mostly old ones, like the original 1974 version of Unix from Bell Labs), so I don't see it as impossible, but certainly not trivial.

Don't worry, I won't sugar coat the effort involved.

As far as what sysadmins should talk about at an informal meeting held at the conference, I'd suggest they should talk about anything they'd like to talk about.

How to appropriately trace, identify, and cope with performance issues? Why not compile all the useful infos repeatedly given by Gustaf N., Dave et al. nicely and give some tool support (extend developer-support, xotcl-request-monitor)?

Going back to Stefan's list and the nearer term. Would someone be able to do a sysadmin session with a dicussion focus on the first two items on the list?

A meeting is a wonderful idea (and I'm planning on flying in even if I'm only a reluctant pseudo sysadmin at the moment) but a more formalized almost-tutorial session would be a great addition...

If I'm forced to move from Tcl, I'll be a lot more interested in moving to a language like python than Java.