[Madlug] Fw: users editing pages created by web app

[Travis Sobeck]

Yet another idea.
1) write a script that either a) at some interval X or b) based on some trigger (like file creation from the web app) pushes the new file into a version control system (like subversion, easy to manage, script, OSS, and nice GUI tools for the end user).  Now users have to properly check-out the files before messing with them.  

2) set up a dev area where the changed files can be tested

3) push tested files back into subversion (or some Version control).

4) export updated files from subversion to web dir.

----- Original Message ----
From: John Heim <jheim at math.wisc.edu>
To: Travis Sobeck <nex916 at yahoo.com>
Sent: Thursday, November 29, 2007 10:39:00 AM
Subject: Re: [Madlug] Fw:  users editing pages created by web app


So I got 3 significantly different ideas from 3 different people --
 which is 
good because it means it wasn't a stupid question.

The rsync and sftp ideas are  interesting because what the users are
 doing 
is tweaking code generated by the web app. This is the on- math
 homework 
system I  was having trouble with a few months ago. It kept bringing
 the 
server down when one of the users tweaked the code wrong. Maybe there
 would 
be some way to keep a copy of the files generated by the web app and
 allow 
the users to modify those. Perhaps then there would be some way to test
 the 
changes before copying them back.

I would anticipate a simultaneous update problem.  Most people use the
 web 
app to generate pages/files. Someone might update a course and then
 somebody 
else might undo it via rsync. I'll have to think about that though. I 
wouldn't mind locking out web-app users while someone is updating the
 code 
"by hand". That would put pressure on the by-hand people to not do that
 
unless they  have to.  But if I have to invent some kind of locking
 system, 
I'm not going to want to do that.

Anyway, thanks guys. I think I have enough info. I can either figure
 out 
some way to keep a copy of the web site and allow users to post updates
 via 
rsync or sftp. Or I can set the ownership and perms the way Brian
 suggested. 
The choice there is a judgement call.

PS: I did get my apache parameters tuned pretty well to keep the server
 from 
going down. The problem is that the code is written in mod-perl and the
 
by-hand guys would make a mistake so that apache processes would hog
 memory 
until the server crashed. What I did was significantly decrease the 
keepAliveTimeout. This caused apache sub-processes to close connections
 
ssooner which in turn caused them to reach the connection limit sooner
 which 
in turn caused them to die off sooner  which in turn caused them to not
 
accumulate so much memory. I actually had to do a similar thing for
 mysql 
connections as well.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Travis Sobeck" <nex916 at yahoo.com>
To: "madlug" <madlug at madisonlinux.org>
Sent: Wednesday, November 28, 2007 9:56 PM
Subject: [Madlug] Fw: users editing pages created by web app


>
>
> Or possibly set up a secure FTP access that has individual login in
 but
> masks uploads/edits as www-data.
>
> ----- Original Message ----
> From: Marcin Antkiewicz <madlug at kajtek.org>
> To: John Heim <jheim at math.wisc.edu>
> Cc: madlug at madisonlinux.org
> Sent: Wednesday, November 28, 2007 5:53:40 PM
> Subject: Re: [Madlug] users editing pages created by web app
>
>
>> Maybe I should allow users to sudo things as www-data?
>
> Can you (r)sync a directory in their home to the webapp
 dir/path/files
> need to
> go?
>
> --
> Marcin Antkiewicz
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