[Box-Admins] Re: SqueakSource

Chris Muller ma.chris.m at gmail.com
Mon Aug 26 17:30:52 UTC 2013


As Dave mentioned, the immediate priority is simply ensuring continued
operation of squeaksource.com.  He is heading up the transition to a new
server this week whether that's box3, box4 (Gandi) or a server hosted by
Robert's group.  If we cannot get it running on a new image and/or VM
immediately, we'll just have to deal with the crashes/lockups until we can.

While I think Squeak should host its own services, unfortunately what we
have right now is unacceptably dangerous.  It appears someone has hacked
our SqueakSource implementation to bypass its original design for
persistence to use "image-based" persistence.  Image-based persistence, in
itself, would be fine, except for the fact that our Linux-based SS system
scripts carelessly KILL the SS process by PID as a means of opening the
image under VNC -- potentially when the image could be in a half-saved
state!

Such a misfortune could wipe out the entire community if we were unable to
recover from a backup.  Therefore, I fully support your idea to move to
SqueakSource3 running on GemStone.

But there is one more option.  Last month, Tim Rowledge expressed interest
in having a more-capable SqueakSource that could support what Magma-based
MC repositories provide today:

http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/squeak-dev/2013-July/172243.html

The advantage to this approach, besides having a working server example
based on Squeak, is that all MCDefinitions across all Versions of each
SSProject would be canonicalized and indexed inside the repository, so that
the 'browse mc versions' and 'browse mc origin' functions which are
afforded by Magma-based MCRepository's would be available on the trunk
repository for everyone.

I've already begun the work for this, but if there is no interest in this,
I will simply bow out and support the idea that we go with the GemStone
solution.



On Mon, Aug 26, 2013 at 7:10 AM, Pape, Tobias <
Tobias.Pape at hpi.uni-potsdam.de> wrote:

> Am 24.08.2013 um 02:26 schrieb David T. Lewis <lewis at mail.msen.com>:
>
> > On Fri, Aug 23, 2013 at 03:18:19PM -0500, Chris Muller wrote:
> >> Hi!  Ok so there are a couple of questions and potential answers
> brewing.
> >> How to host?  Where to host?
> >>
> >> David Lewis expressed that we should recover the actual SS instance and
> >> stabilize it.
> >
> > My immediate concern is to move the existing squeaksource.com to a new
> > home that is stable, supportable, and sustainable for the long term. My
> > hope is to accomplish that migration within days, not weeks. Once that
> > has been completed, all options should be open as far as I'm concerned.
> > But for now my only objective is to achieve operational stability and a
> > sustainable support process for squeaksource.com.
> >
> > Just to check my understanding, the reference to hosting by Robert
> Hirschfeld's
> > group is for future consideration, and not something that I need to worry
> > about to the migration plan for the next few days, is that right?
>
> Well Oscar Nierstrasz is commit to us (Robert’s group) in a couple of weeks
> and would be able to bring a harddrive with all files… (image+mcz's)
>
> >
> >> This may include bringing it up to a more modern,
> >> Cog-supported Squeak image.  I am working on doing this for
> >> source.squeak.org and so I hope that effort can overlap this one.
> >>
> >
> > Yes for sure, it is important to get source.squeak.org and
> squeaksource.com
> > onto a common code base and support structure in order to minimize the
> total
> > support requirement. One way or another, I am quite confident that this
> will
> > resolve the reliability and performance problems that have plagued
> squeaksource
> > in the past.
> >
> > But first things first, I'm still trying to copy files, including well
> over
> > 15 GB of compressed project files. Firefox says it might be done after
> another
> > 23 hours and 10 minutes or so ... then I'll need a box on squeak.org to
> unpack
> > them on.
>
> what files are you copying from where? Are you talking about
> source.squeak.org
> org squeaksource.com?
>
> All that said, I maintained an image-based Squeaksource-installation a
> couple
> of years ago here at HPI and we ran into lockup-troubles (I figure they
> are quite
> similar to those squeaksource.com experienced over the past year) at
> least once
> if not twice a day. I tracked the problem down to Socket-related problems
> (one
> end closed, the other not, image not responding henceforth), but they were
> not
> deterministically reproducible.
>   That was why I started participating in migrating SqS to Gemstone,
> Initially
> creating SqueakSource2, but soon changed to Squeaksource3.
>
> From my experiences, I would _strongly_ advice not to setup a new
> SqueakSource
> based on a SqueakVM that still has this socket problem (no, it is not the
> wiggle-the-mouse-and-it-works-again bug).
>
> I am currently devoting my free time to bring GemStone's Monticello-support
> up to par with Squeaks (read: add missing support for ScriptDefinitions),
> which would make SS3 on GemStone feature-wise a superset of current
> squeaksource.com  and source.squeak.org while at the same time providing
> a higher reliability (esp, compared to squeaksource.com).
>
> Best
>         -Tobias
>
> --
> Tobias Pape
> Doktorand im Fachgebiet Software-Architekturen
> http://www.hpi.uni-potsdam.de/swa/
>
> Hasso-Plattner-Institut für Softwaresystemtechnik GmbH
> Universität Potsdam
> Prof.-Dr.-Helmert-Str. 2-3
> D-14482 Potsdam, Germany
> Amtsgericht Potsdam, HRB 12184
> Geschäftsführung: Prof. Dr. Christoph Meinel
>
>
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