If I understand what DabbleDB does, they essentially give each user their
own squeak process to run in.  When a session is first established, they
start up a new image.  Upgrading would be a matter of dropping a new image
somewhere and as old sessions expire and new ones created, users are
migrated over to the new code.  With hydraVM, a scheme like that might be
doable with just a small bit of session management in the main image.

(with swiki.net, I used to VNC in (I ran squeak headful in a regular VNC
session...at the time, the squeak VNC server didn't exist), fix bugs or load
code on the fly, but I was always a bit nervous about a slip of the mouse or
a mistake taking the whole thing down...I would make changes in a way that
they were captured and repeatable (using change sets (this was pre-MC)) and
then re-apply the changes to a clean image on disk...I didn't like
snapshotting with all the session related state bloating the image)

- Stephen

On Wed, Apr 2, 2008 at 9:23 PM, Andreas Raab <andreas.raab at gmx.de> wrote:

> Excellent links, thanks a lot (and to Ramon for writing the blog).
> Interestingly, the issue of configuration management was one of the ones
> that I've been thinking about recently too ;-)
>
> Cheers,
>  - Andreas
>
> Rajeev Lochan wrote:
>
> > Hi,
> > Check out Ramon's Blog post, which can guide you, though I havent used
> > them.
> >
> >
> > http://onsmalltalk.com/programming/smalltalk/upgrading-a-running-squeak-image/
> >
> >
> > http://onsmalltalk.com/programming/smalltalk/simple-file-based-application-configuration/
> >
> > HTH,
> > Rajeev
> >
> > On Wed, Apr 2, 2008 at 10:29 PM, Ken Causey <ken at kencausey.com <mailto:
> > ken at kencausey.com>> wrote:
> >
> >    Well, I can only say that I've updated (without restarting) a handful
> > of
> >    images that were running either Seaside or something else using Kom
> > and
> >    have not had any troubles.  In most cases these were images that were
> >    probably not getting but a few hits a minute, but I believe in at
> > least
> >    one case we made changes to Swiki (yes, wiki.squeak.org
> >    <http://wiki.squeak.org>) and had no
> >
> >    trouble.  Those were very minor changes though if I remember
> > correctly
> >    (just a method or two).
> >
> >    Ken
> >
> >    On Wed, 2008-04-02 at 09:28 -0700, Andreas Raab wrote:
> >     > Hi -
> >     >
> >     > [Apologies for the cross-post but there may be answers to this
> >    question
> >     > coming from people who are subscribed to Seaside but not
> > Squeak-dev]
> >     >
> >     > What are the best practices for upgrading portions of your running
> >     > server? I'm not talking about replacing the main business logic
> >    of your
> >     > server application but rather relatively small things like an
> >    improved
> >     > log module, or an administrative report function etc. Basically
> > parts
> >     > that you can assume aren't used while you upgrade them.
> >     >
> >     > I was quite surprised that I wasn't able to find any
> >    recommendations on
> >     > how to do that. And I can't imagine that this problem hasn't come
> >    up in
> >     > Seaside or other Squeak or Smalltalk server deployments. So what
> > do
> >     > people do in such a situation? Fire up VNC and load the latest MC
> >     > package? Is that feasible when you have hundreds of users
> >    pounding the
> >     > server? Any other (semi- or fully-) automated variants?
> > Alternative
> >     > recommendations?
> >     >
> >     > Thanks for any insights you can share.
> >     >
> >     > Cheers,
> >     >    - Andreas
> >     >
> >     >
> >
> >    _______________________________________________
> >    seaside mailing list
> >    seaside at lists.squeakfoundation.org
> >    <mailto:seaside at lists.squeakfoundation.org>
> >    http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/seaside
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Rajeev Lochan
> >
> > Co-founder, AR-CAD.com
> >
> > http://www.ar-cad.com
> > +91 9243468076 (Bangalore)
> > 080 65355873
> >
>
>
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