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The FUDForum 2.8.1 installation at www.eclipse.org/forums is a year and a half old. Since then, numerous new features and fixes have been incorporated into the code. Last week I began experimenting with the upgrade in a sandbox and all seems to have gone well. I still need to confirm that existing URLs will still work, but otherwise I'm nearly ready for an upgrade.
Perhaps re-visiting support of attachments can be part of this...
I'm planning on doing the upgrade Friday, April 22. I'll post a note on the Newcomers forum and on the forums page to advise about the outage.
Agh, Friday is a holiday, so I'll schedule for Monday the 25th.
At this time, the upgrade has been unsuccessful. So far it is issue after issue, endlessly plowing through code to see what is going on, and never an end in sight. I'm reverting the databases and the code to the previous (running) version.
I recall that the reason FUDForum was chosen was because of its bi-directional NNTP integration, not because it was the best open-source web forums package. Maybe it's time to re-evaluate that choice to see if there are any other options. Maybe someone in the community could step up to write some code to bridge NNTP with another (better) web forum software... (yeah, I know... keep dreaming)
In the end, I think FUDForum is a decent forum software -- however, I don't think it fits well with the scale of eclipse.org (ie, hundreds of thousands of posts, load balancers, clustered servers, multiple database servers, hardened/restricted PHP environment etc...) > Maybe someone in the community could step up to write some code to bridge NNTP > with another (better) web forum software... (yeah, I know... keep dreaming) Actually, an even better solution (I think) would be for the forum software to act as an nntp front-end, so we can ditch the nntp server altogether.
Since all our messages are stored in NNTP, another lightweight solution would be to skip the upgrade process altogether and simply do a fresh install of the latest version, and re-import all the NNTP messages. I know a fresh install works since I have one running on www.eclipse.org. The problem is that links to existing messages will likely break, since the message_id will likely have changed. However, it would allow us to use per-forum search, instead of the almost useless Google Custom Search.
I don't mind going with the option 2 that you describe in your blog.
I am ok with either option from the blog post. Absent concrete comparison of capabilities and downsides of different forum systems, I don't feel that we have enough information to evaluate choice #1. Choice #2 therefore seems to be the default position.
Option 2 sounds fine.
Before the message links break, it would be a good idea to run a query against the Eclipse wiki to see if there are any links to forum messages embedded in the pages. If there are a few, we should probably find those messages in the new version and update the wiki pages.
I'd go with option 2. Mainly because FUDForum is really the only viable option if we are going to continue with NNTP/Newsgroup mirroring.
(In reply to comment #11) > Before the message links break, it would be a good idea to run a query against > the Eclipse wiki I think that's a great idea. WIKI: For the Wiki, I've examined only the latest revision of each page. 26 pages contain direct references to a specific message on the forums. select p.page_title, p.page_latest as revision, r.rev_text_id as text from page as p inner join revision as r on r.rev_id = p.page_latest inner join text as t on t.old_id = r.rev_text_id where t.old_text regexp 'http://.*eclipse.org/forums/.*msg'; BUGS: 693 bug comments link to a forum message. select b.bug_id, t.comment_id from bugs as b inner join longdescs as t on t.bug_id = b.bug_id where t.thetext regexp 'http://.*eclipse.org/forums/.*msg'; MAILING LIST ARCHIVES: This is a bit more tedious, but it's running now. find . -name '*.html' -exec egrep -H 'http://.*eclipse.org/forums/.*msg' \;
> Absent concrete comparison of > capabilities and downsides of different forum systems, I don't feel that we > have enough information to evaluate choice #1. Choice #2 therefore seems to be > the default position. Perhaps someone with experience with other OSS forums will chime in, in the same way FUDForum was recommended to us, which would provide us a compelling reason to test another forum software. What can I say, I am optimistic :)
A side question... Do people still use NNTP in the age of HTTP-based RSS feeds? Many companies (like my employer) completely block access to NNTP. Perhaps we can remove NNTP support from the requirements when considering modern forum systems. That should open the field considerably.
(In reply to comment #15) > A side question... Do people still use NNTP in the age of HTTP-based RSS feeds? Yes. Denis can probably provide stats from server logs, but I can tell you at least 3 very active support community members use NNTP almost exclusively: myself, Ed Merks, and Russell Bateman. I'm sure there are plenty of others of us.
So, Eric, out of curiosity, what keeps individuals such as yourself on NNTP over more modern options like RSS. Genuine interest on my part...
(In reply to comment #16) > myself, Ed Merks, and Russell Bateman. I'm sure there are plenty of others of > us. +1 for NNTP PW
In the last year, 2220/6190 (36%) of the posts to eclipse.newcomers were made by nntp users, whereas 2539/7860 (32%) of the posts to eclipse.platform were made by nntp users.
(In reply to comment #13) > (In reply to comment #11) > > Before the message links break, it would be a good idea to run a query against > > the Eclipse wiki > > I think that's a great idea. > > > WIKI: For the Wiki, I've examined only the latest revision of each page. 26 > pages contain direct references to a specific message on the forums. > > select p.page_title, p.page_latest as revision, r.rev_text_id as text from page > as p inner join revision as r on r.rev_id = p.page_latest inner join text as t > on t.old_id = r.rev_text_id where t.old_text regexp > 'http://.*eclipse.org/forums/.*msg'; > > > BUGS: 693 bug comments link to a forum message. > select b.bug_id, t.comment_id from bugs as b inner join longdescs as t on > t.bug_id = b.bug_id where t.thetext regexp 'http://.*eclipse.org/forums/.*msg'; > > > MAILING LIST ARCHIVES: This is a bit more tedious, but it's running now. > find . -name '*.html' -exec egrep -H 'http://.*eclipse.org/forums/.*msg' \; 26 wiki pages seems pretty reasonable to manually correct. The mailing list archives I think can be ignored; they're archives after all and I'd bet there are tons of invalid links in there. However, all those bugs, that's a problem (aside from the fact that Bugzilla doesn't provide for editing of comments).
(In reply to comment #20) > > 26 wiki pages seems pretty reasonable to manually correct. The mailing list > archives I think can be ignored; they're archives after all and I'd bet there > are tons of invalid links in there. > However, all those bugs, that's a problem (aside from the fact that Bugzilla > doesn't provide for editing of comments). I'm pretty sure there are dead links in bug reports as well. I know at times people post mailing list archive links, etc. The problem with links in general they go stale.
(In reply to comment #15) > A side question... Do people still use NNTP in the age of HTTP-based RSS feeds? Yes. I prefer it.
(In reply to comment #21) > (In reply to comment #20) > > > > 26 wiki pages seems pretty reasonable to manually correct. The mailing list > > archives I think can be ignored; they're archives after all and I'd bet there > > are tons of invalid links in there. > > However, all those bugs, that's a problem (aside from the fact that Bugzilla > > doesn't provide for editing of comments). > > I'm pretty sure there are dead links in bug reports as well. I know at times > people post mailing list archive links, etc. The problem with links in general > they go stale. True dat. I wonder if it would be reasonable to keep the old forum links available as an archive while using the new version. For example, set up some kind of URL detection for the old links and route them to a running but read-only version of the forums, such as http://www.eclipse.org/forums-old/..... Denis, would that stess either our infrastructure or our webmaster team's development resources?
(In reply to comment #17) > So, Eric, out of curiosity, what keeps individuals such as yourself on NNTP > over more modern options like RSS. Genuine interest on my part... For me it's efficiency. I find the usability of my NNTP reader much more appealing than the one offered by any web forum software out there. It feels like option #2 is the better way to go.
+1 for NNTP
Option 2: +1
I may have some good news. Turns out that for various reasons, the upgrade process was deleting the user record for the forum's Anonymous User, and that was preventing the Admin (me) and everyone else from logging into the upgraded forum. By re-creating the Anonymous user record by hand, I am able to log in and complete the upgrade cleanly. I'll re-test the upgrade process from scratch one last time before doing this live. But I'm confident it should upgrade cleanly. If it does not, I'll proceed with option #2. Thanks for all your feedback. *wipes forehead*
Alright, I think I've got this down pat. I'm scheduling the actual upgrade for this afternoon (ET). I know this is short notice but I want to do this while it's fresh in my head.
Well, the bulk of the work is done. The skin still needs some massaging, and I need to put back the intro paragraph on the home page, and for some reason some posts are being flagged for moderation. Oh, and I need to get rid of that 'register' link even though I've set user registration to disabled... *sigh* We'll get there.
(In reply to comment #29) > Well, the bulk of the work is done. The skin still needs some massaging, and I > need to put back the intro paragraph on the home page, and for some reason some > posts are being flagged for moderation. Oh, and I need to get rid of that > 'register' link even though I've set user registration to disabled... *sigh* > We'll get there. Plus you can't seem to reply to a Forum post. I've tried multiple times to get reply posted but it never seems to take even though it submits.
They all get queued for moderation... *sigh*
The forum is upgraded and is now in a stable state.
Thanks for al the hard work.
