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As many of you have noticed, the forums have been having significant |
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performance problems lately. Without going into the gory details, most of |
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these issues have to do with the inefficient way phpBB 2.0.x interacts with |
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the database. |
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|
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Right now, the apache part of the forums are hosted on OSU's cluster of |
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dual xeon boxes and the database part is hosted by a dual xeon w/ 4GB of |
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RAM, so there is ample hardware behind us. Adding more hardware is not |
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likely to be a tenable solution. |
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|
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We have a couple of options we're considering, none of which are ideal. |
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One option is to delete older posts and/or move them to an "archive" |
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section which would be unsearchable or really hard to search (which is, |
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imo, effectively deleting them because nobody is going to sift through all |
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that) |
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|
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Another option is to migrate to an alternate forums package. Specifically, |
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vBulletin, which has proven to be quite scalable and effective with larger |
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sites. The main drawback to this is the fact that it is a commercial |
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software package, which tends to raise the ire of some of the more zealous |
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GNU folks out there. |
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|
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So, my question to you is, how would you feel if we were to do this? |
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Horribly offended? Saddened because there isn't a GPL'd program to meet |
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our needs, but pragmatic about the need to do *something*? Or C, none of |
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the above? |
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|
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Basically, the choice comes down to one of two things: |
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|
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1) Lose some older posts and stay on a GPL-compatible package |
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2) Move to a commercial solution and keep all the posts. |
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|
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Note that vBulletin *is* open source in that you have access to the source |
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code and can modify it. It's just not Free. |
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|
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Finally, to keep this process somewhat manageably, I ask that you make your |
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responses on the forums. I've also set up a poll there so we can vote on |
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what should be done. I will likely limit my responses to that discussion. |
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|
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http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?p=554174 |
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|
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--kurt |