User:Gordon/Free Geek Wiki Upgrades - Revision history

Vagrant: /* Upgrade Mediawiki */ fix newest mediawiki version

2009-10-08T20:14:14Z

Upgrade Mediawiki: fix newest mediawiki version

Gordon: /* Upgrade Mediawiki */

2009-10-04T18:39:30Z

Upgrade Mediawiki

Gordon: /* Still slow? */

2009-10-04T18:37:13Z

Still slow?

Gordon: /* Upgrade Mediawiki */

2009-10-04T18:36:06Z

Upgrade Mediawiki

Gordon: /* Upgrade Mediawiki */

2009-10-04T18:33:23Z

Upgrade Mediawiki

Gordon: /* Solutions */

2009-10-04T18:32:33Z

Solutions

Gordon: /* Problem */

2009-10-04T18:32:11Z

Problem

Gordon at 18:30, 4 October 2009

2009-10-04T18:30:58Z

Gordon: /* Solutions */

2009-10-04T18:28:14Z

Solutions

Gordon: /* Solutions */

2009-10-04T18:25:40Z

Solutions

@@ Line 13: / Line 13: @@
 ===Upgrade Mediawiki===
-Free Geek is running on Mediawiki 1.12.0, which upon examination by Vagrant, appeared to be a Lenny package running on an Etch server.  Either way, 1.51.1 is the current stable release.  1.12.0 is very out of date and undoubtedly plagued with various security issues.  As well, the virtual server should probably be upgraded to Lenny so that security fixes to PHP and MySQL will continue farther into the future.
+Free Geek is running on Mediawiki 1.12.0, which upon examination by Vagrant, appeared to be a Lenny package running on an Etch server.  Either way, 1.15.1 is the current stable release.  1.12.0 is very out of date and undoubtedly plagued with various security issues.  As well, the virtual server should probably be upgraded to Lenny so that security fixes to PHP and MySQL will continue farther into the future.
 I've administrated Mediawiki sites since 2005 and am fairly knowledgeable about it.  I also have about 9 years of experience as a Debian user and system administrator.  I run Debian on my VPS and am most familiar with it of all distros.  Therefore, if the Free Geek staff are willing to trust me, I would be happy to work on upgrading the wiki software and server, possibly on a Sunday when few people are using it if that's possible.

@@ Line 13: / Line 13: @@
 ===Upgrade Mediawiki===
-Free Geek is running on Mediawiki 1.12.0, which upon examination by Vagrant, appeared to be a Lenny package running on an Etch server.  Either way, the current stable release is 1.15.1.  1.12.0 is very out of date and undoubtedly plagued with various security issues.  As well, the virtual server should probably be upgraded to Lenny so that security fixes to PHP and MySQL will continue farther into the future.
+Free Geek is running on Mediawiki 1.12.0, which upon examination by Vagrant, appeared to be a Lenny package running on an Etch server.  Either way, 1.51.1 is the current stable release.  1.12.0 is very out of date and undoubtedly plagued with various security issues.  As well, the virtual server should probably be upgraded to Lenny so that security fixes to PHP and MySQL will continue farther into the future.
 I've administrated Mediawiki sites since 2005 and am fairly knowledgeable about it.  I also have about 9 years of experience as a Debian user and system administrator.  I run Debian on my VPS and am most familiar with it of all distros.  Therefore, if the Free Geek staff are willing to trust me, I would be happy to work on upgrading the wiki software and server, possibly on a Sunday when few people are using it if that's possible.

@@ Line 32: / Line 32: @@
 ===Still slow?===
-* Convert most database tables to InnoDB if they are not already (this should be done regardless to prevent eventual corruption-related sadness)
+* Convert most non-fulltext-indexed database tables to InnoDB if they are not already (this should be done regardless to prevent eventual corruption-related sadness)
 * Investigate whether [http://www.danga.com/memcached/ memcached] would provide a performance benefit beyond APC, considering that Mediawiki may be using APC as an object cache as well as an opcode cache
 * If the server is under load due to serving a lot of static content, investigate using something like [http://varnish.projects.linpro.no/ varnish] to efficiently cache and serve it (better than squid)

@@ Line 18: / Line 18: @@
 There are 4 options:
 ====Upgrade to Lenny (or beyond) and use Debian packages====
@@ Line 23: / Line 29: @@
 ====Upgrade to Lenny and convert to a manual installation====
-This is more difficult to maintain (marginally -- it's actually pretty easy but not an apt-get only solution) but, if the will is there to maintain it, Mediawiki can be kept better up to date.
+This is more difficult to maintain (marginally -- it's actually pretty easy but not solely an apt-get solution) but, if the will is there to maintain it, Mediawiki can be kept better up to date.
 ===Still slow?===

@@ Line 15: / Line 15: @@
 Free Geek is running on Mediawiki 1.12.0, which upon examination by Vagrant, appeared to be a Lenny package running on an Etch server.  Either way, the current stable release is 1.15.1.  1.12.0 is very out of date and undoubtedly plagued with various security issues.  As well, the virtual server should probably be upgraded to Lenny so that security fixes to PHP and MySQL will continue farther into the future.
-I've administrated Mediawiki sites since 2005 and am fairly knowledgeable Mediawiki about it.  I also have about 9 years of experience as a Debian user and system administrator.  I run Debian on my VPS and am most familiar with it of all distros.  Therefore, if the Free Geek staff are willing to trust me, I would be happy to work on upgrading the wiki software and server, possibly on a Sunday when few people are using it if that's possible.
+I've administrated Mediawiki sites since 2005 and am fairly knowledgeable about it.  I also have about 9 years of experience as a Debian user and system administrator.  I run Debian on my VPS and am most familiar with it of all distros.  Therefore, if the Free Geek staff are willing to trust me, I would be happy to work on upgrading the wiki software and server, possibly on a Sunday when few people are using it if that's possible.
 There are 4 options:

@@ Line 3: / Line 3: @@
 ==Solutions==
-Solutions are presented in increasing order of work and impact on the Mediawiki virtual server.  By far the cheapest and quickest solution is to install APC; see below.
+Solutions are presented in increasing order of work and impact on the Mediawiki virtual server.  By far the cheapest and quickest solution to the speed problem is to install APC; see below.
 ===PHP opcode/object caching===

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
 ==Problem==
-The wiki is slow, especially when saving pages.
+The wiki is slow, especially when saving pages.  It is also running an installation of Mediawiki that is terribly out of date, and the server is still running Debian etch.
 ==Solutions==

@@ Line 6: / Line 6: @@
 ===PHP opcode/object caching===
-Install a PHP opcode cache and give it 32-64MB of RAM.  I use [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_PHP_accelerators#Alternative_PHP_Cache APC] on umasswiki.com,  APC has the advantage of direct support by Mediawiki.
+Install a PHP opcode cache and give it 32-64MB of RAM.  I use [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_PHP_accelerators#Alternative_PHP_Cache APC] on the wikis I administrate.  APC has the advantage of direct support by Mediawiki.
-Umasswiki.com is a wiki that gets 200K or more hits a month on a VPS with 360MB of RAM.  I gave APC 48MB for its cache and noticed a very significant speed increase after it was installed.  Looking at my stats, there is a 99.7% cache hit rate on my installation, and I am running other PHP apps in addition to Mediawiki.  So, 48MB should be more than sufficient for APC on Free Geek's Mediawiki virtual server.
+I run one wiki that gets 200K or more hits a month on a VPS with 360MB of RAM.  I gave APC 48MB for its cache and noticed a very significant speed increase after it was installed.  Looking at my stats, there is a 99.7% cache hit rate on my installation, and I am running other PHP apps in addition to Mediawiki.  So, 48MB should be more than sufficient for APC on Free Geek's Mediawiki virtual server.
 Having installed APC, I found that there was no need for memcached based on the load my other wikis experience.  Since it was a long time ago, I'm unsure now whether Mediawiki also uses APC as an object cache; if so, this might obviate the need for something like memcached on a modestly-used wiki such as Free Geek's.
@@ Line 15: / Line 15: @@
 Free Geek is running on Mediawiki 1.12.0, which upon examination by Vagrant, appeared to be a Lenny package running on an Etch server.  Either way, the current stable release is 1.15.1.  1.12.0 is very out of date and undoubtedly plagued with various security issues.  As well, the virtual server should probably be upgraded to Lenny so that security fixes to PHP and MySQL will continue farther into the future.
-I'm a fairly knowledgeable Mediawiki administrator (running UMasswiki since 2005, a personal wiki, converted the developer wiki to Mediawiki at my day job) and I have about 9 years of experience as a Debian user and system administrator.  I run Debian on my VPS and am most familiar with it of all distros.  Therefore, if the Free Geek staff are willing to trust me, I would be happy to work on upgrading the wiki software and server, possibly on a Sunday when few people are using it if that's possible.
+I've administrated Mediawiki sites since 2005 and am fairly knowledgeable Mediawiki about it.  I also have about 9 years of experience as a Debian user and system administrator.  I run Debian on my VPS and am most familiar with it of all distros.  Therefore, if the Free Geek staff are willing to trust me, I would be happy to work on upgrading the wiki software and server, possibly on a Sunday when few people are using it if that's possible.
 There are 4 options:

← Older revision		Revision as of 18:25, 4 October 2009
Line 30:		Line 30:
	====Stay on Etch and look for a newer backport====		====Stay on Etch and look for a newer backport====
	This is the solution that will be obsolete in the shortest amount of time.		This is the solution that will be obsolete in the shortest amount of time.
		+
		+	===Still slow?===
		+	* Convert most database tables to InnoDB if they are not already (this should be done regardless to prevent eventual corruption-related sadness)
		+	* Investigate whether [http://www.danga.com/memcached/ memcached] would provide a performance benefit beyond APC, considering that Mediawiki may be using APC as an object cache as well as an opcode cache
		+	* If the server is under load due to serving a lot of static content, investigate using something like [http://varnish.projects.linpro.no/ varnish] to efficiently cache and serve it (better than squid)