[wpkg-users] creative ideas to spread out the running of wpkg installs?

[Tomasz Chmielewski]

>> The idea of having a central program monitoring all client requests may
>> sound fine, but is totally unrealistic (at least, with the manpower we
>> have).
>
> Um, is it?
>
> <thinking mode=aloud>
> wpkg.js has a function which displays debug messages to screen or event
> viewer. Could that be adapted to optionally open HTTP connections? We
> might assume that the wpkg file server has an httpd running

No, we should not assume HTTP server is running.
At least, my experience shows that a file server doesn't necessarily have to run a web server.


> and so making
> connections like:
> http://wpkg.server.org/wpkg-log.php?client=%HOST%&message=Installing%20Word
> could be made. If we felt so inclined, this could be logged somewhere nice
> like an SQL database but even doing nothing with the data other than
> logging it in the httpd access logs would provide useful information for
> people to grep. The actual wpkg-log.php doesn't need to return anything
> and wpkg.js doesn't need to do anything with the returned data (if any).
> If the page is 404, who cares? Data will just get logged to error_log
> instead. If the httpd isn't running, we'll have to wait for a TCP timeout
> for each connection attempted, which is a bore but not a show-stopper.

So, wpkg.js would have to connect somewhere:

http://wpkg.server.org/wpkg-log.php?query

and expect a number (like 10, for 10 running installations).

If the number is greater than, say, 15 (configurable), wait for 30 seconds.

wpkg.js should report its actions every 15-60 seconds or so - if a given host doesn't report anymore, consider the installation successful (host
died, ended installation etc.)


Hmm, perhaps, much more has to be thought.


Still, I'm not persuaded by this approach.

If the OP has a fat server as he says, it shouldn't suffer in that way with a 90 MB file.
The file should be buffered/cached fully by the operating system, and served from RAM.

With small devices serving as file servers, installing 70 clients concurrently is not a great idea (although it happened to me to installed ~30-40
machines, operating system + software, off a 2.4 GHz machine with 256 MB RAM - still, it went fine).

So I guess, the OP should look more carefully at his server's configuration.



-- 
Tomasz Chmielewski
http://wpkg.org