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Since about two weeks now, we have full-server backups – automatically built and quickly deployable.
Let’s stress-test the temporary test deployment to gauge availability of all features:
Occasionally you might be redirected to the true nLab or the true nForum, that it is to be expected, but feel free to report such issues here.
Just to say Many Thanks! to Ingo, who made this happen (thanks to communication by Felix Cherubini).
And to add that:
The backup mechanisms that used to be in place here were of a piecemeal form which would have made it challenging to reconstruct the nLab in its totality after a worst case scenario.
The new mirroring process means that even if the main server goes entirely out of the window, we can immediately switch to this (or other) mirrors, with no loss at all.
Or at least that’s the idea. To double-check that the mirror installation really behaves exactly like the nLab, let’s all play around with it to check.
How often does this mirror get updated?
Right now: not at all. It just serves to test that the backup and deployment scripts work as intended.
Later: I think the technical board should decide this. Personally, I can sleep safe and sound if we have daily or twice-daily full-server backups to two locations. But the question of backup frequency is decoupled from the question of availability and update frequency of the mirror. Having a mirror always online could also be confusing (but we could ask search engines to not index the mirror) or increase the attack surface for a machine holding backups. On the other hand, it might be nice to be able to immediately switch to the mirror without missing a beat.
Regarding credits where they are due, Felix not only communicated this endeavour but also guided it along :-)
Let’s stress-test the temporary test deployment to gauge availability of all features:
Unlike the nLab, the mirror doesn’t have the capability to rename pages.
Thank you for this report, Madeleine!
Can you offer some kind of error message or screenshot?
I just tried renaming, on the mirror, “homotopy type theory” to “htopy type theory”, and after a brief pause owing to the fact that the machine the mirror is running on isn’t particularly well-equipped, it appeared to work:
https://nlab-mirror.quasicoherent.io/nlab/show/homotopy+type+theory now redirects to https://nlab-mirror.quasicoherent.io/nlab/show/htopy+type+theory.
I can rename mirrored pages, too.
In fact I was just sending a message (here) to the mirrored nForum saying how well everything works – but then right after hitting “submit” (which otherwise was successful) I got to see this error message:
A fatal, non-recoverable error has occurred Technical information (for support personel):
Error Message
An error occurred while sending the email.Affected Elements Email.Send();
For additional support documentation, visit the Lussumo Documentation website at: lussumo.com/docs
Can you offer some kind of error message or screenshot?
I just tried renaming, on the mirror, “homotopy type theory” to “htopy type theory”, and after a brief pause owing to the fact that the machine the mirror is running on isn’t particularly well-equipped, it appeared to work:
https://nlab-mirror.quasicoherent.io/nlab/show/homotopy+type+theory now redirects to https://nlab-mirror.quasicoherent.io/nlab/show/htopy+type+theory.
So what’s actually happening is that newly created pages on the mirror cannot be renamed. You could try it with the newly created https://nlab-mirror.quasicoherent.io/nlab/show/test
Madeleine, when I follow your instructions, I get a message “Edit blocked by spam detector.”
Is that what you mean?
This wouldn’t be a problem with the mirror, but would be the nLab’s spam detector doing its thing.
(Our spam detector is a most crude algorithm, let’s call it a hack, which was implemented by a previous sysadmin here. We had previously struggled with tuning it such as to be more realistic. It looks like what you found is another case of unreasonable spam flagging that we should adjust in the nLab’s source code.)
Madeleine, when I follow your instructions, I get a message “Edit blocked by spam detector.”
Is that what you mean?
No. For me, when the checkbox to the left of “Change page name.” is checked, the input field for the new page name, which should appear below the text, doesn’t appear at all.
Actually, never mind. I found what the issue is: I had Javascript disabled for the mirror on my browser. After turning on Javascript for the website I am now able to rename pages without problem.
Okay, very nice that the renaming issue resolved itself :-) (And cool that you are JavaScript-conscious!)
Regarding the mail issue on the mirrored nForum: That’s likely because other mail servers reject mail from the mirrored server. As they should: Because the mirrored server is, regarding its mail server configuration, claiming to be the true server, even though it’s not. This masquerade would have went mostly undetected 20 years ago, but nowadays there are several DNS-directed safeguards in place designed to prevent such impersonation.
In case the true server vanishes or has to be restored from a backup, I don’t expect these issues, as then the new server will either have the same IP address as the old one, or because we will update the DNS records accordingly. But setting up such records just for testing purposes seems a bit much, I think (of course the technical board should decide).
I see. But just out of general interest: Which emails is this even about? Why is there an attempt from the server to send an email when I post something?
I’d venture that the mail is to notify other people of activity in a thread they posted to.
Just as a heads up, the temporary mirror will deactivate now, having served its purpose of verifying that the full-server backup is working as expected. It can always come back later with about 10 minutes to 30 minutes of work.
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