Forum: Instiki – Topic: nlab

It’s even possible that it didn’t crash this morning. It was very slow loading the main page so I restarted it. I couldn’t see from the logs anything special, though.

I’m not inured to instiki crashing! I would love to get to the bottom of it, but it’s hard to know what to monitor, and how to monitor it (especially as it may have been my monitoring procedures that contributed to its crashing).

As you say, let’s see how long it can last.

By the way, how many log files does it keep? Does it just keep renumbering them each time it rotates them? If so, I’d better move them out of the log directory each day.

Forum: Instiki – Topic: nlab

I’ve set that one that kills off processes after 20 requests (PassengerMaxRequests), and I’ve set it up to allow 10 concurrent processes (PassengerMaxPoolSize).

I wouldn’t count this morning’s crash as anything special. More likely just teething problems.

Forum: Heterotic Beast – Topic: Bugs

Is the colour of the icon next to the forum title meant to tell me if there’s new stuff there? If so, it’s not always in sync.

Forum: Instiki – Topic: nlab

I was blocking them at the Apache level. That seemed to be what you were complaining about! Maybe I misunderstood.

I can understand list being so big, but atom_with_content is limited to the last … whatever … revisions, so that shouldn’t be so big, should it?

(I think that to get a better picture from the logs then I need to figure out a way to distinguish those that got cached from those that needed a serious operation. But as I’m back on “vanilla” instiki, my hacks to allow this have been taken out.)

Incidentally, the nLab had crashed when I came in this morning, but it’s been running fairly stably all day. So that might just have been first night jitters (or the rampaging googlebot that came through at about midnight).

Forum: Instiki – Topic: nlab

Okay, so after a day’s trading at the nLab, here are the closing prices. This is with nothing disabled.

atom_with_content: 192 requests, 176 taking less than 10s to process, 16 taking 50s to process.

list: 6 requests, 2 taking less than 10s to process, 4 taking 5 minutes to process.

Total number of requests: 4223, breakdown of time taken to process (rounded down to nearest 10s):

  0: 4142
  1: 47
  2: 8
  3: 3
  4: 1
  5: 17
  6: 1
  7: 1
  30: 1
  31: 2
  32: 1

So those atom_with_content and list are a major part of the requests that take longer than 30s to deliver.

Forum: Instiki – Topic: Feature Requests

Okay. So simpler just to have separate copies of the code.

I guess what I’m stumbling around with this is some way to make the update cycle a little simpler. At the moment, I update a live instiki installation from golem, and with the ruby bundle step as well, then the update can take a noticeable length of time. What would be better would be to pull the changes to an offline copy on that machine, then update the live versions from the offline copy.

I can easily do that with the bzr stuff, but how would it work with the gems? Perhaps if the live versions weren’t bzr repositories but were more simply synced with the offline version in some fashion (thinking a bit like how rsync works). Hmm, so the workflow would be:

1. Pull the latest instiki revisions to the “dead” code
2. Run ruby bundle on that
3. Copy any updated files from the “dead” version to the live versions, being sure not to clobber anything special
4. Restart instiki on the live versions

would that work, do you think?

Or is this another case of me thinking something is important which really isn’t.

Forum: Instiki – Topic: nlab

I have a script that exports the day’s revisions to a set of bzr repositories (this is to make it easier for people to keep incremental backups of their webs). I haven’t reinstalled it as a cron job yet, and again I can run it manually.

Root has its usual cron jobs (at least, it does now: in the installed image then it doesn’t run them but lets anacron do it, which is fine except that on a server, anacron isn’t running; however, cron just checks for the existence of anacron, not whether or not it is running). But that’s all.

Forum: Instiki – Topic: Feature Requests

Is the following possible? I tried a couple of things, but don’t know enough to know if what I tried was all that there was. Given that instiki can be installed as a gem, can I install a system-wide version of the code and then run it as a user, with each user having their own separate instiki process, but sharing the code?

Forum: Instiki – Topic: nlab

I’ve now upgraded the nLab server and reinstalled everything. In particular, I pulled a fresh copy of instiki from the repository and made only two changes:

1. Using mysql as the database
2. Disabled the DNSBL spam check

In particular, I’m not mucking about with the logs just yet. We’ll see how this goes for now.

Now, should I enable the daily check on the instiki source code, or shall I keep that off for the time being and update manually?

Forum: Heterotic Beast – Topic: Bugs

This place doesn’t seem to remember me at the moment. *sigh*

Forum: Instiki – Topic: Feature Requests

Ah, another UK/US distinction. Something that is a “dummy” is not necessarily “dumb”. A “dummy” simply means a fake (although it’s not as pejorative), a “stand in”. Had I meant to be rude, I would have said “dumb CSS classes”.

Forum: Heterotic Beast – Topic: Feature Requests

I was just thinking that if only the post itself was tagged with the edit then it wouldn’t be clear to someone reading the end of the thread that something earlier had been changed. Having it sorted by “updated_at” would fix this, but at too great a cost, I think. The extra line was meant to mitigate this without resorting the posts.

You’re right that the guest user doesn’t have an empty password. The script has to know guest’s password.

Forum: Instiki – Topic: Feature Requests

Yes, it worked!

And to finish the thought, since I’m generating this from a LaTeX source, it can automatically handle adding the dummy CSS classes.

Forum: Instiki – Topic: Feature Requests

Actually, I’m going the other way. I’m going from LaTeX to Instiki. So the source file has \label{foo} and \ref{foo} in it already and in the LaTeX output then it gets converted to “In (2) we saw that …”. So there’s nothing in the source to put as the text in the anchor and something has to be put in its place. Thus my thinking was to subvert the maruku counter-counting to figure out what text should go there. Putting a class .num_enuma on each element of the list makes maruku think that there is a list to be counted there and so it converts the \ref{foo} to the correct hyperlinked text. If you’re using maruku here, this should work:

1. The first item.

2. The second item.

Now we should be able to refer to 1 and 2. I won’t know if that worked until I save the reply, though!

Anyway, it certainly does work on Instiki. I don’t need another list in the CSS because the counters are already produced by the browser working on the list. All I need is for maruku to count the entries in the list, and for that I just need the dummy num_X classes. You’re right that I need one per list, but that shouldn’t be that many on any given page.

(Okay, time to see if that list worked.)

Forum: Instiki – Topic: Feature Requests

Just tested adding IALs to lists. Definitely useful, but I’d add one minor modification: the ability to use \ref to refer back to list elements (at the very least, to enumerated list elements). So

1. {: #first} The first item

The first item was \ref{first}

would work. At the moment, I have a hack that uses the numbering system for theorems and so forth to get this to work, putting the class .num_enumX (X increments with the enumerate environment so that each is unique) on a +-- ... =-- div at the top of the list element. This seems to be enough to trigger the internal maruku counter and so make \ref{...} work. It’d be great if this were done automatically without that hack.

Forum: Heterotic Beast – Topic: Feature Requests

With the anonymous posting, then I can specify it on a “per category” basis in Vanilla. The hierarchy in Vanilla is:

Forum: Category: [Subcategory:...] Discussion: Post

Subcategories aren’t really hierarchical in the code, just in the layout. So “per category” doesn’t descend to categories (unless I’m misremembering … I did code this part so I ought to know!). On the nForum, then the allowed category is “nLab - Latest Changes”. To avoid spam, the person has to solve a reCaptcha to post. Behind the scenes, there is a “guest” user and the software logs in the guest user, posts the post, and then logs out again. All such posts get authored by “Guest” and (this is less than ideal) there’s no obvious “Put your name here” field (one has to put it in the post itself). Nonetheless, it works reasonably well and means that people can leave short messages about nLab pages without having to sign up.

Regarding the roles, I’d want something in between moderator and user. On the nForum, then some users have slightly more “power” with regard to organising the place. They don’t have full moderator power, so can’t edit others’ posts and so forth, but they can move posts from one category to another, or similar simple things.

Regarding “editable” posts, I’d go for “created_at”. A discussion is a linear thing, and most of the time edits will be for minor typos which certainly shouldn’t change the order. Deciding on the difference between minor and major is a human thing.

If you wanted the best of both worlds, an edit to a post could insert a line at the relevant time point saying “Post X was edited at …”. That wouldn’t disrupt the flow of the conversation but would signal that someone had potentially thrown a stone in to the water.

Forum: Instiki – Topic: Bugs

Incidentally, I got around my immediate indentation problem, so you can consider that one downgraded!

Forum: Instiki – Topic: Bugs

Ah, that’s unfortunate. What other markdown engines are available for Ruby?

If you’re actively looking, I could run some searches on the nLab pages to see what syntax is used and what isn’t.

I do think that the attribute stuff is a brilliant addition; it makes it possible to make the pages a little more easily customised.

Forum: Instiki – Topic: Feature Requests

Ah, number 2 is fantastic. I hadn’t spotted that (I’ve been particularly bad at monitoring the RSS feeds since my feed reader blew up). I’ll try that.

Forum: Instiki – Topic: Feature Requests

Here’s another random idea: to make it easier for people to contribute to a wiki (thinking particularly of the nLab), howabout a javascript annotation system? Some people might find it a bit daunting to edit a whole page just to correct a minor spelling mistake, but could leave a quick note so that the next person who does edit the page can see what outstanding notes there are.

Just a random idea - I haven’t thought it through very much. (But I did a little search to see that it was, at least, technically possible via javascript.)

Forum: Instiki – Topic: Bugs

To be honest, I find the whole indentation system for preserving environments a nightmare! Particularly, with regard to cut-and-pasting. It’d be great if there were alternatives available, like there is for code blocks.

(I’m right about that, aren’t I: the “fences” from PHP Markdown Extra work in maruku, don’t they? Let’s try:

some code

I’ll find out when I hit “save reply”! Incidentally, I think that a preview makes a little more sense on a forum than on a wiki.)

Maybe:

>>>
a quote
>>>

for quotes, and

123
1. For lists.
123

With the assumption that everything between one M. and another N. ($M,N\in \mathbb{N}$) is in a single list item.

Can’t think of anything else that relies on indentation.

Forum: Instiki – Topic: Feature Requests

(I’m really just trying out the features of the forum, but may as well do so in a “useful” way.)

1. I’d like a span equivalent of the +-- {: .class attributes} ... =-- syntax. At the moment, I do something like *word*{: style="text: normal"} which seems a bit daft.

2. I’d like an easy way to add id (and other attributes) to individual list elements. So I could write 1.{: #firstitem} to get an id tag on that item.

That’s all for now!

Forum: Instiki – Topic: Feature Requests

This is a thread for feature requests for Instiki.

Forum: Instiki – Topic: Bugs

Yes, that worked. Because I modified the indentation a little, the theorem no longer got noticed. All-in-all, I find the indentation rules to be a little too strict! As can be seen, indenting one space extra made no difference between the second and third lines, but caused the fourth line to not be seen as a theorem.

Forum: Instiki – Topic: Bugs

That didn’t, show what I wanted to show so let me try again.

1. This is a list.

   This is in the same item, indented to ensure that.

   This is also in the same item, indented one step more.

   ###### Theorem ###### This is an amazing theorem.

2. Another list item.

Forum: Instiki – Topic: Bugs

Right, I now appear to be logged in again.

What I was trying to demonstrate in the above was that I don’t always get the indentation right with maths in lists I’ll have to think again to get an example that demonstrates it, though.

Forum: Instiki – Topic: Bugs

Let’s see if this shows up here on the forum. It’s to do with newlines and lists.

1. This is a list. I want to put some maths in it, so I merrily go ahead and do so.

   $$\left[\begin{array}{cc}a& b\\ c& d\end{array}\right]$$\begin{bmatrix} a & b \\ c & d \end{bmatrix}

2. This is the next item in the list.

Let’s see if the above shows what I want it to show.

Forum: Instiki – Topic: Shiny new forum

Looking pretty impressive so far, I must say. Not sure that “save reply” is the best text, it’s not clear whether or not it will actually post the reply or not. Still, only one way to find out.

It posted it. Now I know!