[Imc-drupal-dev] meeting logs

[mark burdett]

#### 2007-11-21

08:59 < steev> hello
09:07 -!- robbt has joined #drupal-dev
09:07 < robbt> hello.
09:08 < robbt> sorry i'm late, is anyone around for the imc-cms meeting ?
09:10 < steev> yes
09:11 < steev> hi
09:14 < robbt> Cool, do we want to get started, and draft up a brief agenda.
09:18 < steev> who else is here for it?
09:18 < steev> maybe this should be rescheduled?
09:18 < robbt> Starting with introductions I'm robbt from Cbusimc.org,
aka Columbus Indymedia we joined the network in 05.
09:19 < robbt> well there are at least some people on here, i think we
will need to reschedule a better meeting time but maybe we can at
least draft an agenda today.
09:20 < robbt> this time isn't really great for me right now because i
have to do childcare in a little bit. what IMC do you work with Steev
? You work on the Satellite project right ?
09:21 < steev> I'm with Arizona IMC and yes i'm the editor of the
Indymedia Newsreal
09:21 < steev> I haven't been following this CMS discussion much, just
related discussions on the video list and the drupal list
09:22 < steev> but AZ IMC really needs a new site, needs to move away
from sf-active
09:23 < robbt> Well I was trying to spearhead it because nobody else
was taking it on, but of course like many IMCistas I have a lot of
stuff going on besides just IMC so I haven't promoted it enough
lately. I just wanted to throw together this meeting to at least try
to get people together to discuss it since I think a lot more could
happen if IMC tech's coordinated it.
09:24 < steev> yes
09:24 < steev> are you a tech, btw?
09:24 < robbt> Ahh yeah, a lot of IMC's are stuck with Sf-active, I
don't know if any sites have switched from Drupal.
09:24 < steev> i do web development professionally but i've never done
it extensively for indymedia
09:25 < steev> AZ IMC had pretty much decided on drupal
09:25 < robbt> I'm a tech, not really a developer per se, but I've
been meaning to pick up that skill and start coding more but it takes
a lot of time and dedication to pick up when you are already busy. I
was the person who prepared the DVD's we sent for the newsreal.
09:25 < steev> oh yeah. cool
09:25 < steev> the videos of the music festival and then the antiwar
march at night in columbus?
09:26 < robbt> Drupal is the best solution currently available IMO,
there just hasn't been a lot of network wide coordination, so
everybody ends up with their own version of it. The SF-active techs
are working to do a whole new custom version of SF-Active from
CakePHP, which could be cool, but I worry about it falling by the
wayside or being difficult to set-up since it won't have as large of a
developer community of Drupal.
09:27 < steev> yeah custom imc cms's are a bad idea now, imho
09:27 < robbt> Yeah, I could submit a video of the indigenous people's
march for the next newsreal if you are still taking submissions.
09:27 < steev> drupal is such a clear choice
09:27 < steev> oh yes, i'm ALWAYS taking submissions. send any time!
09:27 < steev> did you ever get paid by FSTV?
09:28 < robbt> Yeah, I think so too, I really think that network wide
coordination could really help us to develop Drupal and I think that
people will continue to want to use it even if they come up with a
custom CMS that some people want.
09:28 < steev> it's been frustrating with drupal tryign to figure out
what the "best practices" are for IMC sites
09:28 < steev> everyone rolls their own drupal implementation
09:28 < robbt> I don't know if we got paid yet or not, I took a while
to get them the submissions and the money is going to the non-profit
that pays the rent for our IMC office.
09:29 < steev> i think every collective will want their own
customizations, of course, but it would be great to have a common
starting point
09:29 < robbt> I totally agree and I think this is what we should work
on. One starting point would be a install profile. I know some people
have started to work on this.
09:29 < steev> fstv sent you contracts at least?
09:30 < robbt> yeah they did send us the contracts and i got them back
to them. the check is prolly in the mail.
09:30 < steev> ok. yeah they usually take up to 60 days to pay after
receiving a contract.
09:30 < steev> anyway, i agree about the install profiles
09:31 < robbt> I would say that coming up with best practices for IMC
would help, especially with the media stuff.
09:31 < robbt> There are so many different solutions prepared by
Drupal developers and some of them need some work.
09:31 < steev> it would be cool to get people from all the IMCs that
already use drupal to compare notes and see what the common ground is,
what has worked and what hasnt
09:31 -!- sbimc has joined #drupal-dev
09:32 < robbt> That has happened on the doc page for Drupal Dev and
also to a degree on groups.drupal.org/indymedia
09:32 < steev> oh
09:32 < steev> i didnt know about that group
09:32 < steev> cool
09:32 < sbimc> hi all - santa barbara,ca imc here
09:32 < steev> yeah drupal is such a moving target too, there are
updates so often...
09:33 < steev> hi sbimc
09:33 < sbimc> working on setting up drupal 5 atm
09:33 < sbimc> currently base install at http://launder.org
09:33 -!- sbimc is now known as punkrider
09:33 < robbt> hello punkrider..
09:33 < punkrider> sorry (nic change)
09:34 < punkrider> i'm currently at work and will be in and out of here
09:34 < punkrider> but we really need to get our shit together here in
sant barbara and get this site back up
09:35 < robbt> i have to do some childcare and have to ride a 5 year
old to a cafe on a burley so i might have to ditch out for a second...
09:35 < steev> heh
09:35 < steev> i was planning to be more of a fly on the wall anyway,
thinking there would be more peeps at this....
09:35 < robbt> what would be a good 2nd meeting time for people, since
i know that was mostly what i heard in response to this meeting is
that evenings or weekends would work better.
09:36 < robbt> do you know andrew from santa barbera, who recently
moved to ohio ?
09:37 < steev> seems like a weekend would be good
09:37 < steev> maybe early afternoon on a saturday
09:38 < steev> taht would be midmorning sunday in australia and not
too late saturday night in england
09:38 < robbt> Do people want to schedule one for this Saturday, I
should be able to be there, if I put it on my schedule.
09:39 < steev> might be hard for some since its the saturday after turkey day...
09:39 < steev> mayeb the next saturday?
09:39 < robbt> What time exactly ? I'll make an announcement and if
nothing else we can meet again the following Saturday.
09:39 < steev> hmm...
09:39 < steev> how about 2pm EST?
09:40 < robbt> Since if we don't get our act together as a group, the
defacto consensus will be towards just adopting CakePHP and the new
SfACtive and the loose deadline is to have a proposal for the network
by December 1st. I think we can at least make a good case that Drupal
should be highly considered by new IMCs. 2PM EST works for me.
09:40 < steev> 11am pacific, and i think that'd be.... 7pm GMT?
09:41 < steev> who set this deadline?
09:42 < robbt> Ok, I'll make an announcement, anyone have agenda
ideas, I have to jet. Mainly the Sf-Active techs who were involved in
TechMeet
09:42 < steev> hmm
09:42 < robbt> It doesn't really have too much weight, since I don't
think it will influence the rest of the network and Drupal will remain
a good choice as well as IndyPlone.
09:42 < steev> ok
09:42 < steev> i have to go too...
09:42 < robbt> Ok, I'll see everyone who can show Saturday at 2pm.
09:42 < robbt> later

#### 2007-11-24

10:56 < robbt> hello anyone here for the cms meeting ?
10:56 -!- robbt has quit [Client exited]
10:56 -!- robbt has joined #drupal-dev
10:57 <@ekes> can be :)
10:58 -!- mode/#drupal-dev [+o robbt] by ekes
10:59 <@ekes> well for now anyway
10:59 < mark> hi
11:00 < mark> um about to run out of battery but hopefully i can plug in
11:00 <@robbt> hello, well it seems like a few of us are here anyways.
11:00 -!- mode/#drupal-dev [+o mark] by ekes
11:01 <@robbt> ahh my fingers are freezing, but i'm not sitting on a
porch like i was last meeting..
11:02 <@robbt> so what imc's does everyone here work with ? I'm with
and helped start Columbus IMC here in Ohio US.
11:03 * ekes was in york.indymedia.org.uk (still doing tech) still in
indymedia.org.uk and moved to indymedia.nl :{
11:03 <@ekes> :)
11:04 <@mark> i'm mark from indybay
11:04 <@ekes> and for discussion could chuck in something I chatted to
occam about -- to do with squid/distribution/... for Drupal
11:05 <@robbt> cool, go for it.
11:06 <@ekes> Well he's worried about the stability of Drupal under
load, now my argument is most of the sites are just really small
anyway, but he points to the spikes that indymedia has -- events, not
predicted etc. There were various things we discussed, but the first
backup to have was just to have some people who offer squid proxies
and make sure all drupal indy's could use them
11:07 -!- clara has joined #drupal-dev
11:07 < clara> hi
11:07 <@robbt> hello
11:07 <@ekes> there were then other ideas, like if it was possible to
seperate out search function, or redirect to one server for
publishing, or use something to distribute url/articles - but all that
is bigger things
11:08 <@mark> hi clara
11:08 <@robbt> would the squid proxy basically act as a caching agent
for the drupal site ?
11:08 * ekes notes that imc uk gets squid cache offers, so this isn't
like really odd
11:08 <@ekes> robbt: yep, just point the ip's at the squid caches
instead of the sites, they can take most of the load, and deal with it
if there are spikes
11:09 <@ekes> the problem is making sure the right headers are sent -
or so I've been told
11:09 <@mark> yeah drupal is not ideal for use w/ squid. it works best
if you use the aggressive cache mode
11:10 <@robbt> yeah i've never really experimented with proxy-based
caching, it sounds like it could be good, but then get complicated
once you login.
11:10 <@mark> also drupal 6 has some improvements in this area
11:10 <@mark> i think, now that drupal.org itself is behind squid,
there has been motivation to improve this
11:10 <@robbt> there is also the experimental boost module that does
static html caching of the pages
11:11 <@ekes> mark: you got anymore experience of higher load sites?
11:11 * ekes pulling up contributions/modules/boost
11:11 <@mark> yeah.. i worked for a huge site (in mumber of nodes)
that had occasional spikes
11:12 <@ekes> I did also see stuff about Drupal 6 re caching and table
locking (removed) etc
11:12 <@ekes> mark: how did it go, anything you did?
11:12 <@mark> the main thing was having an optimized db server or
cluster, and opcode caching
11:12 <@mark> we actually couldn't use drupal cache at all due to some
of our modules needing sessions for anon users
11:13 <@robbt> drupal can eat up mysql memory fast.
11:14 <@mark> yep.. we had a db server with 16GB ram. but really this
is not needed.. i hope.. for most indy sites ;)
11:15 <@ekes> well as many sites seem to be running on vservers which
are heavily shared!
11:15 <@mark> yeah.. for these a beefier server definitely helps
11:16 <@ekes> I'm kinda liking this boost module for some indy sites
from the README
11:16 <@robbt> i had my low-traffic sites causing my apache server and
my VPS to run out of memory and start thrashing, i had to kill apache,
but then i switched to lighttpd and got rid of some modules and it's
been running great at 256megs with the e-mail server and everything.
11:16 <@mark> wow
11:17 <@mark> i really dont recommend less that 512MB for production
drupal sites
11:17 <@mark> so thats' cool that u got it working :)
11:17 <@robbt> yeah i didn't think it would work, but it has been and
hasn't even gotten close to using most of the memory.
11:18 <@mark> but do u have opcode caching? that helps u server a lot
more pages per second but also uses more memory
11:19 <@robbt> i think that i have php5-apc or something along those lines.
11:20 <@mark> yeah i think that defaults to using 32MB ram or so but u
can increase it to cache more code
11:21 <@ekes> I assume the db clustering will be easier with Drupal 6?
11:21 -!- occam has joined #drupal-dev
11:23 <@ekes> haha that stopped conversation ;)
11:24 <@robbt> i haven't heard too much about it, but i haven't been
following it a lot.
11:25 <@mark> well i heard that didnt get in
11:25 <@mark> or did it at the last minute?
11:25 <@ekes> beta3 has no locking that much I know
11:26 <@ekes> mark: what have been the issues in the past? /me not
having actually tried it
11:26 <@mark> well yes, but the db replication stuff sorta died out..
no one finished the patches last i looked
11:26 <@mark> being able to query either master or slave db
11:27 <@mark> i.e. ability to query master if its critical that you
get accurate data
11:27 <@mark> or query slave for faster queries that may be out of date
11:27 <@robbt> what do people think about drupal being the recommended
CMS for Indymedia, vs the other options being discussed from the
techmeet meeting, namely a custom-built CakePHP CMS and IndyPlone ?
11:27 <@mark> i'm sure it will be in drupal 7
11:28 <@mark> well cakephp seems pretty cool from what i've read.
myself i've done rails but not cakephp yet
11:30 <@mark> what i see with drupal is an increasing number of news
and media related sites, and as long as these projects are
open-sourcing their modules, indymedia sites can use a lot of that
work..
11:30 <@mark> nowpublic, hub.witness.org etc. etc
11:31 <@robbt> yeah there are a lot of great modules, i think we
should probably work on trying to come up with good best practices for
installing them, since to a new IMC or even someone just getting into
Drupal it can be insane to try and sort the stuff out.
11:31 <@mark> there's a lot of developers who are familiar with drupal
so its not to hard to find tech volunteers, although probably same
could be said of cake and plone
11:31 <@ekes> Yer I've seen this one develop, I don't know if Drupal
is what developers who have an indymedia 'bigger picture' want to
spend their time on -- but it is going to be used by lots because (1)
it works easily (2) it has a learning curve people can handle (3)
there is lots of scope for nice media stuff that's being developed
11:33 <@ekes> I think it is interesting therefore to work on
developing it and 'best practice' is surely one of those areas,
developing some stability under fire is another, and distribution of
articles (if not the site) is a last easy target
11:33 <@mark> has anyone been involved with imc alternatives project?
i dont even know if its still around but i heard they were working on
drupal stuff
11:34 <@robbt> Yeah I think it would make sense if we supported 3 CMs'
as a network with people choosing based upon their techbackground what
they want to use.
11:34 <@ekes> I've been on the list and offered my help, they are
riding on the back of Philly now- and their tech's haven't asked for
much
11:35 <@robbt> i followed it for a while, it seems to have stalled out
when they tried to get into testing between plone and drupal.
11:35 <@ekes> they are going to use phillys drupal install
11:35 <@mark> hmm sounds like video.indy ;)
11:35 <@robbt> ohh ok, where is the philly beta hosted at ?
11:37 <@robbt> i haven't seen any documentation for that, every drupal
IMC site looks and is set-up completely different, which I guess is
better than every site being clones of each other as it were with some
of the older network based CMS'.
11:37 <@ekes> think it's this http://phillycalendar.org/
11:38 <@ekes> the low hanging fruit for installs are just an easy
'features'/'newswire' with 'users'/'admin' type indymedia site
11:39 <@ekes> anonymisation done properly
11:39 <@ekes> it gets more interesting even once you get to images...
11:40 < occam> talk about decentralisation of fkn drupal! :)
11:41 <@ekes> occam: started that and then it stopped just as you arrived :-P
11:42 <@robbt> i think a sweet theme would be awesome as well, or at
least a theme optimized for IMC's that could be easily customized,
maybe with the color module, and a few easy to replace logos or what
not, I guess the question would be who wants/can do what in terms of
making this happen.
11:42 < occam> damn ;)
11:43 <@mark> also need to figure out what would be in a indydrupal
profile, just a basic site or should it be full featured with
workflows, node access and all that..
11:43 < occam> keywords are: module (search) seperation. frontend /
backend seperation = read only drupal?
11:45 <@ekes> mark: I'd really avoid node access for a basic install -
esp. given previous load considerations
11:45 <@mark> if u turn on aggressive cache mode u basically have a
read-only site
11:45 <@ekes> but it can't be somewhere else from the production machine
11:45 <@mark> but for splitting into read site and write site.. i dont
know about that
11:46 <@mark> u could certainly split out search into another db
server if you wanted
11:47 <@robbt> well if we were to adopt drupal network wide, would
this mean setting up a bunch of drupal servers around the world to
offer hosting to the various new IMCs at this point hosting is
something that the network seems to be lacking, i had to get my own
VPS for our server cuz I couldn't get .htaccess setup back when I was
trying to get hosting from linefeed
11:49 <@mark> well we have a colocation coop in sf offering xen VPS
http://cernio.com/virtual-private-servers
11:49 <@ekes> tachanka has a server with a drupal indy on it with like
2 unused IMCs and 1 quiet one -- for starters
11:49 <@mark> but we do have costs..
11:49 <@ekes> aktivix should have one... one day
11:50 <@mark> our VPS costs are really good compared to commercial
stuff here in the US (e.g. we're cheaper than slicehost)
11:50 <@robbt> it was a while ago, i haven't tried recently, i'll look
into the VPS co-loco.
11:52 <@mark> i have one dedicated box at cernio that is running
freebsd and setup for drupal hosting
11:52 <@mark> i was going to host one of my paying clients on it.. but
then that project found hosting at ibiblio
11:53 <@mark> so i could set it up for free/cheap drupal hosting.. but
it's just one box, not redundant
11:53 <@mark> it currently has a bunch of freebsd jails including one
big mysql jail w/ plenty of ram
11:54 <@robbt> i'm just wondering what the best way to get new IMC's
and a lot of the old IMCs without a lot of techs stuck on either
sfactive or dadaimc onto something better such as drupal based
hosting, i know that twin cities IMC was looking to do this, they're
current set-up is dada i think and it sucks, plus they're going to
host the RNC protests next year.
11:55 <@mark> i could help w/ sf-active to drupal migration, i am way
too familiar w/ sf-active..
11:56 <@mark> i dont know anything about dada though
11:56 <@ekes> there have already been a couple of dada migrations,
they have put the scripts out -- somewhere
11:59 <@robbt> yeah i have seen some of them, it seems like regardless
of whether or not drupal is decided upon as "the CMS" for Indymedia a
lot of sites are already choosing it and just need tech help.
12:00 <@ekes> sooo... from here what are some good things to start on
practically (/me is going to have to move off soon)
12:01 <@mark> well i would say the main thing is a plan of attack for
install profile
12:01 <@mark> at least, thats what i'm interested in
12:02 <@robbt> well i will have to go soon too, i think that a few
things, we should continue to research and document ways to
decentralize/distribute drupal, we should figure out how many servers
we have network wide that could host drupal IMC sites for
new/upgrading IMCs, we should start documenting best pratices for an
install profile.
12:02 <@mark> for install profile we should figure out some basics
like can we use media mover
12:03 <@mark> once we have a general architecture mapped out it would
be easier to make some progress
12:03 <@robbt> yeah where should we work to develop this ? can we get
a test-site set-up to try stuff on with more than one admin, the other
problem is that we'll need shell access to be able to download modules
for it.
12:04 <@mark> if people need a shared site i could set one up.
personally i do everything on my laptop.. ;)
12:04 <@robbt> i'd be down for helping with this, we could document it
on docs, but it'd be good to have a shared place to test modules out.
12:05 <@robbt> i think a shared site would be useful to combine efforts.
12:06 <@ekes> so for install profile try and do it collaboratively...
I suggest starting with the easy profile (without media specifics) -
quick gratification ;) then make media version(s)
12:06 <@robbt> yeah that makes sense...
12:06 <@ekes> I've got my old desktop box under a table at someones
house on the end of a dyndns adsl line -- it would probably do, if I
cleaned it up
12:06 <@mark> indymedia without media :(
12:07 <@mark> well, if u want a shared site on 100mbps i could set one
up in 2 mins.. i already have drupal multisite setup with all the
modules..
12:07 <@ekes> image.module yes, upload/assist/asset... no
12:07 <@robbt> i mean if we could do a install profile that works
simple with articles and attachments, and then also get something
set-up to test all of the different media stuff.
12:07 <@ekes> yep
12:08 <@robbt> cuz i mean if we could get the bittorrent module to
work with desktop seeding/server seeding and RSS feeds that would be
supercool, but I doubt it'll be supereasy.
12:08 <@mark> oh the bittorrent module is really easy to setup
12:09 <@robbt> but do you have to upload the complete file to the server first ?
12:09 <@mark> u can upload just a torrent if u want
12:09 <@mark> last i checked there was no "bridge" to automatically
seed and track video uploads
12:10 <@mark> but if no one else has written it, it should be easy
12:10 <@robbt> yeah stuff like that would be good projects for us to
contribute on, i mean if we just came up with decent documentation on
how to set-up stuff it'd be rad and prolly an install profile would be
used way beyond just the imc network.
12:11 <@robbt> so who is going to set-up the box ?
12:11 <@mark> if u point me to your gpg keys i could set up and send u
login info
12:12 <@mark> what i have is, loads of cvs checkouts
12:12 <@mark> so to install a module u create a symlink
12:12 <@ekes> that makes sense
12:12 <@mark> you don't need to download from drupal.org unless u want
to (but then it's harder to make a cvs patch)
12:13 <@mark> i find i rarely build a drupal site without finding and
patching bugs.. :/
12:13 <@mark> in contrib, mostly
12:14 <@robbt> cool i can email you my gpg keys. yeah it's true..can
someone summarize the notes and post them to the drupal-dev list ? i
have to run and i'm just using chat.indymedia.org on a friends laptop.
12:15 <@mark> i can also post logs if people want
12:16 <@ekes> gpg signed msg with ssh rsa pub key attached on it's way
to mark at indymedia.org
12:16 <@ekes> cool
12:16 <@mark> ok. i'm glad to put this box to use.. otherwise it was
just wasting electricity in the colo
12:18 <@ekes> so that'll go for install profile - and documentation
(using docs.indymedia.org ?)
12:18 <@ekes> any first options for testing/looking at
decentralisation - I'm certainly going to play with this boost in the
next couple of days
12:18 <@ekes> would add to squidishness if it works too
12:19 <@ekes> but more interesting stuff?
12:20 <@mark> ok i have to run.. i will finish setting up sandbox asap
12:21 <@mark> talk to yall later
12:21 <@robbt> later
12:21 <@ekes> k cheers!
12:23 <@ekes> well you can put me down for above, and starting to look
at anonymous users at the same time
12:24 <@ekes> that is anonymous users browsing being seperated from site
12:24 * ekes is going to head off then too