So, SMF has declared the cold war...

Nao

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Re: So, SMF has declared the cold war...
« Reply #150, on November 2nd, 2011, 02:17 PM »
Or this one... :lol:

Well, it's a very customized version so it explains this and that. (Plus, the fact that we'll be moving it to Wedge soon enough.)

AngelinaBelle

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Re: So, SMF has declared the cold war...
« Reply #151, on November 2nd, 2011, 02:24 PM »
I appreciate the update Nao. I think it was the honorable thing to do. Everyone who uninstalls their older versions of AEME and AEVA light will be doing a little bit to reduce the unending barrage of AEVA requests on simplemachines.org.

I'll install it. I've scheduled some time for that tomorrow (I always like to do some testing before even  a very simple install like this).
My little forum is not going to make a big difference to the hammering AEVA installs are giving the site, but I'll do my little part.

The AEVA mod was completely invisible for only a short while -- only until the folks at Simple Machines and the SMF customization team found a less-restrictive way (blocking your unique user agent) to give the customization site some relief from AEVA's barrage of requests. I am told that it would be difficult to re-enable auto-update access now. The AEVA traffic level is that heavy.

Thanks again!
I'm an SMF doc writer.

Arantor

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Re: So, SMF has declared the cold war...
« Reply #152, on November 2nd, 2011, 02:31 PM »
It would also be worth throwing out builds of some kind for Aeva Media (both strands) simply to help minimise the problem; it's not just Aeva Lite that does auto updates.

:edit: Failing that, how much work is it to disable the auto-update? It might be worth offering a small package that just modifies Aeva itself to disable it (for those who don't want to update anything else)


Also, this makes me consider, very carefully, the viability of having Wedge look up daily for updates to plugins and whether my plans need changing.
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IchBin

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Re: So, SMF has declared the cold war...
« Reply #153, on November 2nd, 2011, 05:19 PM »
Nao, I'm assuming you have ported some of this code from your wedge install? Anyway, the mod doesn't work because of this in Subs-Aeva-Sites.php:

Code: [Select]
// Prevent attempts to access this file directly
if (!defined('WEDGE'))
die('Hacking attempt...');

If you wouldn't mind fixing that and then updating the package, it would be much appreciated. Thanks!

Nao

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Re: So, SMF has declared the cold war...
« Reply #154, on November 2nd, 2011, 05:43 PM »
Ah, silly me... Yes, I copied the sitelist verbatim from Wedge because I was comparing the two versions and there were too many differences so halfway through it I just cancelled my edits and copied the file. Forgot to modify the first line though eheh...

Reuploading.
Posted: November 2nd, 2011, 05:41 PM

Done.

 Aeva-Lite-7.2.zip - 101.29 kB, downloaded 53 times.


IchBin

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Re: So, SMF has declared the cold war...
« Reply #155, on November 2nd, 2011, 06:08 PM »
So are you going to update the mod at SMF, or would you like me to do that? Thanks for fixing the package.

Arantor

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Re: So, SMF has declared the cold war...
« Reply #156, on November 2nd, 2011, 06:22 PM »
Also, is there going to be any kind of a post to the Aeva thread to notify users following it? Last I understood, Nao was post-banned and thus couldn't make such a post himself.

Nao

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Re: So, SMF has declared the cold war...
« Reply #157, on November 2nd, 2011, 07:03 PM »
I'm assuming this means the mod update works? Then I've updated the mod page. Hopefully no one gets hurt in the process...

If anyone finds a problem with the new releases, please contact me here, as I haven't looked at sm.org's Aeva topics for many, many moons... (And do not plan to come back either.)
Re: So, SMF has declared the cold war...
« Reply #158, on November 2nd, 2011, 09:12 PM »
BTW Pete, Aeva Media was already (since last April) modified to remove the auto-update code.

And yeah, having all plugins check for new versions will definitely be a nightmare (if only because sm.org itself doesn't do it -- only a few mods do that, and look at where they're at now.)
That's one of the reasons why I suggested requesting that all plugin authors host their 'main' download somewhere else, including the URL to request new version updates.
Maybe we could do it systematically. For instance instead of offering to upload the mod file (which we could still have as a fallback), we'd put priority on asking authors to provide: (1) a direct link to the mod (version number free, so that they don't have to update the URL every time), (2) provide inside their plugin definition file a direct link to the version number request file (we could have some kind of a standard file for this which they'd simply need to fill in and then upload somewhere).
Quote from AngelinaBelle on November 2nd, 2011, 02:24 PM
I appreciate the update Nao. I think it was the honorable thing to do.
Well it's something I'd wanted to do for a long time but I postponed it because I didn't think the load would be that taxing on the server... I mean there are at most 10 to 15k installs of Aeva Lite/Media around, each doing at most one request to one HTML page every day (if they didn't disable the lookup code), so that's one request every ten seconds. At most.

Hmm okay it's still a lot more than zero... :P

I mean I was expecting that if it was a load on the server, I should have received a request about it when I was active on Aeva -- i.e. over a year ago.
Quote
I'll install it. I've scheduled some time for that tomorrow (I always like to do some testing before even  a very simple install like this).
My little forum is not going to make a big difference to the hammering AEVA installs are giving the site, but I'll do my little part.
At the very least, with the user agent being disabled, it'll only be 'ghost' requests.
Quote
The AEVA mod was completely invisible for only a short while -- only until the folks at Simple Machines and the SMF customization team found a less-restrictive way (blocking your unique user agent) to give the customization site some relief from AEVA's barrage of requests. I am told that it would be difficult to re-enable auto-update access now. The AEVA traffic level is that heavy.
It depends on whether the traffic gets manageable. Then they can re-enable the auto-update for a few days, and it should be enough to get all installed Aeva's to update their version number and ask admins to update to the latest version.
As you can see, I added the infamous support for 'youtu.be' URLs as an incentive for noobs to upgrade one final time.

Arantor

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Re: So, SMF has declared the cold war...
« Reply #159, on November 2nd, 2011, 11:30 PM »
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BTW Pete, Aeva Media was already (since last April) modified to remove the auto-update code.
I didn't know it had been changed, so was asking the question on the basis that it probably hadn't.
Quote
Maybe we could do it systematically. For instance instead of offering to upload the mod file (which we could still have as a fallback), we'd put priority on asking authors to provide: (1) a direct link to the mod (version number free, so that they don't have to update the URL every time), (2) provide inside their plugin definition file a direct link to the version number request file (we could have some kind of a standard file for this which they'd simply need to fill in and then upload somewhere).
Hmm. See, I know WordPress does this and if they can cope with it, I see no reason why we can't! Though perhaps I should look more into *how* they do it rather than just blithely say that if they can do it, so can we. Interestingly here, third party repos just aren't the problem, the home repo is.

There is an alternative process that I like the idea of even less, but would solve some of the computational/effort side of things and generate others.

Now, MyBB has a facility whereby users can mark 'I have this installed'. Imagine we did something similar, but that we also asked users to tell us the site(s) they're running Wedge on, and that for mods they mark as 'I have this installed', it sends an HTTP POST notification to those forums to advise them that there are new plugins (and if we get 2+ failures to send, we stop sending notifications to those users' forums). That way, if they don't want to explicitly say what plugins they're using (it need not be public knowledge, of course), they can subscribe to regular thread updates as normal, but if they sign in and indicate they're using x, y and z, when any of those is updated, we tell them. Heck, we could even batch it to a run once a day or so.

It's just an idea. I'm sure it needs refinement.

Nao

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Re: So, SMF has declared the cold war...
« Reply #160, on November 2nd, 2011, 11:37 PM »
Hmm... A push system?
Yeah, that could work...
Although I'd rather see it, once again, defined in the plugin's xml file.

- server installs plugin
- plugin tells server the URL of its fetcher system
- server pings fetcher by sending it a target URL
- fetcher records URL
- when the plugin is updated, fetched pings said URL
- if it fails, retry in 24 hours if it's a security update, or a week if not. (Or just 24 hours for everything.)

Arantor

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Re: So, SMF has declared the cold war...
« Reply #161, on November 2nd, 2011, 11:40 PM »
Quote
- server installs plugin
- plugin tells server the URL of its fetcher system
Which means everyone who isn't interested in setting up their own repository has to manually specify Wedge's plugin server, or would it just fall back on that anyway? (In which case there is no benefit to us directly in setting it up like that.)

And if the plugin server moves in that time, the plugins all have to be updated. (True, there's still a problem, but having it not part of the plugin mitigates it to a degree)

Nao

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Re: So, SMF has declared the cold war...
« Reply #162, on November 2nd, 2011, 11:50 PM »
Hmm. I'm guessing that if authors don't set up a repo of sorts, it prolly means they don't bother with sending updates either. I know I craved for control with AeMe and stuff.

You know best anyway. You'll figure something out in no time ;)

Arantor

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Re: So, SMF has declared the cold war...
« Reply #163, on November 2nd, 2011, 11:54 PM »
Quote
Hmm. I'm guessing that if authors don't set up a repo of sorts, it prolly means they don't bother with sending updates either. I know I craved for control with AeMe and stuff.
Control's a wonderful thing. It's why we did it with SimpleDesk, and why Niko did it for the arcade, project tools and wiki (amongst others), but at the same time it's a pain to come up with something that works for everyone else.

I think after I fix a couple of WedgeDesk bugs I've discovered that I'll go investigate and see what everyone else does, because while I still want the easiest/"best" user experience, I'm aware there are practical limitations that are levied, so I'm curious to see how others solve them.

Nao

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Re: So, SMF has declared the cold war...
« Reply #164, on November 3rd, 2011, 12:09 AM »
At worst, we can always centralize everything on wedge.org and go get a powerful server. I don't believe we'll ever reach the number of users that SMF has, so it's probably not going to be a *horrible* problem. Plus, AeMe fetched an entire web page (well, about 20 or 30KB of text?) when Wedge will only retrieve a few bytes (plus headers).
And if we use your 'push' concept on wedge.org...